There’s just SO MANY!!!

2011-10-07T15:18:00.000-07:00

As I am uploading a picture to Twitpic, Twitter’s photo andvideo sharing side of things, I see the “Share this photo” button to the right.Cool. Upon clicking it, a list drops down with a few of the more common socialnetwork hotties, followed by a button that says “More (335)”. What?!? I’m notone for trendy acronyms but OMG! Do I have to know all of these?? Nope. And youdon’t either.

A lot of social networking sites are very specific to ageographic location, a group of people, a particular purpose, or even aspecific industry. If *every* single one of these sites applies to you, thenyou’re probably already known by every existing person everywhere, and you haveno social networking issues. (Except maybe finding time to reply to an infinitenumber of posts and questions.) I’d be willing to bet though that’s not the casefor the majority of us. I think like five people know who I am. And they’re allcurrently in this building.

Social media boils down to online applications that “allowthe creation and exchange of user-generated content”. (Look what I saw. Cool!Look what you said. Amazing! Look what they did. Gross!) It seems crazilyoverwhelming to consider choosing between hundreds of ways to share yourcool-gross-amazing stuff with your target audience, but really there are six basictypes of social media, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media):collaborative projects, virtual game worlds, virtual social worlds, contentcommunities, blogs and microblogs, and social networking sites. Let’s get a fewof these out of the way.

A Collaborative Project is where many people collaborateto produce one product that’s usually reference. The best, and maybe even thefirst, example of a collaborative project is Wikipedia. The millions ofarticles on the site are contributed and edited for accuracy by volunteersaround the world. People can create their own “wiki’s” for things like communitywebsites and internal company things.

Virtual Game Worlds and Virtual Social Worldsare online communities where users can interact in a computer-simulated world.This is done through the user’s “avatar”, which is the graphic representationof the user, the character that everyone else in the virtual world can see andinteract with. Many sites are hybrids of the two worlds.

Virtual game worlds: World of Warcraft, Maple Story
Virtual social worlds: Second Life, Habbo Hotel

Content Communities are where things start getting abit more useful for many of us. These are sites where users share pictures,videos, articles, and online links. And it’s ALL about the tagging. Tags arekeywords that help people find your stuff and look at it. Otherwise how wouldthey ever find it in an endless sea of everyone else’s stuff?

Consider this. When you want to see a funny video oozingwith tiny animal cuteness, you go to YouTube and search something like “tinybunnies”. A video called “Baby bunnyeats tiny flower, washes its face” comes up in the list. After getting yourfuzzy fix, you see that the video has over 1.5 million views. (Wow!) This is inpart due to the adorable factor, but mostly due to good tagging. Tags on thisvideo include “bunny, baby, wild, rescue, rabbit, bun, eat, flower, wash,face, cute”. So if any of those words get typed into the search bar, this videowill be somewhere on the list of results. The more of these tags that are typedinto the same search, the higher on the list the video will be. Descriptivetitles containing relevant keywords are also important. If you want to sharepictures and videos, content communities are awesome!

Photoshare: Flickr, Photobucket, Zooomr, Picasa Web Albums
Videoshare: YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, Metacafe

Other content community sites are for bookmarking andsometimes even rating links. You can add your own links to many, such as linksto your site, videos, events, etc. Look through other postings before you postyour own links. Some sites are a bit… uncivilized at best.

Link share: StumbleUpon, Digg,Delicious, Reddit

Now we come to Blogs and Microblogs. “Blog” comes fromthe term web log. It’s pretty much like a journal- regular entries servingwhatever purpose you like. It’s usually text, but can also contain pictures,videos, and links. You’re reading a blog right now! For years I worked with theSan Diego Zoo and helped with a behind the scenes program called the “SunriseSurprise Stroll”. After each Stroll I blogged about what everyone saw andlearned, funny and amazing things the animals did while we were there, and I includedpictures I had taken that morning. The newest entries are shown first, and mostblogs give you the option of allowing readers to leave comments. Microblogs workthe same way, but they are limited to very short entries. Short like no morethan 140 characters.

Some blogs detail the latest updates of a company, some listupcoming performances for a band, some are simply streams of consciousness regardingwhatever the author is thinking about that day. Blogs and microblogs are superversatile and useful. And both are good to use. Microblogs are handy for occasionallyfilling in the space, so to speak, between full blogs.

Blogsites: Blogger, Tumblr, LiveJournal, WordPress
Microblogsites: Twitter, Yammer, Plurk, Jaiku

SocialNetworking Sites. Now we've hit it. The social media Goliath. Socialnetworking sites are THE thing now. Decades ago, celebrities weren't reallysomebody until they had been on Sesame Street. (In my opinion.) Now if you wantto be noticed and known you have to have a social site to send people to. Thequestion used to be, “Do you have a business card?” Now the question is, “Doyou have a Facebook?” There are HUNDREDS of different social media sites, butmany are for a very specific purpose. For example, Ravelry is for sharing aboutknitting and crocheting. IRC-Galleria is open only to Finnish speaking peopleaged 12 and older. I’m willing to bet you don’t need to rush out and setup aprofile on either of those. But what is the point of any of them?

