Social media can mean a variety of things depending on the person you are asking. It can be a way for people to connect, engage, network and even meet. In today’s society more and more people are becoming active users of social media and using it for multiple hours a day. For individuals, social media can be a very personal tool for them. It allows them to stay connected to friends and companies. It can also be a way for people to express themselves and talk freely about what they believe in. For an organization or business social media can be a useful marketing tool to connect and engage with their customers and promote their products or services. According to Likeable Social Mediaby Dave Kerpen, from a marketing point of view, word of mouth is very powerful and a very effective marketing tool. Which makes world of mouth on social media an even more effective marketing tool because it reaches a larger number of people. This can either take place between friends (or acquittances), or it can take place between a person of high popularity and their audience. Either way the people receiving the message will more likely listen because for them it is a trustworthy source.
Different platforms can change the way people use social media as well. People using Facebook generally stick to friending people they know and interacting with them in person as well as online. This is especially true because to be friends both parties have to initiate something before they can connect with one another, however, Twitter is a little bit different. While you can still keep your following to friends, many people you don’t know can follow you if you have a public account. This can make your reach a bit wider especially if a lot of people follow you and your tweets get more retweets. Because this platform allows retweets, the amount of people that could see one tweet can be multiplied instantly. Platforms like Twitter tend to be a bit more casual and are often a source for many topics including a lot of humor. In my experience someone can have a tweet or two that reach many people but their account as a whole may not reach many at all. Twitter is also often where we see a lot of celebrities express their thoughts.
Another place we see this expression is Instagram. Instagram is a platform where people post personal photos and videos that they want others to see. In my opinion Instagram is one of the most popular platforms for millennials and generation z users. It is also common to see people called influencers on here. Influencers are people that have a larger voice on a platform. They are usually well liked by a number of people and have some type of influence over them, hence the name influencers. Influencers tend to endorse products either because they like it or because the company is giving them some kind of compensation. Either way when users see this endorsement from this trusted influencer, it usually causes the product or company to be more desirable.
While social media generally means the same thing for most people, everyone has their own interpretation of it. There are even more ways others can use and interpret social media, but this is what comes to mind when I think of social media and how I think of social media being used.
Kerpen, D. (2019). Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, And Be Generally Amazing on All Social Networks That Matter (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.
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