By
- Ben Lutkevich,Technical Writer
- Ivy Wigmore
What is social media?
Social media is a collective term for websites and applications that focus on communication, community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration.
People use social media to stay in touch and interact with friends, family and various communities. Businesses use social applications to market and promote their products and track customer concerns.
Business-to-consumer websites include social components, such as comment fields for users. Various tools help businesses track, measure and analyze the attention the company gets from social media, including brand perception and customer insight.
Social media has enormous traction globally. Mobile applications make these platforms easily accessible. Some popular examples of general social media platforms include Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
What are the business applications of social media?
In business, social media is used to market products, promote brands, connect to customers and foster new business. As a communication platform, social media promotes customer feedback and makes it easy for customers to share their experiences with a company. Businesses can respond quickly to positive and negative feedback, address customer problems and maintain or rebuild customer confidence.
Social media is also used for crowdsourcing. That's the practice of using social networking to gather knowledge, goods or services. Companies use crowdsourcing to get ideas from employees, customers and the general public for improving products or developing future products or services.
Examples of business to business (B2B) applications include the following:
- Social media analytics. This is the practice of gathering and analyzing data from blogs and social media websites to assist in making business decisions. The most common use of social media analytics is to do customer sentiment analysis.
- Social media marketing (SMM). This application increases a company's brand exposure and customer reach. The goal is to create compelling content that social media users will share with their social networks. A key components of SMM is social media optimization (SMO). Like search engine optimization, SMO is a strategy for drawing new visitors to a website. Social media links and share buttons are added to content and activities are promoted via status updates, tweets and blogs.
- Social customer relationship marketing. Social CRM is a powerful business tool. For example, a Facebook page lets people who like a company's brand to like the business's page. This, in turn, creates ways to communicate, market and network. Social media sites give users the option to follow conversations about a product or brand to get real-time market data and feedback.
- Recruiting. Social recruiting has become a key part of employee recruitment strategies. It is a fast way to reach a lot of potential candidates, both active job seekers and people who were not thinking about a job change until they say the recruitment post.
- Enterprise social networking. Businesses also use enterprise social networking to connect people who share similar interests or activities. These applications include internal intranets and collaboration tools, such as Yammer, Slack and Microsoft Teams, that give employees access to information and communication capabilities. Externally, public social media platforms let organizations stay close to customers and make it easy to conduct market research.
What are the benefits of social media?
Social media provides several benefits, including the following:
- User visibility. Social platforms let people easily communicate and exchange ideas or content.
- Business and product marketing. These platforms enable businesses to quickly publicize their products and services to a broad audience. Businesses can also use social media to maintain a following and test new markets. In some cases, the content created on social media is the product.
- Audience building. Social media helps entrepreneurs and artists build an audience for their work. In some cases, social media has eliminated the need for a distributor, because anyone can upload their content and transact business online. For example, an amateur musician can post a song on Facebook, get instant visibility among their network of friends, who in turn share it on their networks.
What are the challenges of social media?
Social media can also pose challenges to individual users, in the following ways:
- Mental health issues. Overuse of social apps can result in burnout, social media addiction and other issues.
- Polarization. Individuals can end up in filter bubbles. They create the illusion of open discourse when the user is actually sequestered in an algorithmically generated online community.
- Disinformation. Polarized environments foster the spread of disinformation where the perpetrator's intent is to deceive others with false information.
Businesses face similar and unique social media challenges.
- Offensive posts. Conversations on intranets and enterprise collaboration tools can veer off into non-work-related subjects. When that happens, there is potential for co-workers to disagree or be offended. Controlling such conversations and filtering for offensive content can be difficult.
- Security and retention. Traditional data security and retention policies may not work with the features available in collaboration tools. This can raise security risks and compliance issues that companies must deal with.
- Productivity concerns. Social interaction, whether online or in person, is distracting and can affect employees' productivity.
What are enterprise social media best practices?
It is important for companies to have a social media strategy and establish social media goals. These help to build trust, educate their target audience and create brand awareness. They also enable real people to find and learn about a business.
Here are some social media social media best practices for companies to follow:
- Establish social media policies that set expectations for appropriate employee social behavior. These policies should also ensure social media posts do not expose the company to legal problems or public embarrassment. Guidelines should include directives for when an employee must identify them self as a company representative and rules for what type of information can be shared.
