I get the calls all the time:

“I know I need to do something with social media, but I do not understand what is is, or how it can help me…”

Sheesh!  Where do I start: let me see….

1. What is the Internet – almost all the computers and people  in the world connected and talking to each other.
2. What is social media – the modern Internet with niche affinity groups connected together by way of ethnicity, location, industry preference, religion, demographics, politics..
3. How do I benefit from Social Media – you must give to get, you must make a contribution to the discussion, to the Internet itself; then, you are found when people search for what you do where you do it on Google, Facebook…need i say more? YouTube…
4. Internet is basically a Meritocracy: in other words, those who contribute the most work, are rewarded the most.
5. How do I compete in this huge competitive marketplace – in order to be found without bidding against everyone in the world for the audience (PPC) you must become part of a niche aggregate group, geographically or niche specific on LinkedIn  and/or Facebook, and/or Google+ etc..like this one (which feeds my business) http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Social-Media-Marketing-Gurus
6. What is a  blog aggregate or content aggregate – in order to compete, niche groups can combine real content and create real geographic and/or content specific resources online that rank because of MERIT; and they get traffic because of size, quality and depth of content: a multi-user website code base of blogs and news that can be used to aggregate local and or topic specific news, activity, videos, links, demographics and other local content to rank on organic search on the search engines for very competitive  organic search terms and feed business to the authors business as benevolent providers of that content.
7. Why don’t free blogs work – WordPress.com, Blogger and other free networks have no quality control – the content is not high quality, is not arranged in a geographic specific and topic specific way, and these are full of random dead sites, so they do not work.  Controlled networks like dzone.com and  are much more effective because they create a better resource for the visitor, and a better networking environment for the users.
8. Now what – you need a perfectly optimized blog (automated modern website) that is fed by the right niche places that you spread your contribution around in the right way linked back to you.
9. Result: you outrank your competitors on search when people look for what you do where you do it.

http://israelirothman.com