This whole Social Networking Thing In A Nutshell

Here's an email from Joel Comm. He hits the nail on the head in this article!

Internet marketing isn't about technology. It's never been about technology. The computers and the Internet, the multimedia uploads, webinars and ebooks are all just a means to an end. They're tools for transferring information from one place to another.

The revolution that has allowed us to build online businesses, even from our living rooms, garages and bedrooms, isn't a technological revolution. We've just enjoyed the benefits of those changes.

It's a community revolution.

It's a complete change in the way that sellers and customers interact. Successful Internet merchants don't wave their products in the air and hope that enough people line up to buy them. They engage their markets with blog posts that invite comments, with tweets that create conversations, and with Facebook pages that allow everyone to discuss topics connected to the publisher.

It's the connection that the seller builds with his community -- and the community members build among themselves -- that make the marketing easy and rewarding too. Customers feel that they're part of a club, an organization that together is heading towards success. Marketers become community leaders rather than sellers, helping people to achieve their life goals.

It's a fantastic thing for everyone and it's something that depends on communications.

Those communications can take all sorts of forms. Some readers will be most engaged by reading blog posts. Others will respond better to email newsletters. Many prefer to chat on Twitter, join discussions on Facebook, and even interact on LinkedIn.

You need to be aware of which channels most move your audiences. Make sure that you're keeping track of the response rates from your regular email newsletters, from the links you place in your Twitter stream, and the clickthroughs, comments and tweeted links you pick up from your blog posts. The fact that there are so many ways now to keep in touch with buyers, clients and audience members has made the life of marketers much more complicated. The same message has to pushed through a number of different pipes so that everyone can respond in the way they want. But it's also brought those audience members a great deal closer and made the relationship far warmer. It's helped to build communities - and when you use those tools build a community too, you get sales.

(visit Joel Comm at http://JoelComm.com ) He's worth listening to. I also reccomend his book Twitter Power available at Amazon.com