Social Media - The "In" thing?

For a week, I've been learning about social media and the power shift from COM 125 lecture. This idea of social media intrigues me and I find it new and fascinating, because to be honest, I do not have any of these social networking accounts. I was wondering just how much do others know about social media, so I went around asking my friends, and it seemed as though their idea of social media is basically just Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, and Twitter. It leaves me wondering, is social media just simply a fad? Friendster have fell to oblivion with the rise of Facebook and many more sites. Thus, is it true that all similar sites will just come and go, grow and dissolve in time to come?




Personally, although I do not indulge myself in the wonders of these social networking sites, I admit that social media indeed do have a great impact on individuals and it is a revolution of Internet technology. It is a great platform for people to share infomation, opinions and insights with each other. It is becoming a very important part of people's lives and I believe that social media as a whole will eventually grow to a stage that it encompasses ones daily interactions. Looking from this point of view, social media is hardly a fad that will face out as time past.

Social media tools have increasingly been used for small to large sized businesses. It is a novel makreting strategy and trend as it allows business people to meet with a vast number of individuals across the globe. One can also easily create a network of renowned people in their industry to expand their professional and personal horizons. By sharing quality content, the site traffic will be increased and this naturally results in increased publicity, exposure, recognition and eventually profit. On a side note, it is also vital for a business to know what their customers are saying online about them in order to survive.

Aforementioned, the use of social media tools aids in publicity. That means advertising! And best of all, certain social media tools are available to everyone free, if not for a minimal cost. There is no other low cost promotional method out there that can easily bring about a large number of visitors, some of whom will become regular ones, visiting the website over and over again. By creating excellent content and posting links to ones company's site, instantly, one can see the results of the primary and secondary traffic. Primary traffic of which refers to visitors who directly come from social media sites, whilst secondary traffic refers to referral traffic from links of other sites.

See how the benefits often exceed the cost. The greatest cost is possibly limited to only time. However, once armed with the skills of the social media tools, one will see that the web traffic generated from social communitites surpass any kinds of traffic an individual can ever receive from search engines. While it is difficult to increase the search engine traffic, social media traffic can easily be controlled and raised. This in itself can already be a prominent reason as to why business people should join the whole social media ecosystem.

Convinced that social media can be useful for your business? If you are not, one last thing to consider. Why waste the money to buy thousand of links and spaces for advertisement, when one can easily create a social community and get equal or even greater amount of traffic through the use of social media for free? It is as straightforward as it sounds. Focus on creating just one excellent site via the social media tools and publicity will come rolling in for you. And before you know it, the profits come rolling in as well.

Blog about blogs

Seen in the video shown to us during COM 125 lecture by the lecturer, I found the idea of blogging very fascinating. I've never had a personal blog before and the past 2 blogs that I had were for assignments from different modules. Therefore I have always linked the idea of blog to a chore, an assignment that I have no choice but to complete before a designated dateline. Never did I think a blog as a platform for sharing news, or something which is interesting and interactive. Blogging now affects almost every industry. As seen from the video, blogging can come in all forms, like google news blog on the latest updates to blogshops selling second hand items and personal blogs which serves as an online diary.

I will be focusing on personal blogs, which is by far traditionally the most common type of blog. Personal bloggers use their blogs as a way for them to communicate and reflect on their daily lifes. In everything, there will be benefits as well as drawbacks. Same goes with blogging. Typing is probably rated more efficient in this time that we are living in, in comparison with the pen and paper idea. Ideas can be shared and information posted is readily available to others. In short, blogging reveals, accepts comments and socialize people together. On the other hand a diary conceals, denies comments and does not allow for socialization. Looking at this, people who favours the idea of sharing instead of keeping things to themselves would cheer on the idea of blogging. However, individuals who feel uncomfortable with allowing everyone to read about their thoughts and things that they hold dear would shun the idea of blogging.

Another point of debate would be, just exactly why would someone want to disclose their lives and feelings to everyone who has access to the world wide web? It seems as though individuals who blog about their lives online are in actual fact merely seeking attention and recognition. These people decorate their blogs and phrase their posts in a way to show off and make known to others whatever which happens in their lives. In contrast, supporters of blogging would defend themsevles by stating that blogging serves as a good reflection for them and exmplifies the power of writing as it can inspire and change their lives.

I do not want to judge nor am I in any kind of position to do so. The issue on blogging is very debatable and everyone is entitled to their own opinions. Although I do not engage myself much in personal blogging, I do not deny the advantages of it especially so after having watched the film Julie and Julia. This film revovles around blogging and cooking and I do find it inspiring how Julie managed to find her personal writing voice and interact with her readers in the virtual world. This, may perhaps prompt me to join the blogsphere by choice one day.