Messaging apps and social media platforms have been in an instant fight during the last couple of years. The fact is, it’s getting more challenging for social media to compete and this is not just a statement; The Statistics Portal claims that the number of active messaging app users exceed the number of social media users. Moreover, this is a continuous rising phenomenon for both people and businesses.

Ever wondered why is this happening? Well, let’s explore several favorable features messengers have as well as the reasons behind this abrupt shift of people from the public to private networks.

Privacy and Security

Messaging security and encrypted communication are mainly the most important factors people are looking for while choosing a messenger for their daily usage. Some modern messaging apps protect our data by not storing users’ messages, calls, videos and other private information on the servers. This means that only you possess your messaging history and only you have access to your private information.

Effective and Simple

In the era of advanced technologies, simplicity is power. Social media networks contain too many overwhelming features and buttons, too irrelevant content and dizzy experience. In contrast, messengers are more straightforward to use – file sharing, call forwarding, voice and video calling, making cheap international calls are super easy to organize!

Utmost Speed

Since messengers are not as overloaded as social media, they operate faster even in problematic conditions, such as poor internet connection or crowded Wi-Fi. At the same time, messaging apps consume low data and care about your wallet. After all, who wants to pay unjustified bills for reaching out friends and family? No one!

Marketer’s Heaven

The information flow of social media is vertiginous. To control this, social media platforms use various algorithms filtering the content. Meanwhile, messengers do not have the same strategy. More specifically, they make the followers more qualified by reaching them one-by-one and generating better results. No algorithms, just pure reach!

It is undoubtedly true that messengers take communication to the next level taking over both social media giants and calling or emails. Marketing and IT godfathers argue that messaging apps will become a major tool for marketing campaigns in 2018. Taking into consideration this, Facebook offered the Facebook Messenger, bought WhatsApp, and now they have 2.6 billion users combined.

So, let’s take a deep breath and stay up to date with those changes happening almost every day.

Every online marketer recognizes the power of social forums. It can make or break a business. But with so many social media channels, how do you leverage on these platforms?

Whether you are a fan of Apple, Android or Windows, there are many apps with different features that can help you organize multiple accounts. Besides, these apps are smart enough to show you information on what’s trending, the latest practice and how people respond to your messages.

To help you optimize your social media marketing strategies we have listed out 5 of the best apps for social media aggregation.

1. HootSuite.

Hootsuite-a social forum management platform serving over 15 million users worldwide. It is available in five versions: Free, Pro, Team, Business, and Enterprise. HootSuite is fully integrated with most social networks allowing you to manage your activities on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn account on a simple dashboard. The app has a simple, intuitive dashboard with advanced workplace filters. Some other features of Hootsuite include:

1. A help desk for queries.

2. A Wise guide. Shows you how to schedule a post, add a social network, check keywords/mentions, share content using Hootlet, and social media network.

3. Social media courses where you can learn the basics of social media marketing.

4. Hootsuite forums allow one to connect your Facebook or Twitter page to this forum.

5. 30 days free trial for Hootsuite Pro plan

6. Provide support for WordPress blog.

2. Sprout social

Sprout Social is a Saas service with three main functionalities: engagement, publishing, and analytics. As a social media aggregator tool, it aims to promote communication between people and a business. It monitors the social conversation, lets you perform tasks and manages a portfolio from a single platform. The app has got features such as:

1. Smart Inbox

2. Collaboration

3. Publishing

4. Mobile

5. Analytics

6. Monitoring

7. Account Structure

8. Discovery

9. Reports

10. Social CRM

These features are available on the dashboard and are divided into six sections: Feeds Dashboard, Task, Messaging, Reports, Discovery, Publishing and Scheduling, and Integrations. These subjects area lets you know where you stand with your prospects and customers besides letting you build your presence on social media platforms.

3. Buffer

Buffer is a social media integration software used for scheduling post, text, images, and photos to your Facebook, Twitter accounts, and other social networks.

The app is available under four different plans- an Individual plan which is free, Awesome, Small, Medium, and Large. The app is Internet-based and allows you to create, schedule post and update all your account with a single click. The app has got browser extension and seamlessly integrate with Chrome, RSS, and WordPress.

