How Social Media works for your business and affects marketing.
Every small and even giant company has now hopped on and joined the social media bandwagon. It is confirmed that social media is a useful marketing tool – social media is exactly where the people are. Social media has a long and complicated history.
The concept of social media starts with the occurrence of the internet. The internet has its origins in the early 1960s when several organizations try to sort out how to get computers to connect and communicate. In the 1990s, personal computers and internet technology have become an integral and inseparable part of our lives. It also then when the ball starts rolling for the rise of social media.
What is Social Media?
It looks like everyone has their own awareness and opinion of what social media is.
By definition, social media is perceived as a form of online communication used by people to create online communities to share information, ideas, and contents such as informative or entertaining videos.
But let’s try to dive deeper and understand the more elaborated concept of social media.
Social media are internet-based communication mediums that allow us to interact with other people by sharing personal messages and information. Basically, we use social media to get in touch with our friends and families by sharing snippets of our daily lives, sharing our interests, and updating our current whereabouts and lifestyle status. Social media also pave the way for us to reunite with old acquaintances through private messaging and enabling us to meet new people at the same time. Before, we use it solely for entertainment. Still, now, we can catch up with the latest current events and follow trends. It could also be a learning ground for us; there’s a lot of informative and legit content that you can find on social media. We can even promote our business through the smart use of the platforms.
Social media has become immensely larger, thanks to easy access to mobile applications and the internet; social media usage continues to swell globally, and it shows no signs of slowing down even a tiny bit. As of 2020, there are roughly 3.6 billion social media users all over the world. And in 2025, it is expected to increase further to almost 4.41 billion.
In 2018, the average daily social media usage worldwide reached 136 minutes per day. The Philippines was ranked first with the most social media users, and Filipino’s social network usage amounted to over 4 hours per day. Reportedly, there were 73 million social media users and 173.2 million (equivalent to 159% of the total population) mobile connections in the Philippines as of January 2020. Social media log-ins and usage in the United States reached approximately 1 hour and 57 minutes per day.
Can you imagine how influential Social Media is nowadays? The word phenomenal would be clearly an understatement to describe the gravity of social media to people worldwide.
Few social media have become popular before the advent of the many famous social media today. One of those is SixDegrees.com, it was considered to be the very first social media, and then there was Friendster, our online BFF, and considered as one of the original social networks.
Today’s leading and most popular social media are:
Instagram – a photo and video sharing application where people post the highlights of their lives.
Facebook – a social networking site that makes it easy for people to connect with their family and friends online; it contains a chat feature used by many to interact even with people from across the globe.
YouTube – a website that makes it easy for people to watch online videos.
Twitter – a microblogging network that allows you to post a short thought or information and messages called “tweets.”
TikTok – an application that makes and shares short 15-second videos on any subject.
Pinterest – a networking site where people can find inspiration for their interests and leisure pursuit. Every idea is represented by a “pin.”
LinkedIn – a professional networking site that focuses on career development.
What are the helpful and essential features of Social Media?
Personal user accounts: users can create their profile pages based on their user account name. They can include a bio that describes who they are, photos for recognition, their own content preference, and more.
Like and comment buttons: you’ll be able to know your likability based on the number of likes you’ll get, and you’ll learn how interested people are about your page by their comments.
Followers, groups, hashtags: gaining many friends and followers can give you a complex benefit. Worldwide connectivity is one of them. Hashtags help you to generate customers and audiences.
Review, Ratings, and Polls: it helps you know which areas of your business need additional improvement. By doing polls, you’ll get to know what people exactly want.
Messaging feature: it makes communication much more accessible. Social media with chat rooms features give the user a win-win situation.
Some advantages of Social Media include a direct connection with people: you can sign in for free, it could be an educational ground for you, and information spreads fast on social media. Which actually falls under either the advantage category or the disadvantaged category.
What are the Disadvantages of Social Media?
Clearly, there are downsides in using social media, just like there are advantages and disadvantages to everything in our lives.
Social media undeniably changed the whole world and the way we communicate.
Here are some common negatives of social media that most people are familiar with:
1. Security and Privacy Problems: Hacking is still getting worse and remains the top problem in the internet world. The security breach threat is always imminent. Cyberstalking also keeps on resurfacing as one of the leading issues of social media. It’s mostly due to an unprecedented amount of access to people’s information, photos, and history of their whereabouts that can potentially evade one’s privacy.
2. Fake news and Spam: Some sites aim for only one thing: to skyrocket their traffic. By spreading false information, news, and stories, they get to drive their traffic. They are the ones that we need to avoid and be aware of. Causing chaotic confusion and misguided information.
Spammers see social media as a piece of cake. It has become easier for them to bombard people with unnecessary content.
3. You can receive negative feedback: though this could be considered as constructive criticism in the business realm. Some customers will still rant and vent out their negative feedback about your products or services even without supporting evidence.
4. Source of embarrassment – on a more personal aspect, it’s now convenient for many people to post anything on social media that could instantly go viral. Making cyberbullying a subject of frequent argument or discussion.
Most successful businesses and brands on social media formulate strategic marketing and using social media and have taken full advantage of the platforms to help them reach their goals.
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