April 9, 2018
We are living in a world where almost everyone is on social media. Getting a Facebook or Instagram is a norm for virtually everyone who has hit legal age. With platforms like Facebook hitting over one billion daily active users, social media communities are probably the largest that we will ever see. As such, these communities are being put to good use, the most important applications being education and customer outreach.
Talking about customer outreach, it would be wrong to assume that everyone will automatically like your brand’s online marketing campaign. Some behind the scenes work has to be put in, of course. Graphic design tools like Canva come in here. With a few steps, it’s incredibly easy with a tool like Canva to design social media graphic necessary for securing maximum engagement from your social media circles.
Sometimes you could find yourself Wondering, where did it all Start?
Social media platforms date back to 1997 when Six Degrees, the first social media platform, was invented. The fact that it allowed you to put up a profile picture and make friends made it be recognized as the first social platform. From there, an unending social media sensation was born.
At first, the aim of social media was to eliminate barriers that prevent people from keeping in touch with other people. This objective has not changed to date. How else would we keep in touch with friends you met at school?
The popularity of social media platforms among all people sparked social media marketing. This mode of marketing involves the use of online communities to boost sales. Although the exact date when this mode of marketing was born is not known, it has seen enormous success over the years. As a result, it has never been easier for brands and companies to market their products beyond borders. Social media has also presented an effective platform for customer care service.
Why Social Media Marketing has become a Necessity?
Social media has become a necessity for every brand that values success. This is because traditional marketing techniques do not have the impact they used to have before social media became popular. The high cost associated with traditional marketing is yet another downside working for the necessity of Social media marketing.
Facebook allows users to create separate personal and business profiles. This means that the audience does not have to see what the business owner posts on his personal profile. The number of likes that a Facebook page has is the number of fans for that particular brand.
To get maximum traffic, business owners have to customize the design of their Facebook pages and posts. With online tools, it is possible to create a complete website on Facebook. This greatly reduces the costs associated with the buying of website domains. Posting to Facebook guarantees reach to every corner of the world within seconds.
Facebook Insights
With Facebook insights, it is possible to evaluate the success of your product online. This way, business owners are able to identify those areas in their marketing campaign which need improvement. Updates on this feature have made it possible to know exactly who is visiting your page, what they click, and how many times they do it. With such knowledge, it has even become possible for businesses to estimate sales.
Twitter is so similar to Facebook. It follows almost the same idea- create a page and earn traffic. However, Twitter poses a problem for most businesses because most people don’t like it. The lack of an eye appeal compared to Facebook is the main reason behind this. Most people with access to both Twitter and Facebook check the latter more often. There was one more issue with Twitter that it only allowed 140 characters in the posts but interestingly, in a latest update Twitter has increased the count to 280 characters to encourage more people to post.
On the positive side, like Facebook, Twitter allows the use of images. Businesses use graphic design tools to customize their own pages through alluring custom images and professional twitter headers.
For a business, simply having a Twitter account is not enough. Successful Twitter marketing calls for a business to be proactive. The business must be able to keep up with the trends. It must make use of trending hashtags and mention popular pages to ensure that their posts rank well in the Twitter News Feed. This requires a lot of time which automatically means that the business might end up hiring someone for Twitter management.
Bottom Line
All social media avenues have evolved fully and this has made them viable marketing platforms for businesses around the world. The rule surrounding effective social media marketing is to “stay woke”. Devoting only 30 minutes a day to probably put up a post to check the number of likes or re-tweets later might not be enough.
Important to mention, as popular as social media marketing is, businesses need to proceed with caution. They should not see social media avenues as an all-round marketing strategy. Social media platforms should only be seen as a boost to an existing brand’s popularity.
6 replies on “The Evolution of Social Media as Important Online Marketing Platforms”
Interesting, Never Knew about Six Degree.
Thanks for sharing
You are welcome!
Wow! What an amazing insight on how we can implement social media in our business marketing strategy. Loved it! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
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