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Week #2A - Overview of Social Media

There are many, many social media platforms that everyone can use on a daily basis. Of all of these options, there's a few things to keep in mind when deciding which ones you want to use - most importantly, what's the best use of each site? Do you want to use it for yourself, or for a business? Picking the right platform for the right job is crucial to social media success.

For those looking for a more personal touch, I would recommend sites like Instagram or Snapchat - Pinterest as well can fall into this category. While businesses can absolutely make use of these sites to take photos and share interesting tidbits, these image sharing social media outlets are more easily used by individuals, to share things that they like and see on a daily basis to their friends and family, or anyone else following them. Often used for sharing food pics or vacation snapshots, image sharing sites like Instagram are great for the individual user. Over time, they can form a photo album of your time on the site, and help you remember the trips you loved and the places you've been.

On the flipside, social media sites more apt for business involve broad stroke broadcasting sites like Twitter and Facebook - although again, anyone is of course free to take advantage of and use these programs. Sites like these allow a singular entity - in this case a business - to reach a massive audience of people with a single message. One tweet or post can spread out to thousands of people via retweets and reposts, which can carry the message far and wide. This allows a business to announce updates, deals, special events, or other important information without needing to send thousands of emails or real life mail to it's customers. A single tweet can reach much, much farther than that.

For those that work well for both, well, Facebook applies here too, as well as sites like Tumblr or Twitch. These allow individuals the freedom to express their own message and content, but also allow businesses to build rapport with their customers. The difference is the content provided and the context in which it's being shown. A personalized, individual Facebook is probably more geared towards what's going on in their daily life, big events, and photos of friends and family, whereas a business Facebook account cares more about the groups it's part of and how to best reach it's followers - content will obviously be geared more towards updates and information to draw a customer in. Twitch streams done by individuals are clearly more focused on interaction with viewers and providing a personalized experience, whereas a business' stream is about providing detailed information about what it is they're playing - not about being an entertainer as well as a content creator.

Comments

  1. I like what you said about the importance of choosing the right platform for what you want to do. I agree that Instagram can be used 100% personally. However I think it depends on the individual user and who they follow.

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