There’s a lot of noise out there about what social media is, what it isn’t, how you use it, why you use it, and so forth. In fact, if you try to learn every detail, you will never get around to using it.

Yes, you can profit from social media. Yes, you can create relationships. Yes, you can chat with old friends. You can run ads. You can be polite. You can be obnoxious.

Getting beyond all the hype, social media is a communications medium. Just like the telephone, snail mail, and email before it, it is a way to meet people, talk with them, and get to know them better. Like all previous communication media, it has conventions.

Remember that in the past most advertising circulars that came by mail got thrown away. People calling on the telephone to sell you something were considered lower than dirt. We appreciated personal letters and phone calls. We appreciated people trying to help us.

When marketers discovered social media, they dived in with both feet, sending out blatant marketing messages, sending messages every three seconds, hoping to drive traffic to their products and services. They quickly found out that most people on social media were like people everywhere. They hated having advertising messages they didn’t want thrust in front of them.

The best marketers on social media, like the best marketers anywhere, realize that the surest way to profit is first to help, to educate, to create relationships, and to build a solid reputation. They stay away from direct advertising in posts because such advertising doesn’t work very well.

This is the essence of profitable social media. People are hungry for information that will help them accomplish their goals. The more you help them do that, the more likely you are to attract them to your commercial web sites, where you can sell all you want.

Social media is like the private party where you meet people for the first time and develop personal relationships. Take some time to get to know people and their needs before you dump products in front of them. Use your posts to attract the right people into your marketing process.

Many companies have successfully used social media to build their businesses. On this blog we’ll give you a lot of examples of how they did it and how you can do it as well.