Social Media

Did you know that about 3.81 billion people use social media in 2020? And about 60% of them utilize one of the platforms daily? 

Just after the decade of their inception, from a platform to interact with friends and family they translated into a medium for businesses and more. They have now become a remarkable tool to sensitize people on grave issues, social causes and help to bring the spotlight on topics that need immediate attention.  

Be it a tweet, IGTV video, YouTube video, and Facebook posts – these small functionalities allow people to share their thoughts and opinions on a global level. Global movements like #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #FridayForFuture, #Movember, #YesallWomen #CleanIndiaMission made social media a catalyst to bring about a change in the society. 

From political protests, unjustified laws to ineffective policies, shameful incidents of social issues, social media makes sure everything is on the radar. These movements brought people with shared values together and drove activism. Through these channels people now have first-hand knowledge on issues affecting the communities – it highlights them and offers great impact.  

Social media has four primary purposes – sharing, learning, interacting and marketing. Each platform offers a myriad of advanced tech-enabled features and functionalities – photo sharing, microblogging, videos, discussion, gaming, social networking, branding, social commerce and more. Nowadays, even top decision-makers and politicians churn the maximum visibility and engagement with voters. 

All these campaigns cultivate offline action during an election, signing a petition, a donation, boycotting business or organization or being a volunteer for a movement/cause.  However, social campaigns with social/political context should have a clear call-to-action attached to it. If you fail to do that, then it’s like asking people to run without communicating the benefits and how to do it. It will yield changes and results only if the end goal is quantifiable.  

With a majority of the global population absorbed by these networking platforms, it is safe to assume that social media has become a prominent force that allows a single message to travel across. 

Choose a cause you truly resonate with, add an element of familiarity, make sure it has high shareability, get an ambassador on board, make the campaign visually attractive and share it on the platforms. 

Key Takeaways

With such an enormous appeal and unstoppable force – social media has now become a defining platform where you can raise your voice and be heard. It helps to advance the movement and revolution which matter. 

Nowadays, it has become convenient to create any movement and discover various sustainable, positive, and resourceful communication outcomes with the help of social media. These outcomes can be utilized in a better and effective way to forward your message to society. Research has revealed that 1.23 billion people actively use social media in their daily activities. Social media has enhanced traditional communication techniques to modernized ones leading to the rapid development of technology.

It has also been observed that over the past few years, Twitter and Facebook have changed the global conversation and lifestyles of people across the globe. There are certain areas of society related to the daily routine, where Social Media affects people’s daily activities.

Let us learn why social media platforms are gaining more popularity in the 21st century:

News Source

The source of news consumption by people has almost changed from traditional methods. The majority of people prefer to follow regular updates and stories added by their friends or followers on Social Media. Moreover, hardcore newspapers are replaced by online newspapers available at different sites like Google News, CNN, and various others. This new trend has become the most reliable source of information even than the search engines.

Business Start-up and Pattern

With the surge in Social Media usage, starting and launching a business plan has become effortless and straightforward. Whether online or offline social media promotions get higher engagement rates to startups. A survey reveals that Twitter has become the basic means of marketing for most people in the country. The new businesses do not need a lot of investment for advertisement or promotion of the product. Social media techniques such as blogging and YouTube ads have created new opportunities for clients and customers.

Engagement with the Audiences

Social media enables you to explore your interests in various eras, as you can join the group created by the people who carry the same area of interest as yours. By joining these groups, you can connect with people at different geographical locations and share your respective knowledge with the like-minded audience. A study has observed that Facebook is primarily used to communicate with people and stay in touch with them, while Twitter is used by 41.6% of Internet users to share with their friends. Therefore, a major part of internet usage at social media is finding and maintaining old and new friendships.

Revealing Reality

In today’s time, the increased use of Social Media has made the users' ideas, thoughts, and feelings clear and transparent. CEOs and Top Businessmen use their blogs to express their real expressions based on reservations about reservations. Moreover, established business owners have started sharing personal views on social issues, thereby impacting people's minds. Thus, Social Media has developed greater emotional transparency, whether through any thought, idea, expression, or activity.

A Greater Influence

The power of Social Media is expanding rapidly in the media sector by leaps and bounds. People are free to express their agreement or disagreement to the news portrayed on media. The organizations consider the views of the audience, and various modifications are made due to that. Due to the open and fluid communication channels, the average person's influence increases with the rise in Twitter followers, friends on Facebook, and subscribers on blogs. The ability of every individual is strengthened due to the information-sharing networks. These networks help in guiding or influencing public opinion and different policies of individuals. Such social media influence results in passive communication by some people and active participation by some of them.

Conclusion

Social media has largely impacted and influenced the lives of every individual that uses it. Hence, it is evident from the points mentioned above that the present era is continuously evolving due to the large impact created by Social Media, and the possible reasons why these platforms are gaining popularity in the 21st century.

Social media is a search engine itself that can largely procure benefits for your brand. Before I go any further, I will answer a basic question: What is Social Networking?

A Social Networking service is a mechanism that helps people communicate and share information instantly. 

However, social media is more than just communicating. It has striking advertising capabilities. 

Websites are limited in delivering two-way communication despite call supports or chatbots. With social media on the other hand businesses can achieve multi-channel communication where interaction is possible with every member of the community. 

In 2020, there are 1.69 billion active users on Facebook, 26.9 million on Instagram, and 330 million on Twitter. If Facebook, Instagram and Twitter were a country, they would surpass the world’s most populated country – China. Thus, it has the potential to extend your brand to the people who can be interested in your profile given its advanced demographics.

Here is how businesses can benefit from advertising on Social Media:

Brand Awareness: Social network is a great platform in creating brand awareness with an enormous user base. The most striking benefit is cost-effectiveness. Branding through offline marketing can hit hard on pockets. Along with that even, tracking performance is expensive and not as achievable. 

