Have you heard people comment or complain that these days everyone is always glued to their mobile phones on social media and not communicating with each other? Is social media really encouraging us to avoid communicating, or is it just a different way of communicating?
For example, in the accompanying photo that pre-dates mobile phones and online social media, no one is talking to each other, each woman is focused on her newspaper. How different is that to a group of modern women focused on their mobile phones?
A newspaper has its parallels to a social media platform. It has news articles and stories and opinion pieces. It has photos and images. It may have a Letter to the Editor section, but you might need to wait several days or a week to get your letter published and even longer to see a reply. Imagine that! Some newspapers have personal pages (think dating apps), buy and sell sections, job vacancies, and community noticeboards (post messages). So, they can even be interactive, just don’t expect instant responses to your ‘posts’!
We keep hearing how social media swept in out the blue and took over how we communicate and interact with each other. But is social media such a new thing? Or is it simply a variation of the old? Like newspapers and community noticeboards? Or perhaps catching up on local news in person at the corner shop or the general store in town.
As human beings, there is something in us that wants to connect with others. We are also curious creatures who want to hear about what’s going on in our world and learn about how things fit together. That’s why so many of us love to use social media because it can help us do those things.
“The first rule of social media is that everything changes all the time. What won’t change is the community’s desire to network.”
— Kami Huyse
Where did social media come from?
What we now call social media wasn’t really possible until the world wide web wound its way around the globe. To break it down into its simplest from, the world wide web (WWW) is an accumulation of web pages that link to other web pages on a worldwide network of webservers or computers.
The WWW went public in the early 1990s. Early versions of social media platforms soon appeared including SixDegrees.com (1997), Friendster (2002) and MySpace (2003). In the years that followed, some of the new social platforms specialised in different areas, for example, LinkedIn (2003) for professional and business networks, Flickr (2003) for photo sharing, YouTube (2005) for video content, and Reddit (2005) for news and content. An awkwardly named Facehash (2003) for Harvard University students evolved into Facebook (2005) to eventually became the most popular social media platform worldwide. Twitter (2006) offered microblogging, Pinterest (2010) and Instagram (2010) offered photo/image sharing, SnapChat (2011) offered image and video sharing, and TikTok (2016) offered video sharing.
The list above is by no means complete and other social media platforms include dating apps, gamers platforms, music sharing platforms, political and activist platforms etc. Some platforms have waned in popularity and disappeared as brand-new platforms and new features in existing platforms have emerged. There is pretty much a social media platform (or multiple platforms) for everyone.
Where can social media take your business?
Along with the potential for instant/ real time interactions, online social media platforms offer us the ability to communicate with people around the globe. This may include social interactions with family and friends and others who share our interests, but, importantly for businesspeople, including small businesses like mine, it opens up opportunities that would never have been possible in the past.
For example, I recently signed on my first international client. It may not be possible, and definitely not practical or economical, to meet in person, but we jump on a zoom call and we may as well be in the same room. I’m very excited about this working relationship and for potential future possibilities that I have not yet even contemplated.
Are you open to learning about and exploring the potential of social media to promote your business and your brand in your local area, your region and beyond, and perhaps even internationally?
For help managing your social media channels, check out our Jam Packages or book an initial Jam Session.