Social Media Tools

Mobile

Approximately forty-five percent of adults in the United States own smart phones. Of cell phone users, approximately eighty percent send or receive text messages, fifty-five percent access the Internet via mobile, and fifty percent utilize their email via mobile. These statistics, according to aids.gov, are relevant for reaching out to a larger amount of people. Aids.gov allows users to access their material via mobile to access HIV information, locate testing sights, and fundraising. Mobile is used for a variety of reasons; mine comes in handy for reminders of events and shopping specials.

Social Network Sites

Approximately sixty-seven percent of adults who are online use social networking sites. Forty percent of cell phone owners use a social networking site on their phone. Facebook has one billion active users as of October 2012 and 584 million Facebook users log on to the site daily. In 2014, FaceBook launched sponsored posts allowing users to increase the number of views to their postings. This is intended to expand businesses to a wider demographic in the hopes of growing the business. For more information on FaceBook sponsored posts visit https://www.facebook.com/business/boosted-posts.

Podcasts

Approximately seventeen percent of monthly online users reported viewing video podcasts only, thirty-one percent reported to listening to audio only, and fifty-two percent reported viewing and listening to both video and audio within a given month. Podcasts have become increasingly popular with Apple users. With the recent iOS 8 update, there is an integrated podcast app, which users cannot delete. There are over a thousand free audio and video podcasts for listeners and viewers.

Aids.gov utilizes all three of these social media tools, along with others, with a variety of content intended for users to increase their knowledge of AIDS and HIV. Mobile and social networks are the most popular forms of media tools. Podcasts is more recent, and users are still becoming accustomed to it—I have been an Apple user since I was fifteen (I am currently twenty-two) and I have yet to access a podcast. Mobile and social networks are more likely to reach audiences more effectively being they are already used by a high amount of people and podcasts are relatively new.