As a media specialist for 30 years, I can tell you that these are incredible times. No one has to depend on traditional media anymore, paper, radio or television… Internet has changed that forever.

In the late 1990s, I did a series of radio shows and officially introduced the Internet as the fourth medium. A medium that would transform the media as we have known it. Transform was an understatement!

Today, “social media” allows anyone to “become the media” in effect. Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Twitter, etc. They are all social networking sites, where we share stories, images, links, etc. It is not unlike newspaper, radio and television, sharing news, images, videos, music, social chats, etc.

The difference today is that at almost zero cost you can reach a global market from your own laptop, using social media. You have thus become the means of communication itself! Now how powerful is that? Just as you needed a physical store or even eBay to sell your products under one roof, now you can do it yourself through your own website or blog. Don’t think that all the traditional media are not scared and worried about all this power that you and I have now.

As a media specialist for many years, I have always talked about targeting products to niche markets using print, radio and television. Objective yes, but still depending on the content of the media being used. If you didn’t listen to that radio station or read that newspaper, you would never see or hear my targeted ad. Now I can find that targeted ad as soon as I type my search query into Google. Now that’s the most targeted you’ll ever get and better yet, targeted to a global audience to boot.

This is great media power in their own hands and it should make the mainstream media nervous, very, very nervous. So essentially, stop trying to figure out how to best use existing media and become the media yourself. Here’s a hint, notice that all the traditional media are using social media! hmmmm

Mastering social media is extremely important, and some would have you believe it’s virtually impossible to master. These are the same people who tell you that Google is impossible to control. Nonsense! Everything is terribly logical and not complicated. It’s formulaic, no gimmicks, no magic, organic marketing at its best.

I hate to rain on the guru parade here, but you don’t need 25 DVDs or 200 page PDFs to learn this process either. That’s too much exaggeration and really bad editing. And trust me, it’s a simple process to follow. But you have to follow it! Long-tail keyword research, blogging, article marketing, and video are at the center of the process. Then it’s all about which social networking sites to use, which RSS feed directories to use, and a few other tweaks, and you’ll be on the first page of Google in a few days.

When you get familiar with social media, get your site or blog on the first page of Google, and start getting some calls and sales, you’ll know for sure that you’ve become the medium itself!