Module 2: Networking - Integrating Social Media
Prepared by:
University of Ljubljana
1. Basic concepts and explanations
What is networking? What does that mean to you?
According to The Oxford Dictionary (‘English Dictionary, Thesaurus, & Grammar Help | Oxford Dictionaries’ 2018) the Networking is “a group of people who exchange information, contacts, and experience for professional or social purposes”. However if you as ten different people what networking is and you may get as many as ten different answers. A person’s definition of networking probably depends upon their use of this important personal and professional activity. However, whether you network to make new friends, find a new job, develop you current career, explore new career options, obtain referrals or sales leads, or simply to broaden you professional horizons, it is important to focus on networking as an exchange of information, contacts or experience (‘WHAT Is Networking’, n.d.). In any industry or career level networking helps you make connections in a personal way and build relationships of support and respect to discover and create mutual benefits. It is a skill set no serious professional woman of the 21st Century can be without.
No matter what industry you’re in, knowing other right people can pay off. When it’s done well, networking can lead to more clients, more exposure and more opportunities to progress up the career ladder. And for jobseekers networking really comes into its own, putting you in the frame for roles that aren’t advertised, or putting you in touch with the decision-maker for roles which are (‘What Is Networking? | Reed.co.uk’, n.d.).
What Is Social Media?
Social media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas and information and the building of virtual networks and communities. By design, social media is internet based and offers users easy electronic communication of personal information and other content, such as videos and photos. Users engage with social media via computer, tablet or smartphone via web-based software or web application, often utilizing it for messaging.
Social media originated as a tool that people used to interact with friends and family but was later adopted by businesses that wanted to take advantage of a popular new communication method to reach out to customers. The power of social media is the ability to connect and share information with anyone on Earth (or multitudes of people) as long as they also use social media (Silver, n.d.).
A Brief History of social media
Social media has a history dating back to the 1970s (Ries 2016). ARPANET, which first came online in 1969, had by the late 1970s developed a rich cultural exchange of non-government/business ideas and communication, as clearly evidenced by ARPANET#Rules and etiquette’s “A 1982 handbook on computing at MIT’s AI Lab stated regarding network etiquette,” and fully met the current definition of the term “social media” found in this article. Usenet, which arrived in 1979, was beat by a precursor of the electronic bulletin board system (BBS) known as Community Memory in 1973. True electronic bulletin board systems arrived with the Computer Bulletin Board System in Chicago, which first came online on 16 February 1978. Before long, most major cities had more than one BBS running on TRS-80, Apple II, Atari, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Sinclair, and similar personal computers (‘Social Media - Wikipedia’, n.d.).
The IBM PC was introduced in 1981, and subsequent models of both Mac computers and PCs were used throughout the 1980s. Multiple modems, followed by specialized telecommunication hardware, allowed many users to be online simultaneously. Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL were three of the largest BBS companies and were the first to migrate to the Internet in the 1990s. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, BBSes numbered in the tens of thousands in North America alone (Edvards 2016).Message forums (a specific structure of social media) arose with the BBS phenomenon throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. When the Internet proliferated in the mid-1990s, message forums migrated online, becoming Internet forums, primarily due to cheaper per-person access as well as the ability to handle far more people simultaneously than telco modem banks (‘Social Media - Wikipedia’, n.d.).
GeoCities was one of the Internet’s earliest social networking websites, appearing in November 1994, followed by Classmates in December 1995, Six Degrees in May 1997, Open Diary in October 1998, LiveJournal in April 1999, Ryze in October 2001, Friendster in March 2002, LinkedIn in May 2003, hi5 in June 2003, MySpace in August 2003, Orkut in January 2004, Facebook in February 2004, Yahoo! 360° in March 2005, Bebo in July 2005, Twitter in July 2006, Tumblr in February 2007, and Google+ in July 2010 (‘December 1995: Classmates - Then and Now: A History of Social Networking Sites - Pictures - Cbs News’, n.d.; ‘History and Different Types of Social Media’, n.d.; Ortutay 2012).
