To really understand the potential of Social Media you just have to take a step back and look at its part in the world of cyber space.

In a traditional business and by that I mean a store on a street corner, the idea was location, location, location. Remember that. That’s why super malls became so popular. People would drive to the mall and walk around and shop.

Owners would pay a premium to get a spot in a busy mall. People would pass by maybe looking for one thing and would notice a display that you put out and walk in.

Sometimes they weren’t even thinking about buying what you had but because you were in that high traffic spot displaying your content it attracted them to walk in, even if they didn’t buy right away, you were now imbedded into their memory.

Being a former brick and mortar store owner, I understood that to be successful, I had to provide good service and quality, and I had to develop a clientele and when that would happen I would prosper. Developing the clientele would typically take 3-5 years to be of sufficient size to make large revenues.

In the cyber world the philosophy is the same. Social Media sites like FaceBook, MySpace etc… are like malls. People are there because they have friends they want to stay in touch with; they aren’t looking to be hounded by sales people. But sometimes they come across your online presence and are interested in what you have to say. They may look and browse, only to decide at a latter time to come back and make a purchase.

Having said all of this should make the first aspect clear about using Social Media to promote a business. You must have a view point and personality that attracts people to you. What you present must be interesting, informational, educational and useful to the person that visits.

The other Side of Social Media sites are the ability to establish an online presence that shows up on search engines. This is a very deep aspect of social sites and the way to do this is very detailed which I will elaborate on in the future, but suffice to say for now it would be the difference of having a store in a plaza in some tiny rural community and having a store in a super mall in a large city.

In the cyber world location, location, location is dependent on Search engine optimization and this is where the power of Social Media becomes apparent to the internet marketer.

So the goal of any Social Media effort should be twofold.

• Establish a presence and become known as an expert
• Use the linking aspects of Social Sites to boost your visibility in the cyber world.

How can you become an expert?

That will be a topic of my next post. Stay Tuned, because I will show you how anyone can be an expert.