Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Social Networking
Social networking
is an umbrella term for sites such as Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, in which users can post information
about themselves and create groups of people with shared interests with
which to chat and exchange ideas and web links.
social network
An Internet-based system that
enables users to interact in real-time and by using
messaging programs.
Each user creates a profile, which can include details about her location,
job, family, and interests. Social networks grow organically by friends
inviting friends who in turn invite or include their own friends. Users
are able to post and comment on photos and videos published to the
network, share links, send each other emails, and conduct web chats.
Some social networks make extensive use of
tags
. These are searchable
labels that can be added to posted content allow other people to
find like-minded users and join interest groups, fan pages, and more.
However, these self-applied tags are also useful to marketers and enable
them to target potential customers far more accurately. Information
sharing and access to people's private information has thus become an
important area of debate. On Twitter and some other services, tags are
preceded by hash symbols (#) and are referred to as
hashtags
.
tag
A topic or subject assigned to a social
networking post. Also called a
hashtagÂ
Some social networks are specialized. You might use
Instagram
to share
photos,
Vine
for video clips,
Reddit
for news snippets, and
YouTube
for
video-sharing. Other networks, such as
Facebook
and
Twitter
, are more
general but allow you to cross-post updates to and from other social
network sites.
Instagram
A social network for posting and
sharing photos.
Vine
A social network for posting and sharing
video clips.
Reddit
A social network for posting news snippets.
YouTube
A social network for posting and sharing
videos.
Facebook
A social network for posting interest-
ing updates, web links, and photos, and for chat-
ting with friends.
One reason social networks are so successful is that they have accom-
panying mobile apps, so it's easy for users to post updates and read
posts from their smartphones or tablets. Many apps let you log in using
your existing Twitter or Facebook details. This makes for a convenient
user experience and is also useful to the app developers and Facebook/
Twitter as a mechanism for promotion.
Twitter
A microblogging platform used to post
frequent updates and to comment on events as
they happen.
Social Media Marketer
A social media marketer specializes in helping companies promote themselves using social networking tools such
as blogs, social networks, and microblogs, including Twitter. Their purpose is to increase public awareness of the
company and its products. The role requires marketing expertise and a thorough understanding of how search
tools work and how to call attention to the client companies. Using this knowledge, the social media marketing
person adds keywords and hashtags to the content they create. This helps the client company's web pages appear
more prominently and frequently in search results and rank higher in page rank indexes. The process of writing
content in this way is known as
search engine optimization (SEO)
. Marketing and business skills and professional
courses in SEO marketing are expected for such a role. A successful social media marketer will demonstrate her
expertise by maintaining her own use of social networks.
Blogs and Microblogs
A
blog
(originally called
weblog
) is a web page where an individual or group
publishes stories, essays, or articles that are generically referred to as
posts
.
Blog posts differ from websites that contain news stories and marketing
information in that they are personal and often opinionated in nature.
Whereas a news story is objective, a blog post may put forth a point of view
search engine optimization (SEO)
The
process of writing web content so as to increase a
page's ranking in online search results.
blog
A web page containing the author's personal
experiences and opinions.
post
An article published on a blog.