50% of the

global population is using social media. That's over 3.8 billion people, and the
number is still growing. In 2019, on average, these users spent two
hours and 24 minutes per day on social
media across devices. In fact, people between
the ages of 16-24, spent close to three hours
a day on social media. These are just some
statistics from HootSuite, a social media marketing
services company. With such a large
audience and high usage, it is no wonder that
social media has become one of the most important
marketing channels. Spending on social
media advertising, is predicted to grow to $83 billion in 2020
according to Zenith. Let's take a closer look at what social media marketing
involves and which platforms and brands define the social media
marketing landscape. Social media marketing is a form of digital marketing that
uses social networking platforms or websites to promote a
product or service. To understand social
media marketing, it's essential to get
a good handle on what a social networking
platform or site even is. Let's take a closer look. In 1996, sixdegrees.com
launched names after the six degrees
of separation theory, which suggests that
any person is related to any other person, through
five intermediaries. If I would take
two random people, person A and B, I can connect them to know
more than five other people. Person A, knows a person,
who knows the person, who knows a person,
who knows a person, who knows a person,
who knows person B. Any two people are no more
than six-degrees apart. Sixdegrees.com was really the first social networking site,
where people could
create a profile, find out who they
were connected to, and built a network they
could communicate with. Soon after other sites emerged that use that same
networking principle, like Friendster, MySpace,
Facebook, and LinkedIn. Initially, these sites we're focused on finding
connections, but very soon they became engines for communication and
information sharing. This timeline was developed
by Miriam Johnson, a senior lecturer at
Oxford Brookes University. It shows the
different brands that contributed to the social
media landscape we know today. I'm sure there are many brands that you recognize
on this timeline, and there are quite a few that you probably
don't recognize. Either, because they're
no longer around, they are prominent
in other countries, or because they serve
smaller niche audiences. Not all social media
brands are included here, so you may know of some that
are not on this timeline. But as you can see, social media is young, and in its
short life, it has gone through many changes. Many different
companies have tried to find social media popularity, some more successful than
others. There are two core elements that typically defined
social media platforms. They let people
connect and they let people create or share content. The connection is crucial, and
that was the big
innovation in sixdegrees. By bringing people together
in one big network, people could connect
with each other and use that connection to communicate or to share
information and links. When people start to
share information, they become content creators. That's another innovative
element in social media. Social media has made
it much easier for people to create and
distribute content online. As a result, content
creation is no longer in the hands of
a few large publishers. From blogging
networks where people share long-form content a right, to video networks like
YouTube and TikTok, where creators upload and share their videos to platforms
like Instagram or Pinterest, where people can grab or take
pictures and share them. All of these platforms
have put users in the driver's seat
when it comes to the content that gets
created and shared. There are different types
of social networks. Some are more focused
on connecting, and others on content creation. Some target broad
audiences and some are more focused on niches
or interest groups. Fred Cavazza divided up the
landscape in few categories. In this overview, he categorizes the social media
platforms in networking, publishing, sharing, messaging, discussing, and
collaborating platforms. Platforms focused on
publishing our sites like YouTube or blogging platforms like Medium or
WordPress, for instance. Instagram, Pinterest
and photo site Flickr are focused on sharing. Then, there other popular messaging
platforms
like WhatsApp, or the more visual
platforms like Snapchat. Sites like Reddit and Quora, can be classified as
discussion or Q&A platforms. Then there are the
collaboration systems, often used inside organizations
like Workplace or Slack. Finally, there are the
networking sites and apps. Some of those are focused
on professional networking, like LinkedIn for instance. Others are focused
on networking around interests like house for
Building and design, or around location
like nextdoor. It helps to get a sense of the many different
sides that make up the social media landscape today, and how all of them have
their specific focus. But many of these brands
span different categories, like Facebook, for instance, which started out as a
networking and sharing platform, but now also has messaging tools, groups, Facebook
Watch and more. Our focused in this program will be on the bigger social networks.
But it's good to
keep in mind that many other social
media platforms exist. Social media allows
people to connect and it's a place where people can
create and share content. Businesses can participate
in social media too. Businesses too can connect
with people or customers, and create and share content. Social media marketing
centers around that. Social media marketing is often split in two
different categories. There's organic or free
social media marketing and paid social media marketing, also called social
media advertising. Let's look at what that means. Organic social media marketing,
refers to all social
media activity that businesses can engage in
without paying a fee. It's an important
part of marketing as social media users have come to expect that their
favorite brands, or the businesses they interact with are present on social media.
Organic social media
marketing typically involves establishing
a business profile, or a business presence in the social media channels
that matter to users. For instance, setting up
a Facebook business page, or an Instagram
account for business. Engaging with users on
social media to post tweets, comments, sharing and so on. Connecting with customers
through messaging platforms
like WhatsApp, for instance, often used for more individual
customer service. Paid social media marketing, or social media advertising, refers
to promoting a
business' presence or message through advertising
on social media platforms. That could be ads on Facebook, or promoted tweets on
Twitter, or promoted posts on
Instagram and so on. Organic and paid social media
marketing go hand in hand. Having a solid, organic
social media presence matters to the success of your
social media advertising. Ads, on the other hand, can strengthen your
organic presence. You'll learn all about
that in this program, but let's look at an example of organic versus paid
social marketing first. Let's take Staples, an
office supply chain. Here is their Facebook page, in which they regularly
post about new products, provide useful tips and so on. They also have a
presence on Instagram. Here are a few of their posts, and you can find
them on Twitter too. Staples posts on these accounts all fall on the organic
social media marketing. They don't have to pay to create these pages or these
posts, and it's a way for them to interact with their
customers and prospects. But Staples also uses advertising on social media
platforms to
reach a broader audience. Here are two examples of ads they ran on Facebook
and Instagram. As opposed to their organic
social media marketing, these are posts that
they did pay for. Social media marketing, let businesses connect with
customers and prospects, and it's an excellent way for businesses to share content
with their audience. They can do this, through both organic, and paid marketing. In
what follows,
we'll look at how business participation in
social media really works.