Don't be confused. In fact, if you have ANY interest in marketing, advertising, promotion or building awareness of yourself, your skills, your product, service or web site, you need to "get your head around" Social Media, and do it quickly.

Why? Because those NOT aware of the awesome potential of social media are doomed to lose in the marketplace to those who ARE aware of it.

This article will briefly explain social media and how it works.

First, lets organize the above picture into six basic categories:

Next, let's take each of those six genres and explain each one.

To help you learn, we'll be using some colorful graphics, some very interesting (and short) videos, and um...even some plain old text.

The result: after reading or even just skimming this article, you'll have a basic grasp of social media, or at least be able to use hold your own in a conversation on this subject.

Within the broad umbrella term "social MEDIA" is social NETWORKING, the first of six genres. Social networking is fast becoming an easy and convenient way to rub virtual elbows with anyone else online,

Through social networking, you can be at the same "cocktail parties" as your present and future customers.

Social networking sites like Facebook (www.facebook.com) and LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) are great for business professionals to learn about each other and create friends within various online spaces. Younger people made the social network MySpace (www.myspace.com) the most popular of its kind, however unless you're dealing with lots of kids, a great deal of the environment of MySpace is not really suitable for grownup activity...um, that's one way to say it.

Conversely, a site like LinkedIn is terrific for adults and people looking to connect professionally with other people because there are literally NO kids there, only people with business relationship-building in mind.

The best way to build relationships on a social network is by doing what's called "building out your profile" with your real photo, family pix, along with your bio and background.

There are literally thousands of social networking sites (see graphic, right), so unless you have very unusual interests, you'd mostly likely want to sign up for the most popular social networks with lots of people, or do some quick research before signing up for a random site.

It's important to not "spin your wheels" spending hours setting up a profile on a social networking site, only to find out later that it only has 21 members, or that it's mostly for Canadians (not that there's anything wrong with Canada!), or that the site was just launched yesterday afternoon. In other words, it's usually best to join a site that already has traction, momentum, and lots of members.

Genre #2 is the social bookmarking concept of social media, which allows people to "tell the world" what sites, articles, photos, videos or blogs they are most interested in.

Social bookmarking sites collect all this info and present the results in rank order, from the millions that have provide this information.

Remember "party lines"?

In a way, social bookmarking is a little bit like the old fashioned telephone "party lines" in the early days of phone service in the USA.

Here's how "party line" phones used to work in the 1940s and 1950s: Before everyone could afford the luxury of private telephone service, "party lines" let you have a phone, but many others were shared the same line with you!

Young people (or anyone under 40 who doesn't remember this) will find this kinda unbelievable, but this is true: if the telephone in your home was on a party line and you wanted to make a call, you'd pick up the phone and might hear someone else in the middle of a conversation! You would have to hang up and wait for the line to be free.

In a similar way, social bookmarking gives everyone the opportunity to take the topics they talk about most and create a "most talked about" list.

The best-known social bookmarking sites are Digg (www.digg.com) and the originator of this concept, Delicious (www.delicious.com). CHeck them out, join each one, and get read to sumbit your most popular destinations and see what others are "digging" or find "delicious".

It's also much like a 24/7 focus group of what people are looking for in the past hour, day, week, or month!

Social media genre #3 is the wildly popular arena of BLOGS and MICROBLOGS.

A blog (a contraction of the phrase "Web Log") is really an electronic version of a personal diary that's left open for everyone to see, and to comment on.

The old-fashioned diaries would NEVER be left around. Hey, those were personal! Ask any woman over 50 or 60 who may have kept a diary in their teen years or when they were first married.

Today, blogs are essentially one-way monologues by one person about their thoughts, experiences, ideas or observations. Occasionally someone reading another's blog will want to leave their own COMMENT on someone else's blog.

Blogs from celebrities, political figures, TV or radio personalities will still be a one-way monologue of their thoughts, but because they are famous, their blogs will often have dozens or sometimes hundreds of comments each time they add another posting to their blog.

The most popular blog on earth, as of this writing, is the Huffington Post, focusing on American politics (www.huffingtonpost.com). It's literally packed with many nationally-syndicated newspaper and television journalists and op-ed writers, each with their own blog. Because they are such compelling content creators, they are all receiving many responses to every thought they post.