Thepurposes of social networking: connecting with old friends, making new friends,maintaining all kinds of relationships, sharing your stuff, touting yourexperience, even playing games. It can be personal. It can be business. It’soften both. You’re able to create a personal profile, sharing as much or aslittle about yourself, your business, your group as you like. When you makechanges or post additional things, other users are automatically notifiedthrough news feeds, live streams, even texts and emails. The users that arenotified are the ones connected to you on the site, whether “friends”, “incircles”, or “following” depending on which site you’re on. You can even joinonline common interest groups.

Thebeauty of social networking sites is the ripple effect the notifications have.Take Facebook for example. Let’s say those five people that know me are eachfriends of mine on Facebook. If I update my status to say, “Come see my new artshow this weekend!” then all five of them will have that update appear in theirnewsfeed, and there’s a chance that five whole people will show up to supportme. But let’s say each of those friends has twenty more friends in addition tome. Since the five are friends with me, their additional friends also see my update.So instead of 5 people knowing about my show, 105 people know! I’m going tofeel a whole lot more supported. Yay! Social networking sites spread the wordof “you” in ways that other methods just can’t. And where traditionaladvertising such as television and radio rely on people being in the rightplace at the right time to hear your ad, social networking sites allow you to postin an easily accessible location that chronologically keeps all of yourpostings indefinitely.

Social networking sites: Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut

Socialmedia is useful, it’s everywhere, and it’s fun. It’s really only overwhelmingif you try to put yourself out there everywhere all at once. Trust me, you don’twant to be everywhere at once. We’ll leave the omnipresence to deities. Besides,it’s annoying. To start effectively socially media-ing yourself, take anassessment and follow these few simple steps:

Decide what it is that you want to share. Pictures? Articles?Videos? Events? What you had for dinner last night? Maybe a combination ofthose things? What is your purpose?
Choose the appropriate type of social media. Out of the six,it will probably be either a content community, blog or miniblog, or socialnetworking site.
Once you've narrowed that down, choose a site within thattype. The examples I've given are just some of the many available sites, butthey’re all biggies.
Decide who your audience is and choose a site that they’reusing. Do an online search for “social media demographics” to find out who useswhat.
Before you devote hours of your life to creating the perfectprofile, browse the site, and check out other users’ profiles. Does it feellike the right place for you to be? WeeWorld is a large social networking site,but it’s for kids aged 10-17. I wouldn't post job listings there or promoteconcert events for people aged 21+.
Whatever other site(s) you make use of, you probably wantFacebook, too.
Take a deep breath.
Enjoy yourself! It’s fun! Your profiles and postings don’thave to look like anyone else’s; they have to look like yours. Take some timeto set things up properly. It’s better to have a few things of quality than abunch of things slapped up in a hurry to get quantity.

Okay now, you've got this! I believe in you! We will get to all the little ins and outs of eachsite.
Until then, keep socializing!

Sociable Nich :)

Isn't all media social?

2011-09-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

"How much experience do you have with social media?"
"I have a Facebook page. So does my dog. I use his more than mine."
"Have you ever used Twitter?"
"I have no idea what a 'tweet' is."
"What about Tumblr?"
"What?"

I work for Erynz.com, a company with an amazing new approach to fashion, serving designers, fashion seekers, models, and photographers in unique and customized ways. I love it here! I've worn a number of hats here, both literally and figuratively, and have had a hand in many diverse and often unusual projects. All fun :) Helping with photo shoots, filming musical performances, body painting, creating decorative elements, sewing- I've been a "this and that" girl. Need someone to stand on a newly built spinning platform to check its operation? Here I am. Need someone to get strapped into a suspend-able harness to test its capabilities? I'm your girl.

Soon the need arose for a company social media director. And my name came up.
"Me?"
"You're social."

Okay so there was a bit more to it than that. But what it boiled down to was that I was tasked with learning about the plethora of social media sites "out there" in order to make appropriate use of them. Whoa. I think it's safe to say that most everyone with a computer or television has at least heard of Facebook and Twitter. But have you ever looked to see just how many others there are? Bazillions! That may be slightly overstating. But there are lots of them. Lots. LOTS. Which ones do people really use? Which ones do the people in our target demographic use? Which ones have people actually heard of? Will a particular site get me in front of millions of people? Thousands? Tens?

This is going to be a challenge. But I like a good challenge. Even my name is challenging. It's Nichta by the way. Don't worry if you aren't sure how to pronounce it, no one is! (Neesh-tah) Or just Nich :) If I can navigate through all the extra letters that get thrown in my name, commute the 5 Freeway on holiday weekends, and actually find what I'm looking for in my crammed closet, than I can certainly navigate through a web of social sites.

If you are...

a designer burning to get your creations in front of more eyes
a model aspiring to appear in more shoots and runway shows
a photographer seeking to gain more models and products to shoot
planning an event you yearn to have filled to capacity
supporting a cause that you passionately want everyone to join

...then you need social media!!! It is THE way to get any word out these days. So what's the best site? It all depends on your purpose and your needs. Follow me while I learn them. ALL. Well a whole bunch of them at least. You've always heard that it's good to "think out of the box". I can personally vouch that not that many people fit in a box, so you've got to get out of it to get noticed. Together we'll get out there and put our names out to the masses!

Until next time, keep socializing!!
Sociable Nich :)

New Girl in a Social Media World

There’s just SO MANY!!!

Isn't all media social?