1. Basic concepts and explanations
1.1. Popular networking websites of the Social media
It has been estimated that some 81% of Americans used social media as of 2017, and increasingly so. Over one-fifth of an individual’s online time is spent on social media, according to one estimate. In 2005, the percentage of adults using social media was around 5%. Globally, there are roughly 1.96 billion social media users. That number is expected to rise to 2.5 billion by the end of 2018. Other estimates are even higher (Silver, n.d.). According to the Pew Research Center (2018), social media users tend to be younger (some 90% of people ages 18 to 29 used at least one form of social media), better educated and relatively wealthy (earning over $75,000 per year). The United States and China lead the list of social media usage (‘Leading Global Social Networks 2018 | Statistic’ 2018): Facebook (2.167 billion users as of January 2018), YouTube (1.5B), WhatsApp (1.3B), Facebook Messenger (1.3B), WeChat (980M), QQ (843M), Instagram (800M), Tumblr (794M), QZone (568M), Sina Weibo (376M), Twitter (330M), Baidu Tieba (300M), Skype (300M), LinkedIn (260M), Viber (260M), Snapchat (255M), Reddit (250M), LINE (203M), Pinterest (200M), YY (117M).
Different websites and applications that serves for social media are dedicated to different types of communication and different content. A short description is available in next sections for most popular social medias (Rouse 2016).
is a popular free social networking website that allows registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues. According to statistics from the Nielsen Group, Internet users within the United States spend more time on Facebook than any other website.
is a free microblogging service that allows registered members to broadcast short posts called tweets. Twitter members can broadcast tweets and follow other users’ tweets by using multiple platforms and devices.
Google+
is Google’s social networking project, designed to replicate the way people interact offline more closely than is the case in other social networking services. The project’s slogan is “Real-life sharing rethought for the web.”
Wikipedia
is a free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles. Wikipedia was founded in January of 2001.
is a social networking site designed specifically for the business community. The goal of the site is to allow registered members to establish and document networks of people they know and trust professionally.
is a social news website and forum where stories are socially curated and promoted by site members. The site is composed of hundreds of sub-communities, known as “subreddits.” Each subreddit has a specific topic such as technology, politics or music. Reddit site members, also known as, “redditors,” submit content which is then voted upon by other members. The goal is to send well-regarded stories to the top of the site’s main thread page.
is a social curation website for sharing and categorizing images found online. Pinterest requires brief descriptions but the main focus of the site is visual. Clicking on an image will take you to the original source, so, for example, if you click on a picture of a pair of shoes, you might be taken to a site where you can purchase them. An image of blueberry pancakes might take you to the recipe; a picture of a whimsical birdhouse might take you to the instructions.
1. Basic concepts and explanations
1.2. Common Social Media Features
Today, there are scores of social media site. They provide different services, have different fan followings and enjoy very distinct identity. Yet, all of them share some common characteristics (Sunil 2017). Here are some key features of social media sites:
Provide free web space:
Members of these sites don’t need to own or share web servers. They can publish their content on the free space provided by these sites.
Provide free web address:
Members are allotted a unique web address that becomes the web identity of an individual or a business. It can be used to identify, connect and share content.
Ask members to build profiles:
These sites require members to build their profiles. Information entered in the profiles is used to connect friends and contacts, and build networks that connect people with similar likes and interests across the world.
Encourage members to upload content:
These sites allow members to upload text messages, photographs, audio and video files. All posts are published in in descending order with the last post coming first. Most important, all content is published in real time, and can be read, viewed or shared instantly.
Allow members to build conversations:
Members can browse content and comment upon it. By doing so, social media sites allow members to engage in conversations that increase engagement.
Allow live chats:
Several social media sites have chat clients that enable members to chat with each other in real time.
Direct Messaging facility:
Several social media sites provide direct messaging facility to their members. This allows members to send private messages, which can be read or viewed only by those for whom the message is intended.
Provide tagging alerts:
Most social media sites alert members through e-mail or in site notifications whenever they are tagged in a message or in a photograph.
Enable members to create unique pages:
On some social media sites, members can create theme-based pages. The pages can then be used to post articles or photographs related to a theme. The pages can also be used to promote businesses (user accounts; profile pages; friends, followers, groups, so on).
1. Basic concepts and explanations
1.3. Social media marketing for start up women
Goals
A really good article about social media strategy was written by Alex York (2018). He pointed out that the most important thing to drive your business is to follow your goals constantly. It even helps if you can write down thous goals to ensure that these are more defined and realistic.
