The Social Media Bible E-Book

Lon Safko

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 841

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

The go-to guide to social media skills, now in an updated and revised Third Edition The Social Media Bible is comprehensive 700-plus page social media resource that will teach corporate, small business, and non-profit marketers strategies for using social media to reach their desired audiences with power messages and efficiency. This newly revised 3rd edition addresses technology updates to the iPad, apps, Foursquare, and other geotargeted networks. New case studies and company profiles provide practical examples of how businesses have successfully implemented these strategies, using the newest social media marketing tools. * Updates and changes to Google's search engine algorithms * More information on plug-ins, widgets, apps, and integration * Updates on Twitter and Yammer and new information on Google+ * The latest in mobile marketing Master the latest social media tools and deliver powerful messaging in the most effective way possible with The Social Media Bible.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I—Tactics and Tools

Part II—Strategy

The Five Steps to Social Media Success

Social Media Experts

The ROI of Social Media

International Perspective

Chapter To-Do Lists

Part I: Tactics and Tools

Chapter 1: What Is Social Media?

Ask Your Audience

So What Is It?

Why Social Media?

Word of Mouth at the Speed of Light

Other Customers

15 Social Media Categories

Credits

Chapter 2: Say Hello to Social Networking

What’s in it for you?

Back to the Beginning

What You Need to Know

Social Network Examples

What’s in it for the User?

What’s in it for Businesses?

Common Terms

Profile

Facebook Interface

Privacy Settings

Child Safety

Twitter

Common Terms

Understanding the Tool

Other

Location-Based Social Media

Common Terms

Foursquare

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Chapter 3: It’s Not Your Father’s E-Mail

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

Tips, Techniques, and Tactics

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 4: The World of Web Pages

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

Techniques and Tactics

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 5: The Internet Forum

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 6: The Ubiquitous Blog

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Note

Chapter 7: The Wisdom of the Wiki

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Chapter 8: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words (Photo Sharing)

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

Techniques and Tactics

To-Do List

Conclusion

Credits

Chapter 9: Talking about the Podcast (Audio Create)

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

Tips, Techniques, and Tactics

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Note

Chapter 10: Got Audio? (Audio Sharing)

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 11: Watch Out for Vlogs (Video Create)

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

Tips, Techniques, and Tactics

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Chapter 12: Got Video? (Video Sharing)

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Note

Chapter 13: Thumbs Up for Microblogging

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

The Microsphere Is Not All Good

On the Lighter Side of Microblogging

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 14: Live from Anywhere—It’s Livecasting

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 15: Virtual Worlds—Real Impact

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 16: Gaming the System: Virtual Gaming

What’s in it for You?

What you Need to Know

Back to the Beginning

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Note

Chapter 17: RSS—Really Simple Syndication Made Simple

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Notes

Chapter 18: Spotlight on Search (Search Engine Optimization)

What’s in it for You

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

Tips, Techniques, and Tactics

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Note

Chapter 19: Marketing Yourself (Search Engine Marketing)

What’s in it for You?

Back to the Beginning

What you Need to Know

Tips, Techniques, and Tactics

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Chapter 20: The Formidable Fourth Screen (Mobile)

What’s in it for You?

What you Need to Know

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Note

Chapter 21: Let the Conversation Begin (Interpersonal)

What’s in it for You?

What you Need to Know

Sharing Applications

To-Do List

Conclusion

Downloads

Credits

Part II: Strategy: The Five Steps to Social Media Success

Chapter 22: Analyze Your Existing Media

Identifying Your Existing Media

Who Are You?

Conclusion

Credits

Chapter 23: The Social Media Trinity

Trinity Number One—Blogs

Understand the Terms

Trinity Number Two—Microblogging (Twitter)

Trinity Number Three—Social Networks

Conclusion

Credits

Chapter 24: Integrate Strategies

Integrate Your Existing Strategy into the Trinity

Selecting the Best of Both

Develop Clear Individual Goals (Conversions)

Quality Content, Not Quality Production

Integrate Existing Conventional and New Digital

Conclusion

Credits

Chapter 25: Identify Resources

Management Buy-In

Reputation Management

Successful Campaigns

Identify Resources

In-House

Out-House

Conclusion

Credits

Chapter 26: Implement and Measurement

Implementing Your Strategy, Metrics, and Analytics

Determine Your Measurement Tools

Know Your Competition

Analyze Each Marketing Channel

Managing Your Expectations

Putting the Pedal to the Metal!

Conclusion

Credits

Index

Copyright © 2012 by Innovative Thinking, LLC. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This project was the largest and most passionate undertaking of my career, and using social media to create a book on social media was by far the most enlightening.

