What Is Social Media and Why Do We Need It?

Social Media can be applied to a method of delivery or types of information exchange

consisting of perspectives, insights and in some cases, your experiences. If you are serious about networking for business online you need to utilize some or all of these technologies.

Some of the methods of delivery are text, image, audio, and video. Generally they appear in the form of blogs, web casts, message boards, wikis, podcasts, forums, bookmarks, and many other forms with more appearing everyday.

In short, social media can be identified but can often be difficult to quantify. You will notice even though social media is hard to quantify it is generally used for some form of marketing whether it be and idea, a product, or a service. I will begin with text-based tools because everyone is familiar with some form of text tool either via email, instant messaging, or some other form of texting.

Text Based Tools

Let's look at forums. Forums are website users can log into and post some type of information related to the topic of the forum. This is key when professionals are reaching out for collaboration to others in their field they may or may not know. Forums are not real time. You will see when you visit a forum that the information threads can be quite elderly and just keep getting added to over time.

Forum Examples

Notebook Review.com

Gamespot

Destination 360

Bulletin Boards are similar to forums but have more functionality and are richer in their interface. From a marketing perspective they have the same purpose and the same tactics of interaction can be used also.

Bulletin Board Examples

DLTK's Crafts for Kids

Pets- Buynow.com

Dragos Lungu Dot Com Security Tools and Tips

Chat Rooms

Chat Rooms are not instant messaging but can be confused with IM at times. Chat rooms are an application that is run within a website and only for the participants in the chat room.

Chat Room Examples

All Chat Sites.com

Yahoo.com

IRC Internet Relay Chat - this is among the first social networking vehicles. No longer the best or only solution but should be used where indicated.

Instant Messaging an application that runs on the desktop of a computer that allows real time communication only to people who have been invited to the conversation. It is similar to the difference between a phone call and a conference call.

IM Examples

Aim.com AOL Instant Messenger

Excite

MSN

Yahoo Messenger

Next Issue we will cover blogs, TXT, and Wikis.

THJ & Associates, LLC 2008

What Is Social Media and Why Do We Need It?

By: Theodore Henderson

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