Other additional features of Buffer include:

1. RSS feeds support

2. Connectivity functions

3. Team collaboration

4. Analytics and insights

5. Stats comparison

6. Social profile sharing

7. iOS and Android support

8. Multiple posts and tweets

9. 2-step account login

10. Multi-media format sharing

11. Customized scheduling

12. Informative social analytics

13. Profile management

14. Standard buffering

15. Agency/business planning

16. Stats comparison

17. 14 day trial for every plan

4. Brand watch

While other social engagement tools are for sharing and managing content, Brandwatch is more of analytics tools. It listens, monitors and collects data from the Internet, social media platform, product review, blogs, news on what people say about your service or product delivering a huge amount of data for analytics and sentimental analysis.

Brandwatch analyses sentiments weeding out spasm and unnecessary messages. It can also integrate with HootSuite and Spreadfast letting you use data on those applications.

5. Social Oomph

As a social media aggregator, SocialOomph allows you to manage all your accounts on one platform. It has both free and paid version. The free version lets you manage up to five Twitter profiles while the paid version lets you unlock other platforms like FB, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr. It is easy to handle, enable URL shortening, got a keyword search feature and tracks the clicks you get on each URL.

Besides, the paid version offers contact suggestions and allows linking of many Twitter accounts, manage blogs and RSS feeds, perform social updates by mail and has got filters to weed out unnecessary messages.

Followers play a big role these days in making ones social media account popular and profitable. Everyone knows the power of the fans, and the same goes for social platforms too. More followers mean more social presence and that in turn means more chance of increasing one’s customers. However, sometimes social media platforms are not for business, in that case, they are for increasing one’s presence and make oneself popular by creating great content. in both the cases having a good number of followers is really important as there is a huge competition out there. Being popular on social media can have a lot many benefits as one well known by many, one can earn money by being a part of promotions and also one can get noticed by some of the influential people out there.

Therefore, one should put their attention to increasing their followers, some of the ways that can help are:

Create an interesting profile

Every potential follower when discovers any content randomly, they will reach out and check the profile of the account holder who posted the content. This is why one should make a profile which gives out information about the account holder as well as should have links to the influencer’s other works like their website or any other social media account. One should have an eye-catching username and a high-quality profile picture as well. One can also create nice and descriptive bios and use hashtags effectively.

Create good content

Content is the king when it comes to any social media platform. One should always try to post something new and fresh for their audience. Try not to copy someone else’s work and always be original with the theme and content. The content should be real and should have the capability to connect the audience to it. And the most important thing is don’t be in a rush to post something as by this one may lose their content quality, always give importance to quality and not just quantity.

Be active

Being active on a social media page is very important today. As there are so many social media users and influencers all around it is easy to forget someone and move onto the next popular page or account. If one will be active then they will be visible among their followers and also to the ones who are not following them. Being a regular poster on any social media is always helpful to grab a lot of attention.

Be interactive

Earning followers is not just about posting content now and then, it is also about showing engagement with your already existing followers and fans. Followers will only bring in more followers, so for that, you need to pay attention to your already existing following, so that they, in turn, can act like your campaigners. You can talk to them and hear their suggestions and try to involve them in various profile activities like quizzes, surveys, challenges, etc.

Technology has lead the human race on such a unique path. A path to greatness and success. A path to do things that are unimaginable. Computers, a piece of technology that is incredibly difficult to live without in this day in age. Almost the entire planet has internet access or access to some form of computer. With that one can access all the information a person could ever want.

Within the last 20 years, social media has become one of the most powerful networking tools a person could have. Many people became famous and have carers solely based on their social media stance or business they chose to make using it. There are many amazing reasons to have social media and to use it for personal gain, but the issue lies in how people are beginning to view others and themselves. Some of the most popular social media platforms include Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. The start of most of these platforms was a simple one, connect people in different ways. Connect family members and friends and share an experience with them all. Of course, came the celebrities in which many people wanted to follow or even become and that is where the problem lied. People became so infatuated with the attention that those people were receiving and compared it to their own. This was not as big as a problem 10 years ago as it is today. Many young adults look up to these celebrities and copy every aspect of their lives down to the dictation. This not only affects how they socialize but their view of the world.

