Slide 2: Defining Social Media Concepts
Description
Social media use the “wisdom of crowds” to connect information in a collaborative manner. Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies such as blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, group creation and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), and Flickr (photo sharing).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
In social media, its important to make your message engaging, relevant, and to make the end user an equal participant in the communication process. Pitfalls to be avoided include:
- Content should not be similar to old style brochures, press releases, etc.
- Content should be “real,” your readers will know if your content is exclusively writtten by your PR department
- Social media is often a communication paradyme shift especially for organizations used to closely controlled communication styles and tools and mechanisms of the past. E.g. Does your organization think like a web 1.0 or web 2.0 entity?
- Do not overemphasize selling your product or service, see video below
