Blogging 101

My top three tips for beginner bloggers are as follows:

1. Have a goal. Before starting your blog it is key to define your goals and figure out why you're blogging. Joshua Lockhart lists 7 types of blogs here. There is the teen rambler blog, the mom blog, the philosophy blog, the tech blog, the political rant blog, the gourmet blog, and the neglected blog. It is important to know why you are blogging.

2. Know your audience. Who are you targeting? Who do you want to read your blog? Once this is defined you need to target those specific people. If you are targeting other social media people then you need to follow those people.

3.  Be Consistent and Persistent. Update your blog regularly and keep the content fresh. Your blog represents you and a certain purpose. Be faithful to that "brand" or "purpose".  If you start rambling on about something completely off topic then you may lose your audience.

These are the three goals I am sticking to while writing this blog. You should consider adopting these tips too!

SOCIAL Media Writing Skills

http://www.webcontentcafe.com/2010/10/10-ways-in-which-social-media-writing-is-different-from-traditional-web-writing/#axzz1plZBKIHW

http://www.compukol.com/blog/honing-your-writing-skills-through-social-media/

Mashable

Mashable.com is a great tool for people to use to learn more about social media and technology. One can go to mashable.com and look up how to use any and every social media site. 

Some say TechCrunch is another good tool to "get up to speed" with social media communication. In the past techcrunch had more users than mashable but within the last few months more people have started using mashable. There is no doubt in my mind that mashable has more users now. Just from comparing the look of the two sites you can see they are both very different.  Out of the two I will definitely use mashable. 

However, I haven't really found any resources on mashable that have helped me "get up to speed" with professional social media communication. I know it's a great site but I have not needed to use it so far to look for certain things. I did look on there for this assignment but did not find any articles that really stood out to me. For future assignments I know I can go to mashable to find articles to help me.

Infographs about SMC

      

    Pam Dyer, a social media guru, states on her blog (HERE), "infographics are visual representations of information, data, or knowledge. They illustrate information that would be unwieldy in text form and they act as a kind of visual shorthand, making information easy to understand and consume. They are driven by the same information as charts, but they’re often a better form of communication because of their pleasant aesthetics — charts and graphs can communicate data, but infographics turn data into information". 

    

    Number 23 on Dyer's blog is an infographic image that shows who participates (U.S. online users) online. It looks at the creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. As you can see joiners have the highest percent with youth from ages 18 to 21, which is not that surprising. With this many people online one can see that it is extremely important to use social media in organizations and as professionals.

   Infographic number 25 looks at how to build a company with social media. Through this infograph one can see what social media outlets one should use in certain levels of an organization. 

   As you can see just from these two infographs, it is important and possible to use social media communication in organizations and as professionals.

Intro!

Hello! I am Erica Pope and I am a student at MTSU in Murfreesboro, TN. This is my blog to express my thoughts and opinions of my Social Media Communications and Organizational Communications 4000 course. I am taking this course to expand my knowledge of Social Media. I have three goals for this course this semester. First, I hope to learn how to use Social Media correctly through experts and my classmates. Second, I hope to help others learn what I already know about social media sites. My third goal is to grow my social networking skills. I am really excited for the assignments we have throughout the rest of the semester. I think I will learn a lot about social media from those assignments.