Most teens and young adults spend more time on their phones and on social media concerned about what is happening and living a life that is not their. In the end, these leads to more people becoming socially inept and having difficulties exploring and experience the outside world. Of course, there are many who choose to have jobs based on social media, but not connecting with people face to face leads to many social issues and even depression. It also heavily impacts relationships and how it can consume two people. Many young couples never last or have severe complications, because of media depicting a relationship that looks all too perfect. When in reality each relationship has their issues, just like each person has their own set of issues wherever or not they choose to accept those issues is their choice.

Another issue at hand is how many people determine their own self-worth based off how many people follow them on these platforms or based off how many likes they get, and if they do not get a certain amount it can make them feel worthless. Now, this is not with every person who has social media or who uses social media, but more and more it can be seen that the young adults are having more issues later on in life, because of this.

Social media usage should be heavily reduced especially in teens and young adults who are still experiencing life and learning through those experiences.Yes, it can lead to many opportunities and it does without doubt, but it has become extremely volatile and destructive to the human pysche, that we as people must ask ourselves. Is it really worth it?

Continuing with our “Why social media” series… we want to begin with some of the important points to note when creating (or revising!) your social media strategy.

First – be really consistent. Choose just a couple of platforms and post regularly to them; and keep your posts balanced (promotion/creation/curation). It’s important to really understand your clients/prospects and post the right number of updates per day to be top of the mind, but not an annoyance.

Secondly, do not make all of your posts about yourself, and only about yourself. The example I always give is that of a networking event, your social media channel should not be a channel for you to speak alone. Like a networking event, you are effective when you’re asking questions of those around you, engaging and learning about them. Social Media is no different. Poll your followers, ask questions, and respond to the answers (even just with a thank you!).

Here are our top 5 reasons why you shouldn’t wait another day to implement a social media strategy for your business:

1. Search Engine Optimization – SEO is a method of getting more traffic to your website for free, in an organic/natural way of influencing search results on search engines. Further, by including Social Media into your SEO strategy (keeping in mind that your “about” section on Facebook is searchable) can lead to link building; as people share your posts on social media, and your post includes a link to your website, connections between your social media platforms and website are reinforced.

Since search engines like links, and love keywords, Social Media can play an influential role in your overall strategy to improve your ranking. While there are multiple social media channels available to businesses, we recommend choosing two or three social media networks to post to regularly and do it exceedingly well. Do some research on the metrics of the users of the different platforms and find the ones that resonate with not only your brand, but your target market as well. Keep in mind that some people do product/company searches within a social network, not necessarily Google, so having a presence on the platform positively influences the likelihood you’ll be found.

2. Increased brand recognition – by using more channels to expand your brand, you will have increased brand recognition. Add to this the shared photos from your loyal followers, and the reach of your brand also increases.
3. Improved brand loyalty – companies that are active have an active fan following, feels personal and more connected. Social Media provides you with the venue for superior customer service, listening and responding to your prospects, which gives your brand a face. Customer service isn’t just about responding to complaint, but also responding to product questions to ease in the decision making between your product and the competition’s (increasing your ability to convert leads to sales). Social media can also create a community around your brand and your products further enhancing brand loyalty.
4. Increased inbound traffic – by using more channels to get your message out, you can reach larger audiences, this in turn leads to more clicks back to your website. Add a lead magnet to the mix, and you’re collecting and qualifying even more leads!
5. Decreased marketing costs – Digital (even paid) ads are cheaper than print. Further, using the metrics built into Facebook, its easier to A/B test and track your campaigns, as well as alter your messaging if results are not aligning with your goals. This can lead to richer customer experience and customer service (forming a community around your product).

And one last bonus tip: Social Media Marketing takes time, not just in the creation of incredible content, but also in terms of results. While we’ve all seen those posts that go viral, and pages that consequently get a ton of new followers, most businesses see a slow and steady increase in followers with a well considered and consistent strategy.

SEO is about growing organically, and to develop an effective, organic online marketing plan, it's important to not only look at SEO, but content marketing and social media, too.

The algorithm of SEO is constantly changing. Social content is being consumed at an alarming rate and it is increasing day after day. As people are continuously turning to social media platforms to search and interact, it becomes important for businesses and brand agencies to improve their design thinking, presence and especially content.

Social media is crucial for growing a successful business presence online. And equally essential is SEO. However, there's something else which most people miss: how SEO and social media marketing are closely linked. That or they get clouded by misconceptions and popular myths. So how is social media marketing connected to SEO? Does posting to various social channels improve the business' ranking? Is it not possible to fetch a rank without it?

