Basics to Starting a Social Media Presence

Long gone are the days of Yellow Page ads, junk mailers, paper business cards, and other traditional ways of marketing yourself.  It seems inevitable these days, that if you have a business, you’re a writer, involved in sports or entertainments, or just trying to market yourself, you need to create some sort of social media presence.  If you don’t have a clue, the following should provide you with a good general list of places to start if you want to get started making that presence, and promote your web site or services.

Facebook

Most everyone should know of Facebook by now.  The great features they have for an individual or organization is the ability to create groups, pages and events.  You could create a page for your business, create a group for focus discussions, and add events for special promos.  You can add apps to the page to incorporate other social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.  Additionally, the time line allows you to add in special dates of your company’s history, and to set up photo albums.  As the world’s largest social media site it is an almost must you create a presence here to interact with users.

Twitter

The supreme leader of all things microblogging.  Twitter is awesome to catch the latest news the quickest.  You can follow, or easily find users related to your own industry, and instantly begin posting your content (140 words or less) and networking with others.  If you find articles of interest you can easily share them to Twitter.  If you are attending a live event and want to share what’s happening, you can post quick responses, including adding pictures.  Twitter also has apps at many other sites that allow a single post to spread to other sites, or many sites to post a link to your Twitter account.

LinkedIn

The social networking platform for professionals.  LinkedIn cuts out the informal social media statuses and provides a social platform to interact and network with like-minded professionals.  You may find current and former colleagues, prospective jobs, but for your business you could find new clients and potential businesses to partner with.  Groups can be created to discuss your products and to send updates.  You can add apps as well to interact with Twitter and your blogging sites.

YouTube

This is the standard for broadcasting video over the Internet.  You can create a channel on YouTube and upload your marketing or tutorial videos.  You can then share them on most other social media sites, or grab a link to embed into your website.

Pinterest

Don’t let the stigma that this is a woman’s site turn you away.  It hasn’t for many millions of users.  You can easily post pictures of your products and separate them by themes or categories.  Users can easily repin those pictures to their boards, creating a link to your page, providing free marketing for your organization.WordPressThis is a great blogging site, especially for writers and photojournalists.  You can create your site to function as your home page, with the ability to create multiple pages, or use it as a blog.  It is easy to manage and schedule all of your postings and to set up tools for sharing to other social sites.  I find this site best for longer articles, photo exhibits, or information blogs, such as this posting.

Though it does not possess the popularity of Facebook, Google + easily integrates with all of Googles products, such as Gmail and GChat.  It is easy to assign users to Friends or Family circles, or to place pages as Followers.  Integration is its best feature to reach users.  It may be a better tool to interact creatively with colleagues as a form of Intranet, rather than trying to reach new customers.

MySpace

The old dog of social media sites.  It has been down but not forgotten, and has shown signs of rising from the ashes.  MySpace is still great for ‘social entertainment’, such as bands, comedians, artists, movies, club events, DJ’s, and other creative services.  There are many audio specific sites popping up that interact well with other sites, but MySpace combines the audio and social experience all in a single location.