- Focus on platforms geared to B2B marketing, such as Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Put in place an engaging, customer-centric strategy in social media campaigns. An example would be to use Twitter to field questions from customers.
- Include rich media, such as pictures and video, in content to make it more compelling and appealing to users.
- Use social media analytics tools to measure user engagement with content and to keep on top of trends.
- Use a conversational voice in posts that comes across as professional but not rigid.
- Shorten long form content to make it social friendly. Lists and audio and video snippets are examples.
- Embrace employees and customers talking positively about the organization and repost that content.
- Check in on analytics and management tools frequently, if not on a daily basis, as well as the social media accounts.
What are the different types of social media?
The four main categories of social platforms are these:
- Social networks. People use these networks to connect with one another and share information, thoughts and ideas. The focus of these networks is usually on the user. User profiles help participants identify other users with common interests or concerns. Facebook and LinkedIn are good examples.
- Media-sharing networks. These networks focus is on content. For example, on YouTube, interaction is around videos that users create. Other media-sharing networks are TikTok and Instagram. Streaming platforms like Twitch are considered a subset of this category.
- Community-based networks. The focus of this type of social network is in-depth discussion, much like a blog forum. Users leave prompts for discussion that spiral into detailed comment threads. Communities often form around select topics. Reddit is an example of a community-based network.
- Review board networks. With these networks, the focus is on a review, usually of a product or service. For example, on Yelp, users can write reviews on restaurants and endorse each other's reviews to boost visibility.
What are examples of social media?
Here are some examples of popular web-based social media platforms:
- Facebook is a free social networking website where registered users create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues.
- LinkedIn is a social networking site designed for the business community. Registered members can create networks of people they know and trust professionally.
- Pinterest is a social curation website for sharing and categorizing images found online. The main focus of Pinterest is visual, though it does call for brief descriptions of images. Clicking on an image will take a user to the original source. For example, clicking on a picture of a pair of shoes might redirect a user to a purchasing site; an image of blueberry pancakes might redirect to the recipe.
- Reddit is a social news website and forum where site members curate and promote stories. The site is composed of hundreds of sub-communities called subreddits. Each subreddit has a specific topic, such as technology, politics or music. Reddit site members, also known as "redditors," submit content that members vote on. The goal is to elevate well-regarded stories to the top of the site's main threadpage.
- Twitter is a free microblogging service for registered members to broadcast short posts called tweets. Twitter members can broadcast tweets and follow other active users' tweets using several platforms and devices.
- Wikipedia is a free, open content encyclopedia created through a collaborative community. Anyone registered on Wikipedia can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles.
The takeaway
Social media is everywhere. Individuals and businesses of all sizes and types use it. It's a critical resource for engaging with customers, getting customer feedback and expanding company visibility.
An effective social strategy can enhance an organization's reputation and build trust and awareness among a growing network of connections. While some are more tailored to B2B promotion, no platforms are off limits.
This was last updated in September 2021
Continue Reading About social media
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FAQs
What is defined as social media? ›
Social media is a collective term for websites and applications that focus on communication, community-based input, interaction, content-sharing and collaboration. People use social media to stay in touch and interact with friends, family and various communities.
What is the main purpose of social media? ›Social media allows individuals to keep in touch with friends and extended family. Some people will use various social media applications to network and find career opportunities, connect with people across the globe with like-minded interests, and share their own thoughts, feelings, and insights online.
Why is it called social media? ›In the Social Media model, information now runs both ways between the authority source and the reader. This ability to communicate directly and immediately with the source of news is a major change in the way information gets handled. Because of its direct, one-to-many-and-back-again method, it's called “social.”
What are benefits of social media? ›- Build relationships. Social media is not just about brands connecting with their customers. ...
- Share your expertise. Social media gives you an opportunity to talk about what you know and what you want to be known for. ...
- Increase your visibility. ...
- Educate yourself. ...
- Connect anytime.
Social media is the communal interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities. It has become the basic need and quality of human beings to be social.
What is social media advantages and disadvantages? ›| Pros of Social Media | Cons of Social Media |
|---|---|
| People Can Connect Through Social Media | Reduces Face-to-face Communication Skills |
| Good Source of Up-to-Date Information | Fake News |
| Social Media Is Beneficial to Education | People's Addiction to Social Media |
However, multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Social media may promote negative experiences such as: Inadequacy about your life or appearance.
