Social Media: The 3 stages of a revolution
Sometimes when a brand new, revolutionary thing comes along, hardly anyone notices. Except a few visionaries who do notice. They quietly make a fortune. (Think Microsoft. Computers were for geeks and then when everybody realized they needed one, Bill Gates made a bloody fortune.)
Other times, the brand new, revolutionary thing comes along, it’s fairly obvious to everyone that it’s going to be a BIG deal. (Think Internet. Everybody knew in the late 90′s that it was going to change the world.)
When that happens, hardly anybody makes a fortune. Instead there’s just this massive sea of chaos that’s all hype and no substance. (Remember?)
That’s Stage 1.
Stage 2 is, everyone gets disillusioned with it and takes their toys and goes home. Things calm down for awhile. (Think ‘Post-Dot-Com Crash.’)
Then in Stage 3, now that sanity has returned, the real practitioners go to work delivering real value. (Think ‘Pay Per Click.’)
Social media online is going through that exact same cycle. Social media is at stage 2.5 right now. The intense windstorm of nonsense is subsiding and the real players are beginning to emerge.
For broad social media strategy across all the various networks, I’d be hard pressed to name a more tuned-in, ruthlessly pragmatic specialist than Don Crowther. Don is releasing his Social Profit Landscape today and he’s assembled a series of outstanding video tutorials.
Today I’d like to encourage you to avail yourself of this resource. For 2 years, the buzz about social media was more annoying than your neighbor running his chainsaw on Sunday morning. Things are different now:
http://www.perrymarshall.com/socialmediavideos/
About the Author

Entrepreneur Magazine says: "Perry Marshall is the #1 author and world's most-quoted consultant on Google Advertising. He has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax."
He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.
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If you’re aware of the Chaos then you can expect the order to follow right behind.
We’ve been doing PPC’s for about a week and a half, getting our adword campaigns from Adword Accelerator. We’ve gotten over 100 clicks but only 1 conversion. Any tips?
Go to school on your competitors and reason to yourself: Everything that’s going on here is visible if I dig deep enough. What is more attractive about their offer than mine? Relax and open yourself to discovering the answer, it is probably right in front of your nose. Also, ask a friend to go thru your website and stand silently behind them and observe. You might learn interesting things….
Social media is always changing and hopefully for the best
Hello Perry, Social media is a wonderful thing if used right. I am glad you are on top of it like you are with everything else and presenting it to us so we can understand it. Thanks, Andrew Gallop
social is blowing up to become more than just a socializing tool…SM like facebook will become similar to search engines and maybe replace them in some ways – which is why google is copying FB and bring about it’s own version!