With social media you can find information from anywhere about anything you are interested in.
I love finding information and reading other blog posts and sharing information with people who are using social media or are just learning how beneficial social media is as a business tool, for people who work at home and for anyone who wants to learn and explore.
I regularly update the Social Status Facebook Page to share with you the benefits of social media. People are writing blog posts, opening social media accounts and sharing information 24 hours a day.
If you want to find out something, whether it's an idea to promote and market your business, or how to use a certain tool or program, you can find your answers by searching on YouTube for how to videos, and by following realtime search on Google, find the realtime tab on the left hand side of the Google home page by clicking the more button. This will keep you up to date on whatever is happening in the world.
Use Facebook and Twitter search to find and follow great business pages, read blog posts, watch videos ... information is constant and changes in the blink of an eye, so a great way to make sure you don't miss something of interest to you; is to add links, pages and blogs to your favorites or if you want the information to come to you as soon as it's put on the Internet then subscribe to RSS feeds.
We are certainly learning to search and find information. And then we are sharing across Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other software programs to reach other people.
I love Read It Later, you can save any link from Twitter or the Internet and then read it later when you have some down time. I use Read It Later to track information and find references and get ideas for blog posts. I find it is also great to track information to send to clients to assist them with their marketing and promoting and to help them with their social media.
The greatest benefit is that social media is so accessible to use as a learning tool.
Social Media gives you a chance to learn, to connect with people all over the world, to find tips and info and to share, therefore helping other people with a how to, or a tip or a blog post on their journeys.
And remember learning never exhausts the mind - Leonardo Da Vinci.
Social media is not just about marketing, promoting, business, feeds, ROI and all the other marketing terms I am sure you have heard of, read and used yourself.
Social media is about connecting and this has been especially apparent on Twitter and Facebook. People use social media to reach out to each other and connect with each other.
There is an incredible amount of sharing on social media sites. People write about everything and share so much about their lives and themselves. It truly helps us to connect, to embrace, to have empathy, to show compassion and you can see this by how many people reply or comment on updates or blog posts or statuses and send or share links with others.
It shows me, that people in the world can learn from each other and mourn for other peoples' losses, deaths and tragedies and support each other and communicate with each other in a way we never could before.
We can also celebrate with people, congratulate people on their accomplishments and achievements and be happy for someone who has witnessed, seen or done something.
On the 3 May 2011, Derek K Miller died of cancer at 41 and wrote a last post to say goodbye to his family. His post reached hundreds of his followers and his friends, who said goodbye to him in their own way and cried tears for him. It also reached out to hundreds of strangers, to people who have or have had cancer and did what I believe social media does best, makes us closer to each other, helps us learn about others and really reaches us, wherever we are in the world, no matter our own individual circumstances.
In the same way, Jenny writes a diary for her son Cooper who has leukaemia and shares her love for her son and again, blogs like these teach us about Jenny, her love for Cooper and both their experiences of cancer.
And a 5 year old boy, whose sister sold his artwork which paid off his cancer treatment, again shows us how we can connect, can reach out to each other, can reach out somehow in ways we never could.
I cannot express how beneficial social media is. Not only for business, for marketing, from building a brand, from putting a business online, from a making money point of view, from building a community - which are some of the reasons that individuals, businesses and corporations are using social media for.
Businesses, entrepreneurs, small businesses and corporations have seen how they can benefit, how we can all benefit by communicating with each other, by connecting with each other in a number of ways.
We no longer just look at websites. We watch YouTube videos, we use Facebook, we communicate on Twitter, we read blogs, use discussion forums, click on likes, share links, we make business connections on LinkedIn. We use email marketing, surveys - we are truly being more socially active online.
And the benefits are astounding. We can connect and make contact with people who love the same things we do. We can find people in our industries. We can find jobs, resources and ideas. We are truly sharing.
We can respond to queries, clients and customers in a hundred different ways. The work we do is different. We look for, find, research and use information which is immediate on the Internet and we can benefit by reading, observing and listening to each other.
But the essential most crucial part of all the social media, is that I as a stranger can mourn the loss of a man who loved his children, I can learn, read about and understand about illness and family life.
We can teach each other and learn from each other. And we get a glimpse of love. We see empathy and compassion. We can wish each other well, help each other, give and receive advice.
I truly love social media but it goes further than that for me. I love learning from people. I love the way I can get information, any kind of advice, assistance, tips, hints which helps me with my business, with marketing and deciding how to teach my clients. I love the way I can find information and news and stay so up to date about anything that is happening in the world.
But when social media shows us that we simply can connect with each other and get a glimpse of love - then we watch and see how people respond, full of empathy and compassion for each other; that's when I truly get a glimpse that we all just really want to hear each other and be heard. (It's quick, people make thousands of Tweets a minute and hundreds of Facebook updates - so you cannot possibly read everything)
Sure, we want immediacy, we want businesses to respond quickly when there is an issue or a crisis. We want to have our say, have the freedom to express (whatever, TV shows, cooking skills, business meetings, funny things that happened through the day, complaints, news, and opinions)
But social media really is about communicating. Not just communicating, but learning about each other. And being very, very grateful that we can.
