Social Media

Like most adolescent girls, I spent many hours in my room pinning pics to my wall of my favorite clothes, sayings, and even pre-teen heartthrobs (John Stamos was my fav!). Images inspired me, and with the popularity of vision boards among adults today, it’s clearly an activity that we’ll never outgrow. It’s also no wonder that Pinterest—the virtual scrapbooking site—has fast become one of the hottest social media platforms around, especially among women.

Over 700 million users on Facebook have faced this dilemma … confirm or ignore a friend request. We’ve all been there, weighing the options of allowing yet another friend into our lives. Some may be nonchalant about adding friends, “the more the merrier.” Other users may be more selective, only allowing “specific” friends into their lives. One thing they all have in common… there aren’t many rules when it comes to Facebook.

Social media is a red hot topic these days. But people worry about the ROI of all that chatter. How can you ensure that social networking actually increases sales? Mark Elliott of Venture Accelerator Partners Inc is one person who's successfully incorporated social media into his sales funnel. In a Communitech seminar, he shared that social media has allowed him to recently:

Up until fairly recently, when you wanted to keep in touch with customers and prospects, you used email to send periodic messages to people who opted-in to receive your mailings. For example, since 2005 I've been emailing my Contagious Marketing Ezine on a monthly basis (more recently bi-monthly). Over the past few years, blogging has generated a lot of excitement as the best, coolest way to market your products and services online and the word is that "email is history. "

According to eMarketer, Facebook users have reached 350 million worldwide. Together they are creating a community of savvy consumers, connecting with friends, family, co-workers and acquaintances to share advice, information and yes, recommendations. I wonder then why so many publishers and authors are still not on Facebook?