Online is by far the biggest advertising channel there’s ever been. Thanks to social media you now have the potential to reach a global audience of 2 billion people. Free. Providing you have something interesting to say

Social media means you don’t even have to buy online advertising, never mind use the expensive channels once the preserve of giant corporations.

So if you thought social media is for daft teenagers and sending your friends pictures of cats that look like Hitler, you’re right; but a by-product is you can use it as a tool for selling yourself, making yourself tremendously visible online, even to track down people you want to connect with.

More than that, it’s the first advertising channel that’s more than ‘broadcast only’ – it’s not a monologue, in other words. It’s a conversation. And in our sales-averse, advertising by-passing, cynical, media-savvy, modern world, that’s perfect: at its best it’s advertising that doesn’t look anything at all like advertising. And that increases the chance people won’t actively try to avoid it the way all of us can now do with conventional advertising.