Tom Zarecki brought his enthusiasm for social media to Danbury Hospital’s Creasy Auditorium and it wasn’t long before his infectious energy excited all the people in the room. He was able to get everyone standing up and walking around, introducing themselves to one another. Tom was in his element since he teaches social media and broadcasting at Western Connecticut State University. The first two rows of the audience were filled with current and former students, two of whom did an outstanding job of introducing him.
The social media movement started back in early 2000 when social networking websites started gaining popularity thanks to the millennial generation. A social network allows people from all over the internet to create their own profiles and interact with others of similar interests. Tom let us know that social media are always changing, and the websites that are popular today may be replaced by others in the future. In 2007, MySpace was valued at 12 billion dollars but today you rarely hear anyone talking about it. In 2008 Facebook overtook MySpace when the new owners of MySpace tried to monetize their investment and started flooding the site with ads, without improving the experience on the site. Tom told us that today Facebook is the largest social media network, and it has only been around since 2004.
We learned that social media are a way to share information, get news and of course a great place to schmooze. Tom explained that the only difference between us and the broadcast media outlets is that they have a transmitter and a tower and that each of us can use social media to broadcast what is important to us. Tom advised businesses to spend time on social media where their current and future customers are already hanging out.
The next category of social media Tom addressed was social bookmarking sites. Tom defined these websites as an ongoing “focus group” of the most popular searches, including not only your bookmarks but the bookmarks of millions of other people. Unlike storing bookmarks on your computer, the tagged pages are located on the web and can be accessed from any computer. Reddit is an example of a bookmarking site that allows registered subscribers to organize the site by voting submissions to move up or down. StumbleUpon is a giant collection of the best pages on the internet, where you pick the topics you are interested in and websites, photos, and videos will be recommended to you. You can use Digg if you want to know what news is trending on the internet right now.
Another kind of social media Tom discussed was blogs and microblogs. Microblogs, as the name implies, are typically smaller in content and people communicate using short sentences or share individual images and links to web pages. Twitter is an example of a microblog and BlogSpot is an example of a traditional blog. Tom mentioned the HuffingtonPost, which blogs about news and politics and is one of the most profitable and best read blogs in the world. The NYTimes blog covers such a wide range of topics that a blog directory was created to help you get to the articles you are interested in faster. If you want to find quick ways to exercise your brain, you may want to check out the lumosity blog. Tom also mentioned the blog LiveYourDream.org, which is an online volunteer network of people who wish to support women and girls in their quest to lead better lives.
Tom said that businesses can benefit from sharing sites, since their customers are already online, sharing content, photos, audio, video all hours of the day and night. YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram are some of the more popular social media websites that share information. Spotify shares music, YouTube shares videos and Instagram and Pinterest both share photographs.
We are fortunate to live in today’s world where it isn’t difficult to find a group of like-minded people on the internet who share your interests. If you love reading books and want help picking out a good one, you may want to turn to idreambooks.com. If you are a New York Yankees fan you can go to Yankees.com to find others who are also rooting for your team. It’s getting to the point where no matter how unusual your hobbies may be, there are so many social media websites out there that it doesn’t take long to find an affinity group of people for you to connect with.
Tom spent many years working in radio as a broadcaster and disk jockey and you could tell he was very comfortable speaking in front of the audience while he moved about on the stage. He made it very clear that his presentation was only an introduction to social media and he didn’t go in depth into any particular type. He will be going in more detail into specific types of social media once his new social media workshop is officially launched and begins to meet on a monthly basis. Please check the calendar on the DACS website to find out the date of the first meeting. This will be a great opportunity to come and get your questions answered so you can join the online community of your choice. Thank you, Tom, for being so generous with your time and your knowledge and we look forward to learning more about this topic from you in the future.