Social Media - a trigger for SPO1510

SPO1510

Social Media

What is Social Media

Social media is the term used to describe social interaction through the internet including audio, video, images and text.

This includes social networking and content-sharing. The services are mostly free to use and you don’t really need to have any technical skills to use them.

Social media is…

• an addition to traditional communications activities

• a tool to converse directly with customers / service users

• a cost communications tool

• cross functional-platform

• sometimes difficult to use!

Why is Social Media Important?

• A great resource to reach a new/bigger audience

• It’s often FREE to use or low cost

• Can quickly be updated.

• Easiest and quickest way of getting good news out

• It’s viral. People will pass stuff on to a new audience

• Sharing information

• Publicising information and events

Common Social Media Platforms

Yammer: Social network used for private communications with groups and networks. Often used within organisations to share documents and ideas.

Twitter: Social networking and ‘microblogging’ service that allows you to answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ by sending a short message of 140 characters.

Foursquare: Location based social network. It lets people ‘check-in’ to places they visit using their mobile phone. Can earn points, badges and rewards.

Facebook: Social networking site that allows you to create a page/group which ‘friends’ can join or ‘like’. You can post messages, add photos and create events.

YouTube: Video sharing site for uploading short videos of an event or activity. People can comment on videos and they can be embedded in a website.

Common Social Media Platforms

Tweetdeck/Hootsuite: ‘Social media dashboards’ that allow you to manage multiple social media accounts in one place. Schedule updates and post them to multiple places

Flickr: Photo hosting website that you can upload images to so that people can view them. Can display your photos in different ways, such as a slide show

Linkedin: Business related social networking site for professional networking. Create a professional profile similar to a CV to build connections

Podcasts: A series of audio files which could be news or events. Users subscribe to the series and are updated automatically when a new one is posted

RSS: Really Simple Syndication is frequently delivered updated information you subscribe to. They are fed from websites to a place you can read them

What is Right for You?

What do you use?

The Big Two!

• The best known and one of the easiest to use

• Approx 3.5 billion are registered

• Millions of businesses, charities and community groups use it to raise profile and increase sales

• Can create groups (open, closed, secret)

• Create a Page (mainly used to promote a brand/product/service).

• Not limited to characters and can upload images etc…

• Arguably has over took Facebook in terms of active use (rather than Zombie accounts)

• Followers not ‘friends’

• 140 characters

• All major corporations, celebrities and groups have an account

• Retweet interesting news

• Link to website updates

• Post images

Social Network Planning

Time is of the Essence

Time is of the Essence

Best Times: Weekends 1.00pm – 3.00pm

www.twitter.com

Social Media Mistakes to Avoid in 2015

1. Obscure Profile Images

2. Self-centered content sharing (Self promote, when appropriate)

3. Check links before sharing

4. Inconsistent posts

5. Research trending hashtags before using

6. Avoiding dialogue

7. Sticking to worn out methods

The key to a successful social media strategy is to constantly share interesting content..

Source: www.mediacase.org and newsnet5.com

Get used to using social media in a professional way

Make yourself aTwitter profileand tweet about computer games, game culture, game and ethics, game design etc. And follow video games suppliers, developers, gamers,some or all of your fellow students, and the lecturer

Make yourself a paper.li using your “gaming” Twitter profile, and set it to automaticly tweet the latest edition so that your Twitter profile has one paper.li tweet per day.

Make yourself a SoundCloud profile and upload two recordings in accordance with the mandatory tasks