You’ll find that the social landscape offers plenty of places to get started online. To help you navigate the terrain a bit, I’ve listed some popular destinations. Some are platforms, others are tools, but with a sound set of social media objectives, all of them offer great promise.
Social Networking Communities
- Users may create a personal profile or business page, engage in meaningful conversations with friends or customers, exchange messages, share photos, videos and much more.
- Users can send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts composed of up to 140 characters displayed on the user’s profile page.
- With over 120 million members and growing rapidly, LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.
- MySpace
- Myspace, Inc. is a leading social entertainment destination powered by the passions of fans. Aimed at a Gen Y audience, Myspace drives social interaction by providing a highly personalised experience around entertainment and connecting people to the music, celebrities, TV, movies, and games that they love.
- Biznik
- Biznik is an award-winning community of entrepreneurs and small businesses dedicated to helping each other succeed.
Geosocial networks
- Foursquare
- Foursquare gives you & your friends new ways to explore your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things.
- Facebook Places
- Easily share where you are, what you’re doing and the friends you’re with right from your mobile.
- Google Latitude
- Google Latitude lets you stay close with your friends from your phone, computer, or both. Find your friends on a map — see nearby friends and meet up. Share where you are with the friends you choose. Control your location and privacy.
Blogging
- WordPress.com
- WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS), often used as a blog publishing application, powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system.
- Blogger
- An easy way to share your thoughts — about current events, what’s going on in your life, or anything else you’d care to discuss — with the world.
- Tumblr
- Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.
Video broadcasting
- YouTube
- A video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos. YouTube allows billions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe.
- Vimeo
- Vimeo is a respectful community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. We provide the best tools and highest quality video in the universe.
- Ustream
- Ustream is the leading live interactive broadcast platform. Anyone with an internet connection and a camera can start engaging with their family, friends or fans anytime, anywhere.
- Justin.tv
- Justin.tv is the easiest way to create live video and show anyone in the world what’s happening right now. Using only a laptop, you can share your event, class, party or thoughts, live, to anyone in over 250 countries while they chat in real-time with you.
- Howcast
- Howcast works directly with brands, agencies, and organizations to create custom branded entertainment, innovative social media, and targeted rich-media campaigns.
Photo sharing
- 23
- Keep all your photos in one safe place. With 23 you can organise the photos, share them with anyone you want, and you can even order real prints of your digital photos.
- Flickr
- An online photo management and sharing application. You can organize your photos, share your photos and stay in touch with your friends and family, form a group for a wedding, reunion and event and much more.
- Fotolog
- Fotolog is the world’s leading photo-blogging site, one of the world’s largest social networking sites and a global cultural phenomenon. More than 22 million members in over 200 countries use Fotolog as a simple and fun way to express themselves through online photo diaries or photo blogs.
- Photobucket
- Store, create and share photos and videos for life. Upload all your best pictures, images, graphics, icons, and videos and share them by email or link them to your favorite sites like Facebook and Twitter.
- Picasa
- A free photo editing software from Google that makes your pictures look great. Sharing your best photos with friends and family is as easy as pressing a button!
Managing and monitoring
- HootSuite
- Using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard, teams can collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress and other social networks via web, desktop or mobile platforms plus track campaign results and industry trends to rapidly adjust tactics.
- TweetDeck
- Your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.
- SocialOomph
- SocialOomph is an automation tool that provides Twitter users the ability to set up tweets and submit them automatically to Twitter. It also supports your other social networking accounts including FaceBook.
Measuring and tracking
- Argyle Social
- Measure and validate the impact of your social media marketing efforts. Argyle Social combines social publishing, customer engagement, and social analytics into one platform. Plans starting at $300.00/month
- SocialMention
- Like Google Alerts but for social media. Receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, a competitor, or the latest on a celebrity. FREE plan
- Crowd Booster
- Crowd Booster analytics and recommendations show you how you can better reach important influencers, create content that resonates with your audience, and send content at the most effective times. FREE plan available, paid plans starting at $39/month
- Twitalyzer
- Twitalyzer can tell you how many people you reach in Twitter and exactly when you need to be active to reach them. 7 day FREE trial, paid plans starting at $4.99/month
- TwentyFeet
- Helps you keep track of your own social media activities and monitor your results. We aggregate metrics from different services, thus giving you the full picture of what happens around you on the web – all in one place. One Twitter and one Facebook Profile forever FREE, paid plans starting at $12.45/month per 5 credits
- EdgeRank Checker
- EdgeRank is an algorithm developed by Facebook to govern what is displayed (and how high) on the News Feed. EdgeRank determines the order of posts visible on the News Feed. As you can see, a brand that leverages EdgeRank was able to enter the News Feed among family and friends. FREE plan available, paid plans starting at $15/month per page
Books
- How to Create a freakin’fabulous Social Media Strategy by Alexis Grant
- The whos, whats and whys to your social media strategy. Plus a bonus sample social media included for reference.
- How to build a part-time Social Media Business by Alexis Grant
- “A guide to making money off your social media smarts.” Great tips and insights to get you going.
- The Now Revolution by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund
- “Every customer is a potential reporter, and every employee is a potential spokesperson. Business has changed more in the past three years than in the prior 30. But it’s not a threat, it’s an opportunity. The NOW Revolution shows you how.”
- Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuk
- “The social media revolution has irreversibly changed the way we live our lives and conduct our business.” And this book is filled with words that encourages, motivates and inspires you need to accomplish anything you set out to do.
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