Social Media Tips & How-To

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content"Kaplan Andreas M., Haenlein Michael, (2010), Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of social media, Business Horizons, Vol. 53, Issue 1, p. 59-68.. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM). Social media utilization is believed to be a driving factor in the idea that the current period in time will be defined as the Attention Age.

Social media can be said to have three components;

#Concept (art, information, or meme).

#Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).

#Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

Common forms of social media;

* Concepts, slogans, and statements with a high memory retention quotient, that excite others to repeat.

* Grass-Roots direct action information dissemination such as public speaking, installations, performance, and demonstrations.

* Electronic media with 'sharing', syndication, or search algorithm technologies (includes internet and mobile devices).

* Print media, designed to be re-distributed.