Long ago, advertising followed this timeline:

* You buy ad space in a newspaper.
* The newspaper runs your ad.
* You get additional business because of your single ad.
* Repeat.

The media may have changed, but the concept has remained the same: advertising is a one-time shot at getting someone’s attention. Thus, advertising campaigns were born, to ensure that the same ad has multiple chances to reach the same people, over and over.

But what happens on the internet, when everything is both instantaneous AND eternal?

Fellow blogger Chris Abraham thinks social media may be changing the timeline of web advertising into something that’s both longer AND multifaceted. Now, social networks provide web users with numerous ways to FIND your business online. And the “long tail” permanence of most web content means a video or blog post you created in 2005 is still being discovered anew by Google searches even today.

All of which means that YOUR company needs to approach social media not in terms of “what we need to say TODAY,” but rather, “what we need to ALWAYS be saying.”

So… which elements of your company are SO universal, they belong in EVERY aspect of your online presence?

Photo by mfakheri.