A Guide Social Media Platforms

This a brief guide to a few social media platforms which have the potential for professional use. This however is a very fast changing area where sites continually evolve and the next big thing could appear at any time with other sites becoming obsolete.

This a brief guide to a few social media platforms which have the potential for professional use. This however is a very fast changing area where sites continually evolve and the next big thing could appear at any time with other sites becoming obsolete.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest social networking site. Users can create a profile including as much of their personal history as they wish on a timeline. They can connect to friends, post status updates, links, photos and videos in which they can tag friends. They can also Like pages and join groups. These two features are those with the greatest potential for professional use. Companies, organisations and causes can create a like page. Those who wish to follow them can do so by liking them in order to keep in touch or show their support. If you want more control over membership and what information is public you can create a group instead. This is useful for membership organisations or projects with volunteers.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the professional equivalent of Facebook. Your profile resembles a CV and you link to those you know through work rather than those you are friends with. You can join groups based on your interests or organisations you are a member of to take part in discussions. Groups can either be open or closed. Closed groups are where membership requests have to be approved. This is often the case for groups run by membership organisations. Interest groups tend to be open. You can also follow companies in a similar way to following like pages on Facebook. You can endorse someone’s skills in a particular area or write a fuller reference for a particular role. There are also sections for honours and awards, publications and voluntary experience.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro blogging site. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn anyone can follow you, although you can make your posts private and block people if you wish. Posts are limited to 140 characters including shortened web links and with the option to add photos and videos. You can choose whose posts you wish to follow and favourite tweets or retweet (re-broadcast to your followers). It’s very good for sharing and commenting on interesting stories you read online and updating others on what you are working on, researching etc. It is increasingly becoming an important way to interact with events you are attending. Tags can be grouped together with common subjects with tags preceded by # (hashtags). It can also be used to hold online discussions where a date, time subject and hashtag are advertised in advance. Tweetups also occur where tweeps (people who tweet) with a common area of interest will meet up in person (often a pub with wifi).

Academia

Academia is a professional networking site for researchers in academic institutions or academic professions. You can choose to follow the work of other researchers and select subject tags for the areas you are interested in. You can then upload (or share links to) your published, papers, presentations grey literature etc and get stats on the number of views of your work. As with Twitter you do not have to be approved in order to start following someone’s work.

Flickr

Flickr is the largest photo sharing site on line. Basic access is free and gives access to your 200 most recently uploaded photos. For a fee you can have a Pro account and view an unlimited number of your uploaded photos and access a range of other features. You can add titles and descriptions to photos as well as adding them to a map and ascribing subject tags. Photos can also be added to groups normally dedicated to a subject. You can follow the work of other users comment and create favourites from the work of other users. You can set privacy levels and control your copyright. Profiles and groups can be created for organisations and projects. The terms and conditions you set for a group you create can make users give you permission to use any photos added to the group which can be particularly useful for community or volunteering projects. Photos uploaded under creative commons can also be very useful. The new phone app for Flickr enables you to upload photos from your phone, geotag and add filters.

YouTube

YouTube is similar to Flickr but for Video content (although video’s can now be uploaded to Flickr). As well as videos uploaded by users there is a strong commercial element to YouTube.

Instagram

Instagram is a photo sharing site based around a mobile app with arty filters and effects that can be added to your photographs. You can include titles, descriptions and hash tags as well as geotags. You can not search for photos on the Instagram website but PC and Mac apps are available which can do this.

StoriFy

StoriFy is a way of pulling social media (Twitter in particular) on a subject together after the event and combining with commentary to create and publish a blog telling the story of an event. This is particularly useful for creating a summary of a seminar or workshop. As Tweets are only searchable for a few days after being sent this gives a way of publishing them for longer term use. It’s advisable therefore to pull Tweets into a draft story immediately and then edit later.

Google+

Google+ is an attempt to create a universal social media platform where you can group those you know into circles. This means you can separate work contacts from friends etc. It remains to be seen if it will take off. The hang out function is however useful for holding virtual meetings.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog and follow other users' blogs, as well as make their blogs private. Much of the website's features are accessed from a ‘dashboard’ interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear.

FourSquare

FourSquare combines elements of a game where you earn points and badges to compete with your friends, with offers from businesses. It is based around checking in at places you visit and leaving tips for other users. You can set your privacy level so only those you know can see where you are. Its relevance for the heritage sector is in having venues such as sites and museums etc listed so that users tagging checking in when they visit can then help with visibility and publicity.

Klout

Klout is a way to measure your online influence by linking it to your other social media profiles to create a K score from 1-100. The higher up the score, the more influential your social media output is. It is also harder to increase you score the higher it is. You can compare to others you know and give K+ to other users to acknowledge their influence in a particular area. Businesses can give users offers based on their K score in the hope they will then talk online about their product. It’s a good way to analyse your influence and see how well you are using social media.

How do you manage all of this?

Various tools are available to enable you to keep track of various social media streams based on your interests and manage your accounts enabling you to programme tweets to be sent at a particular time in the future for example. Popular tools include:

Bottlenose

Bottlenose creates a live dashboard monitoring social media across multiple platforms and providing analytics. A professional version is currently undergoing a private beta test.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a multi platform social media management system. You can have your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other feeds side by side on the same dashboard enabling you to monitor them simultaneously. You can have multiple twitter searches open alongside these too. This can be very useful for following an event with multiple hashtags and information on different platforms. You can post and tweet through this software. The free version of this software will also give you basic analytical tools for the posts/tweets you make through Hootsuite.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck Is a social media dashboard application for managing Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Bufferapp

Bufferapp is a software application that allows you to create posts and tweets and place them in a buffer to be posted at a later time. You can set a timer for when you want your post/tweet to go out. You can save multiple posts/tweets. This software is very useful for planning posts/tweets to go out at times you would be unable to send them directly.

