A Social Media Valentine

Ten things I love about social media:

1. It’s fun. Admit it, you enjoy this stuff. There’s no reason marketing your business can’t be fun.
2. It connects me with people I otherwise would have lost forever. If the guy from high school can find you on accident, surely a prospective customer can find you on purpose. Optimize your presence.
3. It connects me with people I otherwise never would have met. “Why,” an attendant at one of my early speaking appearances asked me, “do I have to do this? Why can’t I just network in my local Optimist Club?” No one is saying you can’t; so long as you’re okay with your professional network being represented entirely within that room.
4. It’s dynamic. However it worked this morning, it changed at least a little bit by this afternoon.
5. The conversations. I remain amazed that my friends and colleagues in Italy, Vermont, San Francisco and Beijing can have impromptu, real time conversations without actually saying a word. Perhaps I am easily amazed, but I recall when the fax machine was a technological wonder.
6. The Facebook Instant Messaging function. I turn business deals in seconds using that thing.
7. The “Go Offline” option within the Facebook IM function. If you’re still struggling with what one of my audience members called the “frenetic pace” of the medium, make it a point to find this.
8. The fact that we already know how to do it. It’s called “social networking” because, in its essence, it’s a networking event that just keeps going.
9. That my mom is on it. Emailing pictures of my kids is pretty darned inefficient compared to uploading them to Facebook. I also love the fact that it’s always my business friends who are quickest and most vocal about how cute and smart my kids are.
10.  The future. Because I can hypothesize about where this is all going, and I do, but I don’t know. And neither do you.

Just a couple of requests before I go: If you’re going profess love to your sweetie this Valentine’s Day, and I hope you are, please do it in person before posting it on Facebook—and please don’t do it at all on LinkedIn.

Have a great weekend, all.

Hanbery Marketing's Swift Kick

• The Sales Funnel and Social Media, Part III
• The Sales Funnel and Social Media, Part I
• Social Media ROI: Are you a Service or a Sandwich?
• A social media “bubble?”
• Job Search and Social Media, Part II | Hanbery Marketing

Swift Recommendations

• SGB Media Group's "Social Views": Online Social Networking Sites, Facebook, Twitter, Ning, Business Networking Sites, Blogging, Social Media, Web Marketing  (Stephen G. Barr, Group Publisher)
• Social Media Marketing… Simplified  (BlogGlue)
• Rolling Out a Social Media Strategy  (Stephen G. Barr, Group Publisher)
• 11 Myths of Social Media Marketing  (Stephen G. Barr, Group Publisher)
• Social Media Observer | Social Media Marketing & Strategic Alliance Management  (Stephen G. Barr, Group Publisher)

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