Part I: Business and The Social Media Craze, New Opportunities or Just More to Do? (A 3-part series)

In the midst of the social media craze, with everyone and their mother swarming to facebook and twitter, I started to wonder about the true purpose of some of these powerful new tools. Never one to follow “the herd” I questioned whether this was just a fad. Or was life as we know it changing? I began to wonder about the purpose of facebook and twitter from a business perspective? Why should I adopt and adapt these new tools in my business? How I could use these tools to create new business opportunities and increase my identity with more people across the country?My first reaction to facebook and twitter was, “Why the hell do I care about what you (or anyone else) ate for breakfast or what you did last night?” The contrarian in me rebelled against telling the world every move I made and losing my anonymity. After all, what do I do that is so exciting that other people would pay attention? I admit I was behind the curve in adopting facebook and twitter. It wasn’t until I finally realized that I was going to be left in the dust if I didn’t learn these tools and that life as we knew it was changing, that I was open-minded enough to explore them. I began using facebook and quickly saw that it was a tool to build relationships. While hundreds of thousands of people use facebook solely to communicate and stay in touch with their friends and family, I began to see an opportunity to also use facebook to communicate, stay in touch and build relationships with business associates and colleagues. Essentially, I discovered that using facebook was a way to build my business identity with the people that I had previously communicated with through my contact management system. I began to use facebook as a powerful tool to build my business and stay in touch in a more personal way with a larger number of people.Krisstina Wise, owner/founder of the GoodLife Team and a fellow colleague puts it this way, “I notice everyone is all crazy about social media. If you take the buzz away, what you have fundamentally are new tools to prospect, market and build identity. We previously used a rolodex, then a contact management system/database. When we converted from the rolodex to a contact management system, we were still performing the same fundamental business practices – marketing and prospecting – but we were using a different and more powerful tool. We are still fundamentally concerned with prospecting, marketing and building identity but we have two new tools to use – facebook and twitter.”These new tools enable us to stay in contact, communicate and build relationships with more people in an easier way than we ever could have with our database system. Are you using these tools powerfully, effectively and strategically as a way to increase your business? If so, how? And how do you measure the return? Stay tuned as we continue to explore ways to produce ROI by using these new tools. Watch for Part 2 coming soon “From Email Hell to Social Media Saturation“.