A popular blog for lovers of tech gadgets is Gizmodo (www.gizmodo.com) and is pictured above.

There are millions of other blogs worldwide. Anyone can set up their own blog in minutes for free, and be posting their own comments with no restrictions or censorship whatsoever.

MICROBLOGS are tiny blogs, usually less than 140 characters per message, and used to send very small messages to those who have said they want to hear from you regularly. The most famous microblog service is Twitter (www.twitter.com), the messages twitterers send each other are called "tweets". Other microblogs are Plurk (www.plurk.com), Pownce (www.pownce.com) and Spoink (www.spoink.com), but there are many, many others.

There are hundreds of web sites where the main goal is to exchange and share each others experiences.

CONTENT SHARING sites, like these HubPages, allow average people like me to post articles (content) on subjects they're familiar with.

PHOTO SHARING sites allow anyone to post their own pictures where anyone can see and comment on them, or just look at them. The most common photo sharing sites are PhotoBucket (www.photobucket.com), Google's Picassa (www.picassa.com), and Flickr (www.flickr.com). PS: No typo there, there is no E in Flickr.

VIDEO SHARING sites like YouTube, the granddaddy of all video sharing sites (www.youtube.com) create an environment of other people's videos on a seemingly endless array of subjects, topics and interests.

Today's best marketers know how to promote themselves, their companies, their products and services in such a way that their potential customers actually ASK for more information, or to be updated on changes in the industry.

Through "opt-in" email, anyone can sign up to receive updates from a company or person or service. At any time, you can "opt OUT" of emails you've originally requested.

SMS (short message service) text messing, or "texting", is a fast and semi-efficient method of one-to-one communications by sending short messages using the keypad on a cellphone.

Online streaming is not on-demand audio or video, but a continuous, non-stop flow of audio or video conducted by a professional media outlet like an FM or AM radio station, television station or news service. Typically, when you arrive at their web site, their online streaming player begins, or the user can decide to play the streaming player, which begins "in progress", with whatever part of the programming content is playing to everyone at that moment.

The sixth genre of social media is AFFINITY SITES, where people are attracted to that site because of a common interest or activity.

If you're building your business, you may want to find ways to get involved on various affinity sites, but only if you have a genuine interest in the commonality everyone else shares. If you don't, your participation and comments will be obviously phony and superficial almost immediately.

Why affinity sites are addictive

Often, on the best affinity sites, content is so "rich" (plentiful), deep and frequently changing that members can literally spend hours browsing the site, discovering more about that particular interest area, if it's an in which area they are heavily interested, like a hobby, sport or a group in which they're a member. Online shopping clubs are affinity sites which members sometimes find hard to leave.

Something for everyone

There are millions of affinity sites. Some excellent and well-known examples are Moviefone (http://www.moviefone.com/), Major League Baseball (http://www.mlb.com/), the Catholic Church (http://www.catholic.org/), a site for dog lovers (www.i-love-dogs.com), National Football League (www.nfl.com), and iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes/overview).

Many businesspeople have already found that the more they explore the new world of social media, the more they find ways to make more money, more friends and have more fun. And who can argue with that?

I hope this short article helped get you enthusiastic about all the opportunities in front of you. Let me know how you liked this information either with a comment below, or emailing me directly at tomz@jetcast.com.

Thanks for taking your first step into social media!

Articles on specific MUSICAL GENRES:

DISCO & DANCE history (plus SOUL and R&B)

COUNTRY, JAZZ, HIPHOP history

Articles on the makeup of MUSIC:

A Video History of Contemporary Music

Origins of Popular Music, part I

Origins of Popular Music, part II

Music Vocabulary

Music's DNA: Melody, Harmony, and Rhythm

Great MELODY is music's "face"

Great RHYTHMS are music's "bones"

Work in radio THIS WEEK: six simple steps

Lists of American leaders:

The USA's 44 Presidents, 1789 - 2009

The USA's 47 Vice Presidents, 1789 - 2009

The USA's 67 Secretaries of State, 1789 - 2009