Powerful Branding Techniques through Social Media- For Foreign Students

In the past few decades, as internet's coverage expands across the world, social media's power grows dramatically in ways many have never imagined. People from different continents become connected through the invisible network in the form of social media. To put in simple words, people do branding for themselves. By using tools like Twitter, Facebook, and Google, people meet each other more easily and share common interests in a much more convenient way. However, there are plenty other exciting websites and apps that await foreign students to explore, such as StumbleUpon, E-blogger, Tumblr and Pinterest.

After taking a semester of digital marketing course, I deeply believe that social media is able to change the world, not only in terms of connection, but lifestyles and living attitudes. Social networking websites contain the largest amount of connections and command the most attention from their userbase. By posting new feeds on social media websites, you opened the door to the world, meeting interesting new people.

Other social network apps such as Facebook, twitter, blogger and Instagram are milestones in social media's development path. But let's think about the ones that are relatively less well-know yet successful and probably many foreign students who yet recognized them.

1. StumbleUpon: It was not until one day during a Geology class during my sophomore year in college that I learned the existence of Stumble. A sorority girl that sat in front of me was busying sending event emails to the group while clicking on a button with a logo that looks like a curly fries. The page changes according to her interests, such as beauty, diet, workout, and surfing. After research, I learned that it offers a database of millions of tagged and unique URLs that include blog articles, images, videos and anything in-between. Viewers first pick topics that interest you and the algorithm will show you pages which are targeted towards you interests.

2. E-Blogger: A good reason to attend college is that you not only learn from the professors but also your trendy peers. Those who enjoy the art of writing cannot help to type on keyboards and express their feelings at any place and any time. Bloggers choose to write because they find the process of transferring words from idea to physical manifest exhilarating. Just like the blogs we have to write for this course, I admired the idea of this interactive participation. Students with various backgrounds share common interest in social media are gathered to this blogger. By posting weekly blogs, we not only share media news but also are able to find the heroes that look alike us.

3. Tumblr: An alternative yet dynamic form of blogging. The system is designed to allow you to re-blog posts from the people you follow with the click of a button. It is a microblogging platform and social networking website owned by Yahoo. Users can follow other user's blogs, as well as make their blog private.

4. Pinterest: It is a wildly popular site and app for collecting media across the Internet. People are able to pin photos into collections called boards, which is a big archive for objects and view's selected interests. For users, it is a way to think and plan the future or to show off one's taste for free. "Pin the interest" is the logic behind Pinterest. Whenever I am stuck with what to wear for the fall season, I ask Pinterest by simply type in "Fall look", or if I want a piece of bread pudding, I type in "Bread Pudding" which gives me over thousands of receipts for different flavors of bread pudding. Just like a frequent user always describes it "It seems like a shopping site minus the exchange of money part."

Source: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/powerful-branding-techniques-through-social-media/

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/what-is-pinterest-a-database-of-intentions/375365/