Goal setting is a staple of all marketing and business strategies. Social media is no exception. Of course, with a range of social capabilities, it can be difficult to determine exactly what your objectives should be. For guidance, here are some common social media goals to consider:
- Increase brand awareness: To create authentic and lasting brand awareness, avoid a slew of promotional messages. Instead, focus on meaningful content and a strong brand personality through your social channels.
- Higher quality of sales: Digging through your social channels is nearly impossible without monitoring or listening to specific keywords, phrases or hashtags. Through more efficient social media targeting, you reach your core audience much faster.
- Drive in-person sales: Some retailers rely on social media marketing efforts to drive in-store sales. Is your brand promoting enough on social to reward those who come to you? What about alerting customers to what’s going on in your stores?
- Improve ROI: There’s not a brand on social media that doesn’t want to increase its return on investment. But on social, this goal is specific to performing a thorough audit of your channels and ensuring cost of labor, advertisements and design stay on track.
- Create a loyal fanbase: Does your brand promote user-generated content? Do your followers react positively without any initiation? Getting to this point takes time and effort with creating a positive brand persona on social.
- Better pulse on the industry: What are your competitors doing that seems to be working? What strategies are they using to drive engagement or sales? Having a pulse on the industry could simply help you improve your efforts and take some tips from those doing well.
Audience
We have a lot of opportunities and choices where to post our products. To choose one or several of them we must ask ourselves: "What is our target group?". When we have the answer we can follow the statistical demographics data of people using different social media:
1. Facebook’s most popular demographics include:
- Women users (89%)
- 18-29 year olds (88%)
- Urban- and rural-located users (81% each)
- Those earning less than $30,000 (84%)
- Users with some college experience (82%)
2. Instagram’s most popular demographics include:
- Women users (38%)
- 18-29 year olds (59%),
- Urban-located users (39%)
- Those earning less than $30,000 (38%)
- Users with some college experience (37%)
3. Twitter’s most popular demographics include:
- Women users (25%)
- 18-29 year olds (36%)
- Urban-located users (26%)
- Those earning $50,000-$74,999 (28%)
- Users with college experience or more (29%)
Similar products
Before you start creating content it’s really smart to investigate your competitors. Do this before the content creation process because you often find new ways to look at content by analyzing what’s making your competitors successful. The simplest way to find competitors is through a simple Google search. Look up your most valuable keywords, phrases and industry terms to see who shows up.
Content
For starters, is recommended to create content that fits to your brand’s identity. This means you should avoid things like reaching out to your unpopular demographics without a complete strategy in place. The content must be relevant and the published page must not be filled up with advertisements. Online shoppers rather believe the video content than only pictures. If it is possible use prepared themes. Keep content format consistent and simple for your readers to not confuse them.
Do NOT ignor
Social media channels are built as networks. This means their main purpose is to be a space to converse, discuss topics and share content. Your brand can’t forget these core elements of “networking” and it takes effort to ensure conversations or engagement opportunities aren’t left unattended.
Through social media, you gain respect as a brand by just being present and talking to your audience. That’s why social customer care is so important to brands wanting to increase audience awareness. It’s all about engagement.
2. Creating social media accounts
2.1. Create a Facebook account
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for Apple iPhone: |
for Android Phone: |
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Step 1: Download Facebook program form Apple Store. |
Step 1: Download Facebook program form Google Play. |
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Step 2: In the Search window type in “Facebook” and click button INSTALL. Then wait for installation to complete |
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Step 3: Open the Facebook application and click button CREATE NEW FACEBOOK ACCOUNT.
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Step 4: Click NEXT and ALLOW Facebook application to have access to your personal data. |
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Step 5: Enter your first and last name, date of birth... |
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Step 6: … enter your gender and phone number. |
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Step 7: Click SIGN UP an wait for application to complete creating your account. |
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Step 8: Now you must setup your Facebook account. First you can ALLOW that Facebook can send and view your SMS messages.
Step 9: Next, you can choose to save password by application.
Step 10: Type in the password and remember it. Then click OK button.
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Step 13: Choose your profile picture. You can take the picture with camera of choose picture from gallery. |
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2. Creating social media accounts
2.2. Create a Instagram account
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for Apple iPhone: |
for Android Phone: |
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Step 1: Download Instagram program form Apple Store. |
Step 1: Download Instagram program form Google Play. |
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Step 2: Click into search field and type in Instagram. |
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Step 3: Choose Instagram.
