Social Media Part 4- Social Media Defined (Unofficially)

In the previous post I spent some time working through an academic definition of ‘social media’ with the hope that any readers out there would still be awake at the end of it.

Having concluded with a fairly broad definition I was still left scratching my head as to why so many of my esteemed colleagues hold a more narrow view namely that SOCIAL MEDIA = FACEBOOK (+/- TWITTER)

Admittedly it’s a bit hard to get past Facebook whenever social media is mentioned. It’s not at all unusual to encounter the word ‘behemoth’ whenever reading about it. The current number of users stands at well over 1 billion, 28% of whom check in with it before even getting out of bed. And it’s a really good way of connecting with people. After some initial reluctance (I had an account for about a year before actually using it) I readily admit that it’s my favourite form of social media both personally and professionally.

Twitter isn’t far behind, though I find that I tend to get lost in the sea of hashtags, meaningless retweets and in jokes that I seem to encounter.

But what else can be ‘social media’?

Well, this thing for a start ie this blog. And Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, Foursquare, Google+, LinkedIn, forums, wikis, podcasts, vlogs, and basically any site that allows feedback and interaction between the denizens of the web.

Suffice to say the potential for finding and using social media is huge-about as endless as the web is big.

Do I use of all these forms of social media? Not by a long shot. And in the first post of this series I explained why-it's about time. Social media is free except for time, so to master and engage with all these forums is a full time job. The average freelance musician, especially if you have anything vaguely resembling a life outside music, simply can’t do it. Hence the restricted definition SOCIAL MEDIA = FACEBOOK (+/- TWITTER).

Without the means to fully exploit the potential, social media gets limited by necessity. And it’s effectiveness is then called into question.

But is it really worth it?

That, dear readers, is the million dollar question.