In 1936, Dale Carnegie wrote a book entitled How to Win Friends and Influence People, which has sold over 16 million copies worldwide. An interesting quote from that book is…

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you…

For it seems we have gone full-circle and that this very concept is more relevant today than ever before, which was the inspiration for this article and the importance of Social-Media for Brands & Businesses, which to some business owners is a difficult concept to grasp.

In all our searching and researching, we have found one lady (Marta Kagen) who has done an exceptional job of getting straight to the point and summarizing the importance of these new tools and platforms in a presentation she has titled What the F**K is Social Media:

 

One of the most important factors from this slideshow is that over 93% of social-users expect brands to have a social-media presence.

Facebook has become the obvious leading social-platform, especially with statistics such as:

As of August the 14th, 2009; there are more than 250 Million active users…
…and over 8 Million users become fans of pages each day…

If brands can learn anything from these facts and figures, the most certain fact of all is that the marketing and advertising strategies of brands and businesses not using social-media to its fullest must change their ways if they want to compete with other brands already using such tools, and as such; we have another interesting slideshow that deals directly with this very issue from Paul Isakson:

 

The key differences between social-media communications and other forms of mass-communication include the facts that social-media can provide spontaneous feedback directly from the consumers and gives them the control to spread the word - not only that, but it can be targeted to niche user-groups and specific demographics.

Perhaps the most powerful insight into social-media can be seen by this simple flow that demonstrates the inter-connected and true underlying power of social-media and how an interesting article, photo or video can be perpetually spread through the viral-marketing mechanisms of social-media:

 

For those still not getting-it, the only option left is CommonCraft’s plain-English:

 

 

01. Social-Media in Plain English:

 

 

 

02. Social-Networking in Plain English: