Learn More About The Birth And Evolution Of Social Media Marketing

28 Aug 2020: More than 3.5 billion people use and engage with social media; that’s about 50% of the world’s total population!

Be it from watching a YouTube video, scrolling through your Instagram stories, or reading tweets on your Twitter feed, you probably have noticed advertisements everywhere.

These advertisements are the basic blocks of online businesses nowadays. Over the years, to tap into the potential of this fast-growing vast market of people, social media websites have emerged as a powerful marketing tool for advertisers.

The Beginning Of Social Media And Marketing 

From the era of newspapers, pamphlets, banners, and magazines, marketing has transformed itself into a new form and now potentially penetrated into every nook and corner of the world.

In the last decade, we’ve made strides into the digital world and opened new avenues for organizations to interact with their customers.

Advertising has now moved to become more personal and is now reaching an unprecedented number of people than ever before.

The roots of social media go as far back to when the internet was first created. Though developed theoretically as a concept in the initial stages, the first recognizable social media took its shape in 1997 with a platform called SixDegrees.

SixDegrees helped in initiating conversations over the internet and has been instrumental in the emergence of social media giants of today, such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, etc.

Where Are We Now? 

Social media has changed the course of marketing tremendously, with organizations pivoting their marketing models to cater to an online audience. The vast majority of organizations have now moved to online-only models as audiences are now more accessible than ever.

With the help of social media websites, it is possible for advertisers to specifically target their desired demographic and showcase their products according to customer preferences.

Online Advertising Made Easy 

One of the best advantages of social media marketing is its ROI (Return on Investment). Nowadays, you don’t have to out-spend your budget just for a single product. You can easily outsmart media platforms and cast a wide net with the help of viral videos and blogs, all without spending a bomb.

Traditional marketing mediums used to be a one-way broadcast system where there was no feedback from the consumers. Today, social media offer real-time feedback from target groups, offering you to tweak your strategy in no time.

Today, if you make a video through instagram video editor apps and release it on the platform, you can use relevant hashtags to let your audience discover you.

This way, you’re reaching a wide range of customers, and at the same time, you are allowing your audience to interact with you and give their feedback through their comments. Plus, if the viewers of your post like what you shared, they will share it with their friends and families.

It’s an endless chain of advertising where your customers are marketing your products on their own. Thanks to social media platforms, advertising is now a reliable and cost-effective solution for growing and small businesses.

Evolution Of Today’s Social Media Platforms 

Today, some of the most popular social media websites, such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. have become household names for all age groups. Every one of them is a market leader in their separate sub-domains, enabling people to interact and share information.

The evolution of these platforms has given common people effective tools to create their own content, resulting in the emergence of a new category of people on the internet known as ‘Influencers.’

Influencers are instrumental in expanding the reach of advertisers and have given social media platforms an additional avenue of monetization.

With influencers having a niche area of creating content, organizations operating in that segment can now collaborate with them, targeting specific groups.

The mining of profile data, preferences, and the use of artificial intelligence have now expanded the horizons for social media marketing.

For example, a digital camera manufacturer can use video outro maker platforms for advertising their product as possibly everyone on the platform uses cameras as their basic tool to capture and edit pictures and videos.

Today digital marketing on social media platforms has made the process more targeted, exhaustive, and cost-effective. The ever-growing digital base of users has made the marketing process more smooth and efficient.

Ecology Of Social Media 

Now we stand at a place where we have several options of media platforms to choose from based on numerous criteria, such as:

• Demography: The number of users on the platform, their age groups, their income, their income, and location to enable Geo-targeting.
• The Purpose of the Platform: Building relationships, news, and articles, conversation, scrapbooking, networking, advertising, etc.
• What It’s Best For:Brand loyalty, Public relations, Brand Awareness, Business Development, Retail, Technology, etc.
• Its Limitations:Limited reach, limitation in characters to use, images only, limited interaction, resource-intensive, etc.

What’s The Future? 

With every passing day, new trends are being introduced for business growth, such as short video format, new trending hashtags, and new challenges. Audiences around the globe are turning towards social media as a form of socializing and entertainment.

With the emergence of innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality, new doors for experimentation, and data analysis have now opened.

These new technologies are now being incorporated not only by social media but have also heavily influenced the new e-commerce and social shopping experiences.

Numerous organizations are now making use of augmented reality to let customers try out their products virtually and share with their friends to get feedback in real-time.

Wrapping Up 

In today’s digital world, marketing has taken a giant leap on the back of social media platforms, disrupting the traditional channels. More than half of the global population is interacting with each other over the internet.

This phenomenon has given leverage to the marketing industry to spread awareness about their products, interact with their client base, and segment customer data to offer a more tailored service.

The opportunities are endless in the digital domain, with constant new innovations arming marketers with adaptable tools to diversify their customer base.