What is Social Media?


Social Media--Beyond Specific Platforms

In the simplest terms, social media refers to Internet-based tools that allow people to easily find and connect with one another and to share ideas and information. They require minimal technical skills and are usually free or very low cost to access.

Social media is much broader than this simple definition, however. Heidi Cohen of Riverside Marketing Strategies identifies several other features of social media that can help us better understand the opportunities it presents for the workforce system:

  • Allows for sharing of a wide variety of content formats, including text, video, photographs, audio, PDF and PowerPoint. For the first time, it’s easy for non-techies to easily create and share multimedia through online platforms.
  • Involves different levels of engagement by participants. Users can create, comment or “lurk” (view).  Social media allows people to ask you questions, comment on services, and educate themselves about the job search process. It also allows people to form online peer networks and to connect with each other and with employers for support and information.
  • Provides for one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communications. Through social media, you have the ability to customize the messages you share with different audiences and to empower your audiences to share your content with other people.
  • Enables communication to take place in real-time or “asynchronously” so that audiences can choose when they will engage with you.
  • Is device-indifferent. People can engage with you through their laptop or desktop computers, through tablets (like the iPad and iPod Touch) and cell phones—particularly smart phones.
  • Extends your ability to engage with customers. You can use social media to easily create entirely virtual/online events, to extend off-line activities into on-line follow-up, or to augment off-line, live events. 

For many workforce professionals, social media is about the most well-known tools--Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, all of which share the features Heidi identifies above. But there are many other tools that also have value to the work that we do and new tools are being developed all the time. This can be overwhelming, but it can also provide us with new opportunities to engage and connect. 

The challenge for us is to find and leverage the platforms that work best for our customers and to use those platforms in a way that helps customers achieve their goals. It's all about adding value with technology and social media gives us tons of opportunities to do this. 

Check out the presentation embedded above for some ideas on how you can use social media tools to support your workforce efforts.