People today are finding out about news headlines, events, sporting scores and everything in between from Social Media. Just one glance on your Twitter account and you find out that a celebrity passed away from a news source that included a link to their website. You retweet that on your profile and inform your followers, it just takes one follower to retweets your status and it goes over and over. Maybe one of your followers takes the link you have included on your Twitter account and posts the link on their Digg or Facebook account. This then sends the same outward reach the same way as it did with Twitter. Now that one link that the news source posted on their Twitter account has been resent out a hundred thousand times or more. That’s a hundred thousand or more people who potentially clicked on the link all resulting in visiting their website.
So what is Social Media? Social Media comes in different genres (Social News, User-Generated Content and Networking) just like any other type of communication that is out there today.
Social News sites allow for users to post and vote whether the content is newsworthy. You have sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and many more from general sites to very niche markets. Topics include everything and anything on social news websites. These are the sites you want to get your news and press releases on.
User-Generated Content is where the user does the work for you in a positive or negative fashion. Users can upload content onto sites such as YouTube or post pictures on sites such as flickr. The user-generated content format that can be the most beneficial to businesses is in the form of comments, reviews, forums and blogs. Feedback can be the make or break of how consumers see your business so time to time do a search for your website or business name to see what people are saying about you.
Facebook and Twitter are the most popular form of Social Networking. These sites allow users to create personal profiles by posting pictures, status updates, blogs, links and applications. Businesses don’t forget you too can have profiles on these sites and get “fans” to follow what’s going on with your business.