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What is Social Media?

crowdvictoriapeckhamI had an interesting conversation recently about social media.  It seems that a lot of business owners kind of know what it means.  If you ask them about it they’ll say “oh is that like facebook or something?” or “it’s media that’s social”.  But if you try to dig deeper into what that actually means you’ll get a mixture of answers.

Social media is media that is social.  But it goes beyond Facebook or MySpace.  Social media is any type of media in which there is, at least, a two-way conversation – usually a multi-way conversation.  Social media is about engaging the audience and having them respond to you and to each other.

Social media is also about a philosophy of listening (instead of shouting).  Just using media that is social does not make it that way.  If you have a blog but never reach out to your readers and never respond to what they are saying, you’re not being very social.  Even if you don’t have a blog, you can listen to what your customers are saying on their blogs and respond to their concerns.

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. – Wikipedia – Social Media

Let me highlight the most important aspect of this definition:

“building” of shared meaning among communities

Social media is not just about your story or your company’s story.  It’s about the shared meaning you create with your customers as you interact with them and they with each other.

What story are you building with your customers?

(photo by victoriapeckham @ Flickr CC)

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How to Get Your Social Network Users to Fill Out Their Profiles

“Hi, my name is MrCucumber69, I have a gray blob for a face and that’s all I care to share about myself – will you be my friend?” Silly as that sounds, this is the way users of many social web applications greet each other. It’s not very useful or inspiring.

Communication works better when you have a good idea who it is you’re talking to. How can new online services get users to describe themselves, though? – ReadWriteWeb – Eight Ways to Get Users to Fill Out Their Profiles

ReadWriteWeb’s article describes a common problem on social networking sites – getting users to engage and fill out their information (let alone post and contribute).  Their suggestions mostly depend on the functionality of the social networking software, but here are some ideas from a community evangelist and internet marketing viewpoint:

  • Reach out – If you greet new users and make them feel welcome, they are more likely to put the time into their profile and the community.  Reaching out to users who haven’t updated their profile can have a similar result.  Sometimes people just need to feel a
  • Highlight – By highlighting changes and updates that are made on profiles throughout the site, people may be reminded or enticed to update their own profile (people love to be famous)
  • Feature – Choose some interesting profiles to feature on the social network to showcase good profiles – sometimes people just need a good example.
  • Recommend – Recommending people to each other based on their profiles can be a powerful way to get people to connect.  For empty profiles, make note of this possibility for when it is filled out.
  • Entice – Sometimes good old marketing schemes like free giveaways are the only way to get certain people off the couch.  Offering a discount or freebie from your business may be relatively cheap way to accomplish this.

Getting people to fill out their profiles is important not only from a business standpoint (yours), but also for encouraging new people to join.  People will be reluctant to contribute or give you information if they community does not seem to be active.  You may need to recruit some go-getters to help you get things rolling.

If you have ideas or ways that have worked on your own social networks, we’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

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Which Social Networking Sites Are Best for Promoting Your Business Website Content?

One way to increase the awareness of your products and services (and your brand) is to have your website and/or blog content show up on social networking sites such as Digg, Newsvine, Del.icio.us, etc.  Users of these social networks will hopefully discover your useful content and visit your site – possibly becoming returning visitors and passing on your name to co-workers, family and friends.  Social networking sites usually have different types of audiences, so it is worth investigating them to see which ones work best for your target visitors.

Here is an summary of some of the top social networking sites:

  • Digg – Started initially in the tech industry as a way to link and rank news and articles and has quickly spread to gaming, and off-the-wall.  Digg is trying to widen their audience, but in my experience, many business-related articles are quickly lost in their huge amount of submissions.
  • FaceBook – Started as college students only, but now open to all.  Best for connecting with long-lost friends and for networking with acquaintances.  There are business networks and groups, but FaceBook does not make it easy to separate close friends with business networking acquaintances.  One possibility is to create two personas – one for work and one for personal use.  Posts from your blog can be displayed in your profile and you can create pages to promote your business.
  • MySpace – Probably one of the more mainstream of the social networks, MySpace is heavily used by younger generations and by entertainment and music groups wanting to connect with their fans.
  • LinkedIn – Targets business users who want to keep track of their networking contacts.  Business can join and create groups to promote themselves.
  • Del.icio.us – Is a link sharing social network where you can share links with notes and tags.  Can be useful across multiple industries and a nice way to add more content to your own blog/site (check out their widgets).
  • Technorati – Started as a way to view news on tech blogs (hence the name) and see their ranking (as a function of how many other tracked blogs link to them) – is now used across many industries for an overview of what’s going on in the blogosphere.
  • StumbleUpon – Has a fairly general audience who use the site to ‘stumble upon’ new content that others have submitted.
  • Newsvine – Started as a sort of portal with voting for content from news organization, it now accepts content from anywhere, but still heavily favors news websites.  May be worth a look for your business blog since you can also start your own column on the site.
  • Sphinn – Targets Search & Internet Marketing Professionals.

As mentioned previously, it is also worth taking a look at industry websites to see if there are smaller niche social networks and communities in your own industry.

Need Help using Social Networks to Promote Your Business Website? Get started with a free website analysis or contact us for a quote.

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