Social Media as marketing tool for Research

I did my first presentation on the above topic for Community Law. We were a bit apprehensive when we were first approached as this is not really an area where we spend a lot of time on but thought that it was worth giving some thought as Social Media is fast gaining popularity as a research tool but have been used as marketing tool in the corporate world for a while now. So the principles are probably not as different from normal business principles and I therefore opted to bring in individuals with more experience in the area than I have. Here is a link that points out some common mistakes in the use of social media http://thesocialskinny.com/10-more-common-social-media-mistakes/. The Social media site upper most in people's minds is Facebook so much of the comments and input was in reference to FB. Here are some points that came from our presentation

1. time to manage
2. Fresh content will bring audiences back
3. Set the tone in communications
4. Use Social Media site to drive audience to your website
5. Social Media language by its nature is more informal
6. Sharing site administration can cut down on the workload

7. Your website can be tweaked to be found be search engines
8. Easy to find stats on audience use.
9. Posts can be made via cellphones
10. Websites need to be dynamic
11. Easy to upload images and video
12. Can select audiences using FB
13. In the event of articles or images posted one can tag the authors to encourage them to visit the page but also to ensure that the posted object/s are seen on their page and shared with their friends.
14. Differences between a group and a fan-page: the latter caters for broader audience especially when you do not know who your audience might be. However should you have a targe audience in mind, creating a group would be more appropriate.

Feel free to add some more in the comment section. There was an interesting question as to whether Social Media pages won't render a website redundant. The consensus was that it depends on your use of these tools as they can be used to meet different needs.