If your target market is using the Internet — and they almost certainly are if you are reading this blog — then you need to be involved in social media marketing. It doesn’t matter if you are trying to sell widgets, save the earth, or pimp your first book — you can leverage social media tools and communities to get the word out about your brand and start conversations with people who will want to buy your widgets, trade energy-saving tips with you, or review your novel.

Knowing how to get started in social media marketing can be overwhelming for even the most experienced marketers, let alone the rest of us. Heck, just wrapping your head around the term “social media” hurts some people’s brains. And the explosion in the number of choices we now have for participating in social media has exploded in just the last two years, leaving many wondering where to start. That said, this mind-boggling amount of choices also means that there is an unprecedented amount of opportunities to connect with people in our backyards as well as around the world in languages we don’t even speak than ever before. Sometimes for FREE.

That. Is. Amazing.

People are using Skype to hold meetings with potential investors across oceans, profitable startups are collaborating on projects with Google Docs, and people are using location-based social networks to locate and rescue victims of natural disasters. Businesses are making nice with customers that complain about poor service online to their friends, people who in the past would have become ex-customers. The people of Iran even stood up to their government last year by organizing protests via Twitter.

That. Is. Powerful.