Let's explore some roles that social media plays in SEO.

1. Social Media Channels are nothing but search engines.

Treating social platforms like search engines is the best way forward. That way, the likelihood of increasing discoverability and rank is more. The idea is to be where the potential customers are, presenting them with the information, results and content that they are specifically looking for.

That said, it's important to mention that the search visibility is not significantly improved by the information presented in the social media page. Social profiles could help users in fetching information; however, it is done indirectly. When Google evaluates the local rank of a certain page and provides information, it takes does so through an external network of third-party sites and directories. These directories gather their information from multiple web sources, such as the social platform of a business. Due to this, filling up the complete information in social profiles can give a business an advantage with respect to visibility and accuracy in online lists.

2. What are Social Signals?

This is another category where misinterpretations run galore. Many believe that if an article is shared several times, then its rank is improved on Google. But it's not so. Social signals are not about the popularity of a piece of information – ie the number of times users on social platforms share it from their own feed, but it's about the number of users who share the piece from the business' on-site page using the social share buttons. This is how Google can measure the rankings. However, the quality of content, the business' authority and inbound links all play a more critical role in determining a page's rankings.

3. Get more visibility and inbound links

This is probably the best and most value method by which it can help a business' SEO. As long as they are grown naturally, inbound links are probably the most dependable authority builders in the world of SEO. But often it gets difficult to earn them unless they're built directly with guest posts or with some other method. A sure-fire way to grow the number of inbound links a website receives is to increase the number of people who encounter its content. Yes, it's that simple. Provided the quality of content is excellent on the website and people link to this page as a result, increasing the audience by a substantial amount will earn the website at least 10 brand-new inbound links. And all of these would be natural, derived from different sources.

Digital agencies should remember that social media's role is completely dependent on the ability of the business to produce top-notch content that users would like to connect with and consume. If the content is link-worthy, there is no doubt that the size of audience would increase. Marketing agencies should learn from their lessons, stay active on social channels, experiment a lot and not rely on one strategy for increasing rankings and ratings of a business.

When I was walking past a few shops a number of weeks ago, I saw that there were plenty of people on their Smartphone's. As it was not busy, these people were busy using their Smartphone's.

I ended up wondering how many books people like this could read if they did not use their phones as much. This did not come to mind because I thought that these people should be reading books, though.

A Waste of Time

It came to mind because I thought that they would get far more out of reading books than they would by using their device. Instead of scrolling through different social media sites, they would be able to expand their mind with new information.

Now, there is always the chance that these people were reading an eBook on their device or that they were sending important messages. I have no way of proving that these people were using different social media sites.

A Common Occurrence

However, even if these people were using their time in a productive manner, it does not mean that they will always use their time in this way. Furthermore, there are unduly a lot of people who do spend a lot of their time using these sites.

When I used to spend a fair amount of time using different social media sites in the past, time just appeared to fly by. But although a lot of time had passed, I had done very little with it.

Meaningless Messages

This was a time when I would send messages to people I actually saw in the real world and to people I had not seen in years. So, while a fair amount of dopamine was released within me, not much else took place.

I came to see that I could use my time better, which caused me to gradually cut down the amount of time I typically spent on these sites. Writing, reading and spending time with people in the real world become far more important.

Can You Relate to This?

If you can see that you are spending a fair amount of time on social media every day, and you want this to change, there are plenty of other things that you can do with your time. There are all sorts of books that you can read, if reading is your thing; if it is not, you could try a new hobby.

In the short term, it may not seem as though what you are doing is not having much of an impact on your life, but as time passes, you will see how much you have learned by spending less time on social media. Also, some of the time that you spent on social media will now go towards your goals, making it easier for you to achieve them.

Conclusion

The modem day world is so full of distractions that it can be easy to get lost in what is going on 'out there' and to forget about what is going on internally. Tuning into what matters is hard with so many distractions and, once we have done this, it takes a concerted effort not to be drawn off course by the bright lights that are all around us.

Marketing is essential to any business and is generally referred to as the most important aspect of any business strategy. Large companies spend millions of dollars to hire reputed agencies to handle the marketing of their business whereas smaller companies rely on more creative and cost efficient methods. In the extremely competitive world of today, social media marketing is the new 'in' thing and definitely here to stay. In a nutshell, it means using social media such as blogs, community sites, video sharing sites, etc. to market a product or a business.

