Recently I had the opportunity to sit in with and co-moderate a panel of local business professionals who want to know how to be prepared for business tactics in the immediate future - at least over the next 5 years. It was amazing to me how many of them still reject or at least avoid social media as a viable venue for engaging the general public for their overall marketing strategy.

Since I am now 50+ I can tell you the world has changed dramatically in my lifetime. When I was a child most of my friends still were hoping for the day when dad, their real dad who was still married to their real mom, would bring home a clunking heavy, US made, color television. If they were really cool they would have a remote control that used tuning forks to operate. In fact if you jingle your keys or the ice in your glass near one of these the channels or volume would change or the set would turn off.

Everyone was excited for the Sears Christmas catalog which meant hours of fantasizing about what neat toy they would get for Christmas and FM radio was all but non-existent. When you did listen to FM it was classical albums with people who spoke quietly like they are at a golf tournament.

What is very amazing to many people who are terrified of Facebook, Twitter and other social media actually still happens today. Once a year, usually in the spring, a book would arrive at our home. Inside that book was the name, home address and home phone number of everyone in town! Can you imagine giving complete strangers your home address and telephone number? Oh the security failure! Save us from ourselves! To top that off you would occasionally find a listing and underneath it would say "children's phone". I kid you not. But I digress ...

The lack of "getting it" where today's social media is concerned will, and already is, becoming the lack of being on top of people's minds. With Facebook now being one of the largest search platforms and YouTube serving up more searches than Yahoo or Bing if you aren't on those platforms you're missing major numbers of searches.

For this post I went to Facebook and searched the terms "real estate marietta". The results were four friends on the top of the list: Heidi Schwartz, Waverly Thornton, Terri Anne Powell-Paguibitan, and Mike Pennington, coming to the top. Facebook is smart enough to show my friends first and the rest of the world later. 

To the right is Mike's Facebook profile - the first words in his editable block are "real estate" and his city is Marietta, Georgia. Facebook knows this and delivered his profile link to me when I searched on those terms. What if he had not used the words "real estate" or if he had not allowed me to search his home city? 

What I am getting at is Facebook can be less threatening than the phone book and we've had the phone book all of your life. Yes times have changed and today more people can do more bad with less information. They don't need Facebook or Twitter to do so - all they need is a phone book to get them started.

If you are not using social media because you don't get it or you're afraid there is a cure for both of those horrible and limiting conditions. However you can also use social media "wrong". Most of you who are here on Active Rain are doing at least that much right but if you are depending on AR for your only social media you're missing most of the opportunities this great internet provides you.

One of the questions I am most often asked by people who are just getting into or who are interested in joining social media is, "how much time do you spend?" The answer varies from day to day. Some days almost no time at all. Other days as much as an hour or more depending on how many blog posts I write and home many people I engage. What matters is the result and my results have been good.

Social media is not only a platform for sharing information with others but also a great way to harvest data and be alerted to important events in your area. While some people say they could care less when you list a home and share that on Twitter I say if it's in my area and you Tweet it I'm going to re-tweet it from my mortgage Twitter account so people know I can provide financing for that property.

Knowing when the next business social is coming up a town away is also important to me so that I can participate and rub elbows with others in my community - you see the goal, my goal, of social media is to interact offline and to either refer someone to you, get a referral from you, or just get in a good round of golf with you. It's social. Think of a cocktail party or church picnic but on your computer. Interact with people - be genuinely interested in what they are saying.

If you have enough friends you never have to sell anything - they will do the work for you. Do yourself a favor, call Jeremy Blanton and tell him Ken sent you. You'll be glad you did.