SM Internet

Blogs and social networking sites have indeed attained a status of being very effective internet marketing strategies through which people could attract a lot of traffic to their website or enhance their prominence on the web. When free blogs are a part of benefit that a member of a social website gets, one can have best of both the worlds.

Blogs were in fact a part and parcel of social media or rather pioneered the so vastly used social media even before social websites came into being. But with changing trends and time, the number of free blogs has seen an upsurge and one could identify the best blog sites with the help of an internet search. Now, blogging and social networking keep the internet mongers on the edge of their seats with a lot of interaction between the members and the bloggers. People now show a lot of interest to be a part of the social media and the social websites and through these have their own blogs and educate the followers on the idea desired.

The social websites too, give a great opportunity to its members to create socially enabled websites which are accompanied with all the powerful and latest features like blogs, videos, forums, member management and shopping cart just to name a few. Irrespective of whether blogging happened first or social networking site happened first, when both are put together the effect seems to be paramount.

Social Media Marketing

But quite apart from putting paid ads the social networking sites themselves ushered in a new dimension in online or internet advertising. Its power lies in the value of word-of-mouth advertising which carries the highest credibility among consumers, especially when circulated among friends, relatives and family.

Social media takes word-of-mouth content to a larger crowd that goes beyond this small circle of friends. It just takes one posting in Facebook from a consumer who has been delighted by a product or service for the posted content to spread out to dozens or hundreds of online readers within his or her circle of friends in the social network. Now, just imagine if each of those receiving the content does the same thing. Just clicking the “Like” button on Facebook content can do this and advertisers can easily get the reach they need that would otherwise be expensive to achieve in traditional advertising. Advertisers don’t even need to spend ad dollars. The consumers themselves do the talking, or in advertising parlance, make product endorsements.

The world of advertising has indeed found a gold mine in the Internet. You now have such buzzwords as internet advertising, online adverting and social media advertising. The old model where marketers place ads in print media hoping to catch the attention of broadsheet and tabloid readers, or intrude into watching television and listening to the radio with 30-seconder airtime slots, has been eroded with a new and promising model where the target consumer has active participation in getting the word out about a product or service to people who are surfing cyberspace.

Rishad Tobaccowala of Publicis, one of the world’s largest advertising companies, likened traditional advertisers as “dropping conventional bombs in villages” where some collateral damage is expected after blindly casting their ad messages in a general direction, hoping that some would get the message. On the other hand, instead of bombs, Mr. Tobaccowala likened internet advertisers as making “lots of spearheads and then (getting) people to impale themselves.” The concept of internet advertising leverages on consumers themselves who actively spread the word about the product by interacting with what they see and read online.

• You Tube - This, or any video site, is a fantastic way to drum up interest in an upcoming book! Think outside of the box and use this tool to create a trailer for your book! Once created, the video can be embedded into your blog or website and help promote your box in a new and interesting way! Even if you don’t have the finances for a professionally done trailer there are a multitude of local videographers who would love to work with you to help promote your book, you just need to look!
• Blog - This may be old news to many people but a blog is one of the most valuable things you can have when trying to promote yourself, as well as previously released and newly published books. The sky is the limit when it comes to deciding on a theme for a blog. You could choose a character from one of your books and write a blog through their eyes to drum up publicity for a new release or simply blog about how a new book is coming along while you write it!
• Twitter - This popular social media site can be an amazing tool or an amazing time waster depending on how you work with it. Like with the blog, set up a Twitter account for a fictional character from one of your books and post random musings and ideas from that character that relate to the book. There’s no limit to what your character might say and this might be a great idea for discovering new book ideas, but that’s another article. You can also use your Tweets as little teasers for an upcoming book. Post interesting quotes from the book each day or each week for a few weeks or months before the book is released. This way the reader is drawn in by the quote and by doing it on a regular basis you will create a following that will continue to come back on a regular basis!
• Facebook - Create a Facebook page (not a profile) for each book and include details on the book, reviews from critics and breaking news related to you or your book. Like Twitter, Facebook can be used to release interesting quotes from a book to create a following, but the advantage of using Facebook is the discussion option built into the pages. With discussions, you will receive questions and feedback from fans which will help you become involved with your readers as opposed to just writing updates. A fan page is also a great place to offer special advanced copies or advanced chapters of an upcoming book! I recommend using Scribd as a way to share these special offers because it has the option to secure the chapter or book from being downloaded, something that a simple PDF will not let you set up.
• Virtual Book Tour - Now to bring everything together! Set up a tour of podcasts, webcasts and internet radio shows in your creative arena and do a virtual book tour! This is a great low cost way to get publicity for a new book and also engage fans and readers in a completely new way. Advertise your appearances through the social media tools we have already discussed and offer recordings of the sessions as well!

