Social media is the in thing these days. The success of Obama and our very own Pink Chaddi campaign is fresh in our memories and spoken to death in social media conferences and seminars.

On the other side, every other day, witness a new venture or foray into the space. If one adds up all the hype, then social media should have already arrived from a brand communication and marketing perspective. Well, not really. Here is my take on what it will take to get social media, which I agree, is hot and presents profound new ways of touch, communication and engagement, can get there.

Yes, it is the most democratic medium or platform. Yes, the young are more comfortable with the Orkuts, Twitters and Facebooks than the old and yes there is no geographical constraint as internet is universal. But let us not forget that brands or the process of branding (except for a few categories) is not something special or separate for social media. Social media needs new ways of adoption and customization to suit its unique ecosystem and ways. But it is not that the branding process itself, is in for a radical change. This means that successful social media initiatives can be executed consistently over a period of time only with firms or players who have an understanding of how brands and the branding process works and then combine this understanding with social media expertise. While social media is powerful, combined offline and online campaigns will create higher impact.

I am not sure how many know this. Software or tools that are meant for listening in social media are growing in abundance and at last count had 18 such URLs or names in my database. I am talking only of players who are visible and this number by itself seems to be growing at a brisk pace. While it is useful, let us understand that it is only the first step in a formal process a brand needs to undergo in social media.

There is an urgent need to look beyond blogs, though blogs show a lot of promise. I am saying this more from the perspective that there are evolved tools such as Twitter, Maplib, social bookmarking sites, besides Facebook, that truly offer immense potential. For example, a friend of mine had done a campaign for a movie using twitter and Maplib that was both creative and engaging. I also saw a website, which is a wiki with the feeds on YouTube linked. A great idea, simply because these two tools have combined reach that is smartly being used. Heard someone recently tell me that Dell extensively uses Twitter for its global customer support.

Social media is not as techie or geekish or complex as many think or make it out to be. There are couple of thumb rules, which work fairly well for starters. For instance, just focus on starting a blog and then use all the social media tools available to promote it. Also social media is not about just getting in but using it smartly to be heard and be visible.

Let us be clear that all that is happening in social media is experiments and there are bound to be successful and bad experiments. The best is to learn from it and move on, as the space itself is exploding fast and learning is the most precious commodity around in the space. Much like a battle scarred veteran who wears his scars on his sleeve.

Not all brands and companies are suited for social media since it is a different world out there. While it is exciting and great for some, it will be out of bounds for many. A company and its entire organization needs to be ready and be prepared for what social media entails and can assure of a surefire disaster if one is not prepared and goes around thinking it is like advertising that one can control. Even firms who play in the space would be well advised to do the diligence as too many failures or bad starts is bound to speed derailing enthusiasm, to adopt the media.

There are many more need to do lists and hope what I have said and listed makes for a good start and gets us cracking into a cracker of a space called social media.

Xavier Prabhu
Director
PRHUB

Web 2.0 – one of the strongest drivers today—is creating new forms of communication, causing drastic market shifts, seeing massive innovation and opening up endless opportunities for entrepreneurs to both develop and take advantage of the technology. There are various arguments about what exactly Web 2.0 encompasses. In general, it refers to a maturing of the internet, the next version of the web. Some of the Web 2.0 trends, such as user participation, are occurring across many media channels. The increase in the number of reality TV shows is one major example of this. Hit shows like American Idol and Dancing with the Stars extend user participation to the audience by allowing them to vote for contestants at the end of the shows.

The entry points of the web have also contributed to these trends. The door to information is mostly managed through major search engines and portals, such as Yahoo!, Google and MSN. These three entry points now rank search results mostly on the popularity of a website, which is affected by the number of links to the website from other websites. When people post content, they also promote it; the links back to their content begin to increase search engine rankings for sites with such user-generated content.

The popularity of YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia further validates the importance of user-generated content. These sites either didn’t exist five years ago or were much smaller. All of these sites are predominantly tools for users to post content at no cost. These three sites in particular have come online and taken the internet by storm. YouTube, MySpace and Wikipedia currently rank fourth, fifth and 10th, respectively, in terms of traffic.

For entrepreneurs, Web 2.0 means more opportunities and better tools for running your business. No matter what type of business you own, you need to be using technology to your advantage. If you don’t, your competition will most likely crush you. As the web audience continues to increase and the use of other traditional media and advertising vehicles such as TV, newspapers and yellow-page directories continue to decline, the web becomes increasingly important for even non-technology businesses. For those of you with businesses that target younger audiences, this becomes even more important. Advertising via Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter is becoming essential for most businesses.

If you’re in any type of business where processes and procedures are important, you can use Web 2.0 technologies like wikis and service portals for collaboration. Web 2.0-based project and task management services can help make your employees much more efficient. Web 2.0 tools for collaboration also make it easier for smaller businesses to collaborate with customers and partners.

Customer relationship management tools are probably the best known Web 2.0 software that’s used as a service. Salesforce.com was one of the earliest innovators in using CRM software as a service. Meanwhile, Google Docs and Spreadsheets provide word processor and spreadsheet applications at no cost as part of Google Apps. Web 2.0 entrepreneurs continue to build out software services for functionality that only existed as packaged software before.

Web apps are hot. But what does this really mean for entrepreneurs? Three things:

1. Lots of room for start-ups: The barriers to entry are low, but the way to stand out is by solving a real customer problem. If a web app solves the user’s problem, he or she won’t hesitate to use it over traditional software.
2. Existing software companies beware: Because web apps replace the functions of traditional software programs sans occupied disk space, many PC users may decide to switch.
3. New tools for growing businesses: The myriad business tools in web app form, such as video, accounting, CRM and so on, can help businesses be more efficient, saving them money and making information accessible anytime, anywhere.
   As more and more people rely on their mobile phones and the web moves to wireless, the mobile apps industry is growing by epic proportions.

And the exciting part for entrepreneurs wanting to dial into this hot industry would be the millions in investment money flying around. Apple and Google have launched third-party mobile app markets already, and Microsoft is scheduled to release its version next year. The technology is only going to get better.

Parts of this article have been sourced from Michael Crichton’s State of Fear and Gary Reid’s articles on Mashable.