Using “social media” means using free accounts on the web to interact with other people. Most people are familiar with Facebook and Twitter but there are hundreds more social networking sites. The most popular social media sites online right now are Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin YouTube and Flickr.
Click the image then click it again to see a selection of other social media sites.
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are good for sharing your interests, thoughts and events with other people. Linkedin is best if you want to let others know about your skills and work experience, or if you are seeking collaborations for more traditional networking. You upload videos to a Youtube account, and upload photos to Flickr.
Getting an account is easy and free – you just sign up. On most of these sites you can create a profile of your background and interests, then invite other people to connect to you. Once people have conncetd to your account, “followed” or “liked you”, they will see a copy of photos or news that you post.
Once you have an account, add the link as an icon on your website to encourage people to follow you. You can also add a social media “share” widget. By clicking on Facebook or other icon in the share widget, people can pass on links to your web pages.
Current trends in social media
The current trend is using online tools to manage and connect your memberships. This means that when you upload some photos to Flickr, you can notify anyone who “follows” your other memberships to let them know you have new photos online.
Another popular trend is the use of social media monitoring tools. These allow you to identify who’s talking about you on their own blogs and other opinion sites.
A third trend is towards social media dashboards that allow you to track the performance of your posts and uploads. These software tools can capture information about things like the number and frequency of your followers, and export these numbers to other kinds of reports.
How to use Facebook and other social media sites
We advise our clients to start with a website or blog then add social media accounts as a way of exapnding the news about your website. For example, when you add a new product to your webpage, you can make a short post on Facebook or Twitter to let people know about it. Or you could use your Facebook account to re-post articles and sites of interest to you. For example, if you have a gardening company, you might want to post a link to an article on composting you found useful. This kind of streamlining reinforces your topic area.