When I first created the plan to write a book on social media, I thought it was going to be another typical business book: 250 pages, 20-plus chapters, 50,000 words, the typical business book formula.

Then I realized that it was not only in my best interest to use social media, but also in a way, that I should use social media to create this book. I knew that if I asked the business community what they wanted in a book and wrote it that way, the book would be successful and it was. What I didn’t know at the time was the magnitude of the journey I was about to undertake.

We brought the initial concept of the book on social media to more than 1,000 people. They were mostly professionals with annual incomes over $100,000; most had college degrees, from associates up to PhDs.

Of more than 1,000 surveyed, 66.4 percent said that they could not define what social media is, while 99.1 percent said that they knew social media would have a significant effect on them and their businesses. Let me restate this: Two-thirds of these professionals didn’t know what it was, but nearly 100 percent knew it was going to affect them. This is whom this book is dedicated to.

By using user-generated content and feedback, I also learned that the business community didn’t want just another vertical business book; they wanted something much more comprehensive. They asked for a book that first explains: What are all of these things we keep hearing about? What’s a blog, a vlog, a podcast? What is a trusted network and wisdom of the crowds? What is LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube? So this became the blueprint for Part I, Tactics and Tools, which in itself is a business book on the tactics of social media.

Finally, they wanted a book that could pull all of this together answering the questions: How do I use social media in my business? How can I incorporate this in my business plan? How do I make money using social media? Where’s the ROI? How will this change the way I do business? This became Part II of the book, Strategy.

During the past year, I have had the opportunity to speak with such companies as NCO, Levi Strauss, Nike, United Airlines, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Dial, Intel, Scott’s, Frito-Lay, General Mills, L’Oréal, Kraft, Dannon, Omaha Steaks, Unisys (Burroughs), La Quinta, Lilly, and dozens of entrepreneurs, governmental agencies, and nonprofits. The one run-on question they had in common was: “How do I put together a strategy that includes my conventional media, integrates social media, determines what social media tools I should use, find the resources, and measure my success?”

So in this edition, the Part II, Strategy, section has been completely rewritten. In this new section, I give you “The Five Steps to Social Media Success,” which addresses all of the questions asked earlier in five easy steps. This new section is down and dirty and in the weeds, and what you will get out of it is what you are willing to put into it. I ask you to look at things most marketing, PR, and upper management people never want to discuss: The cost of customer acquisition and the actual ROI of each of your existing marketing campaigns and efforts.

Once you determine your ROI, and cost of customer acquisition on your existing marketing, you can now better reallocate existing resources, both human and financial, to marketing that is significantly more effective: social media.

I approached John Wiley & Sons, Inc. with a concept of multiple full-sized business books (two business books in one). They trusted the wisdom of the crowds and the result is The Social Media Bible.

The remaining change that has taken place with this third edition is The Social Media Bible is now 75 percent of its original size. Now that people are beginning to understand the fundamentals of social media, I decided to reduce the size of the book and, while providing the history of all of the technologies, focus more on the state of the art of how social media is being used.

The Social Media Bible is an aggregation of ideas, thoughts, and my own experiences from blogs, vlogs, podcasts, videos, books, wikis, e-mails, and conversations. As Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize winner for his discovery of the double helix, said during his acceptance speech while quoting Sir Isaac Newton, “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”

Thank you to Jimmy Wales for creating Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation and to all of the people from around the world who have contributed to Wikipedia, providing such a valuable resource of cumulative human knowledge.

I want to personally thank all of the corporate partners who shared their expert insights in both the book and their executive conversations at www.theSocialMediaBible.com, the 23 technical editors, and the 26 ROI of Social Media vignettes authors.

Thank-you also goes to Evo Terra for his Podcasting For Dummies book; blogger David Risley, for his top 50 blog tips; and to my friend and colleague Joanne Zimakas for her incredible transcription skills and attention to detail of the more than 24 continuous hours of executive interviews available on www.theSocialMediaBible.com.

I also want to sincerely thank Tiffany Coates, who was the project manager on this edition. Tiffany’s attention to detail and people skills made it possible to pull together up-to-the-minute, highly technical, and sensitive information from more than 80 different contributors in an amazingly short time. Tiffany, thank you for all of your hard work and dedication.

My personal gratitude also goes out to the staff of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. for all of the wisdom of that crowd, and especially to Peter Booth Wiley for his support and contributions, without which this book would have never been published. Also, thank you to: Matt Holt for believing in and fighting for this unusual book; Kim Dayman for really putting the polish on the design; Shannon Vargo for her incredible author-wrangling skills, which allowed the book to be published; Christine Moore, for her insightful and meticulous editing talent, which made this book intelligible; Elana Schulman for pulling it all together to make the book complete; and Lauren Freestone for making this book look good!

