Keeping up with social media can be confusing. A proliferation of platforms, an avalanche of content and a world full of people to connect with mean that it can be hard to improve, let alone make a start on, your social media presence.

One of the biggest problems can be trying to visualise the whole thing, trying to see the bigger picture of how everything fits together.

In the first of a series of practical articles we set out a simple visualisation of social media functions. Later articles will explore some of the strategies to consider.

The Layers of Social Media

NETWORK

Social media begin and end with your network. Everything you do should be aimed at communicating with the people in it and deepening engagement.

Communicating

This is the layer between you and your network. Think about:

• Listening (to the conversation)
• Responding (to interesting people)
• Sharing (your content with your network)

Processing

This is all about you, your interests and intentions. Think about:

• Creating (new content to share)
• Filtering (content from your network and the environment)
• Analysing (information, interactions between you, your environment and your network)

Experiencing

This is the layer between you and the rest of the world, everything outside your network. Think about:

• Observing (and exploring)
• Inhabiting (and being present)
• Documenting (in words, pictures, film and sound)

ENVIRONMENT

The environment is just everything else, all of the people, places and content outside your network. It’s so easy for everything in social media to become self-referential so this constant exploration is essential.

What’s Next?

Future articles will look at these layers in depth and think about the strategies, techniques and technology that make them work.