In today's wonderful world we become increasingly visible through our actions and thoughts, as we continually describe our daily messages and post online: from what our children have had for breakfast to where we have been on holiday!
Our planned footprints in the digital universe can be shaped so that they are clearly comprehensive and, with care, can form a good image of ourselves and our professional lives.
From this, it can be seen that it is important to form a strategy as to how to spend the resources of your business in this constantly growing universe which can so easily appear to be a Babylonic confusion.
It is important to both create posts that both make sense and also guide your readers to the content you wish to share. At the same time building your complete image and collecting everything in your central hub: your website.
When approached in the right manner Social Media, such as YouTube, Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, can all be an effective resource. These web tools can help channel your messages and encourage dialogue with business relations and clients, as well as gain rank in search engines. However, Social Media can also be an immense waste of time that you might choose to spend in more profitable areas like free time! Social Media is in explosive development with a lot of opportunism from new businesses and a professional approach is vital as not all initiatives, once entered, can be changed later on. When dealing with Social Media it is important to ensure that security and integrity are always professionally maintained. Listed below the most used Social Media platforms in the English speaking part of the world, which if managed correctly, you may find useful. Many listed can be Integrated into your website and some can can be managed using tools like UberVu, Sprout Social and FriendFeed.
Remember, the view that you need to take is not necessarily the same as those interpreted from articles containing statistics about Social Media. The point here is therefore imperative: that throughout, you need to be both critical and evaluating.
Consult with us about what it is that you want to acheive and we can help you on your way to benefit from social media solutions - and save you a lot of time.
You can also read our BLOG about how to work with social media in business.
Hootsuite
Enables posting in several social media platforms with one click. Mainly useful for simple messages. Hootsuite is a social media management system for brand management created by Ryan Holmes in 2008. The system’s user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations.
UberVu
UberVu charges a monthly fee. The tool can perform searches across social media platforms and display an analysis of which platform has most posts containing the searched keywords. This could help determine on which social media platforms a business should seek to concentrate the promotion of their messages, products and services. www.ubervu.com
Sprout Social
Sprout Social allows businesses to efficiently and effectively manage and grow their social presence across channels. Sprout Social charges a monthly fee. The tool can manage feeds from this shared platform in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and create reports on feeds. It is a new tool that announces that more social media platforms will be included in the future. www.sproutsocial.com
Share This
Here's how it works
The ShareThis toolbar can easily be implemented on websites.
ShareThis is the largest market for sharing and influence across the web, reaching over 400 million users on 850,000 sites. ShareThis makes content more engaging for publishers and marketing more impactful for brands by tapping into its true influence and value.
Facebook
Facebook can be useful to market products and ideas. We can show you how to do this without wasting time or money or jeopardising your integrity. We advise that you do not mix your personal Facebook profile with your business, but we'd like to teach you how to best perform as a business in the Facebook environment.
Before opening your Facebook account you need to read their terms. Make sure you do that fully. And once you get started, try to take it slow, step by step. It can be difficult to reverse actions once they are taken in Facebook.
Also be aware that the system is not easy to navigate and that Facebook has a tendency to send you to pages that they want you to go to. It's not nescesarily the case that the deeper involvement in Facebook, the greater the benefit.
Here is a very usefull guide from ZDnet:
The Definitive Facebook Lockdown Guide - Securing your profile page
Twitter
Elizabeth's twitter account: @eli7abeth
Twitter can be very useful in so many ways. View an example on the front page of this website where @eli7abeth is discussing her films using Twitter. A good method can be to search in Twitter for users discussing the subject that you want to promote or have a dialogue about. @eli7abeth's re-tweets resulted in that her New Year Film from Looe was placed on more websites in Cornwall than any other!
Here's a link to some useful Twitter tools Twitter: Social networking and microblogging.
Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search.
Google +
A Google project headed by Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz, Google+ is designed to be the social extension of Google. Its features focus on making online sharing easy for users.
“Circles,” think social circles, akin to Facebook’s lists
“Sandbar,” a user-unifying toolbar
“Sparks,” a search engine for sharing content between users
“Messenger,” a group messaging app that allows users to share with certain “Circles”
“Hangouts,” group video chatting designed to allow up to 10 users video chat at once
Each Google+ user can replace his or her standard Google profile which will stream everything that user has shared as well as the +1 content. The +1 button is similar to a Facebook “like”.
Google Maps
Google Maps is a desktop web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets. Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn: Professional social networking.
