What is social media?
Social media basically means a medium for people to interact socially. Interaction may be with one or more people.
As we have grown in the fields of technology, the reach of social media has extended from social and informative sector to the marketing sector. This tool is being increasingly utilized by businesses, content creators, advertisers, government, NGOs to promote website, products or services through Ads and posting etc., to communicate amongst each other and also to interact effectively with potential customers.
Businesses use social media to entice more people in purchasing their products.
Content creators need to reach more number of people with their content.
Government makes the most by publishing strategies, election campaigns, implementation of programmes, surveys, etc.
As more and more businesses and content creators are using social media to reach potential customers and businesses respectively, the software engineers have added several features to make the content individualized on the basis of likes and interests.
Lets explore some of the biggest platforms of social media and their salient features which make them a powerful tool in regards to both the businesses and the customers.
Analysis Tools
If you host a public page on facebook or instagram you should use the insights tool to analyze and characterize your customers. This will give you an idea of what kind of people are interested in your business or content and also which are the posts they like. And then you can form your strategy accordingly.
Hashtags
Hashtags begin with the symbol ‘#’ and give a short idea of the content without using space in between the words. These are so effective in reaching out to more people who are not aware of your business. Hashtags refine the search results to the need of people and thus your content can be visible to new potential customers.
Linked Accounts
These days you might own accounts on several different websites. Most of the websites have encompassed an ability to link up your accounts on several sites at once. So you need not repeat the same content everywhere. E.g. You post a photo to instagram and share it across your linked facebook, twitter and tumblr accounts. You can connect to more people who might not be using instagram without having to post the same photograph manually on each of these sites.
Promotions
Business promotion through social media that feature an eye-catching content to be seen on top of people’s feed and thus get to engage with more people, even those who don’t follow your account. If an interested individual is attracted by your promotion, bingo! You just increased a follower or a sale!
Tags
Tags are used to engage with another business or content creator or people. When you tag them , the photograph will also be visible to their friends and followers and these will help you spread your arms wider at a more personalized level.
Community Tools
Facebook lets you create groups while twitter lets you hold twitter meets. Just like the birds of a feather flock together, people with similar interests join your community or meets. So by this way you can not only interact with your customers, you also provide a platform for the customers to interact with each other. These idea makes your customers the brand models and takes your marketing to the next level.
Sharing and Reposting Tools
These tools let your posts to be shared by other people who feel your content might be of use to their friends and followers.
Moderation Tools
With increasing advantages, in are the several disadvantages. Most important of which are spam comments or text bombs, etc. Most of the social media networks consist of tools which let you moderate and subsequently hide spam, derogatory or unwanted comments, shares, etc., which keeps your content and your business safe.
Apart from these businesses adopt several strategies to reach more number of target customers.
Contests
Contests top the list because of the involvement of a bonus factor, which inspires the customer to participate in some kind of activity. These activities, mostly consist of tagging their friends, sharing the content within their followers, etc. Thus increasing your social media reach.
Posting Customer Photographs
This works as an amazing reinforcement to try and buy more products from your website.
Engaging with content creators and other businesses.
This is actually a mutually beneficiary relationship which may or may not be paid. This helps you engage with followers of another business or a content creator whilst they interact with yours.
Thus social media has not only helped people to connect more, it has significantly helped improve businesses and content creators’ community.
