Social media can be defined as online platforms that allow for interaction and conversation between people and organizations. There are six main types of social media: collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual social worlds, and virtual game worlds. Some key benefits of using social media include increased brand awareness, social interaction with customers, feedback opportunities, targeted marketing, and reduced costs. Popular social media platforms include Facebook for social networking, Twitter for microblogging, LinkedIn for professional networking, WordPress for blogging, and YouTube for video sharing. Each platform has its own terminology and features that users should understand.

1. SocialConnect
Social Media Training & Marketing Solutions
What Is Social Media:
Social Media is media based on conversation and interaction between people and
organizations online, by using applications and interactive user friendly social web sites.
Digital tools that permit people and organizations to interact freely with low (or no)
barriers to entering a conversation.
The 6 Different Types of Social Media:
 Collaborative Projects (Wikipedia)
 Blogs & Micro-blogs (Wordpress/Twitter)
 Content Communities (YouTube)
 Social Networking Sites (Facebook/LinkedIn)
 Virtual Social Worlds (Social Life)
 Virtual Game Worlds (World of Warcraft)
Why Use Social Media:
Here are the main reasons to be connected via Social Media:
Increased brand awareness at minimal cost.
Social interaction with clients and customers.
Real-time feedback and product/service improvement opportunities.
Target your specific audience with the click of a button.
Website traffic generation and leads.
Improved Search Engine ranking.
Significant reduction in marketing costs and overall expenditure.
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2. Social Media Type: Social Networking
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004. As of
July 2011, they have more than 900 million active users. Users may create a personal
profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic
notifications when they update their profile.
Useful Terms & Definitions Applicable To Users:
Chat: Users may chat with their friends on a one-to-one basis or with multiple
friends simultaneously.
Groups: These are used for discussions, events, etc. and are a way of bringing
like minded people together to share info and discuss specific subjects.
Like: Users can "like" status updates, comments, photos, and links posted by
their friends and other users, as well as adverts, by clicking a link at the bottom of
the post or content. The content will appear in their friends' news feeds.
Messages & Inbox: Users can send private messages to friends.
Networks: Joining a network such as the place you live, your, school, university,
workplace etc, allows others in the same network to see your profile and info.
News Feed: This highlights info that includes profile changes, upcoming events,
and birthdays, among other updates, and displays it on the user’s home page.
Notifications: Users are notified when someone shares a link for example on
the user's wall or comments on a post the user previously commented on.
Pages: These allow users to “like” fans of an individual, organization, product or
service. Any user can create a page as well as like another person’s page.
Status Updates: This allows users to post messages for all their friends to read.
Subscribe: This lets users follow the public updates of others, regardless of
whether those people are Facebook friends.
Wall: A space on each user's profile page that allows friends to post messages
for the user to see while displaying the time and date of the written message.
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3. Social Media Type: Micro Blogging
Twitter is a Micro Blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based
posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets." Twitter was launched in
July 2006 and has 500 million users globally.
Useful Terms & Definitions Applicable To Users:
Direct Message (DM): This is a private message sent directly to another user.
They must be following you for you to be able to DM them.
Following: People you follow. You can see and read their tweets but they cannot
read or see yours.
Followers: People following you. They can see and read your tweets, but you
cannot read or see theirs.
Handle: Your Twitter username e.g. @SocialConnectSA.
Hashtag: This is a way people categorize tweets so that others might use the
same tag and effectively create a way for people to view related tweets and
interact with each other, e.g. #socialmedia.
Lists: Organizing people into groups, or “lists”. When you click to view a list,
you'll see a stream of Tweets from all the users included in that group. You can
add people to the list manually or they can subscribe by themselves.
Mentions: A tweet that contains a handle of another user.
Replies: This is what it is called when someone writes a tweet directly at your
handle.
Retweet: This is the act of republishing another users tweet. The original tweet
along with author stays intact, showing someone else’s tweet to your followers.
Search: This function allows the user to search Twitter for people, trends,
places, news, topics and general info.
Trends: The latest hot topics tweeted about.
Tweet: When you post your message of 140 characters or less on Twitter. This
is called a tweet or tweeting.
Copyright © SocialConnect 2012

