Have you ever wandered what is Social Media? Social Media supports the human need for social interaction and dialogue with the intent to build healthy and mutual beneficial relationships. It offers a venue whereby users are able to exchange information. This information may be family photos, a daily journal, an article, or perhaps your thoughts for the day. It gives the user the ability to become content producers rather than just consumers. Social media is an excellent method to use to improve your self-esteem and build healthy and beneficial relationships. There are two forms of social media that we will discuss 1) Social Networking Sites and 2) SocialBookmarkingSites. What is the difference?
Social Networking Sites are an online community of web user's who store and share personal information, i.e.
photos, audio recordings, and videos etc. This venue is used to build healthy relationships. This is an interactive venue whereby you encourage your friends and family members to provide feedback on your posts. They can post a comment, send you an email, and or instant message you. These sites are primarily used for social purposes not commercial. However, it is acceptable to build a relationship first before you start giving your sells pitch.Some of your most popular Social Networking Sites:
MySpace
YouTube
Steps to start Social Networking:
Simply sign up for the site create a user's name and password, complete your profile. Provide some personal information, upload some photos, perhaps a video, and start finding friends.
Social Bookmarking Sites are an online community of web users who store, organize, search, and manage links to web pages they want to remember and share. These bookmarking sites are web-based similar to your email account. This means they are accessible from any computer. The user bookmark or tag the link to the blog, website, press release, video, and or article they want to share. Then, they categorize their tags and share them with others. A discussion can take place about the item by posting comments. The user or reader can rate it or email it to others. The most poplar tag usually appears higher in the category and that means more traffic. These sites and the social networking sites have several similarities; however, the primary difference between the two are tagging or bookmarking links to websites, blog, etc., organizing them into various categories to share with other site members or friends.
Join some of the Social Bookmarking sites and tag your blog, website, article, and or press release. These are a few:
Stumbleupon
Digg
Delicious
Technorati
Buzzyahoo
Mixx
Steps to start Social Bookmarking:
Identify the URL(s) you want to social bookmark
Research and identify keywords
Identify categories you want to social bookmark to
Create a short description of your site
Avoid signing up for every social media site. Only sign up for a few and receive some good results, then possibly add others.
Readers love to be educated, entertained, and or empowered so make sure your information does at least one of these three things. Now, go ahead start improving your self-esteem by building healthy and beneficial relationships through social media. Zig Ziglar stated, "you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great."
(Portions of this article was taken from my "Earn While You Learn" Newsletter)
Improve Your Self-Esteem by Building Healthy and Beneficial Relationships Through Social Media