The Magic of Social Media

Social media has quickly become a very important aspect of everyday life whether it is for personal use, classroom use, or for one’s business. It is interesting to take a look into how various companies and businesses utilize social media. There are some companies who implement social strategies throughout their entire organization and companies who only use social media strategies for social media campaigns. The most important approach for companies and brands is to recognize social interaction as a key approach to accomplishing their goals. When social media is treated as top priority, this means that brands are willing to create relationships and connections through two-way communication. Brands who create a relationship with other companies, brands, and consumers are able to build a sense of trust and mutual respect, which helps make that company very credible.

Another thing to keep in mind with social media is that people expect quick responses. With this being said, companies and brands really have to stay on top of their social media sites in order to respond to people in a timely manner. For example, Alaska Airlines is a very credible airline company. If someone were to post a question or complaint on their Facebook page, they respond back very quickly. This shows that Alaska Airlines is credible, reliable, honest, and listens to their consumers.

If a company or brand is looking into creating a successful social media campaign there are four steps to be followed.

1.     Listening

2.     Strategic Design

3.     Implementation and Monitoring

4.     Evaluation

This four-step process is similar to that of RACE. Although all campaigns are creative and different in their own ways, this is a foundation that all professionals should follow in order to be successful in their execution.

How do people obtain their information? This is a great question. In order for someone to influence a big portion of the population that person has to be someone who is well known in politics, business, or even a celebrity.  People who are well known and seen as credible have greater control over the flow of information they choose to share and spread. People who have the ability to control information as it flows in and out of networks are known as a Network gatekeeper.

Network gatekeepers are not the only ones who can make information circulate quickly, social media posts with an emotional pull whether it is happy, sad, or humorous can make the content go viral as well. A lot of people now think that content has to be of the highest quality to be considered worthy or for it to go viral but this is a common mistake. Many videos with poor quality can become viral based off of the content that is being provided and showcased to the public. In addition to views, if people like, comment, share, retweet, or link others then that media has an even better potential of becoming viral. People may also get in the know through word of mouth. For example, “have you heard of the mannequin challenge? Everyone is talking about it, I have to look it up and see what all of this is about!” Things like this will continue to make social media posts go viral.

With social media, it is amazing to really learn about the influence and impact it has on our peers today. Since social media continues to improve and change it is most important to keep up-to-date with all of the changes and new platforms to stay ahead of the game.