And I want to mostly thank my amazing wife, Sherrie, for working so hard both at work and around the house, for without her painting the deck, trimming the bushes, skimming the pool, and just taking care of business, I never would have been free from distraction and able to write. So Sherrie, “Forever and for always. . . .”

I hear the orchestra beginning to play, signaling that my time is up. So. . . THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO MAKE THIS A COLLECTIVE SUCCESS!

—Lon Safko

P.S. In the 1980s and 1990s, I had the pleasure of working directly with and be inspired by a very special man who left his mark on me as he did with millions of others. For that, I wish to say “Thank you, Steve!”

INTRODUCTION

www.LonSafko.com/TSMB3_Videos/Introduction.mov

Welcome to the third edition of The Social Media Bible. As you can see from the size of this book, I have done everything possible to include the latest up-to-date information and all of the tools used throughout the entire world of social media. This has been a daunting task, to say the least.

If you think the content of this book might not be as fresh or relevant as possible because social media is constantly reinventing itself, you will find that not to be true. This book presents all of the tools and techniques that social media has to offer while also discussing the reason these social tools are so effective.

Why a vlog (video) is the most effective form of marketing will never change. The psychological impact on your customers and prospects watching and listening to you on video is at the core of human nature. The techniques you use to create a podcast will be the same five years from now. The importance of building trusted relationships that result in sales will be the same long after you retire. Maybe some of the tools might change, but the rest of the content will still be relevant decades from now.

This book is truly a product of social media, user-generated content, and wisdom of the crowds. Literally, more than a hundred people directly participated in the creation of this text. Some by editing the grammar, some by creating original content, some by adding their content to wikis, blogs, web pages, news articles, and some by editing my content with new technologies and a different perspective. This truly was a collaborative effort by experts from around the world.

Even the actual design of the book was user generated. Before embarking on this project, I simply asked my audience, you, what you wanted in a business book on social media. After surveying nearly a thousand people, you told me you didn’t want just another business book on social media, you wanted three different books. Three different business books in one: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success.

Part I—Tactics and Tools

The first book you asked for was a book on the tactics and tools of social media that explained what a vlog, a podcast, a blog, lifecasting, followers, flaming, tags, SEO and SEM, and pass along are. You asked that the book describe where it came from, where it is, and where the technology is going. You asked for the features and benefits of every type of social media marketing, what tools you should use, type of content, and the psychological benefits of each.

The second book you wanted was the tools, a guide, or a list, of all of the major tools of the trade. You wanted a list of the companies that provide the software, the apps, the websites, the text messaging, the virtual worlds, the game platforms, the mobile marketing insights, e-mail marketing providers, and content-sharing sites.

Then you asked for a third book, a book on strategy. You told me that once you read the second book and understood all of the different ways you could perform social media marketing and now that you’ve read the second book showing the top technology and service providers, you wanted to know how can you apply all of this newly gained knowledge to develop a successful social media marketing strategy.

You asked that this third book be comprehensive, but in a simple-to-implement, step-by-step process of developing a successful social media marketing plan. While this process needed to be easy to follow and easy to implement, it also had to be applicable to the one-person entrepreneurial company as well as to the Fortune 500. It had to be effective when applied to B2C (business-to-consumer) and also to the B2B (business-to-business) companies. It had to be pertinent if being used to develop a strategic marketing plan for an individual and a corporation. And, it had to apply equally to both for-profit and nonprofit entities, including governmental agencies. And, finally, the plan needed to work for marketing and public relations, but also for customer service and for the internal customers, your employees.

That’s what this delivers . . . two books in one.

Part II—Strategy

In the Part II, Strategy, section of the first edition of The Social Media Bible, we took a more academic approach to developing a strategic marketing plan for you and your company. We discussed the age-old SWOT analysis, the four pillars of social media application, and gave the reader exercises to perform. While all of that information and that type of approach is completely valid and useful, you asked that I get down and dirty and give you exactly what you need to develop a successful strategy plan; no more, no less. In this edition, the entire third book has been replaced with The Five Steps to Social Media Success. While it looks like there are only five steps to developing a successful strategy, there is still quite a bit of homework you will need to do to ensure the success of your strategic plan. The amount of work you wish to put into developing your plan will determine the level of your plan’s ultimate success. Like most everything else, you will get out of it what you put in to it.

The Five Steps to Social Media Success

The Five Steps to Social Media Success are synergistic, in which the total is greater than the sum of its parts, or the success you will realize is greater than the work necessary to complete your plan. This is true because the plan is comprehensive and because social media is incredibly effective.

