Everything Your Brand Wants to Know About the Social Media, but Was Afraid to Ask
What is social media?
At the basic level, social media provide the tools to develop a relationship between one and many users. It’s a conversation. A brand site is “social” if it allows and inspires conversation as it appears in the “comments” section. If it uses “rating and reputation” and tools to facilitate engagement, social media will allow and encourage a dialogue to develop. Some social media provide tools for people to contribute online, like YouTube, while others are intended for rating and criticizing, like del.icio.us and Digg. Still others are tools for questions and answers, such as YahooAnswers and HelpShare. These days the most headline-grabbing are MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and, of course, Second Life—a content-providing and community subset of the social media. Just using a blog, videolog (vlog), or podcast format doesn’t automatically qualify something as a social medium. Genuine social media depend on running commentary, criticism, and conversation. In short, social media are about participation. In our digital democracy, social media are the public forum. In our actual democracy, social media are the newest frontier of the First Amendment, as we see in citizen journalism sites like NowPublic and Current.tv, which inspire users to report news and events.
A BRAND IS SOCIAL IF IT ENCOURAGES DIALOGUE, PARTICIPATION, AND RELEVANCE.
What are social media tools and how are they used?
There are many different types of social media tools, with more being developed every day. Social media tools fall into roughly four categories:
+ Social Networks: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, InnoCentive, Second Life
+ Tools: Blogger, YouTube, PodcastNation, Twitter
+ Rating and Reputation: Technorati, del.icio.us, Digg.com, NowPublic
+ Questions & Answers: YahooAnswers.com, HelpShare, Wondir