4. Social Media Type: Professional Social Networking
LinkedIn is a business-orientated social networking site. It was launched in May 2003.
The site is mainly used for professional networking. As of March 2011, LinkedIn reports
more than 120 million registered users.
Useful Terms & Definitions Applicable To Users:
Answers: An area that allows users to post questions so that other members
can show their expertise by responding to the question.
Connection: Members who have accepted your invitation.
1st Degree Connection: Direct connections, people you know on a personal or
professional level.
2nd Degree Connection: Connections to each of your 1st degree connections.
3rd Degree Connection: Connections to those in your 2nd degree connections.
Groups: Allows members to connect with like minded professionals and to
interact via posting comments and replying to discussions.
Invitation: Sent to an existing member or another person on the site to ask to
join a network, or to become part of your network.
Introduction: This is a message that allows members to contact or be contacted
via a shared mutual connection.
InMail: Private messages that allow you to contact or be contacted by any
member directly.
InMail Feedback: This is a reputation system that is based on recipient’s
responses to sender’s InMail messages.
Recommendation: This is a comment made to recommend a colleague, friend,
company or business partner.
Status Message: Updates posted by the user that connections can see and
read.
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5. Social Media Type: Blogging
Wordpress is an open source blog tool and publishing platform which was released in
May 2003. It makes use of a web template system which allows users to create their
own blog without needing to have any programming knowledge or skills.
Useful Terms & Definitions Applicable To Users:
Backlinks: Links within the comments section of your blog post that the other
blogger is linked to.
Blog URL: This is the web address used to locate the blog on the internet, e.g.
http://www.socialconnectsa.wordpress.com.
Blogroll: A long list of links to other bloggers.
Comments: Comments left by viewers/users about a blog post.
Gravatar: This is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is an image that
appears along with your name when you do things like comment or post on a
blog that recognizes and publishes gravatars.
Podcast: An audio file that is recorded digitally for playback online.
Post: An entry, usually dated, written and published to a blog. Posts are similar
to a webpage and are generally displayed in reverse chronological order.
RSS Feed: A file containing a blog’s latest posts which a user can subscribe to. It
shows subscribers whenever a blog has been updated. A feed usually shows the
title of the post, the title plus an excerpt of the post, or the entire post.
Social Plugins: Tools used to connect your blog to other Social Media websites.
Tags: Keywords used to identify a piece of info such as a web page.
Theme/Template: The look and design of the blog that the user can adjust at
anytime.
Trackback: This a way to notify a blog that you've linked to them from your blog
and automatically leave a link as a comment on that blog which tracks back to
the original link on your blog.
Copyright © SocialConnect 2012

6. Social Media Type: Content Community – Video Sharing
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created in February 2005. Users can upload, share
and view videos. Unregistered users may watch videos, and registered users may
upload an unlimited number of videos. Globally, 100 million people use the site with
around 1 billion views per day.
Useful Terms & Definitions Applicable To Users:
Categories: A collection of similar videos.
Formats: YouTube videos are usually in FLV format.
Friend: Befriending another YouTube channel permits you to have full access to
all private material/videos of the other channel.
Mobile Platforms: Many smartphone handsets allow users to access YouTube
via a mobile application.
Playback: To view YouTube videos on a personal computer requires the Adobe
Flash Player plug-in to be installed on the browser.
Quality: Videos are allowed a resolution of up to 4096x3072 pixels.
Streaming media: This is multimedia that is constantly received by and
presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.
Subscriber: A user who has a YouTube account and may upload videos to the
site.
Uploading: Only registered users can upload videos to the site at a maximum of
15 minutes per video.
User Comments: This allows users to leave comments about the videos.
Video Response: A video which is posted in response to another video.
Viral Video: A video that becomes popular through the process of internet
sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email.
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7. Social Media Type: Social/Professional Networking
Google+ is a social networking site which was released in June 2011 by Google Inc.
The site integrates social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz,
introducing new services identified as Circles, Hangouts and Sparks. It is available as a
website and on mobile devices.
Useful Terms & Definitions Applicable To Users:
Circles: They enable users to organize contacts into groups for sharing across various
Google products and services. Although other users can view a list of people in a user’s
collection of circles, they cannot view the names of those circles. The privacy settings
also allow users to hide the users in their circles as well as who have them in their
circle.
Hangouts: These are places used to facilitate group video chat (with a maximum of 10
people participating in a single Hangout at any point in time). However, anyone on the
web could potentially join the “Hangout” if they happen to have the unique URL of the
Hangout.
Messenger: This is a feature that is available to Android, iPhone, and SMS devices for
communicating through instant messaging within circles. You can also share photos in
Messenger between your circles.
Sparks: This is a front-end to Google search, allowing users to identify topics they
might be interested in sharing with others.
Stream: This lets the user see updates from the various circles he/she has created or
joined.
Search in Google+: This allows users to search for content within Google+.
Google+ Pages: Pages allow organizations and professionals to set up profiles, or
“pages”, for the posting and syndication of posts relating to organizations, similar to
Facebook.
Google+ Badges: Badges are sidebar widgets which embed “Add to Circles” buttons
and drop-down lists into off-site websites and blogs, similar to Facebook’s Like Box
widgets.
Data Liberation: This option provides users with the ability to download one’s content
from Google+.
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8. Connect with me on:
SocialConnect (http://www.facebook.com/pages/SocialConnect/)
@SocialConnectSA (http://twitter.com/#!/SocialConnectSA)
Jared Riley (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredrileysa)
https://plus.google.com/b/117806633810554107673/117806633810554
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SocialConnect (http://www.socialconnectsa.wordpress.com)
Copyright © SocialConnect 2012