What is Social Media?
So what is Social Media? Lets begin with the word media. Media are tools used to store and deliver information or data for example; Advertising Media, Broadcast Media, Digital Media, Mass Media, and Print Media. Which in turn defines Social Media as media published through social interaction.
Types of Social Media
Social Photo and Video Sharing - where you interact and comment on other peoples submissions through photos and videos. Social Photo and Video sites that are most used are YouTube, Flickr, and TwitPic.
Social News - where you comment and vote on news articles people have written. Popular Social News sites are Propeller, Reddit, and Digg.
Wikis - where you read, add and edit existing articles. Wikipedia and Wikia are the most popular forms of Wikis.
Social Networking - is interacting by adding friends, having discussions, joining groups and commenting on profiles. Social Networking websites include Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.
How can you use Social Media?
As a small business you can use Social Media in many different ways. Cascading Media uses Social Media as a resource for prospective clients, current clients and friends to be updated on industry information and news from Cascading Media. Specifically we use Facebook and Twitter for Social Networking. We use Social Video Sharing to share client projects and also to showcase our own work we have done in the form of a demo reel through YouTube. We have only dipped our feet into a few of the different types of Social Media but our business does not need to use all forms of Social Media to be effective.
Will Social Media be effective for your business?
This is a question that you have to ask yourself as the owner of the business. What kind of products or service are you selling is the first question you need to ask yourself. If you are selling a service like Property and Casualty Insurance it is going to be hard to sell the specific service considering how many variables go into that industry. Instead of trying to sell the service Social Media now gives you the chance to let your “fans” receive industry updates and any happenings with your office. Now if you are photographer Social Media might help in the fact that as soon as you have the final edits of your pictures done you can immediately share them with everyone, and then their friends can share with their friends and so on.
I personally think that no matter what your business does it does not hurt to get a Social Media account set-up and see if it could help your business. One of the most important things I have found to be key to a social media campaign is to have relevant content and something that will make your business stand apart from your competition. Your “fans” will not come to your Social Media sites overnight you have to either put the effort in yourself to do it or hire someone to do it for you.
More to come...
In the upcoming weeks I will dig a little bit more into Social Media and how to structure a Social Media Campaign for your business, it takes a lot of planning and requires you to be creative. Make sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for industry updates and ways to promote your business on the web!