The Five Steps to Social Media Success include:

Step 1: Analyze Your Existing Media—In this step, I ask you to list every marketing plan, strategy, and campaign you are currently executing. I want you to look at expenses and the number of new customers that that strategy generates. Then divide to determine your “Cost of Customer Acquisition.”

Step 2: The Social Media Trinity—This step asks you to push aside all of the social media noise and hype and focus on the three most important categories of social media: blogging, microblogging, and social networks. Get into the weeds with these three. I’ll show you the payoff.

Step 3: Integrate Strategies—Step 3 discusses how you need to completely integrate The Social Media Trinity into your existing marketing strategy, in detail.

Step 4: Resources—“Where do I find the resources to implement this totally new strategy?” is the most-asked question I get at my keynotes from the one-person shop all the way up to the Fortune 500. I’ll show you the answer.

Step 5: Implement and Measure—This final step is how you can implement your successful social media strategy plan and includes a very important part of the step that is most often skipped, measurement. They say, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This is true.

If you don’t measure your marketing campaign’s success, how will you know what the ROI (Return on Investment) or what the CCA (Cost of Customer Acquisition) is? How will you know what you should keep doing and what you should stop doing? How will you know where the most effective use of your limited resources is? I will show you that also.

Social Media Experts

Since the first edition of The Social Media Bible came out, I have been amazed and equally appalled by the vast number of people calling themselves “social media experts” or “social media gurus.” Please beware of anyone calling himself an “expert.” It took me years and more than 600 pages to develop a comprehensive overview of what social media is.

It was the exercise of having to create a book as comprehensive as this for me to understand social media as well as I do. If not for the book, I might have focused on two or three of the hundreds of tools social media has to offer and called myself an expert.

When I first began creating this book, I quickly realized that I was not an expert and that no one could be, not in every category of social media marketing. That’s when I realized I needed to reach out to the social media community, identify all of the vertical experts, experts in their respective fields, and ask them to teach me what they knew and to share their personal expertise and knowledge.

I identified nearly 50 different experts who covered the entire list of social media genres. These names ranged from Biz Stone, the inventor of Twitter; to Matt Mullenweg, inventor of WordPress; to Gary “V,” social media marketer extraordinaire; to senior vice presidents of YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! This list even included such dignitaries as Peter Wiley, the chairman of the board at John Wiley & Sons, Inc., and Vint Cerf, the real inventor of the Internet.

I called each of these extraordinary experts and spent 30 to 45 minutes with each of them, having them explain why they invented their technology, why they are passionate about what they do, and how businesses are profiting from the use of their social media tools. These are what I call “Expert Insights.”

I have taken excerpts of those conversations with the industry’s greats and placed them throughout every chapter in both Part I and Part II of this book. There is a lot more to the conversations than I had room for in this book. For the entire conversation transcripts, go to www.theSocialMediaBible.com.

If you prefer audio, there are the actual recorded conversations for you to listen to and download to your iPod or burn to a CD to listen to on a CD player in your home or in your car. If these interviews were played back to back, they would run for more than 24 continuous hours. As the owner of this book, I’m making all of them available to you for free.

The ROI of Social Media

The next most-asked questions at my keynotes are “Where’s the ROI in social media marketing?” and “How much should I be spending on social media marketing?” My answer is always, remove the term social media from those questions and ask them again: “Where’s the ROI in marketing?” and “How much should I be spending on marketing?”

Social media isn’t a toolbox of silver bullets given to us by aliens, it’s just a new set of technologies and concepts that we need to add and integrate into our existing marketing strategy. And, there is always a ROI to marketing.

In this third edition of The Social Media Bible, I went back to you, my audience, and asked for user-generated content. I asked for your stories of how you have used social media and have realized a positive, measurable ROI.

In each of the chapters in both Part I and Part II, I have included what I call “The ROI of Social Media,” 500-word vignettes, or brain candy. These stories are of actual people just like you and me, who have used social media effectively, sharing stories in small, bite-sized examples of the power of social media marketing. They range from small nonprofit organizations trying to raise money all the way up to the PR team at OfficeMax. Here’s actual proof of social media effectiveness.

International Perspective

Social media is a worldwide phenomenon. People and companies around the globe are experiencing their own successes. They are using not only the tools that we in the United States are familiar with, but social networks and tools you may not have ever heard of.

In most of the chapters in Part I, I have included stories, essays, and examples of how companies outside of the U.S. are using social media. Many or perspectives and most are actual examples, similar to the ROI stories above, but with an “international” perspective.

