A brief overview of four major social networks (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr). Presented to the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce on February 10, 2010.
11. Social Media lets people connect with each other based on common interests.
12. Who uses it? 73% of online adults are on Facebook 51% of online adults post and share content created by themselves 19% of online adults use a status updating service - PewInternet.org
13. Why should I care? 93% of Internet users believe all companies should have a social media presence 85% of Internet users believe companies should interact with them via social media 56% of Internet users feel a stronger connection with companies that reach out to them using social media - Cone Research
14. Why should I care? Social media is one more way you can create & maintain important relationships & networks.
Social media – at it’s core – technology that fosters communication. It’s a conversation between family, friends, neighbors and strangers.
Tools allow people to use videos, photos and text to tell stories about what matters to them. Other people can interact with these elements, which is making the Internet an easy place for social interaction.
With previous methods of communication online you were able to have one-on-one conversations via email or messaging, and broadcast opinions to multiple people like on a blog. But now things like commenting, live tweeting and fan pages allow multiple people to share multiple ideas in one location.
People who use social media are taking it offline and into their community. Many get togethers, fundraisers and events – especially here in Lawrence – have an arm in social media. Many of the businesses who participate locally in social media benefit from the loyalty of the online community.
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You can publicly address customer service issues - and find ones you didn’t know existed – as soon as they appear on the Web.
You’ll find that once you’re there, the existing online community usually embraces newbies. By finding people interested in the same things you are or locating people in your region, you can expand your personal and business network in a genuine manor at a rapid pace.
Are you having a sale? Is it a good time for customers to purchase your services? People love to see businesses share information about good deals, sales and discounts. You could even hold a small contest just with your online network – you’ll be surprised at how popular it can be.
Century 21 held an internal contest to get their agents to utilize social media. This was the winning entry.
Once you create a page, you are that page’s administrator. That means you’re the boss of the page. You can add trusted friends or employees to be administrators, too, so multiple people can help update the page.
You want to have all the necessary information on your page, but you should also consider adding photo galleries, short videos and blog updates to keep fans interested. But be careful – you don’t want to overload their news feeds. They’ll start to ignore you, and consider you spam.
Individual users create channels (like profiles) that you can customize with graphics, links and descriptions. YouTube also functions as a limited social network. You can subscribe to other channels’ videos – like friending or fanning a page on Facebook.
YouTube has partner and non-profit programs that help increase your visibility. To see if your business applies, you can go to these URLs and read about the requirements.
Direct messages are also limited to 140 characters.
To follow a hashtag, go to search.twitter.com and type in the symbol and term (with no spaces!) It will give you a live feed of all the tweets using that hashtag.
All of these applications give you short URLs that can be tracked and fit well within the 140 character limit.
The Google for finding information on Twitter. Type in any topic and see who is tweeting about it and what they’re saying.