Social media marketing | Liz Hover's Diary of a Web Gal

Something occurred to me yesterday after writing about why you should be using social media.

The phrase ‘social media’ is a redundant term. We should really be referring to the ‘social web.’

Most of us think of ‘social media’ as a thing. Something for marketers to learn maybe. Something to add to our ‘marketing mix.’ A collective term to describe a number of websites.

But social media is not media at all in the traditional or marketing sense.

It’s an online behaviour.

Because the internet has changed so much in the last few years, the way we use it has also changed. What we publish to the internet is no longer a one-way street.

What social media really is is a more open method of communication across the internet.

Social media is commenting on a blog post or news item on your local news website, sharing photos with your friends and family on Flickr, connecting with folks on Facebook, sharing video on YouTube, microblogging on Twitter. The list goes on and on and on.

It’s a way of behaving on the internet that’s active not passive.

Social media is anything on the internet that involves two way (or many way) communication.

If you really want to ‘get into social media’ you need to change the way you interact on the web.

Don’t just be a consumer of information. Be a creator. Be a commentator. Be a sharer. That’s what social media is really about.

If you’ve been reading the news over the last couple of days you probably heard about the Billy Bob Thornton CBC Radio debacle.

And you probably tried desperately to understand the actor’s odd behaviour. How could he be so arrogant? Was he on something?

Thankfully I can reveal exactly what happened.

This video is part of a new web series by Vancouver-based writer/artist Jeremy Fisher.

I may well be behind the eight-ball on this one but I just noticed an embed code on the National Screen Institute’s YouTube channel (seen here). The code allows people to feature the channel content on their site. Not sure I like the format much but the idea is cool.

My dog’s YouTube channel uses the new channel layout and I couldn’t find the embed channel code there.

The National Screen Institute (my workplace) still uses the original channel layout which includes the embed code.

Fear not dear reader, I’m still in the land of the living.

Website tweaks and fiddles have consumed my time. And when I wasn’t doing that I was sipping chilled white wine, spending time with the husband or sleeping. Oh, and possibly shopping.

I’ve spent much time trying to upload video to YouTube and Yahoo! Video. Turns out my files were just too darn big. That’s what you get for being new to a lot of this. I almost broke out the champagne when it finally worked.

We’ve got a great bunch of video and audio interviews under our belts and will continue to gather more.

There is a tendency to just gather new content at break neck speed without giving much thought to what we’re getting or whether it’s worth it. My philosophy has always been (and will continue to be until my visitors tell me otherwise) that quality of content over quantity and frequency of renewal wins out.

So, most things are in place and we’re very close to soft-launching the site which will be the real test and will probably drive me to drink copious amounts of wine – heck, what’s new?

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re launching to a select group – around 500 people. Who knows what will be revealed during that all-important phase? It’s all a learning process.

I’m off to a conference in early June to learn more about all this jazz. Wonder if there’s anyone else out there dreaming the same weird dreams as me and dwelling on stuff that most people don’t?

I recently read a bunch of reports about demographics. They seemed to suggest that young affluent men were the largest consumer of online video which as we know is increasing its presence on the internet. Our new website will host online video so I’m super keen to read about what’s going on.

I read with interest that Emily Chang, a US designer, mentions an article in the New York Times about a recent study that says young women are leading the way on the social web but as a means of self-expression.

Ok, now things are really getting interesting. I just found this article in The Times which refers to the same study. Girls and young women are indeed leading the way on the internet. Traditions are shifting. The two newspapers just lead with slightly different emphasis.

But apparently YouTube still has more boys uploading content.