Chapter To-Do Lists

In each of the chapters throughout Part I of this book, I conclude with a To-Do List for that category where appropriate. These To-Do’s include tips, how tos, and do’s and don’ts when using that category of marketing tools. These are helpful, quick lists that can make you more proficient using social media and help you avoid the pitfalls of this often-unintuitive form of marketing.

As I discussed earlier, the techniques, strategies, and concepts in this book will never become obsolete or outdated; some of the tools and companies providing those tools, however, might. As I also mentioned, we could not physically deliver any more information in a single book; three books and more than 800 pages are our limit. I still want to give you more than I can deliver in this format. TheSocialMediaBible.com is designed to be a resource that will allow you to access as much additional information as your brain will allow.

As an owner of this book, you will have access to the transcripts and podcasts mentioned earlier, clickable links where you can read about an example in this book, see the web link to the example, and either type the link in yourself, or just go to the website, select the chapter, and all of the links printed in the book are there for you to click on.

I have also provided you with direct links and discounts to many of the companies mentioned in the book along with access to all of the major booksellers where you can find the many books mentioned in the text.

This website will be an ever-changing, ever-evolving source for you to access the very latest news, products, services, and resources for the worlds of social media.

The entire content of this tome is focused on using these social tools to market you, your company, your products, and your services, by identifying where the conversations are happening, listening to those conversations, and participating in those conversations, which leads to building connections, relationships, and trust, which ultimately leads to sales.

This third edition of The Social Media Bible was designed and developed by your direction. My philosophy is, ask your customers what they want, deliver it with excellence, and your product will sell. I asked, I listened, you spoke, I delivered. Enjoy, grow, and profit!

—Lon Safko

www.theSocialMediaBible.com

www.ExtremeDigitalMarketing.com

www.LonSafko.com

PART 1

TACTICS AND TOOLS

Part I of this book is all about the tactics and tools of social media. I discuss in these chapters what all of the many components of social media are: What a blog is, a podcast, virtual worlds, lifecasting, mobile marketing, photo sharing, and more.

It is important to understand the terminology, the technology, the application, and the companies providing those services. While this section is not a how-to, it does explain a great deal of the details and techniques to becoming proficient at each application.

Let’s start with the basics: “What Is Social Media?”

CHAPTER 1

What Is Social Media?

www.LonSafko.com/TSMB3_Videos/01WhatIsSM.mov

Social media is the media we use to be social. That’s it.

That really is the short answer. The story is in the tactics of each of the hundreds of technologies, all of the tools that are available for you to connect with your customers and prospects, and the strategies necessary to use these tactics and tools effectively.

Ask Your Audience

When I began writing this book, I wanted to hear what my audience wanted in a book. I have written six previous books and I knew there was a standard formula for writing a typical business book: 250 pages, 23 chapters, 3,000 words per chapter. But I wasn’t sure if this book should follow that formula. Did the audience for a bible on social media want a typical business book? I didn’t know, so, I asked them.

I knew that if I asked my audience and delivered what they wanted, it would be a success. Go figure, ask your customers what they want in a product. Then, you told me some interesting facts. First, you didn’t want another typical business book on social media. You asked for three books in one: Tactics, in which everything is explained; Tools, with which you can find a comprehensive list of all the companies providing social media services; and Strategy, with which you can apply all that you have learned from Part I and Part II.

This approach of listening to my customers obviously worked. The Social Media Bible, first edition, sold out in the first four days across the country, has been among the top 10 best-selling books in America, and has hit the number one best-selling book spot in both “Business” and “Marketing” categories on Amazon.

The second fact I learned was from the first two questions on the survey, “Can you define social media?” and “Do you believe that social media would have a significant impact on you and your business?”

What I learned by asking my audience these two questions was that 66.4 percent said that they couldn’t define social media and the remaining third lied. If it takes me nearly 26 chapters and more than 600 pages to define social media, they didn’t know, not even the social media experts and gurus.

The second really interesting fact I learned was that 99.1 percent, nearly everyone, said they knew social media was going to have a significant impact on them personally and their businesses.

These two statistics told me and the publisher that two-thirds of everyone interviewed didn’t know what social media was, but that it was coming for them.

So What Is It?

The first part of the terminology, social, refers to the instinctual needs we humans have to connect with other humans. We have been doing that in one form or another since our species began. We have a need to be around and included in groups of similar like-minded people with whom we can feel at home and comfortable sharing our thoughts, ideas, and experiences.

The second part of that term refers to the media we use with which we make those connections with other humans. Whether they are drums, bells, the written word, the telegraph, the telephone, radio, television, e-mail, websites, photographs, audio, video, mobile phones, or text messaging, media are the technologies we use to make those connections.