Top Three Social Networks: Part 1

Social media, everywhere you look it's there. I'm going to discuss the basics of them and a tip on how they can help you. Let's start with Facebook:

Facebook is the revolution of social media. We're talking about movies, lawsuits, billions of dollars and the lovely drama-issues people have. I remember back when I started on Facebook, I really wasnt involved at all. I never play the games, and the applications I use are for the third-party stuff like Tweetdeck. So, yeah, I'm not a total Facebooker, per se, but I do have my friends list, which I try to keep up with; I give my shout-outs and pokes here and there, and the occasional happy birthday, when I see one.

Facebook is the best way to connect and network. I'm talking about how I can spend maybe two hours on Facebook and be introduced to thousands of people I'd like to network with. I gain new friendships, ideas and networks to be a part of. What I've been seeing lately is how small, little companies are taking advantage of the APIs Facebook has to offer and building full-fledged sites around them. We're talking dating sites, network marketing, social marketing, advertising and just so much more. This helps in many ways: possibly to find more friends or date, or to network that much faster.

A couple of tips when using Facebook:

Make sure to set your privacy settings accordingly. You can show some info to only your friends to friends of friends. I do enjoy the friends of friends because if I'm network marketing, those friends of friends could potentially be looking at your profile and maybe would want to network with you. It could lead to great things.

Be yourself. Maybe your Facebook is your loose self. I'm talking, you say whatever you want, we don't care what is said, we swear, etc. This is fine, but if you are trying to network professionally, that could lead to bad things. If you're networking, keep it professional. Yes, creating two accounts isn't right but make one a personal account and the other a business account or fan page.

Applications and games are great. I'm a huge gamer, and I'll admit I did try to play some games on Facebook. Only problem I see is the flood of invites to play the games. I'm talking about where your friends are playing these games and are sending you invites like mad to go collect the chicken they caught on their farm or spend the coins they got from killing some mobster. It's all fun and all, but myself, I'm not a big fan of all the invites. If I want to play, I'll play. To me, the game companies are spamming machines and they are doing a hell of a job.

In my next posts, I'll be talking about Twitter and Foursquare, my other two favorite networks.

Interested in working with NewMediaPlus? Click here.