So, based on how businesses post content about the brand, its journey, manufacturing insights/videos (for manufacturers) it can successfully create trust and buzz amongst viewers. Social Media lets you acquire traffic outside your loyal client circle.

Elevate Conversion: Social media channels are popular for the different kinds of formats, for example, Twitter is popular for short text format limited to only 280 characters, Instagram was originally an image sharing platform, however, now it is highly optimized with features like IGTV long videos and reels for small videos. Similarly, Facebook that has acquired Instagram is largely adopted for advertising. With the business manager, Facebook makes campaigning easy to execute and monitor growth.

With interesting creatives, content and videos, businesses can publish adverts with embedded links to increase conversion rates of their product selling pages.

Paid Advertising: As mentioned earlier, Facebook has extensive support for cultivating and refining campaigns. This further helps you achieve brand recognition, conversions, leads, likes, follows and more. Setting detailed demographics, you can reach the right set of people that are likely to be interested in what you have to offer.

Customer Satisfaction: As we know, Social Media permits two-way communication. That means it allows your consumers to give you genuine reviews about their experience and give businesses as well a chance to ensure that prompt customer service is delivered. Most popular brands use Twitter for the purpose of connecting with their consumer base.

To conclude:

Online advertising is seen spiking over the years. Most large enterprises or popular brands preserve 30% of the advertising quota for online promotions. That explains in itself, the power of social media advertising.

Gone are the days when people were utilizing social media just for “socializing”. Now more than 75% of the online sales are influenced by social media, to reach there you need to post 2-4 posts each day to stay on the top of prospects head. It has become a most-sought-after strategy for businesses worldwide and restaurants are also joining that league at a steady pace.  

As per a study, about 84% of people say they trust online recommendations as much as the recommendations given by a friend/colleague or a family member. They work as social proof – so to leverage on the huge user base these social media channels, you need to start posting. Which platform? Let’s find out!

Instagram 

Nothing makes you hungry or craving for food like the realistic and detailed images that suddenly pop on your feed. You can sell food items with just an adequate picture. Pictures are a superior form of content, especially for the restaurant business. 

Make a stunning profile on Instagram with all the information, CTAs and publish the images/videos. It drives engagement, keeps your customers hungry and wanting more. 

Facebook 

It provides the entire information a person needs to find you – from maps, number, address to opening hours and price categories. You can design targeted ads for your demography with the actionable CTA like “book now”. 

With that, you can categorize your restaurant – good for kids, Vegan, Keto, Good for vegetarian etc. If your restaurant/café/bar has multiple locations then you can list them all at one place. Don’t get involved in blatant self-promotion, do it subtly by engaging with your user base.

Twitter

When we talk about engagement, Twitter gets the maximum traction. It sparks conversations through the funny, relatable and compelling tweets. It’s a go-to platform for people from every age group – so it provides an array of immense opportunities to capitalize on. Burger King, McDonald's, Taco Bell and many prominent players are using it for social listening. 

When the customer is unhappy or extremely satisfied with the product then they go all out on Twitter and tag the brands. It is an outstanding medium to build lasting relationships with customers and create ultimate brand loyalty.  

Final words

After you make profiles on these platforms, keep sharing user-generated content, connect to your customers with posts that evoke dialogue and focus on building the connection. Food is something everyone eats 3 times a day – so you just never know when you make them impulsive just with a sumptuous photo and CTA.

There have always been clouds of confusion about how often one should post on social media. Different theorists laid out their observations and analysis but if you are not a social media strategist or new to it, this question can be literally daunting. 

One by one I will put down theories for each of the popular platforms.

FACEBOOK:

Ahalogy and LocalVox have suggested posting only once a day and three times a week. Excess may make you appear spammy.

Buffer and DowSocial suggest posting twice a day. However, every other including HubSpot, Nulou, Constant Contact, Social Media Week and Adobe stands for 5-10 posts maximum in a week.

According to Neil Patel’s recommendation, if you do not have a following of at least 10000 followers, posting twice is recommended and later can reduce to 1.

Culmination,

Number of posts: 

High: 2 Posts / day

Low: 1 Post / day

Weekly: 10 posts max

Along with posting it is also important to monitor the progress. Facebook provides a tool called Insights. To use this tool, open Facebook Business Page, click insights and select the posts you want to track.

TWITTER: 

Again, there are various conflicting theories. According to Buffer 3 times, a day is the best way to tweet before engagement drops.

However, Constant Contact, LocalVox and HubSpot suggest 5 tweets a day and DowSocial says a minimum of 6 tweets and a maximum 1 tweet every business hour. 

Neil Patel says, a number of tweets should be based on business goals, for higher engagement, it is better to tweet 1-5 times a day.

Despite all the complication, here is the conclusion:

Number of posts: 

High: 5 Tweets / day

Low: 3 Tweets / day

Twitter as well offers analytics to observe tweet performance.

INSTAGRAM:

With Instagram, Adobe and Neil Patel emphasize consistency over the frequency of posts. Moreover, most agree on posting 1 to 3 posts a day while some say there is no maximum limit to Instagram given its easy shareability.

To conclude:

Number of posts: 

High: 2 Posts / day

Low: 1 Post / day

Performance can be tracked with Instagram’s post insights.

LINKEDIN:

It is clearly agreed by all, that on a daily basis it is ideal to post just once on LinkedIn. 

Buffer and Quick Sprout explain that posting 20 times a month helps you get more reach whereas HubSpot and  Constant Contact say post a maximum 5 times a week.

Number of posts: 

High: 1 Posts / day

Low:   -

Final words:

To know what best suits your brand will require some experimentation as well as tracking the performance of your posts for any platform you choose.