You Go Girls!

 Erik Qualman, author of Socialnomics said it like this...."As Social Media is less about technology and more about relationship building, we are starting to see more women have a heavy influence if not dominant role in the social media space".
It's not surprising to me, on the contrary, it makes perfect sense that women would take the realm of Social Media by the reigns, proving to themselves, and to forums like Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, that they've got a pretty firm grip...in fact, they've got total control.
 To understand the brilliant connection between women and the vast array of social media forums out there....you have to consider the history of women. In fact, you might as well go right back to ol' Eve in the Garden of Eden who just couldn't resist the urge to go off "socializing"....didn't seem to matter that it was a serpent...it talked, and that was good enough for the woman.  
Women by nature were designed to connect emotionally, verbally, and physically with other humans, and while you can't physically connect on these forums, women, more so than men...find it irresistible to "poke" one another.  They simply can't help themselves. Ladies have always loved to exchange stories, boast, ramble, brag, inquire, and OBTAIN info about others...(but surely not gossip). And while the terminology has been refurbished to more "modern" verbs such as, share, post, blog, poke, question, like, etc.., you can be sure...the vocabulary is the same as it ever was.  Socializing for women no longer requires a tea pot, a park bench, an outing or a department store "sale"; just a thought, an idea, a prompting, a keypad and a friend....or 500 friends! The "more the merrier" as we women love to say.

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words....

Marketing methods come and go but there are a few things, that even time and technology won't let go of, a picture, being one of them.
Remember when your parents would read you stories, and you would sit pressed against them so as to see and touch the the pictures? Or, as a youth, you would check-out a library storybook based on the number of pictures that were interjected into the chapters.  As a teenager studying for a test, you'd  likely scan the textbook, looking for pictures, charts and graphs concentrating on the attached information.  As you grew older, you would whiz through pictures in gossip magazines at the grocery store, and People Magazine became the #1 subscription, not because of it's fabricated and exaggerated stories, but because of all the "people" pics!
Marketing mediums are constantly evolving but the human desire to see images of people, places, and things...well, that's a forever "given".
Facebook soared to the top of Social Media forums because it includes, "faces" and Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine because it includes images.  If you search Google Images, you can literally find a picture of just about anything you type into the search box....pictures, pictures, and more pictures!
A recent Facebook study showed that when pictures are attached to a post, the post is 75% more likely to be read; and when a Facebook ad is created, it's the picture that either "makes or breaks" the Click.
So when you're blogging, Facebooking for your business, creating new social media forums, sending out email blasts, and creating online newsletters....be sure to include pictures, and plenty of them. A picture truly does speak a thousand words.....