Thoughts on Basic Social Media Prospecting

On Wednesday this week I attended Dan Fowler's Basic Social Media Prospecting class. I took the class hoping to learn something new that would take me to the next level; especially since (I thought) I already know a good amount about social media. Well, I learned some great things!

The best thing I learned was that "social media is about categorizing content, rather than trying to capitalize on trends." This was groundbreaking for me because I never thought about social media as even having categories. This is important to know because each kind of social media is for a certain purpose and can be best used once you understand its category. There are: search engines, social bookmarking, blogging and micro-blogging, media sharing, social and business networking, etc.

The next best thing I learned was that social media is inbound marketing, this means your business has permission and invitations from your friends/followers to be a resource to them. This kind of marketing creates the opportunity for the traditional kind of inbound marketing to be most effective. I love this idea because I inherently dislike traditional inbound marketing (i.e., direct mail) because I believe it is not cost effective or even slightly efficient. However, after Dan's revelation of using outbound marketing only after you have made a connection (and most importantly gained trust) through inbound marketing I am more excited than ever to revamp the social media marketing for the Law Office of Veronica R. Guzman!