by Jon Bounds, We Share Stuff.
Social media can be a fantastic way to communicate with friends or colleagues or to quickly organise people around almost every subject. Almost all websites where you can create or discuss content are free to use and easy to learn. This briefing is an introduction to social media for participants in Birmingham’s Resident University.
What is social media?
Social media is a term used to collect together all the ways people have conversations online, that can mean talking on forums or commenting on websites right through to making their own video and audio. The key is the ability to talk with other people and to share content easily. It can be similar to social networking (where you use a site like MySpace to build a network of contacts), but it’s not necessarily about networking, it’s about contributing to discussion.
Different types of sites are good for different things, it’s possible that a combination of a few will suit your purpose. Many people will centre their content on a single place, often a blog.
A blog (the word is short for web-log) is simply a website where people can post updates on whatever they wish. They usually have the entries (posts) appearing in chronological order, newest first, and each individual entry can be commented on. There are various free services that will host a blog for you (wordpress.com and posterous.com are two of the best). Regular visitors can subscribe to updates using RSS.
Microblogging is a much faster way to share content or talk to people online. It’s a cross between blogging and instant messaging, posts are about the same length as a text message and people can chose to “follow” you to get your updates. Twitter.com is the most famous and most widely used — you can update it (send a “tweet”) from your mobile phone, from the web or any number of applications for your computer.
RSS (doesn’t really stand for anything) is a way of getting updates from all sorts of websites, most social media sites include it as standard. You need a reader to get the updates (Outlook will do it, or use a free online reader such as Google’s google.com/reader/). It’s an easy way to keep in touch with news, blogs, even new search results. It’s also a way to put content from around the web together on one site for people to see.
Social Networking sites (such as MySpace.com Facebook.com or bebo.com) are sites where users create profile pages, and form networks or groups for various interests. These sites are used by different types of people, and in different types of ways. The age group of Bebo users is much younger than the users of Facebook for example, and on Facebook you usually know the people you connect with in real life first but on MySpace it’s more usual to ‘meet’ new people. There are social networks based around all sorts of interests, and you can set up one for a group very easily on a site such as ning.com.
Social media in communities
One of the most powerful uses of social media is in organising — campaigns can keep supporters in touch, people can quickly group and plan without having to have formal structures or meetings and you can find help from outside your normal area very quickly.
Clay Shirky’s book ‘Here Comes Everybody’ (more information at herecomeseverybody.org) is a great starting point for anyone who would like to see some of the possibilities in “organising without organisations” as he puts it. Examples include how bloggers worked to highlight racist statements from Majority Leader of the US Senate Trent Lott which forced him to resign when the mainstream news wasn’t covering the story and how Belarusian bloggers managed mass protest by simply eating ice cream.
Social media is also very useful for building community spirit, so called ‘hyperlocal’ sites (hyperlocal really means local communities) are springing up in neighbourhoods around the world — they’re part local news part discussion space. Some work very much like a local newspaper, such as Stoke’s excellent Pits n Pots (pitsnpots.co.uk), where as others might take a more light-hearted angle or an even smaller area such as Digbeth is Good (digbeth.org). What these sites do is encourage people to think about issues near to them, and as they can cost only time to produce are a very good way of building links and getting things done.
Even small local campaigns or issues can really benefit with exposure on the social web, online communication (alongside real meetings) is a very effective way of keeping things moving.
Getting started
If you’re thinking of starting to use social media, take a little bit of time to think about what you would like to achieve — different sites are better for different things, or will reach different audiences. If the people you would like to talk to are already using a particular site or service it will be much easier to join that conversation than starting a new one. For a short campaign or a single issue a Facebook group can grow fast as people invite their friends, but they’re hard work to keep up-to-date and not very flexible. Here’s a quick run through of some of the more popular sites, what they are best at, and who you might find there:
• MySpace (myspace.com) was once the most popular social networking site, but has now fallen into disuse, as it’s quite difficult to communicate and can be hard to use. It’s still the first place most musicians try and is still the default place to promote a band or gigs. More here: http://bit.ly/RUMySpace
• Facebook (facebook.com) was started as a network for people at University in the US and is still quite dominated by young graduates or students. It’s easy to start groups which people join to support a cause, which can spread a simple message very quickly (it was largely responsible for the recent Christmas number one campaign). More here: http://bit.ly/RUFaceb
• Twitter (twitter.com) the microblogging service has an older audience than most social media sites (grouped around those 30-40), its very public nature is said to put off younger people. Journalists love the site, for both breaking and discovering news, so it can be a good place to make contacts with the press. More here: http://bit.ly/RUTwit
• Bebo (bebo.com) Is the fastest growing social network amongst young people in the UK, it has features similar to Facebook, but with more privacy by default. More here: http://bit.ly/RUBebo
• Flickr (flickr.com) Flickr is the most social of the many sites that will host photos for you online, it’s easy to search and you can join or explore groups More here: http://bit.ly/RUFlickr
• YouTube (youtube.com) More here: http://bit.ly/RUYouTube
Blogs are less about the network than the subject, they can also have multiple author for more than one point of view —they can also work like a normal website, with pages of information that you create, in fact setting one up is the quickest way of getting a presence on the web. There is a fantastic guide to getting started with Wordpress here http://en.flossmanuals.net/WordPress/.
Find out where people are can be a bit difficult to start with, searching the various social media sites, as well as the web in general can be a little hit and miss. The best search is recommendation from your friends and colleagues, but there are lots of tools to make the search a little bit easier. There’s a very comprehensive guide here http://bit.ly/RUSocialMM
No matter what type of site you decide to you use, it’s wise to take a little bit of time watching how others use them before starting to post yourself if you want to get the best out of the conversation. Very much like joining a club or going to a party there are some written and unwritten rules about that might be acceptable behaviour. The best advice is to be friendly and helpful where you can, help is part of the currency on the social web and you will (very roughly) get out of it what you put in.
Offline Support
Social media surgeries are an increasingly popular way of social media experts spreading their knowledge with others. They were invented in Birmingham and have a drop-in format where people from community groups or charities can drop in and ask questions on any aspect of social media that they want. They’re free and organised on a monthly basis. To find details of when and where they’re taking place visit the website http://bit.ly/RUsocialmS
Social media cafés (informal networking meetings) and other meetings take place around Birmingham on a regular basis, some are based around different topics or for people interested in a certain type of software or website. The Digital Brum website (digitalbrum.co.uk) is a listings guide for all sorts of events.
