Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace…how are these different and which social networks should you be on? I recently came across a great quote that summarizes the difference. Myspace is like a dance club, Facebook a back yard barbeque with friends, and LinkedIn is the office. The first two are a great way to keep in touch with friends, and LinkedIn is an online rolodex of your contacts.

The hot social networking application has been Twitter. Twitter is a micro blogging platform which gives you 140 characters to express yourself. Through Twitter’s search functions, you can do real time searches for current trends. There are different symbols that you should familiarize yourself with before you hop on twitter. To explain:

• Hash tags are a way to group current topics. For example, San Diego Golf Course Superintendents may form a #SDGCSA hash tag to group all of their comments towards the SDGCSA.
• @ symbols lets you publicly comment “at” someone. If you wanted everyone to read your message to someone else, you would direct the comment @theirusername.
• dm are direct messages. These are not public like # or @ symbols.

Some people like to tweet about their cats or other useless information. For each of your tweets, try to follow the principles of informing, educating or entertaining. Keep your tweets worth while. One relative application of Twitter for Golf Course Superintendents is for the super to tweet about course conditions. Some courses will post this on their website, but most don’t.

If you are on the fence whether to join or participate in any social network, remember that there are no physical costs to join.

Article written by San Diego Online Marketing Agency BigTuna Interactive.