“The growth of nearly every aspect of social media has and continues to be
enormous. We’ve dug up some amazing statistics and numbers from this realm.”
Mashable – The Web In Numbers and The Rise Of Social Media
We’ve always known the web is big. Nothing new there. However, what many in the small-cap space don’t realize is how big social media is becoming, or what social media actually is. Click on the story and you will see the numbers are ginormous and growing.
However, for small-cap CEO’s to really understand the significance of these numbers and the trend, you must first understand what social media is.
WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?
In layman’s terms, social media is the process of people amalgamating around content that is created by the people. From kids sharing home made videos, to wickedly smart financial bloggers sharing charts, trends, analysis and information.
The common denominator in social media is that you no longer have to be employed by a media conglomerate to publish your views. If you have something intelligent to say, simply publish it and people will flock to you. Previously unknown people from all walks of life are literally becoming super stars in any and every vertical, including finance.
WHAT DOES SOCIAL MEDIA MEAN TO YOUR SMALL-CAP PUBLIC COMPANY?
Wikipedia says “At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content.” I’ll break that down further and say you can no longer keep your company in the shadows. If you won’t lead the conversation about your company and choose to stick to press releases, others certainly will.
On the other hand, social media can turn out to be an incredible investor relations asset if you choose to accept and engage. How you do that is material for another post where I teach you how to use blogs, Twitter, YouTube, photos and audio to get your message out.
Regards,
George
Last modified: July 13, 2026
One big advantage AGORACOM has over Social media is the sense of community. I am not stating that one does not tie into the other but at their root, Communities are continuous, not temporal – this is not to say that people don’t drop in and out but there is a core membership that interacts together over a long period of time. Communities also tend to gather around a concept or common goal. Social media can help foster communities but social media can be limited to allowing a conversation around content. We also differ significantly from social media as we branch into not one conversation, but many. Many thanks to our Hub Leaders and emerging new members for their contributions to the discussion forums.
Also, one of the biggest advantages of using social media is the fact that one can broadcast any messages very rapidly to the world. People can find your stuff within minutes (or even seconds) after you distribute them through these social media channels. This is unlike traditional search engines such as Google, where it takes weeks if not months for you to get ranked well.