Social media has a powerful impact on our lives, whenever we realize it or not.

Thanks to it, we now can receive the latest news and updates on family and friends literally from our fingertips. Some may deride its existence while others live by it. To utilize social media, it's better to use it to inform other people rather than talk about yourself.

Now if you are just posting in order to connect to family and friends, then it's okay to be a "me-former" and bring up your life, so long as you are careful about what you post. If you're going for a professional image and hope to accomplish something notable with it, then the only answer is to be an "informer."

For one, being an "informer" requires being informed about the subject matter. If you claim to say, be interested in Latin American history but often get facts wrong about modern Latin American politics, you're not going to be taken seriously by an audience critical of the information they want to consume. You can turn heads is by knowing what you are talking about.

Digging up information about Latin America, most people don't realize that being actively involved in the conversation can turn some heads. Proving scholarly knowledge of the subject at hand can be done through making posts serving to inform people of important events and why people need to pay attention.

Given that social media posts emphasize conciseness, this helps reach your work out to a wider audience. The benefit of social media is that people who normally wouldn't care about your topic of choice now have the opportunity to be exposed.

Using relevant hashtags is important towards finding success on social media. Not only do you need them, you must make wise choices with them. If the topic you're concerned about is fashion, your target audience does not need to hear about an irrelevant game from twenty-five years ago or how the latest movie is so awesome. Use only what will interest your audience in the product, not anything else.

If you have a longer article for a topic you want to discuss, post about it on social media. Simply link to it, preferably using bit.ly, seeing as it shortens links, put in a small blurb advertising it, and then spread it around to everyone who is interested in the same topic as you. Doing so won't give you millions of views, but it will start as a slow build up towards building a large audience.

It always pays to make a professional social media account informative about something you're passionate about.