Social media is a phrase being tossed around a lot these days, but it can sometimes be confusing to people just what does social media mean and what kind it do for me or my business.

What is Social Media?

The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication.

Social media would be a website that interacts with you while giving you information. This interaction can be something like asking for your comments or letting you vote on an article

Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on TV or Radio, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter.

Social media is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate as well.

Here are some examples of social media websites:

Social Bookmarking. (Del.icio.us, Blinklist, Simpy) Interact by tagging websites and searching through websites bookmarked by other people.

Social News. (Digg, Propeller, Reddit) Interact by voting for articles and commenting on them.

Social Networking. (Facebook, Hi5, Last.FM) Interact by adding friends, commenting on profiles, joining groups and having discussions.

Social Photo and Video Sharing. (YouTube, Flickr) Interact by sharing photos or videos and commenting on user submissions.

Wikis. (Wikipedia, Wikia) Interact by adding articles and editing existing articles.

And these websites are not the only social media websites. Any website that invites you to interact with the site and with other visitors falls into the definition of social media.