Once again, we had another great meeting at this past weekend’s meetup with the Social Media Mastermind, Orange County (SMMOC) roundtable professionals. By the way, if you haven’t been to one of those, and you live in Southern California, you should try attending one. Here’s where you can get more information about upcoming events.
http://www.meetup.com/Social-Media-MasterMind-Orange-County/
In any case, one of the questions that came up for discussion during our last meeting (and we talked about a lot of things including Rockmelt and–get this–placing QR Codes on sheep (?!)) was the role of email in social media marketing activities for businesses.
How Do You Define Social Media?
Now, if you ask me, if you take the definition of social media as a media channel for social interaction using highly accessible and scalable web-based publishing techniques to turn communication into interactive dialogues, then you also have to consider email as part of that venn diagram of social media channels, as well.
Now, one of the things we were talking about on this topic was that all the activities that we’re used to doing on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and so on — these are things we do in social networks. And while there’s a place for business and marketing in social networks, I wouldn’t actually recommend trying to garner a point-of-sale transaction in a social network.
The point of sale is still better-managed within email-as-social-media vs. social-networks-as-social-media.
What do you think? If you’re a business owner, how do you actually make an online sale? Do you find yourself doing that in social networks? Or, is there a process you follow that leverages email and dedicated online ecommerce locations? What have you found effective?
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