Popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. have been an integral part of our life. The presence of social media has been essential in both our personal and professional lives. The presence of social media is important for business as well and if businesses miss from social media marketing then they miss a lot on the table.

Social media is an interactive application on the internet that allows people to share their content and ideas via virtual networks. Since communication has been a key part of human life to strengthen the relationship, social media has been an effective tool. This web-based communication tool helps to connect people from all around the world.

With the growth of social media, it has become easier for businesses to connect with their potential customers. So, are you keeping up with the growing needs of social media marketing?

The History of Social Media and its Reach

Before social media were introduced, people used to share their content through forums, chatrooms, and tripod webpages. Social media started in the early 2000s but history dates even earlier. The first and real social media site ever created was Six Degrees founded in 1997 by Andrew Weinreich. The media could view friends lists, profiles, and instant messaging but the site was closed in 2001 because less than 2% of the population was using the Internet back then.

Next, Friendster was started in 2001 with over a million users and more. Similarly, there were other competitors like Hi5 but MySpace stood out more popular with over half a billion users. Then, Facebook was introduced by Mark Zuckerberg and Harvard students in 2004. Initially, Facebook was limited to Harvard students only but later the membership was established worldwide with numbers of users exceeding 2.2 billion in 14 years. Similarly, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, etc. also began to get popular and Tik Tok has become popular among younger groups.

Nowadays, almost everyone has a social media account on the Internet. At least 3.5 billion people are online and it covers about 45% of the total population. It is reported that an average person has a minimum of 7 accounts on the Internet. With this influence of social media, business now are considering to choose social media marketing for business.

Some data to give you perspective:

– More than 75% of social media users check-ins on these platforms every day

-An average person spends an average of 3 hours per day on social networks

– 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers use social media platforms

-About 1.66 billion people log onto Facebook daily

-More than 500 million people are active users on Instagram

– 91% of social media users access the platform through their mobile phones 

How has social media changed the way people consume information?

A study suggests that people remember 80% of what they see. Consuming information has been much easier using visual content and visual platforms. People present their ideas and their business content in social media using fully visual materials which have made their business and marketing strategy more effective, interactive, and evolving.

A survey asserts that about 90% of marketers claimed that social media generated immense exposure for their company. Thus, social media plays a great role in the promotion of one’s business by increasing brand loyalty among the user, the growth of the social community, and ensuring to build a more -solid relationship with customers.

You may use the same traditional efforts you make to promote your business on many of the social media platforms. By incorporating the tips and tricks, you will see a higher variation in the outcome. About 73% of marketers believe that their efforts of marketing through social platforms have been somewhat effective or very effective for their business. Social media are dominant in this case.

Considering this effect, the change we can see is in the use of social media platforms for brand promotion and awareness. To make your business reach out to a higher number of audiences, you should focus on these helpful tips:

• Choosing multiple and right platform
• Using personalized messages
• Using related hashtags
• Building relationships with social influencers online
• Addressing problems
• Improving search engine ranking using SEO skills
• Consistency

How has social media marketing changed?

Nowadays, social media has been a successful platform for promoting one’s business. People use social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tik Tok etc. widely to promote their business. Social media has been a very effective tool to make positive impacts on customer experience. 

There are more than 3.03 billion active social media users with 1.66 billion and 500 million active users on Facebook and Instagram only. Social media gains new users every 15 seconds and the number of users has grown by 121 million from the second to the third quarter of 2017. So, the percentage of adult users of social media has increased from 5% in 2005 to 79% in 2019. 

Reports suggest that people spend more than six hours per day using digital media. They further confirm that about 71% of consumers, if they have a positive impression of the brand from social media platforms, are more likely to recommend the brand to their friends and family.

Knowing all these major facts, you should focus on marketing through digital platforms. Social media allows your brand to grow followers and build a relationship with your customers. Since we are focusing on awareness, you should be consistent with your content, use interactive elements and designs, test how the content is working, communicate with the user and address the problems.

What to work on?

Creating good content is very essential in the first place. You should ensure that your content has the necessary keywords and enhanced SEO to improve your search engine ranking. Your content will not get proper ranking in the absence of this key component i.e SEO skills. For this, you can acquire the skills on your own. Else you can hire a writer with the skill online.

Then, you should work on choosing the right platform. Surprisingly, 85% of participants aren’t sure which digital marketing platform to use as per their needs. So, choosing the correct platform concerning your business is very important. Social media makes the customer experience more interactive, with great content and the correct platform, you can make your business content more cost-effective, increase the conversion rate and improve the search engine ranking.

Similarly, you should be consistent with your content. And your focus should be on turning your business into a brand, and you should work accordingly. You should be addressing the problems of the viewers and make your business more transparent. Doing this will prosper your business.

Investor Richard Branson said that an entrepreneur who does not have a social media presence is at a competitive disadvantage naturally. If you are ever planning a business no matter the size, you should give more focus to advertising through social media. Social media marketing can fortify your other marketing efforts by reaching out to your content to a higher number of audiences and using visual content.