Introduction to Social Media

Facebook is considered the leading social media platform with 500 million users.

Primary demographic is 25 to 45.

The fastest growing population is women aged 45 to 60 years old.

A large proportion of users log into Facebook at least once a day.

Many organizations, businesses and brands use Facebook Fan pages to communicate with their customers and audiences.

What to measure: number of fans, comments, likes and wall posts.

Facebook has its own analytics available to administratorsWeekly updates on

increased fans and interactions

Supplies information on audience including gender and location

LinkedIn is a professional social networking site, connecting over 75 million users through business connections.

Primary demographic is 35 to 55

Helpful tools/features: creating groups, company profiles, interconnection with other social media platforms, such as Twitter and blog feeds

Groups: Ontario Hospital Association

Profiles: Jen

Companies: Municipality of South Huron and City of Stratford

What to measure: profile connections, group members, discussions

Looking for more info: learn.linkedin.com or blog.linkedin.com

Twitter is a microblogging site with over 100 million users.

Great for conversation building and increasing traffic to websites.

Primary demographic using Twitter is 35 to 45.

Users post content and links in a public post of 140 characters called ‘Tweets’.

When you want to mention another user (publicly) you use the @ key + their username. This is called an @ reply.

For example:

If you want to repost what someone already said, a user re-shares what another user has posted. This called is a retweet and is seen as a form of compliment on Twitter.

You can also send private messages to another user, rather than post it publicly. This is called a direct message.

Important note: you can only send a direct message to someone if they are following you

Hashtags = uses a # symbol to tag posts with a topic. It allows topics to be threaded and searchable (i.e. #Twitter, #socialmedia, #FF)

Examples: London, Guelph, Jen

Helpful tools/features: bit.ly, Twellow, list feature on Twitter, Twitpic, customized backgrounds such as @cityofnorthbay

What to measure: followers, @ replies, retweets, direct messages, custom hashtags

Looking for more info? blog.twitter.com and twitip.com

Social Media Management Tools

Allow you to update multiple social media accounts individually or simultaneously. Includes Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Foursquare (and more)

One stop place to perform custom searches, shorten links, add photos and maximize your time on social media.

Social Media Management Tools

Tweetdeck and Seesmic Free applications downloaded to your computer

Social Media Management Tools

HootsuiteBasic account is free, more features (i.e. more

than one user) there are monthly fees

Social Media WidgetsButtons on your website that allow users to

share your content or follow you on your social media accounts.

Add this

Other Social Media ToolsRSS Feeds

Bookmarking: Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon

Video sharing: YouTube, Vimeo

Geo-location: Foursquare, Gowalla

Blog platforms: Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad

Monitoring tools: Social Mention, Board Tracker, TwitterCounter, and TweetStats