Hello and welcome to Day 1 of 30 Days of Social Media. Social Media is the ‘buzz’ right now. But what IS social media and why does it matter? Why should we care? I’m assuming that you are a busy professional and that there’s a good reason why you are here taking part in this program. Something you’ve heard or seen has piqued an interest in social media and you want to know more. So, let’s get started. START HERE: Listen to this overview of Day 1’s lesson:
QUESTION 1: What is Social Media?
You could Google the term ‘Social Media’ and come up with something like “Social media is content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. …” a definition that comes from Wikipedia (a free, collaborative online encyclopedia). I, however, prefer the explanations demonstrated in these two videos.
Social Media in Plain English
This video, by CommonCraft is one of many they’ve done and posted to YouTube. As well as being very clever, it clearly demonstrates the concept of social media. The video demonstrates these social media elements:
- coming together with others, sharing with friends and others of like mind
- niche markets and how social media serves them
- ways to interact with your customers
- new technology and new ways to work
- “by the people for the people”
- feedback, organisation and promotion
- new opotuntitiees to communicate with people that care
… and these are all concepts we’ll explore during this program. This second video – The Social Media Revolution – has some great statistics on the use of social media and how it’s revolutionised the way that we work and play. And, it showcases some of the tools we’ll be learning about. The other great thing about this video is that (at the time of this writing) there are 644 comments (from 730,895 views)…. from people who’ve watched the videos before you. Conversations are being had, and we’re going to learn how to tap into those conversations (from the point of view of knowing what our customers are saying about us, about our industry, about our competitors). With social media we get to be a part of, and contribute to conversations about things we care about.
QUESTION 2: WHY SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA?
There are many reasons to care (and we’ll go deeper into those in the coming days), I care because it has changed the way that I communicate with my community, connect with my customers, share resources, do market research, distribute content, share knowledge.. But, I digress. Why do YOU care? Why are you interested in social media? What is that you’d like to learn about over the next 30 days, and why? TODAY’S ACTION STEP Watch both videos. And, if you want to get more interactive comment in the comment box below a) your thoughts on these videos and b) what interests you about Social Media and what you hope to learn of the course of this program. Thanks and ‘see you’ tomorrow. Suzi PS If you’re posting on Twitter about what you’re learning, use #30DSM as part of your tweet to allow us to track the conversation.