What are the 7 functions of social media? ›In "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media", researchers provide a framework that defines social media, which includes seven functional social media building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups.
What type of people uses social media? ›- The Listener. An active social media user who prefers to fly under the radar. ...
- The Activist. A compassionate heart and desire for change gives this type of social media user a knack for promotion. ...
- The Spammer. ...
- The Passionista. ...
- The Social Butterfly. ...
- The Troll. ...
- The Influencer. ...
- The Early Adopter.
Why is social media important? Social media is important because it allows you to reach, nurture, and engage with your target audience — no matter their location. When a business can use social media to connect with its audience, it can use social media to generate brand awareness, leads, sales, and revenue.
Who started social media? ›
The First Social Networks
Six Degrees founder Andrew Weinreich, sometimes referred to as the father of social networking, created his platform to help people connect with people they didn't know (yet).
Although there are important benefits, social media can also provide platforms for bullying and exclusion, unrealistic expectations about body image and sources of popularity, normalization of risk-taking behaviors, and can be detrimental to mental health.
What is the first social media? ›May 1997: Six Degrees
Six Degrees is widely considered to be the very first social networking site. Founded by Andrew Weinreich in May 1996, the site launched the following year and combined popular features such as profiles, friends lists and school affiliations in one service.
Social media plays an important role in every student's life. It is often easier and more convenient to access information, provide information and communicate via social media. Tutors and students can be connected to each other and can make good use of these platforms for the benefit of their learning and teaching.
What is the best way to use social media? ›Connect with loved ones.
Social media is a great way to stay in touch with your friends and family, whether they live nearby or across the globe. Use your social media channels to reach out and see how your loved ones are doing, share personal stories and photos and remind you of the important people in your life.
Social media is the fastest-growing communication medium. Social media comprises latest communication and social networking sites through the virtual medium of the internet. With the development of technology and different social media platforms, the world looks smaller.
What is the introduction of social media? ›Introduction to Social Media
Social media is a web‐based technology to facilitate social interaction between a large group of people through some type of network. In common widely used network is the Internet. But social media platforms are also for local networks as well.
In addition, it strengthens bonds with your loved ones. Distance is not a barrier anymore because of social media. For instance, you can easily communicate with your friends and relatives overseas. Most importantly, it also provides a great platform for young budding artists to showcase their talent for free.
What are Negative Impact of social media? ›Social media harms
However, social media use can also negatively affect teens, distracting them, disrupting their sleep, and exposing them to bullying, rumor spreading, unrealistic views of other people's lives and peer pressure. The risks might be related to how much social media teens use.
- Building Relationships and Staying Connected. Social media can make it easy to find groups of like-minded people or make new friends. ...
- Finding Your Voice. ...
- Showing Empathy and Kindness. ...
- Offering Support. ...
- Better Communication. ...
- Spreading News. ...
- Building a Business. ...
- Establishing Authority.
Why social media is important in daily life? ›
Social Media allows people to interact in ways we could never imagine, how we did till now without it. It is quite easy to catch up on someone's life through a simple message on the computer or mobile phone, even email. Social media enables communication for not only one's personal life but also for business life.
How important is social media in communication? ›The importance of social media in communication is a constant topic of discussion. Online communication has brought information to people and audiences that previously could not be reached. It has increased awareness among people about what is happening in other parts of the world.
What are the five uses of media? ›Five uses of media by adolescents can be specified: entertainment, identity formation, high sensation, coping, and youth culture identification.
What is another term for social media? ›The term social media platform is often used to mean the same thing as “social media network” or “social media channel”.
What are the features of social media? ›The main features of social networking apps and sites include content sharing, follow and send requests, private communication, chat and live video, push notifications, etc.
What is the most used social media? ›Facebook
With nearly 3 billion monthly users, Facebook is inarguably the largest and most popular social media platform in the world.
How many people use social media? Social media usage is one of the most popular online activities. In 2021, over 4.26 billion people were using social media worldwide, a number projected to increase to almost six billion in 2027.
Did you know facts about social media? ›One of the mind-blowing facts about social media is that; there are nearly 3.5billion active social media users, and every 6.4 seconds a new account has been created. Every user has an average of 7.6 social media accounts. They spend around 142 minutes on social media every single day.
How old is social media? ›Social media started in the early 2000s
The first social media site to reach a million monthly active users was MySpace – it achieved this milestone around 2004. This is arguably the beginning of social media as we know it.
