We all know about Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.. but what you may not know are the types of social engagement tools that are available inside these popular sites.
If your main use of Facebook has been for personal use, did you know that you can join groups and create pages? I set up my first Facebook page back in 2007, you can go and check it out here https://www.facebook.com/courierservices it’s a page for a hyper-local courier service, it has less than 250 fans and brings in around $500 of business a week. Not bad considering how much the page is neglected by me!
Facebook groups can be extremely helpful and can help extend your social media reach. The Free Kindle Book Group I started last November is growing at the rate of 100 members a week, and I now have two co-admins; Angela Boothroyd and Tobias Roote, two fellow book lovers. Every day fabulous and free kindle books are shared within the group, along in-jokes about smut and wine o’clock. When one of the “regulars” has a book to promote community spirit kicks in and downloads, shares and reviews take place. It’s with particular pride that books from “one of our own” are shared.
Groups can be open, closed or secret and can be used as a membership or forum. Jackie Walker runs her successful Coaches Companion as a paid membership forum. To join you must request to be approved and this way the administrator can only accept those that they want into the group; those that have registered, work in the correct field and understand the group rules. I highly recommend you check Jackie’s group out if you are a coach, you need support too.
Creating a group can serve several purposes including being used for research purposes, to test a new product, mastermind and for families to set up a surprise for someone such as planning an anniversary or birthday celebration. They are also fantastic for finding people and services in your local area.
The various social platforms allow users to do different things. Some allow you to add tags, links, videos, photos, short and long messages and even post articles. With Twitter you are restricted to one short sentence for example. Pinterest is a site for purely sharing images and photos.
Not everyone uses social sites in the same way.
Yes the biggest social media secret of all is that not everyone uses social media sites in the same way.
I realised this when attending an event run by the local chamber of commerce. The event organiser refused to go onto Facebook because there were too many people wishing other people happy birthday. Clearly she’d never read a copy of How to win friends and influence people. Many people use social media sites to play games while others use them for chatting and sending message to their friends and family.
Businesses may use these sites for research purposes as well as for branding their company. There are also quite a few people that like to flick through the pages of status updates and start a fight. One particular so called social media expert likes to blast anyone who disagrees with her or her friends with a tag telling them they are showing themselves up. Clearly she’s lacking somewhat in the manners department and missed her calling as the social media police.The Grammar Nazi also police Facebook with a particular zeal and frequently grouse about the death of good language use.
These multiple functions are really the reason why social media has become so popular
With so many uses these sites are just plain fun to use! Young people today would be lost without their Facebook or Twitter accounts, their whole lives are played out in the social media arena. With the marketers moving in on Facebook it becomes really challenging for consumers to go about their daily business and enjoy themselves and when that happens they’ll move on leaving behind all the experts and marketers to console each other.
Other social media sites include YouTube and even Skype, you can interact with people, leave messages and make new connections
Skype Status updates are a good driver of traffic to blog posts and services pages.
With YouTube you can upload your own videos and make them public or keep them private or unlist them. Private videos are a great way to connect with overseas family members and are wonderful for using for long distance relationships. What better way to send a personal message for that someone special. Imagine how they will feel when waking up to a personal video from you! Video isn’t all that scary there are plenty of tools you can use to create video without having to go on camera yourself!
Social Media has come a long way in the last few years and it has a long way to go. Social media sites are more interactive and you can now access your accounts from your mobile device and your smartphones. When you think about it social media allows to literally only be seconds away from anyone and that’s the most powerful social media branding secret.
[Contributed by Sarah, Content Creation Expert at Sark eMedia.]