With more than 67 million users representing 150 industries around the world, LinkedIn is a fast-growing professional networking site that allows members to create business contacts, search for jobs, and find potential clients. Individuals have the ability to create their own professional profile that can be viewed by others in their network, and also view the profiles of their own contacts.
MySpace
MySpace provides users with a way to connect around content and culture. It is one of the world’s largest social networks, with about 125 million users. User pages are highly customisable and support integration with widgets such as Slide or YouTube.
WordPress
WordPress.org is the community site for the WordPress blogging platform. This is the place to go for bloggers who need help or resources for their WordPress blog. Blogger
Blogger is a blog publishing platform and a product from Google. Blogger blogs are mostly hosted internally with the “dot Blogspot” domain but they can also be hosted externally on a user’s own server.
Reddit
Launched in 2005, Reddit is a social news website that displays news based on your personal preferences and what the community likes. Your preferences are determined based on your history of voting stories up or down.
The company was started by two University of Virginia grads, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman in the Y Combinator program. Two others, Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz, later joined the team.
Digg
Digg is a user driven social content website. Everything on Digg is user-submitted. After you submit content, other people read your submission and “Digg” what they like best. If your story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page for other visitors to see.
Digg is in the top 100 most trafficked sites on the internet. The success hasn’t come without its share of problems though. The site has had to face services aimed at gaming the way stories hit the front page, as well as a user revolt. Digg has however been able to get over these hurdles as it continues to be one of the social news leaders.
Disqus
Disqus is a networked community platform used on hundreds of thousands of sites all over the web. Using Disqus with your website gives you a fully-featured comment system, social network integrations, advanced administration and moderation, and other extensive community functionality. Most importantly, with Disqus your website is plugged into a web-wide community network, connecting millions of global audiences to your small blog or large media hub. Here is a Disqus Blog embedded in our website.
Mashable
Mashable is a top source for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture. With more than 25 million monthly pageviews, Mashable reports breaking Web news, provides analysis of trends, reviews new Web sites and services, and offers social media resources and guides. Mashable’s audience includes early adopters, social media enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, influencers, brands and corporations, marketing, PR and advertising agencies, Web 2.0 aficionados and technology journalists. Mashable is also popular with bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users — an increasingly influential demographic.
Delicious
Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows you to tag, save, manage and share Web pages all in one place and independently of which computer and internet browser is being used. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.
Technorati
Technorati Media is an integrated online media company with an ad network, three owned web properties, and an ad technology platform. Launched in June 2008, Technorati Media’s ad network has quickly grown into the largest social media ad network (blogs, social networks and distributed content), boasting an audience of over 300 million unique visitors a month worldwide and 150 million people in the US. In July 2010, com. Score ranked Technorati Media as the 4th largest social media property and the 3rd largest blog property. Technorati.com, the flagship site, is the world’s first and largest blog search engine and a robust community blogging platform.
Flickr
Former game designers Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake created Flickr, an online photo sharing network, in 2004. Flickr, which began as a photo-sharing feature of their gaming project, has since then blossomed into one of the premiere photo-sharing sites on the web.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a discovery engine that finds the best of the web, recommended just for you. StumbleUpon uses positive and negative user ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When users stumble, they will only see pages which friends and like-minded stumblers have recommended. Users often find that the content they discover on StumbleUpon could not have been found using a search engine.
People who are passionate about StumbleUpon say they like it because of its serendipitious nature. Users love the surprise factor in what they see next, and the fact that the product has such a high hit rate in delivering interesting new content. StumbleUpon site says they have nearly 10 million users as of April, 2009, up from 1.7 million in December 2006. 20 million personalized recommendations (“stumbles”) are delivered daily. Soundcloud
SoundCloud is the world’s leading social sound platform where anyone can create sounds and recordings of their own music and share them everywhere.
Recording and uploading sounds to SoundCloud lets people easily share them privately with their friends or publicly to blogs, sites and social networks.
www.soundcloud.com
Instagram
Instagram is a fun and quirky way to share your life with friends through a series of pictures. Snap a photo with your mobile phone, then choose a filter to transform the image into a memory to keep around forever. Instagram allows you to experience moments in your friends' lives through pictures as they happen.
www.instagram.com
Foursquare
Find the best places to eat, drink, shop, or visit in any city in the world. Access over 75 million short tips from local experts. In 2009, Foursquare launched the check-in and real-time location sharing with friends. Five years later, it was decided to give the check-in its own app. Swarm is the fastest and easiest way to keep up and meet up with friends.
www.foursquare.com
AND SO IT GOES ON...….. |
