Hash tags, phreaking, and retweets. A guest lecturer and self-made social media expert, David Ford, addressed beginning journalism students at East Tennessee State University recently to emphasize the importance of proficiency in various social media outlets.

Ford, a senior advertising major and part-time magician, broke the ice with a few sleight-of-hand tricks before encouraging the students to become more involved in the burgeoning field of social media.

“Regardless of what you want to do, public relations, journalism or advertising, you need to realize that you are all in the business of sales,” said Ford. “What are you selling? You.”

Ford defined social media loosely as any mass medium that requires an interaction between people. He then traced the development of social media from the early days of “phreaking” in the 1960s – hacking into a phone system to deliver messages – to instant messengers and bulletin boards of the 1990s, to the current presence of Facebook and Twitter.

“Two-thirds of the global Internet population are on a social media site,” Ford said. “That’s 82 percent up from last year.”

Using statistics from a promotional video for the book “Socialnomics,” Ford demonstrated that social media outlets have become the most popular activity on the Web. For example, one out of every eight couples married in 2008 met online. If Facebook were a country it would be the fourth largest in the world. Eighty percent of employers now use LinkedIn, a professional networking site, as their primary tool to find employees. Actor Ashton Kutcher and comedian Ellen DeGeneres have more “followers” on Twitter than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama, according to Socialnomics’ YouTube video.

“It’s really democratizing media. Media power is now in the hands of ordinary people,” said Ford. “It’s working too. Studies show that Wikipedia is now considered more reliable and accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica.”

Ford then stressed the importance of social media proficiency for communications students. “As more and more companies utilize Facebook and Twitter to attract customers and do business they are going to expect you as a young communications graduate to know this stuff,” said Ford.

“Networking is important. Twitter is the online equivalent of an after-work party; you can surf in and out of conversations,” said Ford. “If you find something you like and want to share it with your followers you can ‘retweet’ it on your homepage.”

Ford then demonstrated the method of using hash tags to find Twitter content by entering a pound symbol followed by a search term.

He told the students that they must create a LinkedIn account in order to maximize their employment potential.

“On LinkedIn you can make professional connections and post resumes and reference letters,” Ford said. “It’s a great way for employers to find you.”

Ford told the students to create their own personal brands online to stand out from other potential employees.

“Your life is a story,” Ford said. “Don’t be afraid to tell it.

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