Social media has become an integral part of the lives of millions of people around the world. In the United States alone, over 72% of people have some sort of presence online through social media and it is easy to see why. Through social media, people can keep up with their friends, absorb the daily news, and explore different fields of interest.
But this widespread adoption of social media has created a burgeoning industry that stands to profit off of this growth. The use of social media by businesses is not a new idea by any means. Things have been advertised on the internet since its inception, but the new age of social media presents new ways for brands to get their name heard by millions of people.
This wild-west of internet-mediated growth has left many consumers and producers wondering what this industry has to offer in terms of methods to build a brand’s presence online. Here is a quick background on social media’s relationship with business advertisement and why it is becoming more important to solidify an online business presence.
Social media’s beginnings are rooted in the heyday of the internet. Early resemblances of the modern-day social media platform as we know it was started with communication services offered through companies like America Online and CompuServe. These platforms allowed users to communicate with friends, family, or strangers using the internet. These early platforms had no real advertisement presence and businesses had no real incentives to pursue growth through these mediums.
This would change with the creation of social media sites as we know them today. MySpace’s creation in 2003 and Facebook’s launch in 2004 started a revolution in the online space with millions of people hopping onto the internet to create profiles. Facebook would eventually “win” against MySpace in the race for dominance in this field and today, around 1.7 billion people have a Facebook account.
Advertisement through these social media platforms came along with their explosive growth at the time. Many in the marketing departments of major companies, corporations, and businesses realized that a wide variety of people were now gathered in a place for easy and efficient advertisement. So, thus began the social media marketing industry that we see today.
Advertisement through social media comes in many different forms. For starters, there are specialized and different advertising methods for each social media site. Something that works for Instagram may not work so well for Twitter but the general ideas stay the same across many different sites.
Building a profile around your specific brand is the most basic form of advertisement through social media. Making a profile that can attract new users to share and follow a business’ posts is essential in growing an audience for a good or service. On top of this, it is important in this method to retain followers that can consistently spread the word about a business.
With this comes a whole assortment of methods to drive people to a specific brand or business page. One method that has become popular recently is through paying an advertising agency to like posts for a specific profile. With this method, a large number of instant likes flood a post and drive its spread around the platform. Sites like Instagram heavily incentivize pages to get a large number of eyes on a post and will spread the post further to more users.
Also, directly paying a social media site like Instagram and Facebook to advertise for you is another option that works very well. These sites have perfected and are constantly improving algorithms to push certain products and brands to those that it deems more likely to benefit from seeing the advertisements.
All of these different methods of advertisement through social media can prove crucial to growing a successful business online. With so many users flocking to social media every day for hours at a time, the use of advertisements through these sites can make a massive difference in online presence for a business. When a business can grow a consistent and ever-growing audience on social media it results in more eyes on a good/service and more sales at the end of the day.
A large amount of research has been done in the field of social media marketing over the years. The consensus that has been reached shows that businesses who can successfully navigate and use social media to their advantage will see more business than if they had not. With this being said, it becomes pivotal to any business that has not made a transition over to social media yet that they do soon.
There are obvious shortcomings to advertising solely through social media. Namely, being buried in the massive amount of brands trying to get their name out, in the same way, is a major consideration when thinking about establishing a massive online presence. Social media has become one of the most widely adopted parts of human life in the last decade and it stands as an essential field for businesses to adapt to.