Further Adventures in Social Media

Picture of man using laptop for FacebookSince I last wrote about this topic, the social media field has continued to develop at a great rate.

With all the new possibilities springing up, you could easily spend all your working day being “social”.  So what to choose?  How to keep everything up to date?

Inevitably as this field develops, there are more people concentrating on building expertise in this section of the internet.  I’m working with one of them on a project at the moment and it’s going to be fascinating to see what effect it’ll have on my client’s business.

Briefly though, for people who just want a quick overview, here’s what seems to have changed in the last few months:-

Facebook continues to grow and grow. Not only for friends and family to interact (and yes, sometimes in my house that’s the way the kids talk to each other!) but also for businesses to get involved with their customer base. No doubt because of this wide appeal, Facebook is growing but MySpace is cutting back on staff. Myspace seems to have settled more into a role as publicity for musicians, bands and creative types.

Twitter is still going strong but its role in terms of a business tool is becoming more focused on either again keeping in touch with customers (especially on the move since it lends itself to mobile/smartphone use) or checking on hot topics.

YouTube is a great way of putting a personal touch on a business, and of course for sharing and hosting advertising videos. Another way also of getting links back to your main website.

Becoming more useful are blogging platforms such as Blogger and Tumblr. More of this in future posts I’m sure.

And finally, LinkedIn continues to grow in importance, especially to anyone who is providing any kind of consultancy service. In addition to developing connections, it’s a good way of displaying recommendations to the wider community. If you have time to get involved, you can use the Answers (and of course questions) feature to share your expertise – great for building credibility and more links back to your site or blogs.