Where oh where does my little post go?

Where do you decide to put your information when you venture out into the big beautiful world of social media?  Conservatively speaking (really conservative) you have over 100 quality choices where you can post your content.  Divide that by the mediums you can use, video, text, audio, combination of those, and you can spend a lot of time doing nothing but signing up for and into accounts to post your information and interact with your community.

So, let’s be realistic and sensible about it.  First, go where the people are. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.  Those are the big three that carry the most attention and have the most subscribers and account holders.  If you want to add a fourth tier to your presence, blogs are a great choice to expand you thoughts, input and engagement.  I use three different blogs and enjoy some parts of each more than others so I don’t really have a recommendation there.

Want a photo-specific site? Those are available as well and they make a great catalogue for photos that allow the community to take a peak into their police agency LinkedIn? I don’t consider that a community outreach tool.  To me, that is where you go network, do research and collaborate with other professionals, then bring that information back to the big three to share with your community.

The main idea of using social media is as a communication tool.  That communication can be broadcast, reception or both.  It can be used to find info, share info or create info.  The places where to put that info are limitless.  But that doesn’t mean you have to use every platform out there.

But, there may be times when you want to venture away from the big three.  Community chat rooms and forums should never be overlooked.  There is nothing like drilling down to a hyper local group level to hear what is going on or concerning a small community, talking with the people and making a difference in the lives and quality of life there.

If there is a specific issue that is affecting your community or you need a resource to turn to for answers use search engines to find out if there is a specific social network that has been created around the topic…chances are, there is.

Finally, experiment a little. There are a lot of high quality sites out there and new ones come along all the time. You never know, you might find a great community somewhere that doesn’t get all the attention of the big ones.  Chime.In, Google+, Ning, Vimeo, Photobucket, StumbleUpon and many more are out there loaded with content, connections and community.

Why, what, when, who and where.  Only one part of the complete equation to go….next the hard part…HOW.