The Definition of Social Media from a New User

There are many of us who scoff at the idea of the definition of social media because we have been talking about it for a couple of years. However, we are in the minority. I wanted to encourage novice users and bloggers to write guest posts on my blog that defined social media in their minds. Here is the first one.

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What is social media?

This is a very good question and has been asked many times. As a matter of fact, when I performed a search of this phrase in Google, it produced the following results:

Notice how many results that query produced?  573 million results! We can come to the following conclusions:

1. It is a very popular topic
2. There are over 500 million articles on the topic

Overwhelming? Yes it is. But, I decided to tackle this subject to provide a definition from a new or fresh perspective. Why? Because I am no expert and only recently, has this subject peaked my interest. Thus, this post is dedicated to those who are interested in the subject but unsure as to what it exactly is.

Wikitionary defines social media as forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet.

Dictionary.com defines social networking as: a website where one connects with those sharing personal or professional interests, place of origin,education at a particular school, etc.

Notice the definitions? I would like to focus on two words in particular, interact and share. In other words, social media is about interacting with others albeit friends or family where both sides share content. Popular tools that allows for this are Facebook and Twitter. Initially, the idea was just that, to keep in touch with your friends and family. However, some have found a way to use these tools as a means to generate income. I am sure you have heard of this and think that this is possible for you too. Remember the search results that were produced at the beginning of this post? Let’s do another search on Google for How to make money using social media. Here are the results:

Wow! We have over 70 million suggestions on how to make money using social media. While it is possible to make money using these tools, it is not easy and the success is not always possible. If it was that simple, I would be writing this article on a beach in Costa Rica. Nevertheless, here are a few ways that these two services can be of benefit:

Facebook – Facebook does allow for the creation of fan or company pages where you can promote yourself or product. I think this is one of the main applications that internet marketers use for promotion especially since Facebook encourages it. They allow for you to create ads at a reasonable price. Additionally, they have recently implemented Facebook Places which allows for location based functionality similar to Foursquare.

Twitter – Allows for you to promote yourself in a 140 characters or less. But, if the Twitter community finds that you’re spamming others, then you will be called out. Also, Twitter itself will restrict spamming to the point that your account will be suspended.

In my personal opinion, the concept of social media has completely changed, especially with Twitter. At first, I would only retweet articles or quotes that I found interesting, because I figured that is what everyone did. Then I decided to interact with a few respected twitterers and was shocked to received responses (actually that is how I got this guest post). Unfortunately, that is not the case for all whom I follow. It almost seems that they automate their tweets, which restricts interaction or you’re too much of a peon that it’s not worth their time to respond. As a matter of fact, I have a suggestion for some of these “celebrities”, since you have so many followers, pick a random person and say hi. Also, if you want to help a charity promote the charity, don’t charge your fans to become a follower.

If I can summarize social media in one word, it would be interaction. Even if you have 5 followers or over a million, take the time to interact with your followers and I guarantee it would be appreciated.

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Today’s guest post was written by Reinaldo Moodey is a novice blogger and social media enthusiast. By no means an expert but frequently expresses his opinion regarding technology at his blog blogtekkie.