• Tweet

Major Uses of Social Media

• creating information (photographs, links, stories, knowledge, slide shows, videos, audio recording, helpful guides)
• sharing (sending information to people or into an accessible area for people to enjoy)
• interacting (having conversations, joining groups, meeting new people, advising, listening)

Forms Of Social Media

Each form of Social Media listed below has a link explaining the method of use and how people, bloggers, and Small Business can use these technologies.

1. Facebook – Social Networking
2. YouTube – Video Sharing Online
3. Twitter – Microblogs
4. WordPress – Blogging
5. Digg – Social Bookmarking
6. Flickr – Photo sharing
7. Scribd – Document Sharing
8. iTunes – Podcasts

Building Trust Online

By creating and sharing information, and interacting online you build a network of trust and begin to join and form personal groups. If you use a Social Media site regularly and people like your input (i.e what you say or your information) this builds more trust.

To help build your network and to make your account more valuable Social Networking sites recommend friend of a friend,

1. John is friends with Terry and Chris.
2. Terry and Chris are friends with Peter,
3. Facebook for example would send John a message to say “Peter is friends with Terry and Chris do you want to send Peter a friend request”.
4. By using the friends (Terry and Chris) as a trust factor Facebook recommends their mutual friend (Peter) to John.

Other Trust Factors

Trust Factors include the amount of comments, ratings or reviews a member has created. By viewing a person’s account you gauge their interests and can see by their content and who their friends are which will allow you to measure a level of trust.

Word of Mouth

Recommendations are very important in society away from the Internet and even more so online in Social Networking sites. People talk a lot about experiences and services online, E-commerce sites have star ratings and reviews next to comments. If someone has a good experience they want to tell their friends if they have a bad experience they want to tell the world.

Social Media and Business

Social Media has had a technological effect on Society not seen since the industrial revolution in the early 1900′s. The effect has led to the modernisation of business practises which have allowed business to:

• source new markets and trade to customers in countries all over the world
• source new suppliers and staff in other countries
• communicate with old and new customers in new ways helping to build, maintain credibility and reputation
• use social media tools internally allowing staff to communicate on business matters.

Should a Business use Social Media?

Companies have been reluctant to begin to use Social Media as they may not understand the tools or as there is no concrete form of control or that it’s difficult to measure Return on Investment

Lack Of Control with Social Media

Social Media has allowed more open communication between business and customers.  Customers can complain online and voice their opinions as individuals or in groups. Business can reply with tools such as Twitter that allow the business to use it as a customer service tool (Customer Relationship Management).

• If a customer is complaining on Twitter and Twitter is monitored by a company member of staff the member of staff can converse with the customer and rectify the problem or try to find an acceptable solution.
• The whole process could take 5 minutes but other dissatisfied customers may have seen this conversation and not need to complain as the solution is available to see.
• The solution can also be referred to on the company blog and linked to in the company twitter list and be turned into a positive reference and not a negative customer complaint left for all to see.

If as a business you are nervous about using social media, some elements to remember:

• appoint certain skilled company employees the responsibility to use social media, these people will need to learn how to build relationships around the brand and product with visitors (you need to know and understand customer needs)
• have a clear social media usage policy – get some ideas from the BBC
• Give value in your interactions and reward visitors, share something of perceived value to the visitor
• Know your Social Media Tools – go through the links at the beginning of this page to understand the different types of Social Media and see Facebook for Business and Twitter for Business for more tips.

One of the most security conscious organisations in the world has started using Social Media, it pays to be online see the Pentagon. By not embracing social media techniques businesses will be at a big disadvantage, especially when the competition are probably already using social media tools see Gartner.

Social Media and PPC

Pay Per Click advertising does exist on Social Media Sites and this may be a more attractive method for some businesses. If the only form of Marketing connecting your brand to Social Media is PPC advertising it does defeat the whole object of Social Media Marketing (however your brand is still viewable on these sites).  It would be best to use PPC in addition to your social campaign. See Facebook Advertising, SlideShare ad share.