May 13 / 2013
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What the Heck is Social Media?

Social Media…the New Communication Method

Howdy folks! Welcome to week 3 of our May series on inbound marketing. This week we will be talking about social media, what it is, what it does, and how you can utilize it to boost your business.

So, what is social media? Chances are, if you’re reading this blog you know what it is. However, I found this awesome graphic from the New Zealand Teaching Council called What is Social Media, and I couldn’t help but share it for two reasons. 1.) New Zealand is awesome, and 2.) it’s a really nice graphic that sums up the different types of social media into categories with pretty colors (we love pretty colors here at NSquared).

“What is Social Media

Social media embraces web-based and mobile-based technologies to facilitate interactive communication between organisations, communities and individuals. The social media map provides a visual summary of some of the most common types of social media platforms, and their purposes. We’ve also identified the characteristics that are a feature of all social media platforms.

Characteristics of social media

Online platforms that enable users to:

create, share, adapt and reuse content engage in digital dialogue and collaboration
create linkages, groups and communities
have peer-to-peer contact
have social interactions with other users
create and maintain their own user
profiles and IDs

Online platforms:

are largely public, but walled gardens exist within some platforms
are accessible 24/7 from a range of devices and locations
generally expose users to an unknown audience

Content on a social media platform is:

discoverable
community moderated
persistent
subject to conditions of use”

There you have it. A super basic idea of what social media is. Nowadays, it’s mega important for business owners to understand social media. As much as some of us still like to talk to people rather than their profile (I am one of those people), there’s no doubting that social media has an amazing capacity for being a wonderful marketing tool. Our next post will explain how to use social media to your advantage. You don’t want to miss it!