Starting out with social media

This page is meant to give you the most basic understanding of social media and how to start using it. However, social media can be a somewhat complex issue and opinions vary a lot. So you may probably want to seek out other sources and search the web for more information.

Defining social media

Trying to define social media, I have decided to call it:

A wide selection of online networks, services and tools that allows users to create, share and co-develop content.

In my opinion, creating, sharing and co-developing are the three basic actions seen taking place over and over again in social media, whether it is in a personal expression such as a blog, in social networks like Facebook, or a joint project such as a wiki.

Wikipedia has a somewhat more lengthy definition of social media.

You can also turn to YouTube where a host of videos will try to explain social media for you. This is one of my favourites:

Getting started

Once you have a basic understanding of what social media is, you should turn to Chris Brogan’s two excellent blog posts about starting out in social media: “If I started today” and “Starting your social media case”. These blog posts offer some terrific insights into how and where to get started if you want to do your own project or you are trying to implement social media into a company or an organisation.

The “rules” of social media

If you google “the rules of social media” you get roughly 330,000 results so clearly a lot of people have an opinion about what rules apply to social media. Rather than talk about rules, I would like to share a few universal truths that seem to apply:

1. The key word in social media is social. The power of these networks, tools and services lies in their ability to spark conversations and interaction between people all over. If you treat social media as just another one-way communication platform from where you can blast out your message, chances are pretty high that nobody will listen.
2. Social media requires attention and time. Ever had a friend on the phone and get the impression that they are not really paying attention to what you are saying? It’s not really a conversation then, is it? It is the same with social media. People who listen to you expect you to listen to them – not just leave when you are done talking. But engaging in a dialogue with lots of social media users is both time consuming and sometimes technically challenging. Make sure you allocate the proper amount of resources.
3. First you give – then you receive. This is probably the observation that I try to stress the most when I talk to people about my experiences with social media. It might seem obvious, but you would be amazed how many people and organisations and companies forget about this. They expect record high numbers of enthusiastic comments after just the first few blog posts or they twitter nothing but unpersonal marketing messages and can’t understand why their following isn’t growing. To succeed in social media you need to give people something that interests them – and then they will repay you with attention and conversation.

Using Ask About Social Media

This blog was created with social media novices in mind in an effort to help beginners who have an interest in learing to understand and use social media in communication, public relations, marketing and other related areas. Over time the blog will expand in three main areas:

1. Social media tutorials. Using the tag cloud and the category list on the right you can seek out basic video or text tutorials on how to set up and use various social media networks, services, tools and platforms.
2. Social media case studies. Another part of Ask About Social Media is dedicated to building an online library of case examples of successful and not so successful uses of social media.
3. Social media dictionary. At the top of the page you can find the link to the blog’s social media dictionary, which will gradually expand to cover more and more social media services, tools and networks – hopefully becoming a popular point of reference for curious new social media users.