Students frequently familiarize themselves with computers as they navigate these social networks. They gain valuable skills on an instrument that has become indispensable in the world they reside as students and the one, which they will enter upon completion of their studies. Also, it encourages networking with a variety of people, which can be viewed as a necessary skill in the business environment. This is also the case for teachers and administrators. With the existence of social blogs, Twitter and Facebook, teachers are able to share and record through various mediums, methods of instruction as well as teaching theories and practices in real-time. Furthermore, many are able to expand on techniques for learning and also interact with students on a consistent basis outside of the classroom.

On the contrary, the rise in social media and advancements in other interactive communicative technologies have produced negative impacts in and outside of the classroom. While social media can be seen as a positive tool for education, this tool has the potential to hinder student performance, social growth, and communication skills. Similarly, it can affect a teacher’s overall efficiency in several ways. To what do we owe a decline in academic performance as a result of its impact? What are the social ramifications of social media? What factors are directly responsible for the inability to educate students effectively? How are teachers affected by social media both in and out of the classroom?

For most, access to the Internet for educational purposes would be seen as a great resource for information; however, for students, the Internet poses many problematic factors in academic performance. In general, children who spend more time online find it harder to concentrate resulting in shorter attention spans. Students who rely solely on social media for information rather than researching other resources are likely to experience difficulty focusing on learning and information retention. It significantly affects study habits as students are attempting to multitask and end up becoming easily distracted because they are too busy tweeting and/or posting messages to Facebook in lieu of completing assignments.

Advancements in and excessive access to technology are direct factors on how social media has affected the student in and out of the classroom. Today, students spend most of their time on these networks via mobile devices. Some schools prohibit the use of these devices however; many of them sneak them into school. They use these devices to record videos; take photos of themselves and others, search the Internet, tweet and log on to Facebook, thus making it difficult to concentrate during instruction time. These activities also seek to inhibit effective instruction. In addition to this many of these activities have led to many problems in the school and community for example, fights, harassment, law suits etc. Excessive, unproductive time spent on social networks can therefore be very unhealthy, thus having a negative effect on teens and children. We can then argue that teaching/learning, is in direct competition with Social Media, when they should be partners in educating students.

The use of social networks has also significantly decreased the use of proper grammar and syntax in writing. Students have found it difficult to differentiate between the proper use of language as a result of abbreviated writing and shortened forms of word formulation. Many slang terms have become common in written class assignments. These terms IDK (I don’t know), SMH (shaking my head), BTW (by the way), YW (you’re welcome), TNX (thanks), IMO/IMHO (in my opinion/in my humble opinion) just to name a few, have crept up in students writing so much so that they are unable to understand the differences between the right and wrong way of spelling correctly. Teachers see the decline in proper writing in capitalization, punctuation, and subject-verb agreements, to name a few. Students are so immersed in poor grammar usage while online that they rely heavily on computer devices to autocorrect their mistakes resulting in the decline of their command over the use of English language. Subsequently creating a conflict in grammar usage.