About Social Media
As part of some training I’m delivering about Public Engagement, I’m putting together a handout about where people can reach ‘the public’ and want to include some notes on Social Media.
It’s likely this willl be a new area to many of the workshop participants so I want to give enough information to be useful, but not so much as to be overwhelming.
Also it’s part of a longer list also including networks, local media, agencies etc so it needs to be fairly succinct.
Can anyone offer feedback on how this looks - any major ommissions or faults? Or do you know of something that already exists which does the job perfectly and I could just include instead?
——————————-
Social Media To be effective social media (or social networking) relies on short, regular bursts of information and especially conversation. It requires some effort to start up and be effective however once established you will be amazed at the impact and may even need to control how you use it very carefully so you don’t end up with three times the amount of people at your event than you can accommodate.
Social media relies on being collaborative. The more you can involve other people in it the more effective it is. Each person involved helps spread your message and can add their own thoughts to it along the way, also enabling you to use it as a consultation or research / observation tool.
Most social media sites need an email address to register. It’s a good idea to set one up just for this purpose so that you can share access if need be, and it doesn’t take over everything else you are working on. Social Media can be a huge distraction as well a useful tool. A separate email address will help anyone involved manage their time effectively.
• Facebook: good for young people and 30s / 40s
• Twitter: mostly late 20s-40s, especially high percentage of women; also ‘early adopters’ and business Directors (male and female). And celebrities.
• Linked-in: for professional networking with peers and relevant colleagues • Blogging: set your own blog up for free and ‘post’ (write) regular updates
• Flickr: for sharing images, adding notes about them, and enabling other people to add their comments too.
————
I haven’t included Ning as I wonder if that’s more complex than beginners need? Any thoughts?
