People are always abuzz nowadays with talk of the latest celebrity follow on Twitter, that funny photo on Facebook, or that cool post-modern loft on Pinterest. The question is, why should you care?
Social media is a highly used tool that can be great for sharing your message and content with a large audience. With a bunch of different social media outlets, it can be hard to determine which one to use. Instead of signing up for everything deemed popular, it’s better to consider which one would work best for your needs.
Using a series of 140 characters (known as “tweets”), messages can be sent to “followers”. This medium is good for those that want to send quick messages to people, which can be accompanied by links to full content if you have more to say. Twitter can act as a space for conversation by communicating with other users (“@ mentioning” them), which can make the relationship between you/your department/brand seem more personal with your audience.
The basis of Pinterest is to share inspiring and/or interesting images. Though this site is still relatively new, it has gained a lot of attention and hype that makes it an ideal medium for sharing image-based content. Not much text is involved, so you’d have to convey your message through pictures. This could be a good medium for sharing interesting photos of events around your department or relative images.
Facebook takes the best of both worlds where you can share both text and images without a word restriction. It’s important to attract people by making your page visually appealing and engaging to read. Your page should act as a person’s Facebook friend where they can write on your “wall” (page) and comment on your content. This is a good way to keep people interested in your content and/or to get feedback.
Remember: The key to any good social media campaign is consistently updating your content.