User:MPLichtman

Social Media Certification

=== Students at Central Michigan University are enrolling in a new undergraduate Social Media Certificate program. Teaching someone how to make social media valuable in business helps them find jobs or advance their current positions.

Why is it even necessary to teach social media? Social media is not something that can be avoided by any business or organization, as textbook authors indicate in their book, Auditing Social Media: A Governance and Risk Guide. The authors define social media as "A set of Web-based broadcast technologies that enable the democratization of content, giving people the ability to emerge from consumers of content to publishers."

What social media specialists really "need" to know about social media is how to bring value to an organzation or business. The book outlines steps to developing a strategic plan for incorporating social media into an organization, beginning with an audit, involving all departments, and training employees. Developing policies and making sure everyone is on the same "social media strategy" page is a priority.

Some of the history of social media includes the development of bulletin boards in the late 1980s,use of the Internet by government, military and academic organizations in the 1990s and the Doc.Com boom in browsers, websites, e-commerce and online advertising. Along came blogging and control of access to information clearly moved from provider to user.

References === Boyd, P.R. & Jacka, J.M. (2011). Auditing social media: A governance and risk guide. HoBoken, N.J: John Wiley 7 Sons, Inc.

Boyd, D.M. & Ellison, N.B. (2007). Social Netowrk Sites: Definition, History and Scholarship. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13:210-230. doi: 10.1111/j.1083-6101.2007.00393.x

O'Dell,J. (Jan. 24, 2011). Infographic: History of Social Media. Mashable.com. Accessed at:http://mashable.com/2011/01/24/the-history-of-social-media-infographic/ ===