Social media represents an opportunity to engage with online communities to foster tighter customer relationships. Those relationships, in turn, can increase brand recognition and loyalty, and ultimately increase revenue. That’s why social media continues to be an exploding area of interest for marketers worldwide.

Whist it’s fun to use new tools to connect with others. Accessing the information generated by these online relationships to create generate revenue should our aim. But giving this practice a new label and suggesting it’s a fresh concept that has never before been put into practice devalues our past efforts.