SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

Experiences of a small ruminant specialist

SUSAN SCHOENIANSheep & Goat Specialist

www.sheepandgoat.com sschoen@umd.edu

What is social media?

Online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives.

A broad term used to define website and web applications where you have social interactions around a media form.

Tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online.

Interactive forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet.

A combination of sociology and Information technology that allows people to publish their own content and to establish business or personal relationships.

There are at least 23 different kinds of social media.

1. Blogs

2. Social networking

3. Social news

4. Social measuring

5. Micro-blogging

6. Social bookmarking

7. Social Q & A

8. Video sharing

9. Photo sharing

10. Social search

11. Professional networks

12. Niche communities

13. Social e-mail

14. Comment communities

15. Regional social media sites

16. Podcasting communities

17. Blog networks

18. Blogging communities

19. Presentation-sharing sites

20. Content-driven communities

21. Product-based communities

22. Review and recommendation sites

23. Other

http://onbloggingwell.com/23-types-of-social-media-sites/

Top 10 social media sites of 2012

Rank Site Type # unique visitors

1 Facebook Social networking 950 million

2 YouTube Video sharing 880 million

3 Wikipedia Content-driven 410 million

4 BlogSpot Blog 340 million

5 Twitter Micro-blogging 170 million

6 WordPress Blog 130 million

7 Linkedln Professional network 96 million

8 Google Plus+ Social search 90 million

9 DailyMotion Video motion 60 million

10 Flickr™ Photo sharing 51 million

http://socialmediachimps.com/platforms/most-visited-social-media-platforms-2012/

Why should you embrace social media?

Mass influence!

Social media is a culture changer, not a fad.

Anti-AG activist groups are becoming increasingly active on social networks.

We need to tell our story!

We have a good story

to tell.

How can social media help your farm?

Marketing

If you’re a direct marketer or service provider, social media is a great way to promote your products (and services) and engage and build your customer base.

What else is social media good for?

Information

Gain knowledge Share ideas Research products Find support

UME Small Ruminant Program

My Social media tool box

Blogs (2006)

Flickr™ (2007)

SlideShare (2010)

Twitter (2010)

Facebook (2011)

Linkedln

Pinterest

Youtube

What is a blog?

Online diary: a discussion or information site that consists of discreet entries (posts) that are displayed in reverse chronological order.

Most blogs are interactive: visitors can leave comments.

“Real” web site: content is indexed by search engines.

There are many FREE blogging platforms.

http://askavetsheep.wordpress.com/

Shepherd’s Notebook blogmdsheepgoat.blogspot.com

Created in 2006 to provide information to sheep and goat producers and anyone else interested in small ruminants.

Contains information news, images, presentations, and research findings.

795 posts178,409 views

W. MD Pasture-Based Meat Goat Performance Test

mdgoattest.blogspot.com

Created in 2006 to provide information to consigners, potential buck buyers, and anyone else interested in our meat goat testing program.

Blog entries contain links to all test data and reports (PDF files).

All consigners have had Internet access and the blog has turned out to be an excellent tool of communication.

291 posts41,555 views

The Baalandsbaalands.blogspot.com

My farm blog

Helps to promote sales of breeding stock.

What is Flickr™

Most popular online photo management and sharing application.

Established in 2004; acquired by Yahoo in 2005.

More than 6 billion images.

Can organize images into sets and categories and search using (meta)tags.

Low cost ($25/year)

My Flickr™www.flickr.com/baalands

#1 image: 524,643 views

Began posting images in 2007 (6,454 images).

What is SlideShare?

Presentation sharing web site, e.g. PowerPoint presentations.

Also supports documents, PDFs, and videos.

Useful tool for education and e-learning.

Can imbed presentations in social media.

SlideSharewww.slideshare.net/Schoenian

Began uploading files in 2010 (99 presentations).

What is Twitter?

Established in 2006.

Micro-blogging service.

Can post text-based messages up to 140 characters, known as “tweets.”

Messages can be grouped using hash tags (#).

Over 500 million registered users, generating over 340 million tweets daily.

59% of users are women.

Twittertwitter.com/MDSheepGoat

Since 2010, Shepherd’s Notebook blog entries have been automatically sent to Twitter.

What is Facebook?

Launched in 2004.

The most popular social networking web site, surpassing MySpace in 2008.

Over 1 billion users, half of which use Facebook on a mobile device.

57% of Facebook users are women.

Personal and business uses.

Facebookwww.facebook.com/MDSmallRuminant

Established page in October 2011.

What’s next on my social agenda?

Pinterest

Youtube

What I like about social media?

Another (new) way to reach people and extend the reach of my extension program.

Branding of my extension program.

Integration among social media websites.

You get lots of statistics: like, reach, favorite, visits, views, downloads, etc.

Social media challenges

Which one(s) to use

The learning curve

Time

Measuring impacts

Getting people to interact

Dealing with negative interaction

Facebook is better than

Twitter

No, Twitter is better!

Social mediaUME Small Ruminant Program

www.facebook.com/MDSmallRuminanttwitter.com/MDSheepGoatmsheepgoat.blogspot.commdgoattest.blogspot.comwww.slideshare.net/Schoenianwww.flickr.com/baalandspinterest.com/mdsheepgoat

Do you have any questions? Thank ewe for your attention.

Sheep don’t

tweet. They bleat!