Today, HubSpot featured a very informative webinar covering the relationship between Social Media and Business Marketing. I found that the webinar cleared up many of the questions I had about social media. I would like to share some of what I learned. This is post one of a three part series. This article will cover Part 1: An Introduction to Social Media Marketing.

Why is social media important?
Traditionally, we have practiced many forms of outbound marketing—we attempt to pull people in toward us. We have tried seminars, trade show booths, telemarketing, print ads, direct mail, email blasts, television commercials and radio ads. Sometimes successful, these types of marketing are expensive and are very easy to block out. We have Do-Not-Call lists, our DVRs can skip TV commercials and we even have handy ways to assassinate spam.