Social media is the future, the future is local, personal and worth every difficult bit.
This morning I, like many in the social media world, read Chris Brogan’s blog. His entry is called “Just As Difficult as it Seems” where he says, in essence, that adding social media to your business communications strategy is complicated, difficult, and time-intensive. Yes. He also says that sending out a mass email newsletter or measuring a new banner ad campaign is easier. Yes. What makes these so much easier than using social media? Mass audience vs. Single audience, generic vs. personal.

I’m also reading a book called HARDBALL by American political writer Chris Matthews. One of the chapters is full of stories about how politics is ALWAYS LOCAL and that every national or state campaign is based on connecting small campaigns that are built on years of one-on-one interactions. Yes. National vs. Local.

The connection? Business and politics are both personal. Humans are social animals. Put the clichés together and you come to a very simple conclusion: social media brings business, all kinds, down to the individual level for people who want it there.

The massive transition going on right now is impossible to ignore. The business pendulum swings once more to the personal with the growing popularity of social media. Brogan hits it on the head with today’s post, and we in the affiliate marketing program world should pay attention.

As Matthews writes in HARDBALL, people stay loyal to someone they know and interact with who keeps up that relationship. Same with business. Same with social media. For that reason alone social media is worth every ounce of difficult that it is.

Again, the future is social media, which is local, personal and worth every difficult bit.