Communicating With and Within Social Media and Social Networks

Advice, Questions and Answers About Communicating In Social Networks

Although the technologies to create and use social networks (the new buzzword for both new and old approaches for online interaction) have been around for decades, it's been only more recently that they have been available and used by the "masses". During the first decade of the 2000's, people have flocked to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, the in millions, while other platforms such as YouTube provide ways to share media in social ways.

As with email, and bulletin board systems in the past, there is a knack, and skill to participating and using media for communication. It's easy to assume that interacting on, let's say, Twitter, or Facebook is just like e-mail. It may not be. There will always be some similarities and some differences.

Our FAQ's About Communicating On Social Media

We will cover both basic and advanced topics about social media platforms, but we're going to take a wide path to the discussion of communication, because of a) the popularity of these platforms, b) the desire on the part of business to use them effectively, and c) the apparent simplicity, but underlying complexity of succeeding with them.

As always you are welcome to comment via the comment and interactions sections at the bottom/side of each question and answer page.

The Basics of Social Media and Social Networking

• What is the definition of social media, and/or social networking?
• What Platforms and Tools Are Considered Part of Social Media?
• Does Such A Broad Definition of Social Media Cause Problems?
• What Is The Viewers Distortion Syndrome as It Applies To Social Media
• Why is there such a buzz about social media, despite the fact that the tools have been around for more than a decade?
• Are there limitations to what you can do with social media?

Communicating Using Twitter

• How is Twitter particularly prone to viewers distortion syndrome (ie. appearance of many more "readers" than actually exists)?
• What's this mean: "Twitter is able to be almost anything you want it to be"?
• The challenge of communicating with those who might be interested in your message on Twitter.

Writing and Social Media Platforms

Is there a difference between writing an article for a static website and writing a post for a blog?