What is Social Media?
Any website that invites you to interact with the site and with other visitors falls into the definition of Social

• online forums (e.g., DigitalPoint)

• blogs (e.g., WordPress)

• social networking sites (e.g., Facebook)

• social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg)

• video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube)

• photo sharing sites (e.g. Flickr)

• streaming sites (e.g., Ustream)

• user reviews (e.g., Amazon)

• crowdsourcing (e.g., Wikipedia)

• content aggregators (e.g., FriendFeed)

As you can see, social media is much wider than what some people think. It is also much older. We could say that the first Usenet (a form of distributed discussion system) developed in 1980 was already social media. So anyone not taking advantage of the power of Social Media is about 3 decades behind the times.

Why Social Media

The world of one way advertising is extinct. Stop thinking “campaign” and start thinking “conversation”. You gotta listen before you ever think of selling.
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations when it comes to making their buying decisions. Only 14% trust advertisements.
The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
Who does the buying research in a family? Traditionally and statistically, it’s the females. They will do research and seek out buying recommendations before a final purchase is made.