Internet had changed the way people communicate and organise their daily life. Over the last decade or so, the rise of social media had erased the barrier between people living in different part of globe and brought them closer. Hence in turn had affected various aspects of social interaction among the people.
Today we can share personal or news stories, videos and photos, participate in online discussions, follow interesting people or company based on personal interests using different social medias.
At personal level, or as an individual, you can use social media to be entertained, communicate with family and friend, and develop new interests. You can build a link of people often referred to as followers and widen the network. A blogger blogging in particular niche and sharing it on Twitter, Facebook is an example.
On a professional level, social media allows to build your professional network and target wider range of audience. Same as in personal, a network of follower can build.
On a business level, companies or corporates or even governments can use social media to reach their audience, elevate their brand, and gain customer feedback. Recent studies have shown people are highly impacted by the information in social medias, and can be quiet crucial to make or break the deals.
Social Media Sites or Social Media Categories
Social media can be categorised in various categories. Some of the post popular forms are listed below:
- Blogs - online journals with content in various. Among the popular platforms that can host blogs for free are included WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr.
- Wikis - collective websites where users are allowed to create new pages or modify any pages. Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia, is a well-known example of using wiki technology.
- Social bookmarking – these are websites that allow users to share and organize links to other websites. Some examples are Alltop, Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit.
- Social network sites –allow individuals to create a public profile and share a connection with a list of other users. Popular examples of social network websites are Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and LinkedIn.
Among the most popular social media websites are Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, WordPress, Tumblr, Google+ and YouTube.
Facebook is a social networking website that allows users from around the world to interact and network with family and friends, organizations, and companies. Users can post on their Facebook Page various content, including event listings, photo albums, videos, links to news stories and more.
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging website that allows users to post updates up to 140 characters long. It does allow to direct message between the people that are following each other.
Google+ is social media network that allows to share content, images, videos to followers and made public for larger audience. User can interact and join in various communities based on personal interests.
WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr etc allows user to blog or write articles on various topics and niche.
Instagram is a social networking website that allows its users to share short videos and pictures.
LinkedIn is a social networking website that is business-related and it is used for professional networking. LinkedIn pages contain job postings, business updates, research projects, academic programs, and more.
Pinterest is a social networking site that allows to create pin boards, organize and share content. The website offers creative and inspirational content such as design [web and architect] projects, recipes, fashion etc.
YouTube is the largest video sharing website in the world where users can create their own channel and publish and share their video creations.
Social Media Strategy – Shall I have one?
Recent online researches have shown that when it comes to recommendation for a brand, a service, or a product, people trust more their connections than any other marketing campaign. For this reason, the more followers a company creates on social media networks, the more potential customers they’ll have.
It’s getting quiet common people are interacting via social medias to say thanks to any product or services. On reverse side, social media had also been platform to complain about too. Good or bad the impact of social media is not to be neglected.
Social Media Strategy involves finding the social media or list of social media that is best suited for the niche of interest you have or if you are business finding or sorting out social medias channels where you can communicate with your customers or find new ones.
It’s not guaranteed if all the social media can be fruitful for the business. Business or Individual can benefit from a social media but may not benefit from other. So a good social media strategy involves proper planning, finding out right form of social media, knowing behaviour and interest of existing customer as well as probable customers and correctly shaping it up for longer sustainability.
Social Media and Website Traffic
Does social media help in boosting up website traffic? In short and simple answer – Yes it does.
My case studies on different sites that I worked had shown that a proper social media strategy does help in boosting up website traffic.
I am sharing some of interesting facts of my previous projects.
- One of the site I worked on generated more than 90% of traffic via Twitter
- The other site almost generated twice the traffic when posts were shared via facebook. The amount of time spent on site increased quiet significantly too.
- My own portfolio site almost increased the traffic by 20% over the last year since I started blogging and sharing content on Google+
Conclusion
For sure and without a doubt, social media has changed the ways in which people communicate and interact.
For a growing number of individuals social media provides a new way of interacting with relatives, friends, and communities and have some fun and get connected to people online.
For serious blogger and experts on particular niche, it’s been a way to interact with their followers and build up new followings.
For companies and corporates, social media is a mean to reach a large audience and explore new opportunities and wider range of customers.
