The usage of social networks is increasing daily. Clearly, the whole social phenomenon is still far from over. Its impact for marketers and companies is huge.

For marketers, this evolution constitutes an enormous opportunity, but also a major challenge. The attention of modern individuals is fragmented, and in this hectic communication reality they want to decide for themselves how and when and with whom they speak, both in private and with regard to business communication.

Moreover, people can also disseminate information themselves via social channels, which can very quickly send messages all around the world.

The social media (r)evolution has five major consequences for marketers. Note that this does not mean that all of them are only caused by the social media and networking evolutions.

Many of them were happening already. The social Web is a natural evolution (read the paragraph “the rules of linking are changing” in this post) whereby people are connected to people online in a one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many way, more than ever before, but it certainly has strengthened, and sometimes simply caused, each of the five evolutions that you find below the graphic (click on it for a larger version).

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