Social Media is game changing.

It’s game changing because it’s shifting the power to define and control a brand from the traditional institution to the individual or community. With each day that goes by, the ownership of all brands is gradually becoming the domain of the user.

Social Media is not a closed system.

Social networking sites may often be closed systems of friends, but the impact of messages shared inside these walls is not isolated to online social networking communities. Influence is flowing in and out of social media circles because people have a foot in both the online and real worlds. Therefore, engagement on a topic of concern does not have to happen in the same medium where the conversation began. An integrated approach to communications is still the name of the game.

Social Media is not just another media.

Social media is not like other forms of traditional media. Traditional modes of communication travel one-way, usually between the brand and its customers or potential users. Social media bonds networks of people with a digital medium enabling them to interact with the content. Brand messages are personally interpreted, shared and conversed between friends and people who’ve been given permission to enter into discussions about common interests.

Social Media is transparent.

To truly participate and get the value out of social media, users must decide to share personal information about themselves. The same is expected of corporations. The online community is increasingly demanding greater transparency and clearly articulated messages from corporations that wish to enter these social networking sites. In exchange for that increased level of transparency and communications, corporations can be granted access to social media networks, which often can contain a trove of information about the personalities, preferences and points of view of its members.

Social Media is more than blogs.

Social media is defined by the act of sharing content in and between social networks regardless of the content type. Blogs may have recently attracted mainstream interest to online networks but various social media have been around for years. In the beginning, there were discussion forums and opinion sites, and now it has morphed to include; video sharing (YouTube), photo sharing (Flickr) and microblogging (twitter) sites. Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are driving the social nature of the medium.

Social Media is decentralized and real-time.

Traditional media is a slave to space and time. It always has more information than it needs, which forces PR and advertising professionals to tailor their messages to the space available, whether it is a blank page or an available time slot. And, of course, traditional media has deadlines, which, by its very nature, dictates when messages can be delivered. It’s a different story for social media. These online sources of information operate 24/7, posting information as soon as it is received – in whatever format it arrives. There are no deadlines, no space restrictions and no rules. Rather, it is self-edited by the users themselves.

Social Media is measurable.

Users of social media share a lot more than just their opinion. Those who enter the social media domain leave behind a lot of clues about who they are and how they think via information found in social bookmarks, comments, engagement, influence, friends, followers, downloads, favorites, views, votes and links. From all of these user actions, you can measure what’s important, what ideas are gaining ground and who, or what, is having the biggest impact on your, or your client’s brand.

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