So you have created a website for your business and a blog where you post original articles in your niche as often as you can. You’ve got engaging content and quality products or services that are promoted professionally, and you are ready to apply social media tools to reach more possible customers. And by social media, I mean Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. But how do you approach these three platforms? How to use them in order to create buzz and credibility? Is there any secret formula that you need to learn?

The truth is there is no secret formula no matter what the “social media experts” tell you. And they can recommend some ridiculous things, like first creating a strategy with goals, milestones and expected results that you should follow step-by-step until you achieve success. And you will achieve success, they say, because there’s no way such a well-developed strategy won’t work. Of course, this kind of advice sounds ridiculous. It overlooks the most important aspect of social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are free-flowing, ever-changing and malleable for every person’s style. What may work for someone may not work for you. On these platforms, you interact with people, and people are unpredictable. You cannot know what they want to read, what makes them get involved and what makes them “like” you and come back for more. You learn these things in time, and this means it’s nearly impossible to build a precise strategy.

Hence, consider hiring Fresh Crowd for professional social media advertising instead. These are experts who can modify your social media marketing campaign towards success. That’s by considering delicate factors social media has among its users.

I do not call myself a “social media expert” because, honestly, I would never be able to give anyone advice or tell you how to go about using Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. What I can do is tell you how I use them, and hope that you will think some of my methods are worth applying.

Let’s start with Facebook, because everyone is on this social media platform, interacting, making friends and spreading the word about great websites and blogs. I see Facebook as a picture economy. Mainly, here I post pictures that I think are worth sharing and discussing. My readers post to trigger conversations with people and that turns Facebook into a kind of forum. It’s the best way of keeping in touch with readers and hearing their opinions. It is easier for me to post pictures, content and respond to people. For me, Facebook is very active, while I consider Twitter more reactive.

On Twitter, my main goal is to find great content to post every day. Whether it’s an article written by me or an article found on the Internet, as long as it is in my niche and it is professional and informative, I post it. So I see Twitter as a link economy. On Twitter, it is easy to earn credit if you only post things that you consider genuinely interesting. I’ve got thousands of followers who re-tweet my links because they see me as an expert in my niche and trust me.

As for Google+, no one really knows what works on it. Everyone is trying to experiment and see how it can be used to promote a business. I can easily compare it with the Wild Wild West. I just post a picture or a video and I can get up to hundreds of comments. I respond to comments, interact with people, let them know that I am an approachable, open-minded person, and what I get in return is more comments. This is why I can say I love Google+ more than the other two platforms. But, of course, each of them has its own advantages.

Now that I’ve told you how I use Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to build credibility, should I encourage you to take my advice and do exactly as I do? No, because I can’t tell if my methods will work for you. Actually, all you can do is post great links, pictures, and videos and see what happens. Learn what your readers want to see, figure out which platform suits your needs best, and concentrate on that one.

Today, social websites have started to create waves but this is only to be expected given their exponential growth in the last few years. These social websites have grown so much that they have started to impact electronic media. While electronic media could be termed to be an effective means of communication a decade ago, that no longer holds any water, for the simple reason that social media get the latest news hours ahead of any electronic media.

Apart from being the first to get the latest news [from politics to entertainment], these networking sites have actually started to have an impact on geo-politics and other factors; in short, these websites are actually having an impact on how people think and react. Apart from affecting electronic media, government agencies have started to use social media to monitor electronic media and current events. As a result, lawsuits have been filed against certain government agencies in order to get them to be transparent about the process.

The Egyptian revolution is a perfect example of networking websites influencing local politics. The call for a revolution against Hosni Mubarak first made its appearance on social media websites, thanks to an innovative reformist. And that was enough to kick start an entire revolution, so much so, that it only took a few months for the Egyptian government to resign and for Hosni Mubarak to go into Exile in Sharma el-Sheikh.

In addition, most of these websites are easily accessible by mobile and multiple platforms, enabling members to upload news, pictures and graphic videos. in an instant, thereby creating an instant sensation. Furthermore, these websites make it possible for web users to share the news with their friends and associates, thereby increasing the instagram followersfree and gaining the viewer base. Naturally, governments worldwide are not too happy about the impact that social media seem to have on geo-politics and other government decisions. As a result, they have started to monitor these websites round-the-clock for any information that may prove to be inimical to their domestic and international policy decisions.

Of late, things came to a head when Congress started to discuss two bills, aimed at reducing internet piracy. Both these bills, SOPA [Stop Online Piracy act] and the PIPA [Protect IP act] were aimed at websites hosting pirated content. The problem is that most websites including and not limited to social media have no optimum method to per-verify any content before it is posted on to their website. Naturally, given the broad contours of these bills, social media as a whole would stand to be affected and nearly all the websites would be blocked out.

Given this, it was but natural for social media to impress the idiocy in going ahead with these bills now and to emphasize this; these websites went AWOL, making the point “All or nothing”. And the US congress, in a welcome change, decided to shelve these bills for the moment. This is not to mean that these bills will not come up later for discussion again but one hopes that when they do, they would dot the I’s and cross the T’s. It would indeed be idiotic for any government to try to control online content while under the guise of protecting intellectual property.