Social networking – are you a follower or a BFF?

Have you joined the social media world? Millions have but many others have no interest in this phenomenon at all. As with all things, there are benefits to be derived by participating, but there are pitfalls as well. The key is to study up on the negatives first so you can jump in with your eyes wide open.

I, of course, have this blog. Anybody can sign up for a free blog on WordPress.com or BlogSpot. I chose to use WP because it has a platform that is better suited for a business blog. While blogs can be very simple in design, IMO you’ll find it easier to manage if you have a “decent” knowledge of html code. That way you’ll understand how the code may be affecting your design … in the event you do something wrong and need to fix it. While I’m no computer expert, I’ve been using html code for nearly 10 years as I started using it on my web site first. That coding allows me to add all the extras that you see on this blog. Once you learn it, it’s very easy and logical to do.

CAUTIONS: Any photos you post will be picked up by Google in their Images section. People can steal (use) these photos by merely right-clicking on the photo. This is plagiarism, subject to copyright lawsuits, but most people don’t know this or don’t care. That’s why I place a copyright watermark on the photos I’ve taken, to make the photo less attractive to steal. I also don’t post any family photos … other than The Murph. Read more and more.

Sploggers also may steal your posts. They’ll do this using your tags and aggregate multiple posts by subject in order to increase their Google ranking for those search terms. A higher ranking (like page 1 on a Google search) will get more traffic with increased opportunity to earn more money from the Google Ads that they have on their blog. Read more. 

Click to link to me

LinkedIn is a good social network for business people. Think of it as an online resumé. You can post your employment history and connect with people you knew at former employers or connect with people of like-minded interests by joining groups. Building up your network of connections can certainly be beneficial if you should be in the position of needing to find a new job. There are lots of recruiters (headhunters) on this site. LinkedIN does a very good job at protecting its users from spammers, so it is one of the “safer” network sites. You can also ask business-oriented questions and receive helpful answers.

RECOMMENDATION: Use your real name and a business-type photo so people can recognize you or find you if they search for your name. LinkedIn is not a “kiddie” site, so don’t treat it as such.

Click to follow me

Twitter is a fairly new phenom that is rapidly growing and quickly changing the way we communicate with others. It’s rather like IM (instant messaging) except the messages can be seen by the world. People don’t have to be a Twitter member to be able to read what you say, so USE CAUTION. Some people block their tweets to only the people that they are following, but that sort of defeats the purpose of Twitter.

I use TweetDeck to organize the tweets of the people I want to read. I’m not interested in reading people’s tweets that only talk about what they had for breakfast or where they’re eating lunch. My focus is using Twitter more as a news feed and I enjoy seeing what the local and national news people are saying. Sometimes those news anchors ask for our input, and I especially enjoy giving my thoughts to David Gregory for questions to ask his upcoming “Meet The Press” guests. TweetDeck is a download program that resides in the background on my desktop, and “beeps” me when one of my followers posts something. Thus, this add-on program means much less time spent on this social network.

Facebook is another social network but so far, I’ve decided to not participate in it. Since my focus with social media is business-oriented, I prefer to not spend time on the purely social aspect. I’d rather have my social connections be face-to-face. But that’s just my choice and millions of people really enjoy FB.

The one thing that people complain about with the various social networks is that they can easily become addictive and thus, tremendous time wasters. Just as texting can intrude on REAL relationships, be careful these “social” sites don’t make you less “social” to your real FTF BFF’s.

Copyright © 2009. Elaine Reese, Real Living HER. Reproduction of any portion of this blog post or the images is prohibited by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. If this post is being viewed on any site other than www.ReesesPiecesOfRealEstate.com then the material has been stolen without permission. Violators will be reported.