The advantages of social media and how to build your own platform

We were lucky to have Marta Matias, a media strategist from the International University of Barcelona at Baytree. Her expertise in Social media has me thinking of the world we live in. Certainly Social Media is around us. We may be a generation that simply adores the fast paced instant contact, for business as well as personal purposes. I have learnt Social Media is:

GREAT FOR NETWORKING

Do you love networking? Then twitter is the best way! With a click of the mouse you can go from being a mere stranger to building a high profile platform with quite a large number of audiences in minutes.

GET A STRONG PASSWORD

Matias suggested we should always make a password of more than 10 letters with numbers and lower/higher case letters. This can protect your identity from hackers. She said use a sentence rather than your favourite word. Fair enough with the high media coverage and almost ¾ quarters of the world using social media we definitely need to protect our privacy.

PICTURES FEED OUR DESIRES

Want to become an expert at something? If you are into fashion you can take a Prada bag and a good picture, upload it on any social media and you are guaranteed to have followers in minutes. A picture can convey a message without using words in fact it sells. No doubt then, social media is a very clever tool and used wisely and I mean wisely can seriously make you business.

EXPOSURE IS A RISK

However, like all things using social media comes with a certain risk. Exposure comes with attracting both followers and haters. Be prepared for the unexpected if you are using Facebook, as this is a gossip market. Exposure is a good thing because we are pro-consumers, we dictate which products we want so power to the people but with many changes going on in social media, one has to wonder:

1. How to control a virtual world, where everyone has a right to voice their opinion which can destroy our image if anything bad gets posted

2. Overload of everything is like too much of a headache at times

3. Nothing is stable for long on social media

Matias suggests success online means to be open, own up to anything otherwise someone will do it for you and you may not like it. One thing for sure social media is innovative and also an everlasting progressive art form and we can be masters at it, if we choose.

So what is the best way to establish your platform? Know your subject and talk about it on social media. Keep the same subject, don’t be an expert of everything. Having your niche makes you stand out.

Matias suggests the content of information must be valuable, have no barriers (people must be allowed to comment), must be conversational and there must be sharing.

THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Tweet tweet tweet if you want to get instant information out there.

YouTube is the way forward!!! Whether you use social media or not, it’s the future for personal and business use and if you are not part of it, it’s likely you will lose out in some way.

Leaving the seminar I felt much more informed knowing that new ideas will lead to new discoveries and the platform of social media is open to all.