Social media in real time

Crowdsourcing? Retweet? Boos? This last year has brought a huge upswing in the use of social media by everyone from individuals to big brands. Even my mum is my facebook friend but what is the impact of using social media in a real time format?

Just what is social media?

For those who aren’t in the social media sphere, I thought a video breaking it down would be more fun and Common Craft have created one that does just that:



The advancement of real-time social media

Now real-time social media is a step beyond what original users of facebook or MySpace have come to know. When I first heard of twitter I scoffed at it but this popular form of real-time social media has been credited with breaking news around the world from the Mumbai terrorist attacks to the New York Hudson River plane crash. Just last week, Twitter has been credited for the wave of criticism over Jan Moir’s article on Stephen Gately in the Daily Mail that led to her apology over the article.

As news, everything you read on twitter does have to be taken with a grain of salt as it is opinion but it is great at spreading information globally by the microsecond. News sources and publications now use it to send out their headlines and I’ve seen those same sources call out for information and photos of news events as they happen. So with this type of power to hand, how do you use it to promote your ideas or in the case of small businesses, promote your product?

How Twitter gave me coffee

Recently, I was tweeting about coffee with a friend of mine and he mentioned a coffee company called Xpress Coffee. I sent out a few messages about them and Chris, who runs the business, offered me some coffee to try. It amazed me that a few messages in the social media sphere would get heard and give me some direct benefit. Now that I’ve received the coffee (and it was much more than I expected!), I feel excited to talk about their small business and promote it to others. I’ve even given some of the coffee away to friends who read my messages about the coffee I was drinking so others could also try the different types of coffee on offer. For a small business, this is invaluable and can grow your customer base exponentially.