Socialnomics — Our Video of the Week

To kick off our Monday staff meeting this morning, we played a video. My goal was to give people something to think about, talk about and share. I think it worked, so we’re going to do it every week.

This week’s video is Socialnomics, which presents a ton of data in an engaging way to dispell the myth that social media is a fad. The video was created last July, so some of the data is a little old. Despite this, Socialnomics effectively documents the fundamental changes in media now underway.

In addition to proving that social media is real and important, I think the video effectively makes the case that embracing social media is a requirement for doing business today, for the following reasons:

1. To be noticed, much less considered by your potential customers, you must use the media that they use. More and more, that media is social.
2. To connect with customers, you have to be part of the conversation. That conversation is taking place now, with or without you, in social media.
3. To engage your customers, you to have to stop selling and start sharing. As the video states, “Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators and content providers than traditional advertisers.”

The Socialnomics video is the work of Erik Qualman, who has been working in online marketing for companies such as Cadillac, AT&T and Yahoo for the past 16 years. He has a blog that covers trends in social media. He also wrote a book which has been a top selling business book since its release in August 2009. You can find his slide presentation, Socialnomics: It’s a People Driven Economy Stupid! online. You can also follow him on Twitter.