Certain popular websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube which have more than five million visitors everyday are considered to be an important hub for marketing. Promoting your business using these sites is a very attractive business proposition since they offer a huge amount of steady traffic everyday. In today's world, social networking is extremely successful and social media marketing is very important to a business because of the sheer number of people that access these sites regularly.

The reasons why this type of marketing is so important, or rather, essential for a business are many. Firstly it is a low cost investment when compared to the other options available, offering many links to your site for free. Social media is generally free to use but marketing the same thing through conventional methods would cost you thousands of dollars. These sites get a lot of traffic and they in turn generate traffic to your site. Also it acts like a word-of-mouth concept that people tend to believe when compared to commercial advertising.

To make a lasting impact on the user and build a successful business any entrepreneur should be adept in social media marketing. There are a number of factors to keep in mind while promoting your business online so as to maximize its potential and achieve realistic real time sales. Lehman Hailey believes marketing through social media is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.

Following are a few points that an entrepreneur would do well to remember while utilizing the immunity scope of this type of marketing. Firstly, one should always try to give a clear account of the company's product or the contents of the business instead of exaggerating and claiming the impossible because this discourages people from visiting your site whereas a more realistic picture generates slow but steady traffic over time. Secondly, it is important to post as many links as you can wherever there is a provision to do so.

Any business becomes profitable only if the end product promised by the company or the entrepreneur is really as good as advertised and produces customer satisfaction. There is no sure-shot formula for success using marketing since it only gives more visibility to the business and the end sales depend only on the efficiency of the product. However, social media marketing is an important tool that, when properly used is a highly beneficial and promising enterprise.

“Do you have Facebook?”

“Yes, of course. But I don’t think you can find me, as there are too many people who have the same name as me. Try searching with my surname as well.”

“Hey, you celebrated your birthday in K-Box, right? I saw the photos in your Facebook.”

“Bro, I saw your comments about the YouTube video that I’ve posted in my blog. I’m happy that you are also deeply moved by the ‘Dancing Peacock Man’ as well.”

Social media or “social networking” has almost become part of our daily lives and being tossed around over the past few years. It is like any other media such as newspaper, radio and television but it is far more than just about sharing information and ideas. Social networking tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blogs have facilitated creation and exchange of ideas so quickly and widely than the conventional media. The power of define and control a brand is shifting from corporations and institutions to individuals and communities. It is no longer on the 5Cs (e.g. condominium, credit cards and car) that Singaporeans once talked about. Today, it is about the brand new Cs: creativity, communication, connection, creation (of new ideas and products), community (of shared interests), collaboration and (changing the game of) competition.

In January 2010, InSites Consulting has conducted an online survey with 2,884 consumers from over 14 countries between the ages of 18 to 55 years old on social networking. More than 90% of participants know at least 1 social networking site and 72% of participants are members of at least 1 social networking site. On the average, people have about 195 friends and they log in twice a day to social networking sites. However, 55% of the users cannot access their social network websites at work. In the past, not many adults were able to make more than 500 friends, but with social media, even a child or teenager can get to know more than 500 people in a few days by just clicking the mouse. Social media has devalued the traditional definition of “friend” where it means trust, support, compatible values, etc. Although we get to know more people, we are not able to build strong bond with all the people whom we met as our available time is limited. Hence, there is an upcoming social trend of people with wider social circles, but weaker ties (people we don’t know very well but who provide us with useful information and ideas).

Social media also influences people’s buying behaviours. Digital Influence Group reported that 91% of the people say consumer reviews are the #1 aid to buying decisions and 87% trust a friend’s recommendation over critic’s review. It is thrice more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising for purchasing decisions. 1 word-of-mouth conversation has an impact of 200 TV ads. With the prevalence use of social media, there is numerous news related to it from the most viewed YouTube video on “Armless pianist wins ‘China’s Got Talent'” to Web-assisted suicide cases (e.g. New Jersey college student who killed himself after video of him in a sexual encounter with another man was posted online). Thus, does social networking make us better or worse off as a society?

