Social Media Overload (Guest Post)

This post is a guest post on John's Blog Space. For the first time ever in this blog's history, a post made by somebody besides myself will be posted here. A loyal reader named Greg Figueroa wants to discuss social media here on John's Blog Space. He wants to help you make sense of using social media as well as understanding what these popular services all entail. Everything except the image (and the image's description) are from the guest poster.

Now on to the post.

--- "Social Media Overload," by Greg Figureoa ---

^ from: marketingland.com - With so many different social networking media, it is easy to become overwhelmed with all the options. However, you can learn which social networking medium is right for you with this guest blog post from one of my loyal readers.

I’ve been putting together a social media promotion website called http://promoteclique.com and it has been challenging to say the least. One of the issues were picking which Social Media websites will I use to promote products and special announcements for my clients. There is an overload of Social Media websites to use and network in.

Here is a mix of popular to under the radar Social Media websites and their target demographic:

Facebook: Most popular Social Media website that allows you to post all types of media and stay connected to a community.

Twitter: Twitter has a character limit of 140 for any posting called tweets. This site is perfect for quick updates and musings that people want to share.

Linkedin: This is a business networking website. People post up their resumes in profile form and use it to maintain business contacts and to network for business contacts and opportunities.

Youtube (Google product): This a community based on sharing videos online that can be commented on and shared with other Social Media websites like Facebook or Twitter.

Google Plus (Google product): Google’s answer to Facebook. It’s biggest selling point is having circles to filter out who sees what with the information or media you post up.

Flickr (Yahoo product): A photo sharing website.

Ustream: This is a community for live streaming videos. Youtube has it’s own live streaming functionality, but it’s only for partners (people that YT pays to post up their content through Google’s ad sense program) and not as popular as Ustream.

Diaspora: This is an open source Social Media network that gives you control of your data.

Yelp: A community of peer reviews of restaurants, entertainment options, services, and business in their respective cities.

Ping (Apple product): A Social Media network based on sharing music.

DeviantArt: A community to share art amongst the members.

Myspace: This is the predecessor to Facebook as a Social Media networking website, but its new incarnation, it’s more a music and entertainment sharing and discovery community.

So I focused on popularity, differences of use, and most importantly, what my clients would possibly recognize. I settled on Facebook, Twitter, ustream, flickr, and Youtube. A nice variety that touches on the different ways to engage a community. Google Plus almost made the cut, but I felt like the community is stronger on Facebook; I will admit that I will lose out on some link juice in the eyes of the Google search engine because Google Plus and Youtube are products of Google and it’s in the best interest of the company to give more relevance to their products in search results, but at this point, in comparison to FB, it is an overload.

Here’s the thing, I believe that if you are a company or use your name professionally make sure to claim your name in these difference social media sites. I may not use Google Plus a whole lot, but I did make sure to claim my name. Let’s be honest, you never know when another Social Media website may become popular and you want to protect your business interests.

Maybe one day it would make sense to add more Social Media websites to my business, but not today. Only use the sites where your community is currently networking. I was once a member of Myspace, but then everybody started migrating to Facebook and I followed them. It made no sense to me to participate in a dying network. A Social Media website lives and dies on their considered freshness and if it has a large community that you relate to because of friendship, family, work, or through mutual friends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Greg Figueroa is a Social Media promoter that helps promote products and companies in a fun and engaging way to his community. Check out his Social Media promotion site: http://promoteclique.com and his twitter handle is @promoteclique (Follow me).





Once again, I would like to thank Greg Figueroa for his loyalty and in presenting me with this guest post. Please be sure to send your compliments and such to him for this post if you enjoyed it. To get started with any of the sites mentioned, please visit the following sites:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linkedin
• Youtube (Google product)
• Google Plus
• Flickr (Yahoo! Product)
• UStream
• Diaspora
• Yelp
• iTunes Ping
• deviantArt
• Myspace

Thanks to all of you for reading John's Blog Space! I am selective in deciding to allow guest posts. If you would like to make a guest post on my blog, please Contact Me via E-Mail. I will add your guest post after reviewing your post. And of course, I'll inform my readers that I did NOT make the post in question. Thank you for reading!

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