Who is making money with social media

I heard an interesting comment that was delivered as a question last week. This took place at a business meeting for networking that I attend on a regular basis. There was a general discussion about social media and someone said, "is there anyone using social media and actually making money?" He continued to say, "there's a lot of people on social media but is anyone actually making money?" My first thought was that obviously the companies who run the pay-per-click advertising and sell other media on the social media sites make money. Certainly there are plenty of businesses that created apps to use with social media and they are making money too. But I think the original statement/question was directed to the everyday users on the various social media sites.

I have two thoughts on this and I'm going to keep it short because I do not have much time.  I would like to come back and expand on this post's subject in the future. The first thing is that yes, plenty of people are making money with social media. Its not black and white and it is indirect. A person or business may get some business or sell something if they come right out and try by posting on a social media site but generally throwing up on your contacts and connections does not work very well. If you try to push something by blasting it all over social media sites it tends to backfire and you'll lose connections/friends/etc. People hate to be sold but love to shop. So if you are pushing something it won't work in general, even if its an amazing product or service. Think about all the times you've been cold-called or approached by a "sales" person (your defenses go up). Walk into a store and typically when a person working there asks, "may I help you?" people answer "no thank you, just looking". Social media helps you to sell something because you create a relationship with others on the various sites. When people see that you have something to say that is intelligent and pertains to whatever they need they will listen to you. They will follow you, read what you have to say and eventually contact you. By the time they do contact you they have already decided that you are the person or business that should supply them with whatever it is they need. This is essentially In-bound Marketing which deserves an enormous amount of space to write about so I will post more on this in the future. There are many books, web sites, webinars and seminars out there by experts such as Seth Godin and  David Meerman Scott for example.

The second thing I wanted to mention is that there are plenty of people who are making money with social media and not only are they using all the aspects of In-bound Marketing but are actually selling and collecting income within a social media site. For example there are very few (I believe its only three) companies that can actually run an E-commerce shopping cart in Facebook within a vast network specific to their business. I will save this part for my next blog post, I need to go!

Thank for reading!