Social media is a method of communication that uses the Internet to create interactive dialogues. Social media not only allows news and information to be delivered to an audience, it allows conversations with an audience. In addition, members of the audience can interact with each other and form a community.
People use social media to interact in many ways, including reading and commenting on blogs and Internet forums, uploading media to video and photo-sharing websites, and sharing life events on micro-blogs and large social networks.
Compared to print and broadcast media, social media is relatively inexpensive, yet it can reach the same or larger audiences. Using social media usually doesn't require specialized skills or training, it provides instant communication, and once the information is published it can be easily updated or enhanced.
Here are some statistics on the popularity of social media:
- Social networking now accounts for 22 percent of all time spent online.
- People all over the world spend more than 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
- There are about 90 million tweets sent each day on Twitter.
- People watch 2 billion videos a day on YouTube and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily. In fact, every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
You can even use social media to explain social media. Check out this video at www. youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE or tinyurl.com/crc-socmedia.
To find out more about the social media efforts of the Christian Reformed Church, see www.crcna.org/pages/blogs.cfm.
