If you are a business owner and new to the Social Media world, you must be pulling every hair out of your body right about now. Before 1995, marketing your product or services meant putting an advertisement in the paper, making sure you are listed in the yellow pages and making a few cold calls here and there. Then the leads come to you. There was little or no competition from abroad and you didn't worry about some techie from Harvard stealing your idea and creating the biggest technology Armageddon in the world!
Well it is mid-way through 2011, and yes, there is a new legitimate player in the social media world. It is a very positive and forward thinking company called Google. I am still trying to figure out why it is called "Google +". Then again "Facebook" and "Twitter" are interesting words too. Conan O'Brien put it best a couple of years ago and called MySpace + Twitter + Facebook = MyTwitFace. So, I guess since MySpace is pretty much non-existent now, I guess the new Social Media platform is Goog+FaceTwit? OK, I am not exactly good with words. That is why I have a day job, right?
All I know is that I spend a lot of time on social media sites now. Tools like TweetDeck and Hootsuite make it easier to have that "console" approach. But I find myself looking at posts, responding usually about nothing important and then later discover that I just wasted two hours. Speaking of wasting time... why did Zuckerburg come up with this "Poke" thing. Was it his way to pick up chicks on Facebook? His one liner was " Hey Babe, I am going to poke you!" I login everyday on Facebook, and always know that heck I still got it for an old guy, since there is a list of women that "poke requested" me... but it is not a sexual thing. It is more like, POKE! Wake up Jeff and do something constructive and get off Facebook!
Now Google + has this thing called "circles". Great, now another way to get stuck in some click talking about nothing and not letting the world know about it. I personally think with the incredible initial success of Google + is that people are starting to get sick of Facebook and are hoping Google would create a new dimension in social networking, but instead you get stuck in these gossip circles. Could Google call them groups instead? Oh wait, that is what Facebook calls them.
Finally, I think the innocent social media site in all of this is LinkedIN. I do the bulk of my business building on LinkedIN and there is nothing about the site that makes me sick and tired of social networking. They don't have this poke thing or some addition symbol in their name. Just a great name for a social media site.. I am linked into you. Being linked is a lot less painful than being poked or being called a Twit! Speaking of Twit... I know I did not mention Twitter since I also never log onto Twitter. I have linked my two LinkedIN account and my three Facebook accounts to my three Twitter accounts. It takes a computer engineering professional like me to draw a flowchart to figure it all out.
OK, time to get off my computer and go for a walk and chat with the neighbor. Social Walking sounds so much healthier!
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