Social Media

A Helpful Guide to Using Social Media for Your Business

By JL Designs on Oct 9, 2013 in Blog, Featured, Internet Marketing, Social Media

What Is Social Media? What does ‘social media’ mean to you? Billions of people have accounts on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. You may think all social media networks are the same, but each of them offers a unique feature that attracts millions of people to each of them. So how would you define social media? Social media can be defined as an interactive platform, a virtual community where people can create and share information. The content on social media sites is built by users, which is one of the reasons why these platforms are so popular. Social media can itself be divided into various categories. Here is a brief list. Social networking: Users interact by joining groups, adding friends, commenting on their profiles and taking part in discussions. Example: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and Orkut. Social video and photo sharing: Users interact by sharing videos, photos and writing comments on submissions by other users. Example: YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Flikr. Social bookmarking: Users tag websites and visit websites that other people have bookmarked. Example: Pinterest, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, and Del.icio.us. Social News Websites: Users interact by voting on articles and writing comments. Example: Reddit, Digg and Fark. Wikis: Most people are still divided about whether Wiki sites are true social media sites. Here, users interact by writing articles and editing articles that already exist. Example: Wikipedia. In regular media like newspapers and television, the end consumers’ ability to give feedback and comments is severely restricted. Social media places nearly no restrictions on its users. Quick Social Media Guide: Here is a brief social media guide to help you understand the most popular social media networks better. Facebook: Started by Mark Zuckerberg and a few of his Harvard university friends, Facebook was initially open to Harvard university students only. It is the most popular social network with more than a billion users. Facebook users can “Like” and share each other’s status updates. facebook.com Google+: Google Plus is an identity and social networking service. It has more than 500 million users and has recently surpassed Twitter. When a Google+ user likes a post on Google+, they hit +1 button which is Google+’s version of Facebook’s “Like” button. plus.google.com Twitter:...