Positive Effects of Social Media

Besides having opportunity to know a lot of people in a fast and easy way, social media also helped teenagers who have social or physical mobility restrictions to build and maintain relationships with their friends and families. Children who go overseas to study can still stay in meaningful contact with their parents. To a greater extend, there is anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from these technologies.

In 2008, President-elected Obama won the election through the effective use of social media to reach millions of audience or voters. The Obama campaign had generated and distributed huge amount of contents and messages across email, SMS, social media platforms and their websites. Obama and his campaign team fully understood the fundamental social need that everyone shares – the need of being “who we are”. Therefore, the campaign sent the message as “Because It’s about YOU” and chose the right form of media to connect with individuals, call for actions and create community for a social movement. They encouraged citizens to share their voices, hold discussion parties in houses and run their own campaign meetings. It truly changed the delivery of political message.

Obama campaign had made 5 million “friends” on more than 15 social networking sites (3 million friends on Facebook itself) and posted nearly 2,000 YouTube videos which were watched over 80 million times. At its peak, their website, MyBarackObama.com, had 8.5 million monthly visitors and produced 400,000 blog posts. In order to ensure that their contents were found by people, the Obama campaign spent $3.5 million on Google search in October alone, $600,000 on Advertising.com, $467,000 on Facebook in 2008, etc. Currently, Obama’s Twitter account has close to 6 million followers.

In 2010, after the earthquake happened in Haiti, many of the official communication lines were down. The rest of the world was not able to grasp the full picture of the situation there. To facilitate the sharing of information and make up for the lack of information, social media came in very handy to report the news about the affected area on what happened and what help was needed. Tweets from many people provided an impressive overview of the ongoing events from the earthquake. BBC covered the event by combining tweets from the work of its reporter Matthew Price in Port-au-Prince at the ground. Guardian’s live blog also used social media together with the information from other news organisations to report about the rescue mission.

It has been two years since CNN officially launched iReport as a section of its website where people can upload video material, with contact information. During the Haiti crisis, CNN had published a range of social media material but not all the materials were verified. The editorial staff would vet the reports from the citizen journalists and labeled them differently compared to unverified contents. On Facebook, a group, named “Earthquake Haiti”, was formed to show support and share updates and news. It had more than 14,000 members and some users even pleaded for assistance to the injured Haitians in the group. Using email, Twitter and social networking sites like Facebook, thousands of volunteers as part of Project Ushahidi were able to map reports sent by people from Haiti.

The most impressive part of the social media’s impact on Haiti is the charity text-message donations that soared to over $10 million for the victims in Haiti. People interested in helping the victims are encouraged to text, tweet and publicize their support using various social networking sites. The Global Philanthropy Group had also started a campaign to ask wealthy people and celebrities, like Ben Stiller and John Legend to use Twitter and Facebook to encourage others to give to UNICEF. An aid worker, Saundra Schimmelpfennig, allowed the advice from other aid workers and donors to post on her blog regarding to choosing which charitable organisations to support. In the meantime, donors were asking questions in Twitter, Facebook and blogs about their donations and endorsements of their favourite charities. After every crisis, the social media for social cause becomes a more effective medium to spread the word.

Negative Effects of Social Media

There are always two sides of every coin. Social media is just a tool or mean for people to use. It is still up to the users on how to use this tool (just like a knife, can help you to cut food or hurt others). Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center conducted a study on “The Future of Online Socializing” from the highly engaged, diverse set of respondents to an online, opt-in survey consisted of 895 technology stakeholders and critics. The negative effects presented by the respondents included time spent online robs time from important face-to-face relationships; the internet fosters mostly shallow relationships; the act of leveraging the internet to engage in social connection exposes private information; the internet allows people to silo themselves, limiting their exposure to new ideas; and the internet is being used to engender intolerance.

Some respondents also highlighted that there will be development of some new psychological and medical syndromes that will be “variations of depression caused by the lack of meaningful quality relationships”, and a “new world society”. The term, “Social Networking”, has begun to deceive the users to believe they are social creatures. For instance, spending a couple of hours using Farmville and chatting with friends concurrently does not convert into social skills. People become dependent on the technology and forget how to socialise in face-to-face context. The online personality of a person might be totally different from his/her offline character, causing chaos when the two personalities meet. It is apparent in online dating when the couple gets together in face-to-face for the first time. Their written profiles do not clearly represent their real-life characters. It is more enticing for people to type something that others want to hear than saying the truth.