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Step 4: Click install and wait for installation process. |
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Step 5: Click open to open the Instagram program.
Step 6: Choose create new account.
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Step 7: Make account with phone number or with email address. Enter phone number or email address and press next |
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Step 8: Fill in your name and password. Then click next . This will be the last step of making the Instagram account before setting up your profile… |
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Step 9:To start setting up your Instagram profile click Next.
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Step 10: Choose your age and click next. |
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Step 11: It is recommended to find your friends from Facebook to follow them, but we will skip this feature. |
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Step 12: Also is recommended to follow your friends from your contacts. To do that you should allow Instagram application to have access to your contact information.
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Step 13: Choose relevant contacts to follow theirs published content. When you are finished press next. |
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Step 14: click add a photo to add your profile photo. And choose the source of your profile photo. You can download it from Face book, you can take a photo with phones’ camera or choose a photo from library. |
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Step 15: We will chose a photo from a gallery and choose one appropriate. During the selection we have to allow Instagram application to have access to ours photo gallery. |
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Step 16: Click next and confirm chosen profile photo. |
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Step 17: Save profile data with cliquing save. |
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Save profile data with cliquing save.
2. Creating social media accounts
Follow the steps below to share from Instagram to other social networks
In next exercise we will show:
- how to post a content
- how to share the content with other social networks and
- how to add a content into relevant subject.
Step 1: To post new content press camera sign at the bottom of the screen.
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Step 2: You can choose to upload the desired picture from three sources: gallery, photo or video. To insert the photo from your photos click gallery, choose desired photo and click next. |
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Step 3: If you want to change a photos’ look you can apply a filter to it or edit it manually. When you are done press next. |
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Step 4: Click inn the write a comment field and write short description of your photo.
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Step 5: It is recommended to add a #hashtag to your description to include the post into #hashtags’ content. It is smart to include #hashtag that already has a lot of followers. Since we post an ardunio shield for robotics we include #arduino and arduinoshield. Both #hashtags are followed by several ten-thousand followers.j |
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Step 6: To include this post to other social networks check fails under Share To section. Finally click Share st the top right corner..
Step 7: The content is published…
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Step 8: … and also included into selected #hashtag section. You can check it with click on an #hashtag link. |
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2. Creating social media accounts
2.3. Create a Twitter account
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for Apple iPhone: |
for Android Phone: |
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Step 1: Download Twitter program form Apple Store. |
Step 1: Download Twitter program form Google Play. |
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Step 2: Type Twitter in search field.
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Step 3: Choose Twitter application and click INSTALL. |
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Step 4: Wait for installation to complete and click OPEN. |
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Step 5: Click Get started and type in your email address and phone number and click Next.
Step 6: Check Connect with people you know to spread your twits more efficiently and click Next.
Step 7: Then click Sign up and wait for SMS confirmation code…
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Step 8: Fill in the code received by SMS and click next. |
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Step 9: Fill in (set) the password for twitter account and click next.
Step 10: We recommended to Sync contacts with twitter account.
Step 11:And click ALLOW to set application permissions.
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Step 12: Choose people that you would like to follow… and click Next. |
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Step 13: Enter your favorite interests… and click Next.
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Step 14: You can allow that application have access to GPS (your location) data by clicking OK and ALLOW . |
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Step 15: Now your account is ready to tweet. You can write your first tweet by clicking f icon. |
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Step 16: In the field What’s happening you can write content you would like to publish and click Tweet button. |
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Step 17: You will see the tweet in your Home screen.
3. Use social networking sites
Informing people about your business progress or products is very important job. Many people deciding to do so by several social network sites or platforms. By far the most popular is FaceBook which not needed to be introduced nowadays…
3.1. Create a Facebook Page
Step 1: Run FaceBook application, sign in your account…
Step 2: Click on Menu icon.
Step 3: Click on button CREATE PAGE.
Step 4: Click to GET STARTED.
Step 5: Type in a relevant page name and click NEXT.
Step 6: Choose some relevant categories and click NEXT.
Step 7: You can type an URL of yours homepage to send your visitors to that page (or skip this step) and than click NEXT.
