Business and enterprise software, and other applications that help a business run

The purely business aspects of social media software have always existed, clear back to local ads on local computer bulletin boards. With the advent of social media sites such as StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Plurk, the sophistication of the business component of social media has grown. If one includes blogging in the social media category, as one should, you will find that very few companies of any size have no social media presence at all, and that many have a sizable presence indeed.

Part of this effort is public relations. This generally starts with a blog, sometimes by the corporate CEO, and sometimes by professional corporate bloggers. Often, forums exist on corporate sites to enhance communications. These efforts are sometimes bolstered by corporate accounts at sites like Facebook and Twitter, allowing some personal interaction between private users of those sites and corporate PR personnel. Public relations efforts are aimed at maximizing the positive exposure of the organization and its key stakeholders, while downplaying any negative exposures.

The other major business aspect of social media sites is pure marketing, generally involving efforts to drive traffic to either corporate Websites or to brick-and-mortar locations to purchase products. We have seen full-fledged marketing campaigns, especially on sites like Facebook and MySpace, and many examples of “viral” marketing campaigns on those same sites and very often including video sites such as YouTube.

These social media marketing efforts are here to stay. Although some companies have been slow to adopt such methods, major social media efforts by companies such as Ford Motors, MacDonald's, and Apple leave little doubt that social media marketing is here to stay. As long as the social media paradigm is hot, someone will be following you there to sell you something.