Having a social media presence can be the most significant and influential boon to your marketing business and overall brand. If you’re trying to secure a massive amount of followers, the key is to know when to post, who’s in your network, and what platform you wish to shout to the world. Timing is everything with social media.
Forget about person to person, eye to eye, and face to face contact. The new connection is all about who’s online and when, which makes social media a necessity in everyone’s lives. The collective’s social media consciousness has amped up in the wake of society’s overwhelmed, introverted ways of doing business.
Oftentimes, users behind the screen feel more at ease in their relationships and conversations than in an up close and personal situation.
Why The Need For Influence?
The effect of social media on business marketing and overall communication efforts shows that the ability to evolve and be present in real life social situations, or a coming-of-age business progression isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When you want to influence the public-at-large, in today’s world, the best measures are through an influential and engaging platform. Go viral, by all means.
Answers lie within each social media platform, network, capabilities, and the audience’s perceptions of each. During the onset of Facebook in 2007, it was simple and user-friendly, and boasted no measures of trying to outscore competitors. It simply became a venue where people from all over the world could connect, discover, and be friends.
How times have changed! Not only has Facebook grown to be a billion dollar business, but LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and numerous other social mainstream connections are always on the cusp of something greater, more exciting, and definitely more influential in the industry’s platform.
If this evolution continues, the social media world of connecting and relating will surpass what ancestors never thought possible: Social media is the new handshake and sharing of a glass of wine.
The Effect Of Social Media In Marketing
Whether you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade or so, social media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Its ability to transform a conversation and subsequent emotional wellness is highly documented. However, social media has a dark side.
There’s been studies and research of users who swear by their onscreen connections and how social media fosters anxiety, depression, false narratives, and possibly liabilities unforseen in real time. Whatever you post on a daily basis gets scrutinized by your peers, by your family, and by your employers.
It’s no wonder that people get upset when they’ve been unfriended or disconnected, or unliked in certain circles, and this goes for all media platforms. Going forward in the world of social media will see a rise in the world’s population engagement. The growth rate is exponential and it’s only going to expand by leaps and bounds.
Marketing and advertising everywhere and anywhere depends on a message ranking high on social media. It’s become a distraction and attraction of the healthiest kind in business, trends, and brands. There’s LinkedIn, which has notoriously been the platform for business owners, employers, and employees alike.
Connections made on LinkedIn typically follow a path of the latest trends in business, job placements, scenarios relating to what’s happening on Wall Street or within our economy, and users posting their own job celebrations and messages. It’s with these daily communications that LinkedIn remains at the top of the heap for connecting with the like-minded in business.
Twitter, on the other hand, is an entity all on its own. Recently, the major hub of quick messages and knee jerk responses has come under the spotlight due to their inability to censor what’s proper and what’s harmful to citizens around the world.
Twitter was designed to be something of a bold and brash way to deliver responses and comments. It’s out of control and potentially damaging to society as a whole. Doubtful it’s going anywhere downstream, as Twitter’s following gets more users every day relying on the hashtags to promote their message.
Instagram is owned by Facebook, and has surpassed primary users based on the ability to use images to tell a story. It’s easy, it’s exciting, and it gleams with gloss and shimmer. For those not on Instagram and continue to regularly post on Facebook, there’s a sense of missing out on attracting those connections who solely rely on Instagram and have abandoned Facebook for one reason or another.
The Etiquette Of Social Media
Before the explosiveness of social media and users depending on it to be at the forefront of their main connecting tool, each company involved spearheaded a type a sort of ‘launch’ outline that social media was to be used to find a job, search for old friends, show vacation photos, display celebrations of family life, and have healthy discussions on what’s trending in the mainstream.
Unfortunately, social media has gone through a metamorphosis that includes hate, criminal activity, divisiveness, silly antics that turn users off, dating and mating, and misquoted or misdated information. There’s been an avalanche of users posting unresearched, untrue, and unmitigated thoughts and comments. As much of a positive tool that social media helps society’s lives on the daily, it also has a dark side.
As a marketer, let’s hope that your momentum with social media is rooted in proper dialogue that includes knowledgeable banter, intelligent data and research, resounding ideas, humorous memes, and sites that are worthy to join.
The Finale
As everyday postings and hashtags, and the common word about an individual’s life, is publicized, social media continues to rank as the number one platform for inspiring and engaging an audience. Your status spreads like wildfire, your influence is revered in numerous social circles or groups, and because of modern technology in society, your livelihood is also up for public debate.
Don’t let that dissuade you. If anything, the world of social media is here to stay. The audience engagement is something our current lives cannot do without, and if there’s anything to gain from a social media platform, it’s the ability to see and be seen.
Here’s to success by keeping the conversation and connection thriving!