Social media is the combination of user-generated content with new media distribution technologies. It can range from information about your products to opinions about your political views. Social media can take many forms including text, images, video and audio. Popular social media mediums include message boards, blogs, vlogs, podcast, and wikis. Social media shares all or most of the following characteristics:

Interactive: Traditional medium is broadcasted, one-way communication. Social media allows and encourages two-way or multi-way communication. If allowed, users can post comments or feedback on your site. You can also respond to comments or further the discussion.

Community: Social media allows communities to form quickly and effectively. In the early days, email newsgroups were the preferred method of forming communities. Other mediums such as blogs and forums were either expensive or can only be created with technical capabilities. Social media mediums can now be created and formed without any technical skills or significant expense. Most of these social media mediums can be created for free.

Connectedness: Social media content can be easily linked. Others can quickly link your content on their site or vice-versa, thus creating a community with a wealth of themed internal and external information. With the use of RSS (Really Simply Syndication) feeds, you can also syndicate your content or have others republish your content onto their site. In order to republish content from traditional sites, you will need to ask for permission first. Offering RSS feeds of your content gives other website publishers advance permission to republish your content.

Filed under: Blogroll, Social Media on October 15th, 2007