Archive for the ‘Social Media Tools’ Category
It is definitely time to make sure that your site is ready to go mobile. All the top dogs are making sure that there sites are stipped down to text only. What does this mean really? It means stripping a website from all images and making it text only and viewable for mobile phones.
Well in all truth its not rocket science to get your site to be mobile. If you run your website or blog on a WordPress platform, guess what, WordPress are already a step ahead of you and has a plugin called Mobile Press which you just install and activate.
BBC News – Facebook launches “Zero”
Posted in Just when you get familiar with on application it is time to learn a new application. For most it will probably be second nature because everyone these days has a Google account. You need a Google account if you want to use any of Googles cool tools such as Analytics, Google Adwords, Google Wave, Feedburner, and….
Hearing that there is a new buzz in town of course I must go and check it out. Well on first impression it looks and feels almost like a Twitter knock off. Not sure at this stage whether it will catch on. What is in Google Buzz’s favour is that everyone almost has a Google Account for one reason or another which other applications like Twitter do not. But it is not Twitter and if you like me who loves Twitter, you just cannot compare. I’ll have to keep my eyes on Buzz to see if it Buzz’s and start adding contacts to my very dorment Google Account to see what happens.
PS. All you need to get buzzing is a gmail account.
What are your thoughts?
There is this slight notion out there that social media tools are only social networking which is not actually the case. Social networking in fact happened because of social media.
If you think or have been told that social media is only social networking then you have been misinformed. Social media consists of a variety of tools and social networking would be one of those tools which make up the whole of social media. In this blog I’m going to give you a brief of the various social media tools out there.
Blogs
Most of us are familiar with blogs but if you are not, blogs is a type of website which can be updated quickly and easily and published chronologically. You can post text, images, video, podcasts pretty much anything on blog sites. Blogs are is a good place to get started if you are a new start up.
WordPress (my favourite)
Typepad
Blogger
MSN Spaces
Movable Type
PMachine
Greymatter
B2 Evolution
Text Pattern
Express Engine
I’m only familiar with Word Press and Blogger but to get a good break down of the pros and cons here is what Problogger has to say.
Social Bookmarks
Social bookmarking is just really another way to bookmark your favourites but the difference is that you do it online instead of offline.
Digg, Delicious, Stumble Upon, Tweetmeme, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller are just a few social bookmarking tools out there.
Find out more about social bookmarking sites.
Microblogging
Microblogging to me is like sending an sms but too many rather one person. It is short live updates.
Here ReadWriteWeb compares 10 of them, 10 Micro-blogging tools compared.
Aggregators
The web definition of an aggregator is a person who collects things, so picture an online web aggregator as a social media tool which collects information and brings them together in one place.
Aggregators allow us to syndicate our content in one place, it is very much like having your own newspaper because you determine the content and you do this by adding RSS feeds from various sites to your chosen aggregator. Other terms for aggregators are RSS readers, feed readers, news readers.
Netvines
Friendfeed
Techmeme
Google reader
Alltop
Read further on top 10 social news aggregators
RSS Feed
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a very powerful tool as it allows you to distribute your content easily in various places. It also allows others to share and distribute your content easily or to add it to their aggregator or email if they want to keep up to date with your content.
Example: I take my RSS feed from my blog and I add it to my Twitter account, Facebook and Linked In account this way each time I blog those sites are updated automatically. I also take RSS feeds of blog sites I like reading and add their feeds to the same accounts so that my audience can benefit from this if they like the content of course. I also subscribe to receive email updates or add the feed to my aggregator so that I can read the updated blogs and comment if I wish to.
Photo sharing
Photo sharing sites is a place where you can post your digital photos online and share them with others.
Flickr
Photobucket www.photobucket.com
Picasa
Read more about photo sharing sites
Podcasts
A podcast is basically a multimedia file or another simpler term would be audio file which you can upload online and users can download it to their computer which can then be added to a mobile device.
Here is a good blog which explains all things related to podcasts which you may find useful.
Video
The use of video online is becoming more and more popular with both companies and the general public.
Youtube
Metacafe
Break
Google Video
Wiki’s
A wiki is basically software which allows multiple users to work collaboratively to add, remove or edit content.
Wikipedia
Forums
People use forums to ask questions, answer questions and discuss topics. Companies generally have their own forums where their customers can post questions, find answers, or get help.
Apple Forum
Vodafone Forum
UK Business Labs Forum
Community Sites
There are many community sites, business community sites, social community sites and your more niched community sites where people can network online and share common interests.
LinkedIn
Facebook
MyGenius
Better Networking
Ecademy
Myspace
If you have a particular hobby then search online for your hobby you are bound to find a community.
And this is pretty much it for social media tools.
If you have been using the internet for a while like most of us, you would’ve probably been using a tool called Bookmarks (Firefox) Favorites (IE) in your web browser, where you would bookmark and tag content you wanted to refer back to another time. is the same thing; the only difference is that it is online rather than on your PC Social Bookmarking, which means you can access your bookmarks anywhere rather than having the limitation to only your PC.
The benefit of using an online bookmarking tool is that you can share your favourite content with others, and social bookmarking sites can help you connect with people who share the same interests.
The other benefit is that these sites collate all members’ content together, which means that one can see which topics are popular and trendy.
Bookmarking also strengthens your links, which gives you added visibility.
Allows you to bookmark, store and tag content you find interesting and useful. It was one of the first major sites to add the tagging feature.
Stumble Upon
Takes it one step further and allows you to rate sites you like and sites you don’t like. It also allows you to write a comment on why you give it the thumbs up or down.
Both these tools can be added to your web browser making it easier to bookmark valuable content.
Social Bookmarking is just one of the many social media tools, but it is important to make use of these tools by bookmarking other people’s content, as it shows your support and engagement.