It's been able to provide a source of entertainment and shopping, and many businesses have even found it useful for promotion and marketing. At this point, social media has had such a huge impact on society that it seems like people couldn't live without it.
How social media is addictive? ›
Using social media can lead to physical and psychological addiction because it triggers the brain's reward system to release dopamine, the “feel-good” chemical. Dopamine is actually a neurotransmitter (a chemical messenger between neurons) involved in neurological and physiological functioning.
How social media affects students? ›It is easy to become addicted, and research shows that students who spend too much time on social media can suffer from poor sleep, eye fatigue, negative body image, depression, anxiety, cyberbullying, and more.
What are the positive effects of media? ›Some positive effects include: Motor skills are improved by typing, clicking, playing games, and other tech related finger skills. Hand eye coordination or even quick thinking can be helped. Access to mass news media can improve reading skills.
How do the media affect you in your daily life? ›Emotion. Multiple studies have shown that unlimited use of social media causes stress, bad moods and negative mental health. Many people wake up in the morning and immediately check their Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter.
Why did social media start? ›At first, social media existed to help end users connect digitally with friends, colleagues, family members, and like-minded individuals they might never have met in person.
What is the history of social media? ›The first recognizable social media site, Six Degrees, was created in 1997. It enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with other users. In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular, creating a social media sensation that's still popular today.
How many social media are there in the world? ›Analysis from Kepios shows that there are 4.74 billion social media users around the world in October 2022, equating to 59.3 percent of the total global population.
Is email and texting considered social media? ›“Why isn't e-mail social media?” E-mail is definitely social but not considered social media. It is tricky using the term “social media” because as an industry term it only covers a subset of media that can be social. The key to social media really is effective mass collaboration (v.
Is texting on social media? ›That's why you now find a number of marketers talking about “Is Texting social media or not?” The basic rule of thumb is that the testing isn't social media because it has a wider aspect as compared to social media.
Is YouTube a social media? ›YouTube – Yes, YouTube is considered a social media platform. What's more, it is also the 2nd most-used search engine following Google.
What's the best social media platform? ›
Absolutely NOT! Gmail is used for organizing, sending, and receiving email messages which will eventually take over completely from “Snail Mail” (that stuff that comes through your letterbox and lands on the floor) and Social Media is used for socialising and finding a business or social friends.
Why is social media important for communication? ›The importance of social media in communication is a constant topic of discussion. Online communication has brought information to people and audiences that previously could not be reached. It has increased awareness among people about what is happening in other parts of the world.
What SMS means? ›SMS stands for Short Message Service and is commonly known as texting. It's a way to send text-only messages of up to 160 characters between phones.
Is it rude to text k? ›It's seen as something that we send when we're mad, frustrated, or otherwise want to put an end to a conversation. “K” is rude, dismissive, or cold. While some of us might still view “K” unattached to a nefarious meaning, it appears that the vast majority of us are well aware of its reputation.
Is Messenger a social media? ›Messenger is a social messaging app attached to Facebook. It currently has 1.3 billion users and is one of the most popular messaging apps. Originally, Messenger started out as a feature that was included as part of Facebook's interface.
Is Google a social media? ›Assessments of Google+ growth varied widely, because Google first defined the service as a social network, then later as "a social layer across all of Google's services", allowing them to share a user's identity and interests.
How many people use social media? ›...
Social Media Statistics Details.
| Network | Active users (MM) |
|---|---|
| 2853 | |
| YouTube | 2291 |
| 2000 | |
| 1386 |
“One is less likely to get FOMO anxiety, too, and leaving social media will allow you to cultivate better relationships with the people around you. It can also let you enjoy the things you have and instead of focusing on what you don't,” boosting your confidence and your overall sense of wellbeing.
What are the 7 functions of social media? ›In "Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media", researchers provide a framework that defines social media, which includes seven functional social media building blocks: identity, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of social media? ›
| Pros of Social Media | Cons of Social Media |
|---|---|
| People Can Connect Through Social Media | Reduces Face-to-face Communication Skills |
| Good Source of Up-to-Date Information | Fake News |
| Social Media Is Beneficial to Education | People's Addiction to Social Media |
However, multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-harm, and even suicidal thoughts. Social media may promote negative experiences such as: Inadequacy about your life or appearance.