Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or listen to a report on television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter. Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate too.
Social media often features in political struggles to control public perception and online activity. In some countries, Internet police or secret police monitor or control citizens’ use of social media. For example, in 2013 some social media was banned in Turkey after the Taksim Gezi Park protests. Both Twitter and YouTube were temporarily suspended in the country by a court’s decision. A new law, passed by Turkish Parliament, has granted immunity to Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) personnel. The TİB was also given the authority to block access to specific websites without the need for a court order.[254] Yet TİB’s 2014 blocking of Twitter was ruled by the constitutional court to violate free speech.[255] More recently, in the 2014 Thai coup d’état, the public was explicitly instructed not to ‘share’ or ‘like’ dissenting views on social media or face prison. In July that same year, in response to Wikileaks’ release of a secret suppression order made by the Victorian Supreme Court, media lawyers were quoted in the Australian media to the effect that “anyone who tweets a link to the Wikileaks report, posts it on Facebook, or shares it in any way online could also face charges”.[256]
Expanding your social network beyond your familiar circle of friends can have surprising benefits. It’s those weak ties that bring fresh ideas and unexpected opportunities: a job, an apartment, a mate. The Internet is providing new tools for cultivating and capitalizing on those networks; someone you’ve never met in person could change your life.
Digital marketing’s development since the 1990s and 2000s has changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing.[2] As digital platforms are increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life,[3] and as people use digital devices instead of visiting physical shops,[4][5] digital marketing campaigns are becoming more prevalent and efficient.
If you still think WeChat is just about messaging, you’re vastly underestimating the platform, which now counts more than 650 million users. Weixin, as it’s known in China, is the most dominant social network in the People’s Republic, where Facebook, Instagram and many other apps are blocked. WeChat is where you go to pay bills, hail rides, play casual games, browse news, send friends money, and much more. Today, there are millions of “official accounts” on the platform which act as mini apps within the app, enabling users to interact with brands, services and even celebrities. Looking at what WeChat is to China, you can’t help but think this is what Facebook wants to be to the world.
The Google AdWords Certification is a globally recognized stamp of approval from Google that showcases your knowledge of the latest AdWords tools and best practices as well as your ability to effectively manage AdWords campaigns. AdWords Certified individuals receive a personalized certificate from Google Partners that can be shown to future employers as a way to demonstrate your expertise.
Social media has affected the way youth communicate, by introducing new forms of language.[257] Abbreviations have been introduced to cut down on the time it takes to respond online. The commonly known “LOL” has become globally recognized as the abbreviation for “laugh out loud” thanks to social media.[257] Other catchphrases and neologisms include “YOLO”, which stands for “you only live once”, and “BAE”, which stands for “before anyone else”.[258]
With offline marketing, it’s very difficult to tell how people are interacting with your brand before they have an interaction with a salesperson or make a purchase. With digital marketing, you can identify trends and patterns in people’s behavior before they’ve reached the final stage in their buyer’s journey, meaning you can make more informed decisions about how to attract them to your website right at the top of the marketing funnel.
You have to share your location and other personal information. For the app to work, you need to let it “geotag” you. Also, there are no private profiles, so the only option is to allow anyone to find you.
Measuring Success with Analytics — You can’t determine the success of your social media marketing strategies without tracking data. Google Analytics can be used as a great social media marketing tool that will help you measure your most triumphant social media marketing techniques, as well as determine which strategies are better off abandoned. Attach tracking tags to your social media marketing campaigns so that you can properly monitor them. And be sure to use the analytics within each social platform for even more insight into which of your social content is performing best with your audience.
Intensifying competition. Digital channels are relatively cheap, compared with traditional media, making them within reach of practically every business of every size. As a result, it’s becoming a lot harder to capture consumers’ attention.
If your company is B2B, your digital marketing efforts are likely to be centered around online lead generation, with the end goal being for someone to speak to a salesperson. For that reason, the role of your marketing strategy is to attract and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website and supporting digital channels.
Later, Yo’s creators proved the app was much more than a joke when they opened it up to third-party developers who started connecting Yo to other services. Today, you can use Yo to turn on your lights, remember where you parked your car, or follow your favorite sports teams, publishers and Instagrammers. There’s also an Apple Watch app, perhaps one of the few apps that really makes sense to have on your wrist. Though the app wasn’t able to sustain its early virality, it proved that “dumb” apps can have brains, too.
On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history… but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications. Written by Columbia Pictures
Kik Messenger is an app that lets kids text for free. It’s fast and has no message limits, character limits, or fees if you only use the basic features. Because it’s an app, the texts won’t show up on your kid’s phone’s messaging service, and you’re not charged for them (beyond standard data rates).
Guided by its young cofounder Evan Spiegel, the app quickly took off with college students and teens who helped buoy the app from obscurity to the top of the charts in the span of a year. Its design was confusing and not intuitive at all — and offered little guidance for newcomers — but all that was intentional, the app equivalent of a “no parents allowed” sign.
Though its popularity with tweens is frequently attributed to their affinity for PG-13 activities, the reasons for Snapchat’s popularity are much more complex. (If not, then any one of the myriad of better-designed copycat apps would have unseated it by now.)
Social media has a treasure trove of benefits to help you grow your business. By using it to learn more about your customers, engage with your audience, and extend your brand reach, you’ll be converted before you know it.
Social networking has grown to become one of the largest and most influential components of the web, but despite how prevalent it is in the Western world (especially among the younger crowd), not everyone uses it or understands it.
Not sure what kinds of content and information will get you the most engagement? For inspiration, look to what others in your industry are sharing and use social media listening to see how you can distinguish yourself from competitors and appeal to prospects they might be missing.
Jump up ^ Hart, Cathy; Doherty, Neil; Ellis‐Chadwick, Fiona (2000-09-01). “Retailer adoption of the Internet – Implications for retail marketing”. European Journal of Marketing. 34 954–974. doi:10.1108/03090560010331441. ISSN 0309-0566.
Set a benchmark. After two weeks or a month of sharing, you can go back through your stats and find the average number of clicks, shares, likes, and comments per post. This’ll be your benchmark going forward. You can come back and update this number at any time as your following and influence grow.
For travelers who like getting off the beaten path, AllTrails is an excellent resource for finding things to do outside (the app features a variety of activities) and it will tell you exactly how hard the options are and how to get to them. Because, I’m guessing, you don’t have a guide book handy.
“Twitter only adds to the noise: it’s simply impossible to pack much context into its 140 characters. All other biases are present as well: in a country like Iran it’s mostly pro-Western, technology-friendly and iPod-carrying young people who are the natural and most frequent users of Twitter. They are a tiny and, most important, extremely untypical segment of the Iranian population (the number of Twitter users in Iran — a country of more than seventy million people.)”