Besides the “friendship”, creators of social networking sites and users redefine the term, “privacy” in the Internet as well. The challenge in data privacy is to share data while protecting personally identifiable information. Almost any information posted on social networking sites is permanent. Whenever someone posts pictures or videos on the web, it becomes viral. When the user deletes a video from his/her social network, someone might have kept it and then posted it onto other sites like YouTube already. People post photographs and video files on social networking sites without thinking and the files can reappear at the worst possible time. In 2008, a video of a group of ACJC students hazing a female student in school on her birthday was circulated and another video of a SCDF recruit being “welcomed” (was hosed with water and tarred with shoe polish) to a local fire station made its way online.

Much news has been reported about online privacy breach in Facebook and Facebook is constantly revising their privacy policy and changing their privacy controls for the users. Interestingly, even when users delete their personal information and deactivate their Facebook account, Facebook will still keep that information and will continue to use it for data mining. A reporter asked whether the data will at least be anonymized. The Facebook representative declined to comment.

In the corporate world, human resource managers can access Facebook or MySpace to get to know about a candidate’s true colours, especially when job seekers do not set their profiles to private. Research has found that almost half of employers have rejected a potential worker after finding incriminating material on their Facebook pages. Some employers have also checked the candidates’ online details in Facebook pages to see if they are lying about their qualifications. Nowadays, younger generations have a complete disregard for their own privacy, opening doors to unwelcome predators or stalkers.

Continuing with our "Why social media" series … we want to begin with some of the important points to note when creating (or revising!) Your social media strategy.

First – be really consistent. Choose just a couple of platforms and post regularly to them; and keep your posts balanced (promotion / creation / curation). It's important to really understand your clients / prospects and post the right number of updates per day to be top of the mind, but not an annoyance.

Secondly, do not make all of your posts about yourself, and only about yourself. The example I always give is that of a networking event, your social media channel should not be a channel for you to speak alone. Like a networking event, you are effective when you're asking questions of those around you, engaging and learning about them. Social Media is no different. Poll your followers, ask questions, and respond to the answers (even just with a thank you!).

Here are our top 5 reasons why you should not wait another day to implement a social media strategy for your business:

1. Search Engine Optimization – SEO is a method of getting more traffic to your website for free, in an organic / natural way of influencing search results on search engines. Further, by including Social Media into your SEO strategy (keeping in mind that your "about" section on Facebook is searchable) can lead to link building; as people share your posts on social media, and your post includes a link to your website, connections between your social media platforms and website are reinforced.

Since search engines like links, and love keywords, Social Media can play an important role in your overall strategy to improve your ranking. While there are multiple social media channels available to businesses, we recommend choosing two or three social media networks to post to regularly and do it exceedingly well. Do some research on the metrics of the users of the different platforms and find the ones that resonate with not only your brand, but your target market as well. Keep in mind that some people do product / company searches within a social network, not unnecessarily Google, so having a presence on the platform positively influences the likelihood you'll be found.

2. Increased brand recognition – by using more channels to expand your brand, you will have increased brand recognition. Add to this the shared photos from your loyal followers, and the reach of your brand also increases.
3. Improved brand loyalty – companies that are active have an active fan following, feels personal and more connected. Social Media provides you with the venue for superior customer service, listening and responding to your prospects, which gives your brand a face. Customer service is not just about responding to complaint, but also responding to product questions to ease in the decision making between your product and the competition's (increasing your ability to convert leads to sales). Social media can also create a community around your brand and your products further enhancing brand loyalty.
4. Increased inbound traffic – by using more channels to get your message out, you can reach larger audiences, this in turn leads to more clicks back to your website. Add a lead magnet to the mix, and you're collecting and qualifying even more leads!
5. Decreased marketing costs – Digital (even paid) ads are cheaper than print. Further, using the metrics built into Facebook, its easier to A / B test and track your campaigns, as well as alter your messaging if results are not aligning with your goals. This can lead to richer customer experience and customer service (forming a community around your product).

And one last bonus tip: Social Media Marketing takes time, not just in the creation of incredible content, but also in terms of results. While we've all seen those posts that go viral, and pages that continually acquire a ton of new followers, most businesses see a slow and steady increase in followers with a well considered and consistent strategy.