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Step 8: Add a profile photo from your gallery by clicking ADD A PROFILE PHOTO button, choose photo(s) and click DONE and SAVE. |
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Step 9: Click NEXT to continue and click VISIT PAGE to go to your FaceBook page. |
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Step 10: To create new post to your FaceBook page just click Post button.
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Step 11: Click on text What’s on your mind? and change the text. |
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Step 12: After you are done with the content click PUBLISH.
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Step 13: Click SIGN UP an wait for application to complete creating your account. |
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3. Use social networking sites
3.2. Set up a Blog
Before you can begin blogging, you will need to select a platform on which to publish your site. Several free, hosted options exist, such as the very popular WordPress and Blogger. Both of these platforms have apps that will allow users to compose, edit and publish their posts on the go. The key difference between Blogger and WordPress is that while Blogger is a little more simple to configure and use, WordPress is easier to customize and to eventually transition over to a self-hosted site when you exceed the bounds of their free offerings. Whichever you choose, there are official apps available for the major mobile platforms.(Bozzo 2014) In this tutorial we will be using Blogger because of simplicity…
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Step 1: Go to Google Play Store and search for Blogger. |
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Step 2: Chose Blogger application and click INSTALL.
Step 3: Accept the policy of application to have permissions to your phones’ data.
Step 4: Wait for installation and OPEN the application.
Step 5: Choose your account or add new one.
Step 6: Wait for application to finish the some settings…
Step 7: If you don’t have account jet, you have to sign-up first.
Step 8: You must ACCEPT the Googles’ terms of service…
Step 9: Choose to sign in with yours google account and click CONTINUE.
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Step 10: Click MORE and OK, GOT IT… and you will be redirected to blogger web page. |
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Step 11: Click CREATE A BLOG.
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Step 12: Again chose your Google account, enter your * password* and click Next. |
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Step 13: Enter a verification code and click Next.
Step 14: Click CREATE NEW BLOG.
Step 15: Fill in title of your blog, for example: David’s Blog and url of your blog, for example: davidsblog.blogspot.com.
Step 16: Choose appropriate blog template and click Make blog.
Step 17: To publish new blogs content click New content.
Step 18: Make some relevant content and click Publish.
Step 19: If you want to publish the same content also in Google+ blog click Share.
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Step 20: You can see your blog content by clicking Show blog. |
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Step 21: Now you can run Blogger application on mobile device
Step 22: click in pencil icon to publish new blog poste
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Step 23: Fill in Poste title, add some new content and click send icon (arrow / paper plane icon). |
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Step 24: And new content is published on your blog.
4. Quiz
Do you have a problem with displaying the quiz? Click HERE
5. References
Bozzo, Frank. 2014. ‘5 Apps to Start and Run a Blog Entirely from Your Phone’. 2014.https://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/5-apps-start-and-run-blog-entirely-from-your-phone.html
Center, Power Research. 2018. ‘Demographics of Social Media Users and Adoption in the United States | Pew Research Center’.http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/
‘December 1995: Classmates - Then and Now: A History of Social Networking Sites - Pictures - Cbs News’. n.d.https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/then-and-now-a-history-of-social-networking-sites/
Edvards, Benj. 2016. ‘The Lost Civilization of Dial-up Bulletin Board Systems - the Atlantic’. ‘English Dictionary, Thesaurus, & Grammar Help | Oxford Dictionaries’. 2018.https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/
‘History and Different Types of Social Media’. n.d. ‘Leading Global Social Networks 2018 | Statistic’. 2018.https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
Ortutay, Barbara. 2012. ‘Yahoo Is Now a Part of Oath’. Ries, Monica. 2016. ‘The Complete History of Social Media’.https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/social-media
Silver, Caleb. n.d. ‘Social Media’. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media.asp
‘Social Media - Wikipedia’. n.d.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Sunil, Saxena. 2017. What is Social Media and what are its main features -. Easymedia.in. Retrieved fromfrom http://www.easymedia.in/social-media-main-features/
‘WHAT Is Networking’. n.d. ‘What Is Networking? | Reed.co.uk’. n.d.https://www.reed.co.uk/career-advice/what-is-networking/
York, Alex. 2018. ‘7 Step Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2018 | Sprout Social’.https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-marketing-strategy/
