Ten years ago, when the topic of social media was mentioned, the vast majority of people thought immediately of the website MySpace that prompted millions of Americans to personalize profiles with their favorite songs and rank their top friends.

Today, that phrase encompasses a wide array of platforms and functions. In addition to perusing the traditional website online, social media users can take advantage of countless amenities.

They can network by becoming “friends” with people they have known for years or have never met, “follow” businesses, friends, coworkers and even celebrities lives through status, photo and video updates. They can “favorite” a photo or “like” a post, “retweet” a 140-character status called a “tweet” to endorse it, “mention” another friend or business to share information — the list goes on and on.

As this long list of potentially confusing vocabulary grows, web-savvy users have found their own niches for how they obtain information, the process can get a little complicated, and we’re learning right along with you.

Similar to the way educators learn to adapt to multiple learning types, content creators are learning to adapt their content to different types of readers, and Leader Publications is one of those businesses.

Depending on time or circumstance, we’ve learned that different readers prefer to gather their information in a variety of ways. Sometimes we want our information quick and to the point. Sometimes we want to gather information visually. Sometimes we prefer more text, and sometimes, when we have more time to spend, we want to get a combination of these methods.

The cool thing about the large variety of social media platforms is that there truly is something for every type of reader.

For some time now, our staff has been utilizing Facebook frequently, and Twitter periodically. Moving forward, we will be working to improve the way we post to these networks and more, providing more breaking news, photo galleries, video clips, crowd sourcing and more.

Each of our publications has its own Facebook and Twitter pages. You can follow our Facebook pages by searching the name of the publication in the search bar and clicking “like.”

Our Twitter accounts are @leaderpub, @nilesstar, @dowagiacnews, @cassopolisnews, @edwardsburg news, @LPSportsreports and @michianalife.

We also recently created two new Instagram accounts where we plan to post a variety of pictures and videos ranging from behind-the-scenes photographs to short interview clips. You can follow these Instagram accounts by searching for @LeaderPublications and @MichianaLife. For now, our newspapers will share the @LeaderPublications account, providing a one-stop shop, so to speak, for all of the images and videos we choose to distribute on this application. @MichianaLife will offer followers a chance to view our magazine content in a unique way.

We’d love to gain your feedback on our coverage, and always, we want to know what you want to see.

As we expand our presence on these platforms, I encourage you to take advantage of these newfangled functions and engage with us by liking, favoriting, mentioning, retweeting, etc. to tell us what you’re looking for.

Ambrosia Neldon is the managing editor at Leader Publications. She can be reached by phone at (269) 687-7713, or by email at ambrosia.neldon@leaderpub.com