this seems familiar ...

Why does Taco Bell have a "shrimp blogger"? Why did Tyra Banks need a "FierceBook" page to pick her latest pack of America's Next Top Model hopefuls? Why has the humble cell phone become more complex and do more things and run simultaneous apps?

From TV commercials to hardware and software development, from experts talking about "SM" on their blogs to those who are writing that if you claim you're an expert in social media you're not on their blogs, and just about everywhere else, social media is the ubiquitous topic du jour.

And it all seems awfully familiar ... (if this were TV, this is the part where wavy dream lines and mystical music would cue and the calendar on your iPhone would reset itself to 1998)...

OK, seriously. Having been in the interactive marketing industry since 1997, all the current hype surrounding social media does seem eerily reminiscent of those heady days somewhere in between the writing of the Cluetrain Manifesto and the spectacular Dot.Com bust of 2000. (I even found a blog post advising mistrusting those of a "certain age" who claim to understand social media. Bless her heart.)

And it would be easy to be cynical about the whole state of social media today (full disclosure, I was for some time). But I've come to realize that unlike the euphoria founded in the very newness of the dot.com era, social media excites people because of the nature of what it is at its core: a really immediate, personal way to communicate with other people.


So what does all this mean for you as a small business owner? The simple answer:

Social media has become the latest marketing trend because it is:

Accessible.Social media is instantly accessible to you. Unlike dot.com marketing vehicles, you don't need to know how to program, hire a developer, market your site online, or even buy hosting. You simply log-in to places that have already done these things for you and begin publishing.

Attended.Your audience is already online. Unlike the early internet days, where we had to sell the medium as well as the vehicle, the people you want to reach are already using social media in record numbers.

Participatory. While digital marketing initiated the conversation between companies and customers, social media enables customers to direct the conversation.

Sustainable. Because it is an ongoing conversation with your customers, it is a marketing medium with built in freshness. Social media enables your marketing to grow organically and constantly.

Evolving.Social media is simply the next evolution of Internet (often called web 2.0); a very free-flowing, instant, and personal version of the Internet with which we started. Because of this nature, it follows that social media will only continue this constant evolution, thus providing you with more opportunities to use it to achieve your marketing goals.

So, while social media won't replace traditional marketing, digital marketing, or find your lost dog (oh wait, that mobile service provider's TV ad claims it will - "Sarah! You're home!"), it is going to be around for a while. At least until the next iteration ...