Managing Social Media

If you use email, facebook, online forums, twitter, or other electronic media to keep up with professional issues, you are using social media.

Social media can take up a lot of time. Whether you use it professionally or strictly on your own time, here are some tips from iLibrarian:

How To Simplify Your Social Media Routine
Leo Babauta, author of Top 25 blog Zen Habits and best-selling book, The Power of Less, blogs for Mashable with tips for How To Simplify Your Social Media Routine. The article provides a six-step guide to keeping up by doing less.

Step 1. Use simple tools to make the most of social media
Step 2. Focus on sending out high impact messages
Step 3. Let go of the need to read everything. Learn to scan
Step 4. Figure out which social media give you the most value, and simplify
Step 5. Form close relationships with people who give you the most value, not everyone
Step 6. Manage your time wisely

Social media anyone?

A couple of interesting links from iLibrarian:

Adult Social Network Users Quadruples Over Four Years
7 Reasons Your Social Media Marketing Failed (and how to fix it!)

Not A Bad Thing At All!

We've known for some time that the next generation uses information differently, communicates differently, and learns differently. Here are some links that discuss it more in-depth:

Teenagers’ Internet Socializing Not a Bad Thing
from http://librarystuff.onlineinc.com/wp-rdf.php by Steven

New MacArthur Foundation Study on Youth and New Media
from Stephen's Lighthouse by stephen

Social Networking Marketing

Great advice here from iLibrarian:

The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan

Social Networking Takes Over The World!

We all kind of had a hunch about this, didn't we? Now we have the studies to prove it.

Study Shows Social Media Use on the Rise

Whoa baby! Social Media appears to have moved beyond the Early Adopters and infiltrated the collective. It isn't just the kids anymore. After all, how many readers out there are over 26 and have a Facebook account?

For marketing, social media is a whole new venue. And the rules are way different than the old "interruptive" model. Brand yourself and get yourself out there. Make your social content something that makes the reader/viewer want to click back to your brand. Engage and think globally about it.

Don't forget the vicarious consumption inherent in the Expectation Economy discussed in Trendwatching. Opinions are out there. Your users are reading those opinions and makind decisions based on them. Know them. Grab them and use them to market your library and improve services.

Stephen Abram sums it up:
Half of U.S. adults use social media
from Stephen's Lighthouse by stephen
According to study, half of U.S. adults use social media.
Wow! That is, they do according to the latest findings from Universal McCann's "Media in Mind" study. In this particular study "social media" includes text messaging, blogging and social networking. These three technologies combined are used by 50% of U.S. adults for communication purposes.

1 out of 10 U.S. adults now publish blogs (up from 5% last year)
1 out of 5 18-34-year olds publish blogs (up from 10% last year)
22% of U.S. adults use IM (up from 9% last year)
21% 18-34-year olds use IM (up from 14% last year)
57% have joined a Social Network, now the primary mode of creating and sharing content
23% of social network users have installed an application
Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration
73% have read a blog
34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog

Read the complete presentation/report (80 page PDF) here.

Interesting. Right or wrong, it's still obviously growing in interesting ways.