Today, the Social Media has a very big role to play in all business and marketing circles. Social media refers to bringing together of various activities which help in integrating technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio into a seamless entity.

It can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing) are some of the technologies used.

Social media is fundamentally different from traditional media like newspapers, television, books, and radio. The major success of all social media depends on interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words builds shared-meaning, using technology as a conduit.

It caters to a wide spectrum of topics. With reference to Internet marketing, Social Media means a collective group of web properties that are driven by users. Examples in such case are blogs, discussion boards, vlogs, and video sharing sites. Similarly, Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the process of trying to get a person’s content more widely distributed across multiple Social Media networks.

Social media marketing refers to the process of promoting a site or business through social media channels and is seen as a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic. This is the low-cost promotional method which will easily provide you with large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to a website again and again.

Most business owners and managers today are recognizing the benefits and huge potential that a ’social media marketing’ and ‘business blogging’ strategy can offer and are always on the lookout for implementing the same.   

The main advantages of social media applications are:

• they are user-created, developed or enhanced
• there is a community of interest built around them
• they do not require advanced technical knowledge
• multi-way communication is enabled
• they are participatory and interactive
• they are free or low cost to the end user
• they are infectious and fast-growing
• they are global

Some examples of social media applications include:

Communication

• Microblogs / Presence apps: Twitter and Pownce
• Social networking: Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace
• Events: Upcoming

Collaboration

• Wikis: Wikipedia
• Social bookmarking: del.icio.us and StumbleUpon
• Opinion sites: epinions

Other/Specialty

• social ads