In the past week I had the pleasure to attend 2 great seminars:  Marketing Profs’ Digital Media Mixer and the Forrester Consumer Forum.  Social media seemed to be the big discussion point for everyone in attendance at these forums.  The big questions was how can we make money in this space.  That is what happens when you are with many people from the marketing side of the business.  Even for a simple service person like myself, I was thrilled to see the excitement.

To me the term Social Media is confusing, I think it is more the socialization of the internet.  In the past we communicated more 1 on 1 via tools like email or instant messenger.  There were some social options such as chat rooms or email distribution groups.  But today we are now talking to more people, not as segregated as was the past with these other methods.  Sometimes it is simple as posting comments about a product at Amazon.  It can also be starting a blog or posting on someone else’s blog or tools such as Twitter, identi.ca, Plurk, LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, etc.  The list goes on and on.  But now there is a lot of discussion.

What this means to marketers is control is shifting.  It is more difficult to get a message out there.  So now companies are trying to figure out how they can participate.  This will be a topic I will be discussing in future posts.

Now how did I get involved in this Social Media?  It was not through Comcast (although they were the connection at the time), but back in 2000 our daughter Gia was born 10 weeks premature.  What happens is people want updates, but we were busy enough and did not want to talk to everyone.  We started our own website.  Then 3 years later when Gia was diagnosed with cancer, we used the website again.  We provided regular updates that are still available.  After her passing we let the old website remain intact at the following URL  http://www.sitedreamer.com/gia.  After our other children were born we created a new website http://www.eliasonfamily.info

As I have conversations regarding these social interactions, you will notice that I am a firm believer that people are trying to communicate their thoughts on a variety of topics.  They are trying to be heard, it is just a question who will listen.