The World of Social Media

Social media has created a new outlet for people in many aspects of life. First, it is fairly obvious how social media has influenced personal life. Social media has created a way for interpersonal connections to be created and maintained all from behind a computer or phone screen (Petric, Petrovic, & Vehovar, 2011). This allows people from all different parts of the world and types of lives to meet and connect on social media (Petric et al., 2011). It also allows for people to keep connections with others that move away (Petric et al., 2011). That is the positive aspect of social media; it allows for connection. This does require people to learn new skills in order to use social media as a way to create interpersonal connections, though (Paus, 2013).

Professionally, though, social media has had a much more complicated presence. The positive side of social media for professional use is that it has provided companies a free way to market and reach audiences that are attracted to social media (Petric et al., 2011). The advent of social media found audiences being pulled from companies because they were more interested in spending their time on different social media platforms. This meant that companies needed to adjust or be left behind (Kolodzy, 2013). Companies began using social media platforms as a way to market themselves (Kolodzy, 2013). This proved to be profitable because using social media websites are free, but can provide an outlet for wide audiences (Kolodzy, 2013). Because of this, companies needed to learn to use social media to their advantage (Kolodzy, 2013).

A good example for what kind of skills communicators needed to learn to advance with social media can be seen through the dissemination of news information. Social media caused a huge hit to be taken by newspaper companies because people no longer wanted their news in that form. Many companies took to creating online newspapers. While that has been somewhat successfully, news companies still needed to do more (Kolodzy, 2013). This resulted in a necessary change for newspaper companies, which was to integrate news information with social media (Kolodzy, 2013). Instead of fighting with social media to get users’ attention, news companies worked through social media to get users’ attention (Kolodzy, 2013).

Though this has been successful, it has caused new skill sets to be necessary for journalists. A journalist now needs to know how to get an audience’s attention on Twitter by being able to post headlines in 140 character or less (Kolodzy, 2013). A journalist now needs to know how to get an audience’s attention on Facebook by posting interesting pictures to go along with the written story (Kolodzy, 2013). Finally, a journalist now needs to know how to get an audience’s attention on YouTube by posting a video along with news information (Kolodzy, 2013). All of this has caused new training to be completed by communication professionals for them to remain vital in the professional world of today where social media is only becoming more and more integrated (Kolodzy, 2013; Paus, 2013; Petric et al., 2011).

References:

Kolodzy, J. (2013). Practicing convergence journalism. New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Paus, V. (2013). New media and leadership: Social media and open organizational communication. Manager, (17), 73-78. (this one is a stretch but can be used here because it talks about interpersonal communication between teams and through social media)

Petric, G., Petrovcic, A., & Vehovar, V. (2011). Social uses of interpersonal communication technologies in a complex media environment. European Journal of Communication, 26(2), 116-132. (this discusses the interpersonal side)

This infograph depicts how social media is affecting the workplace. It provides percentages of how much social media usage is being used in the workplace both personally and professionally.

 

This infograph shows how social media is being used across the world. It exemplifies how social media is being used in all parts of the world, but how some use it in different ways. What is particularly interesting about this infograph is the fact that looking at the future in the United States shows trends of common usage of the hash tags conflict, war, and terrorism. On the other hand, many other counties will be using the hash tags environment and green.

 

This infograph shows the relevance of social media both in general use and in professional use. It particularly shows how corporations are using social media as a way to connect with their customers. It also explains what type of social media is more popular for companies.

References:

Adams, D. (2013). How technology changed our workplace communication. Bit Rebels. Retrieved from  http://www.bitrebels.com/lifestyle/technology-changing-workplace-communication/

Social Media Facts. (2013). Core Vision Technology. Retrieved from https://corevisiontechnology.wordpress.com/tag/whatsapp/

Wallace, D. (2011). Digital Technology: Global Game-Changer for Social Change. Infographic Journal. Retrieved from http://infographicjournal.com/digital-technology-global-game-changer-for-social-change/