“What’s new in social media?” That’s like asking, “What fuzzy animal do you see in the clouds right now? How about now? Now?” It’s always changing. To the older generation, Facebook in and of itself is new! Pop quiz time; have you ever heard of or used these new social sites? Gowalla • Viddler • Dailymotion • Ustream • Cellit • Enowit • Groubal.com • Radian6 • ObjectiveMarketer If you recognized any of these new additions, you’re ahead of the game.
Businesses are relying heavily on advertising through social media. Facebook recently had half a billion; no I did not misspell million, half a billion people use Facebook in one day. That is huge. Not using this enormous platform will be fatal to the success of your business. The whole focus of social media is changing from getting people connected, to getting users engaged in using the many tools of social networking. Tools like social apps, WordPress plug-ins, event promotions, text campaigns, and alerts.
A large amount of businesses are using WordPress for their websites. WordPress is an open source publishing application that allows you to implement search-engine optimization at no cost to you via plug-ins.
Presentation platforms are also gaining in popularity. People no longer want to just listen to presentations; they want to see them. SlideRocket.com and Prezi are two websites that allow you to do this by live video feed.
The amount of user created blogs is exploding. People love being heard and followed. Most blogs contain posts from other posts. A blog is mostly recycled information sent back and forth. In order to be seen and heard, you need to be posting or re-posting high quality, entertaining and relevant content.
Twitter is becoming the place to turn for breaking news. Even before Google has the info, Twitter users will have already mentioned it.
So get your site on WordPress, market on Facebook, find blogs of interest, tweet and test out different social sites. See what works for you. Getting heard and being seen is now easier than ever. Good clicking!