Does Knowing How to Cut With a Scalpel - Make You a Surgeon?

Social Media gives you, or your company, a unique opportunity to get your message out to the masses - but does anyone care what you are saying? Social media can be roughly defined as - distributing a message through social interaction, through highly accessible and scalable publishing methods. It is only recently that this term has been adopted to define online resources such as social networking sites, blogs, podcasts, etc...

The concept of self publishing has always been around, such as posters for telephone polls or a zine. Only recently have web-based tools and the Internet delivery channel lowered any cost or time barriers to entry. So does knowing how to functionally use the tools make you an expert? How do you know what to say? or does it even matter? - Andrew McClenaghan

A surgeon's tool is a scalpel, but without knowledge of how to use this tool - it is no more than an a glorified butter knife. This tool is incredibly effective in the right hands and unbelievable destructive in the wrong hands. The same holds true for social networking tools, having access to the tool is not beneficial, knowing how and why the tool should be used is the true power of the social networking phenomena. Therefore, if you are just diving into the social media pool, make sure you address the following:

1. What MESSAGE are you trying to get out?
2. What AUDIENCE are you trying to reach?
3. Create CONSISTENCY in your delivery and your messaging.

So let's all become "Social Media Surgeons" and consistently put out incredibly effective messages that hit our target audience with pinpoint accuracy!