Why bother with social media?

As most regular visitors to Digital Signals will know I work for a digital media agency.

Now, you would think that all that work within the digital agency world would be early adopters of all things digital, and all staff would have vast Twitter accounts and a fully integrated social media platform.

This is not so.

Social media is not for everyone and why should it be. We are, after all, all different thankfully. Engaging and communicating with other industry colleagues or interested parties is not something that takes everyone's fancy.

In my role, however, I've found social media to be invaluable so far and it's value continues to grow on a daily basis.

To get the real value from social media I believe you can't just use Twitter or say Facebook. You need to take a multi-pronged approach, using a number of applications that can answer different needs.

The following apps are the ones I used regularly and would recommend others focus their energies on, and a brief review of what I use them for:

To date, I still keep Facebook to people I've met face to face with a few minor exceptions.

I have photos of my family on Facebook and that's not something I want to make available to the public domain. I don't mind the odd photo here and there, but photo albums of holidays and family are something I still want to restrict access to.

I've noticed how much busier Facebook is these days when I do return to my profile and also how busy the status updates are. I seem to spend a lot of time on Twitter that others spend on Facebook.

I've been meaning to create a Facebook account for Digital Signals, but have yet to get round to it. It's something I intend to do as I do have several business related invites on Facebook that I'd like to connect with.

Facebook is still growing it's already enormous network, it's worth joining if you haven't already for both personal and business networking.


LinkedIn has been one of my least busy social networks, but likely one of my most productive and valuable.

Having made an industry/career move has meant that I climbed one career tree to relatively high heights, only to have to start climbing another much lower down.

LinkedIn has enabled me to get back in touch with people I used to work with who, hopefully, respect me for the work I've previously completed. This has lead to a number of new business leads in my industry of choice and I hope will lead to many more.

LinkedIn is an invaluable network, but one that I always maintain a professional profile rather than a more relaxed conversational application.


I love Friendfeed, as I've stated many times before. But like a cat, Friendfeed can be very good at looking after itself.

It's used as an aggregation point for all of my social networking applications and you can find just about all of my online activity there.

It's recent jump in activity has increased my usage of the interface, but not as much as it deserves. If you don't use Friendfeed yet, you should.

What can you say about Twitter that you don't already know? Not a lot I guess, everyone's banging on about Twitter at the moment and that's because it's very good at what it does.

I still hold a lot of value in Twitter, but I haven't gone down the auto follow route just for the sake of achieving exceedingly high follower numbers. I still pick everyone I want to follow and believe this is the way to achieve the best value from the application.

It's great for developing a community of contacts from all walks of life. Forget Wolfram Alpha, if you need a question answered, ask your Twitter community. Some of the answers I've got back to questions asked have been great on Twitter.


I'm a big music fan and I think sharing your music with others speaks volumes about your personality that would take a thousand words to describe.

While I think social music is generally the domain of individual users of the platforms, I think it could be a great addition to the right brands digital portfolio.

Music can engage with people that you wouldn't otherwise suspect of holding similar interests. I've made some of my most interesting contacts via my social music profiles.


Blog is something I hold in high esteem as I've raved about many times.

Blogging properly takes great commitment, but the reward from this commitment can be great.

It will take a long time to build respect for your blog, particularly if like me your are a solo writer.

I find my blog is a great way to not only illustrate your own knowledge on specific matters; but also a place to start conversations which can increase your own understanding and gain you new contacts around that subject.



Obviously all of the details above are looking at the use of these applications from a personal perspective rather than a brand or corporate perspective.

I've yet to offer any detailed advice to a client on how to go about using social media to market their brand. I have however provided a number of clients with advice on what the benefits of social media can be and how we can help them interface social media tools into existing digital platforms.

But the benefits of building networks of people within either your industry or other industries can have great results.

It takes time to work at all of these different social media profiles, but in my experience it's well worth the effort.

There are obviously a whole multitude of other social networks out there other than the ones detailed above, but these networks are the ones that have worked for me so far.

Business is quiet for some at the moment, can't say that's the case in digital media, now would be a great time to start building contacts and good customer relations with your networks.

Taking the time to do this properly should be rewarding for all concerned. I'll take more about what these rewards can be in another post soon.


Related links:

Friendfeed adoption - So who are you again? - Digital Signals http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2009/05/friendfeed-adoption-so-who-are-you.html

What are the costs of social media? - Digital Signals http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2009/04/what-is-cost-of-social-media.html

What now for Twitter - Digital Signals http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2009/03/what-now-for-twitter.html

My social media profile - Online management http://www.digital-constructions.com/blog/2009/02/my-social-media-profile-online.html

blog comments powered by Disqus