How to set up your social media profiles
Ever since Barack Obama used social media to prise open the doors of the White House, there has been a buzz about the new sector which is coming to define the twenty first century media.
Twitter. Digg. You Tube. Vimeo. Delicious. Facebook. I could go on all day. You’ve read about them in the newspapers, now here is your guide to getting started on three of them – Twitter, Delicious and Flickr.
Twitter is the first on the list and by far the most difficult to explain. In short it allows you to write and publish 140 character messages, follow and interact with other Twitterers.
It is a deceptive little tool. What you use it for depends very much on you and who you follow. It can be used for status updates, breaking news, conversation and linking. Just like the telephone – the quality of the conversation on Twitter depends very much upon the people using it.
How do I sign up?
Simple. You just go to www.twitter.com and click on the green ‘Sign up Now’ button. You will have to enter your name and email address and you’ll be asked to select a username.
Once you’ve been through this step then you are ready to get going. Good luck!
Tips
Twitter has a subtle etiquette that you have to learn. Here are a few tips:
Thank someone who re-tweets (RTs) your tweet. Interact, don’t just broadcast – remember you are part of a conversation.
Don’t overload people with too many tweets. The likelihood is that they’ll just treat it as spam. Build up slowly.
Delicious is an excellent web resource. It allows you to save all of your bookmarks under different ‘tags’. It is like the old bookmarking feature that you have on your computer – but this is even more useful as it can be accessed from any Internet connection.
Delicious also allows you to create an online network. You could connect with other users and browse through their bookmarks too (if they are publically available). Finding another user in the same field as you on Delicious can be very useful – it’s like being given access to their library.
How do I sign up?
Delicious is owned by Yahoo and to use it you will need to have a Yahoo account. If you don’t have one already then you’ll easily be able to get one by going directly to Yahoo.
Once you have this then you can go to the green ‘sign in’ button at the top right hand corner of the website. From there you will be prompted to choose a username and password. Once you have completed these steps then you will be ready to start bookmarking.
Tips
Delicious becomes more useful the longer you use it, so just keep going.
It is also really worth downloading the Delicious add-on buttons for your web-browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and so on). This makes it much easier to quickly bookmark pages as you are going.
Flickr is the best online photo-sharing site. You can upload all of your latest photos, tag them with specific keywords and browse through other public images.
The standard of photography on Flickr varies from very basic to highly professional and – best of all – you can take images for use on your blog or site if they have the appropriate creative commons license.
There are comment boxes beneath every photograph, so, just like a blog, you can leave your thoughts and congratulate a photographer if you think they’ve done a good job.
How do I sign up?
Just like Delicious, Flickr is owned by Yahoo and therefore you will need a Yahoo account. Once you have this it is really easy. Just click on the sign up box, fill in the fields and you’ll be ready to start uploading in no time at all.
Tips
Explore the creative commons and find some of the photographs that are available for republication. There are six different creative commons licenses – make sure you know the difference between them.
If you are a keen photographer and you think you are going to use Flickr often, then you should consider upgrading your account to ‘Pro’ which gives you much more storage space.
Flickr can also be used for uploading videos – although it is still predominantly a photographic site.
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Mon, Nov 16, 2009