Social Media Is About…

Jun 30 2011 in Trends by Shane Hebel

Number of Views:1444

Photo courtesy of Sean MacEntee on Flickr.

You’ve heard it millions of times. Social media is taking over the world! Social media will change everything that we do! Social media is revolutionary! Jump on the social media bandwagon!

But why?

What is social media? What does that even mean?

Let’s take a few minutes to really dig into what social media is and why it can benefit YOU. I don’t care about how it can benefit Lady Gaga or President Obama. I want to know how it can benefit ME in my life and why it’s such a big deal.

Unfortunately this time around our good friend Wikipedia let us down. Wikipedia defines social media as “the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.”

Okay so that tells us the specifics of what social media does. It allows people to connect online. Well that’s cool. Email did that. Why is social media so special? Let’s bring it down a peg and see if we can gain some further insight:

“If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” Jeff Bezos, CEO at amazon.com

WOAH! Now that brings it down to Earth. Social media allows people to interact with thousands and thousands of people that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. And they can tell them whatever they want. Uncensored.

Fantastic! So social media allows people to say whatever they want online without being censored. Social media is a +1 for free speech. However we still haven’t answered the question: what does that mean for you?

Well lets go down one step further with some specific examples. If your customers are telling 6,000 people that they’re at the dentist and they’re lovin’ it – that’s really good. If they’re telling 6,000 people that your office is terrible – that’s not so good for you.

Being part of the social network and getting involved in communication areas that your patients are in will give you an unprecedented look into your ‘online reputation’ and give you a chance to really see what your patients are saying.

So now we’re spying. Fantastic. Just what you want to do in the health care industry.

However there are more aspects of social media that are very beneficial to you, and not in a creepy kind of way. When people think of social media their minds immediately jump to huge websites like Facebook and Twitter. While these website embody the values of social media, they’re not the end-all be-all of the social media landscape.

Social media is about connecting and collaborating online. Take a look at this website! This is a social media tool. This is a social network. This is your network. It’s a place where you can come to connect with fellow dentists, to collaborate and to learn. That’s the most important part of all of this! Social media provides an extremely effective medium for active learning, participation and collaboration. We are here to encourage you guys to collaborate, participate and continue learning for the rest of your lives.

Check out the following video on social media. Let’s see if it (or this post) change your perspective!

This video was released 8 days ago and almost 100,000 people have watched it. Now that is the power of social media.

 

 

 

 

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