It’s official. More and more people are using this term “social media”.  But do you really know what social media means?  It’s so commonly used that I really wonder who on earth really knows what this means.

Who says that social media means a media which has to do with online?

From my understanding, social media is basically means the websites which are utilizing publishing technologies to create a pull of information from interested parties.  For example, if you have a website which can contain various feeds of related information, the visitors will be very glad to find out more from you.  And those releated information are made available using the publishing techologies which is basically in the form of an RSS and ATOM feed.

(Ok, here’s the meaning for social media from wikipedia)

But do you think social media an overused buzzword?

Social media is becoming more and more aggressively used by many people out there. But do you think social media an overused buzzword? I thought so!  A lot of my friends are using it like nobody’s business.

Who is right? Who is wrong?

I think it’s not an issue here anymore.  Why?

Because we must all understand that there’s no such thing as the real standard anymore.  (For example, pluto is no longer part of the planet.)  We are all human beings.  A standard will be formed if you are able to spread the news fastest to everybody’s attention.  That’s the “real standard”.

More and more blog stars are born. They do not need to go through the endorsement of the media companies.  All they need is an Internet access.

Social media is a place where you will exchange more ideas than ever before!

Every website owner will want to earn more money.  It’s as direct as that.  And when you are stucked with the same consistent amount of traffic everyday, what do you do to create more traffic else where?

You probably have a certain amount of conversion rate for all of your traffic in one website.  You might want to think of how to increase the conversion rate by doing some landing page optimization.  You might want to add more varieties of potential income generating widgets around your website.

But how do you look out for more sales, other than just tweaking your own website?

Selling the same product again and again

If your website is selling the same product consistently (such as Pepsi), you might think of new product launches such as “Vanilla Pepsi”.

But other than adding varieties to your own product, what other ways you can do to remind people to buy your product?

• You could be doing more advertisements to disturb people “Ermm excuse me, this is our product. Please remember to buy”.
• You could be creating a new facebook page and gather all your fans, reminding them to “buy” your product again and again.
• You could be paying money to sponsor people to play soccer, reminding them “We paid money to make your sports event successful! Remember to return favors”.
• And many other ways so that you can create more eyeball impressions…

After you have done so much, is that the reason why you want to pick this brand over others?  Chris Brogan has some thoughts about the small talks of all brands.

Selling new products again and again, discarding the old ones

This seems very common in many companies.  They are always launching new products, and making the old products end-of-life.  They keep on making new versions, and making the old ones obsolete.

This is one way how they can find a reason why they need to talk to the same crowd again and again.

• Some paid huge money, talking to the same crowd because they don’t own the database.  TV advertisements, radio advertisements, newspaper advertisements and online advertisements.  All these are owned by the media companies.  They have the database (both identified as subscribers as well as unidentified as strangers) to speak to every moment.  They leverage on the crowd that they have, to sell to the big companies who don’t want to manage the crowd.
• Another way, is to create your own media and communicate to the same media.  You are your own sponsor and you talk to the same people again and again.  Your database is growing.  And you are saving a lot of money.  But it really depends on which media you have chosen, and how sustainable this media is going to hold.
• Big companies have already identified the usage of facebook.  More and more of them are jumping onto this ship and enjoy the bandwidth that they can reach.  They can probably

So what do you do to sell more?

image credit: tripleoptix

While jobs are lost, personal branding becomes important because that is the key selling point for potential customers to buy in. 

Social media remains personal because it is something which belongs to you alone.  It’s personal.

MNCs don’t stand a chance to be any more personal in social media than you.  That’s because they come in a team. Huge team! They have to go through a lot of consensus before they can proceed.  And don’t forget, they are on paid salary.  The employees yearn more for a job security than anything else.  Most will not dare to take the bold step to change the world, although it is easy for them to do so.

Personal branding is the way for the individuals to sell to the world, leveraging on the social media.  Social media is so powerful because human beings are finally more united through the Internet.

Individuals have no choice… But to become unique and change the world.  Their “job security” depends on their uniqueness and to communicate in the social media.

For the first time in my life, I can see how helpless the MNCs are when it comes to broadcasting their message to the world through this simple tool called “social media”.  

What do you think?