Social Media Crash Course (Part 2)

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Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 5:07AM

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Social Media Crash Course (Part 2)

So now you may have a good understanding of the state of the internet and the terms used to talk about related services, but what are the most common sites and tools to target? The following list should give you a great start, although it is certainly far from the definitive compilation!

Social Networks

Social Networks may be what comes to mind first when someone hears the phrase 'Social Media.' Two prominent examples are Facebook and MySpace. In very general terms social networks are online 'places' where people describe themselves (profiles), befriend other users, and maintain an online presence. There are various levels of Social Network users. The uses include: a cure for boredom, a determined effort to keep up to date with what all your friends are up to (think 'status updates'), or even a more professional presence aimed more toward creating new business opportunities.

Blogs

The web log. A way to offer your opinions to anyone interested in reading them. Blogs are a great social medium for two reasons. First they provide the opportunity to express opinions that are not company news or press releases. These blog posts show the human side behind a company and lay the foundation for establishing organic conversations (rather than 'customer support discussions').

Second, logically continuing from the first point, blogs can provide a comment section where visitors can reply with their own (often shortened) thoughts about what was discussed in the blog post. This, as we have previously discussed, is a fantastic customer engagement tool.

Twitter

The king of micro-blogging. Twitter does away with the need to write long blog posts and instead restricts users to 140 character 'tweets'. Think of it as an individuals stream of conscience. Instead of a long blog, a user posts their thoughts and ideas as they come. Every user has a list of other users that they are following and who are following them. Twitter can provide a great complimentary platform for customer engagement (again, NOT marketing) or to send out feelers on a given topic. Ask your followers to reply with their thoughts or vote on a given debate.

Digg

Digg is a social news site where users determine what stories reach the front page by voting for the articles they enjoy. Stories are presented on digg as a Headline and brief introduction. These serve as links to the website which hosts the full story. Getting on the front page of Digg is a Holy Grail for many sites with the achievement bringing thousands of unique visitors to a site within the space of a few hours. The phenomena, known as the “Digg Effect”, has caused sites to crash under the weight of overwhelming traffic generated by a popular article.

That being said, getting on the front page is far from a simple process. It requires a combination of timing, a large network to spread the article, and an inherent quality in the submitted link... though given some of the content appearing on the front page, one may think twice. Sadly, it seems these days that a 'large network' is much more important than exceptional content (although the latter obviously helps).

Wiki

Not too long ago, the Wiki framework led the way in online collaborative environments. To some extent this is still the case. The ease with which several individuals can asynchronously construct a knowledge base is the driving force behind the appeal of the Wiki concept (think Wikipedia). The reason that we mention this framework is because very often it turns out that the users of a particular product or service can do a considerably better job of putting together a collection of instructions, advice, tips, and support than the original creators or providers! It is also worth noting that Wiki-pages tend to rank highly in search engine results.

Forums

Forums are an interesting medium to mention. Some years back, forums pretty much acted as rudimentary social networks (that is, social networks as we know them today). Users would gather for specific topics, share their opinions, hold lively discussions, and build solid relationships - and very often friendships - right in the forums. The popularity of forums is steadily decreasing (although some would readily debate this statement). Forums are now more suited for very specific topics that people can gather (online) around, and less for more general discussion and collaboration tools.

This, however, does not mean that forums cannot be useful as Social Media when building an online customer engagement campaign. Very often forums provide a much better opinion sharing platforms than blog articles and their comment areas. Just keep in mind that a forum should only be provided when you are getting a substantial number of visitors to your site. Providing a forum right from the start can put you at a disadvantage because the forum is likely to remain empty for a long time with a limited number of visitors.

Email

We'll finish off with a medium that may seem too 'old school.' We mention email here not for its outstanding potential as a social media tool (although there certainly are merits), but more as a cautionary note. Although mailing lists can do the job well when it comes to updates and introductions, platforms for a more personalized customer engagement experience are clearly preferred. If you are going to email - avoid sending frequent 'marketese' emails to your mailing lists and focus more on refining the personalization of email conversations with individual customers.

Thanks for reading, to some readers the previous two articles may have been too simple, but we felt it necessary to at least provide a starting point for readers who may not be as familiar with the field. Make sure to check back here next week when we will get back into more specific topics.

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