The Big Four – the most Popular Social Media

If there’s one takeaway from the entire 15-week program, it is:

“Social media is designed to foster social interaction. The more you engage with others—the more you will get out of it.”

By signing up for this 15-week course, you will have all the basic tools you need to really engage with others—with a minimum of effort.

Engagement is really the revolutionary aspect of social media that traditional marketers don’t understand.  They’re still stuck in the broadcast mode. Broadcasting is the old-fashioned media monologue from a talking head on NBC to your TV—it’s a one way street—and you are a “passive participant.”

Social Media has the potential to transform that tired old media monologue into a social media dialogue in which you are an “active participant.”

Social Media transforms people—i.e., YOU and your connections, friends, and followers—from content consumers into content co-producers.

Putting you in control…

User-generated content represents the democratization of the media… it puts YOU back in CONTROL.  It EMPOWERS you.

In the months and years that follow, as you become more familiar with social media, you’ll want to make a key strategic and tactical decision about what social media services to use…

But since you’re just beginning, it’s best to…, well…, start at the beginning.

 

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The Big Four of Social Media

Not surprisingly, the default choices for most people are LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube because they are the most popular. And since they’re so popular, that’s a good place to start.

Linked-in:  Launched May 2003. 65 million users. Valued at more than a billion dollars. LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. It is mainly used for professional networking. The purpose of the site is to allow users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business—called “connections.”  There are currently over 65 million professionals using LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas, and opportunities.

Facebook:  Invented by a Harvard Student in October 2003 after a bad date, Facebook got its initial investment from a couple of ex-PayPal employees. It recently surpassed Google as the most visited website on the Internet, and has 100 million users.Over 300 million in revenues, and employs 1200 people. Facebook is a more personal-oriented social networking site that helps you connect and share with the people in your life. Users can add friends, send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves.  

 Twitter:  Created in 2006, Twitter has an estimated 75 million user accounts as of March 2010.  Twitter is a micro-blogging site that enables users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.  It is a rich source of instant information—and a great way to network with people—using Twitter correctly is a great way to meet new people and stand out from the crowd.

YouTube: Created by three former PayPay employees in February 2005, Youtube was purchased by Google in November 2006 for $1.65 billion. YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos.

Task for Week 1:  

I would like to know more about you. Answer these questions quickly, and write down whatever comes to mind first (this should not take longer than a half-an-hour; but you will come back to this to update it repeatedly as you evolve your online ‘persona’):

  1. Where do you come from?
  2. What do you do?
  3. Who are you trying to reach—to engage with?
  4. How did you get where you are today—why did you choose to do what you do?
  5. Who are your customers? Describe them.
  6. Compared to others who’ve chosen a similar path, what makes you special—what makes you unique?  
  7. What’s your philosophy about living your life and being successful that you’d like to share with others—your connections, friends, and followers?
  8. What are your aspirations?

This information will be used to help you build your online identity and your social profiles, so keep this in a safe place that’s accessible (like in a Word Document on your desktop), and refer back to it for future use.

 FYI… These Are My Answers…

  1.  Where do you come from? (I come from Columbia, Missouri—from a long line of Proctors who settled this country, and prior to that North Yorkshire, England.)
  2. What do you do? (I am a marketing consultant, coach, and entrepreneur.)
  3. Who are you trying to reach—to engage with? (Small business owners and executives)
  4. How did you get where you are today—why did you choose to do what you do? (I’ve been in sales and marketing all my life—and reached a point where it was riskier to work for someone else than to go out on my own.  Marketing to me is a calling. I was drawn to direct marketing and internet marketing early on and love it because it’s measurable. I love writing, and I love the creative production aspect of marketing, developing new products, and helping others be successful; it was a natural progression for me to become a coach and a provider of educational content.)
  5. Who are your customers? Describe them. (I work with small business owners who are struggling to grow their business, etc.)
  6. Compared to others who’ve chosen a similar path, what makes you special—what makes you unique?  (I’m happy with who I am and feel like I’m already successful. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone with a bunch of awards. I believe that the fundamentals of direct marketing have not changed – that they’re just being applied to new media. So I honor all the “great ones” who have gone before me and draw inspiration from them: Dale Carnegie, etc.  I take the best from each and leave the rest. I am in the process of creating a suite of educational tools that are easy to use, practical, all-in-one place—and which will empower great people to achieve greatness.)
  7. What’s your philosophy about living your life and being successful that you’d like to share with others—your connections, friends, and followers? (“Work hard at work and love—and things will work out they usually do.” )
  8. What are your aspirations? (To start and build many companies successfully, to employ great people and manage them to greatness, to be a great father and teach my children to have good character and give them the opportunities to realize their dreams, and to be remembered as someone who took advantage of his gifts and helped bring goodness of others to the world.)