Facebook is the largest social networking site. Users can create a profile including as much of their personal history as they wish on a timeline. They can connect to friends, post status updates, links, photos and videos in which they can tag friends. They can also Like pages and join groups. These two features are those with the greatest potential for professional use. Companies, organisations and causes can create a like page. Those who wish to follow them can do so by liking them in order to keep in touch or show their support. If you want more control over membership and what information is public you can create a group instead. This is useful for membership organisations or projects with volunteers.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the professional equivalent of Facebook. Your profile resembles a CV and you link to those you know through work rather than those you are friends with. You can join groups based on your interests or organisations you are a member of to take part in discussions. Groups can either be open or closed. Closed groups are where membership requests have to be approved. This is often the case for groups run by membership organisations. Interest groups tend to be open. You can also follow companies in a similar way to following like pages on Facebook. You can endorse someone’s skills in a particular area or write a fuller reference for a particular role. There are also sections for honours and awards, publications and voluntary experience.

Twitter

Twitter is a micro blogging site. Unlike Facebook or LinkedIn anyone can follow you, although you can make your posts private and block people if you wish. Posts are limited to 140 characters including shortened web links and with the option to add photos and videos. You can choose whose posts you wish to follow and favourite tweets or retweet (re-broadcast to your followers). It’s very good for sharing and commenting on interesting stories you read online and updating others on what you are working on, researching etc. It is increasingly becoming an important way to interact with events you are attending. Tags can be grouped together with common subjects with tags preceded by # (hashtags). It can also be used to hold online discussions where a date, time subject and hashtag are advertised in advance. Tweetups also occur where tweeps (people who tweet) with a common area of interest will meet up in person (often a pub with wifi).

Academia

Academia is a professional networking site for researchers in academic institutions or academic professions. You can choose to follow the work of other researchers and select subject tags for the areas you are interested in. You can then upload (or share links to) your published, papers, presentations grey literature etc and get stats on the number of views of your work. As with Twitter you do not have to be approved in order to start following someone’s work.

Flickr

Flickr is the largest photo sharing site on line. Basic access is free and gives access to your 200 most recently uploaded photos. For a fee you can have a Pro account and view an unlimited number of your uploaded photos and access a range of other features. You can add titles and descriptions to photos as well as adding them to a map and ascribing subject tags. Photos can also be added to groups normally dedicated to a subject. You can follow the work of other users comment and create favourites from the work of other users. You can set privacy levels and control your copyright. Profiles and groups can be created for organisations and projects. The terms and conditions you set for a group you create can make users give you permission to use any photos added to the group which can be particularly useful for community or volunteering projects. Photos uploaded under creative commons can also be very useful. The new phone app for Flickr enables you to upload photos from your phone, geotag and add filters.

YouTube

YouTube is similar to Flickr but for Video content (although video’s can now be uploaded to Flickr). As well as videos uploaded by users there is a strong commercial element to YouTube.

Instagram

Instagram is a photo sharing site based around a mobile app with arty filters and effects that can be added to your photographs. You can include titles, descriptions and hash tags as well as geotags. You can not search for photos on the Instagram website but PC and Mac apps are available which can do this.

StoriFy

StoriFy is a way of pulling social media (Twitter in particular) on a subject together after the event and combining with commentary to create and publish a blog telling the story of an event. This is particularly useful for creating a summary of a seminar or workshop. As Tweets are only searchable for a few days after being sent this gives a way of publishing them for longer term use. It’s advisable therefore to pull Tweets into a draft story immediately and then edit later.

Google+

Google+ is an attempt to create a universal social media platform where you can group those you know into circles. This means you can separate work contacts from friends etc. It remains to be seen if it will take off. The hang out function is however useful for holding virtual meetings.

Tumblr

Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog and follow other users' blogs, as well as make their blogs private. Much of the website's features are accessed from a ‘dashboard’ interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear.

FourSquare

FourSquare combines elements of a game where you earn points and badges to compete with your friends, with offers from businesses. It is based around checking in at places you visit and leaving tips for other users. You can set your privacy level so only those you know can see where you are. Its relevance for the heritage sector is in having venues such as sites and museums etc listed so that users tagging checking in when they visit can then help with visibility and publicity.

Klout

Klout is a way to measure your online influence by linking it to your other social media profiles to create a K score from 1-100. The higher up the score, the more influential your social media output is. It is also harder to increase you score the higher it is. You can compare to others you know and give K+ to other users to acknowledge their influence in a particular area. Businesses can give users offers based on their K score in the hope they will then talk online about their product. It’s a good way to analyse your influence and see how well you are using social media.

How do you manage all of this?

Various tools are available to enable you to keep track of various social media streams based on your interests and manage your accounts enabling you to programme tweets to be sent at a particular time in the future for example. Popular tools include:

Bottlenose

Bottlenose creates a live dashboard monitoring social media across multiple platforms and providing analytics. A professional version is currently undergoing a private beta test.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is a multi platform social media management system. You can have your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other feeds side by side on the same dashboard enabling you to monitor them simultaneously. You can have multiple twitter searches open alongside these too. This can be very useful for following an event with multiple hashtags and information on different platforms. You can post and tweet through this software. The free version of this software will also give you basic analytical tools for the posts/tweets you make through Hootsuite.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck Is a social media dashboard application for managing Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Bufferapp

Bufferapp is a software application that allows you to create posts and tweets and place them in a buffer to be posted at a later time. You can set a timer for when you want your post/tweet to go out. You can save multiple posts/tweets. This software is very useful for planning posts/tweets to go out at times you would be unable to send them directly.