Ballarat only has a couple of platforms at our train station connecting us to Melbourne. Southern Cross has around 15 platforms connecting Melbourne’s suburbs and much of Victoria, as well as interstate services.
How many social media platforms are there? Too many to list and definitely too many for one person to manage for themselves. Probably too many for small to medium organisations to engage with too, but different platforms have different capabilities, different audiences and their own strengths and weaknesses.
Just because a big brand ignores a social network, doesn’t mean it can’t work for you, it’s all about what will work to connect you with the people you want to engage with.
I found this handy graphic that features just some of the platforms that are out there and attempts to categorise them. Interesting here is the focus on international platforms that we don’t hear much about here.
Isn’t it strange that at the same time as social media is supposed to bring us all closer together and globalisation means business is going international, we are often on different platforms altogether and often aren’t even aware of the platforms our near neighbours might be using.
What do I use?
Facebook and Twitter mostly, although I’ve tried out many platforms over the years.
My old Myspace still exists and I opened a YouTube account years ago. I also have a LinkedIn if anyone wants to offer me work.
In various capacities I’ve used Instagram, Flickr, Stumbleupon, Digg, Delicious, Vimeo, Pinterest, Tumblr, Picasa, Google+, Blogger, Yahoo and others.
My personal and professional use of platforms has really been focused on local geographic areas and connections, so I haven’t found much use for anything beyond Twitter and Facebook as few people seem to be using other platforms from this area.
However, thinking about how I work I think it may be worth investigating platforms such as Pinterest or Delicious or other note-taking or bookmarking platforms such as Evernote in order to better store and collate important and useful information that I find along the way.
The lack of searching capability in Facebook makes it quite limiting in bookmarking or collating information and making notes that can be referred to later.