As a Millennial and a student majoring in Accountancy, I would never think about what Social Media was about. We just use it, right?
While Digital Marketing has many marketing activities, Social Media Marketing is one of the most effective ones available today. In this post, I am going to expound on Social Media, their types and purposes. I hope that this post will help you to build a foundation about understanding Social Media, before talking about Social Media Marketing Strategy in the next post.
What is Social Media?
According to the book “Education on Digital Cultural and Social Media” by Dr. S. Saileela and Dr. S. Kalaivani, Some common features of Social Media are:
- Interactive Web 2.0 Internet-based applications.
- User-generated content (text posts or comments, digital photos or videos, and data generated through all online interactions).
- Users create service – Specific profiles and identities for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the social media organization.
- They facilitate the development of online social networks by connecting a user’s profile with those of other individuals or groups.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Definition: Social media is interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.
— Dr. S. Saileela and Dr. S. Kalaivani, 2019
Social media is therefore not limited to social networks like Facebook, SnapChat and Instagram, but includes the following:
- Blogs & Micro blogs
- Collaborative projects
- Enterprise social networks
- Forums
- Photo sharing
- Product/services review
- Social bookmarking & Social gaming
- Video sharing
- Virtual worlds
In short, Social Media are web-based sites that serve as a platform allowing interaction between people. With this, we can look at the Types of Social Media Platforms:
Social Media Platforms
1. Wikis – editable websites
• Collaboration (Assume all people are good/equal)
2. Blogs (“web log”) – website with entries made
and displayed in reverse chronological order
• Text, images, links, media
• Interactive comments
3. Microblogs – e.g. Twitter
4. Social software – collaborative applications
• An online community for connections and collaboration
• Instant messaging (Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, virtual worlds)
Classification of Social Media Platforms
Let’s go further to classify Social Media Platforms and understand each of their purposes.
(i) According to their Purpose
Community:
– Channels of social media focused on relationship
building and maintenance of relationship among people sharing common interests / identity
– Vehicles include social networking sites, message boards and forums
Publishing:
– Channels focused on dissemination of content
– Vehicles include blogs, microblogging sites, media sharing sites, wikis etc.
Commerce:
– Channels of social media focused on facilitating commercial transactions
– Vehicles include review & rating sites, deal sharing sites etc.
Entertainment:
– Channels focused on entertainment
– Vehicles include gaming sites, virtual worlds and entertainment communities
(ii) According to their Social Presence and Self-disclosure
Impact of Social Media
Ever wondered how impactful and effective Social Media is? These statistics are the ones Singapore Digital Marketers should look out for to decide which is the best site they should post their advertisements or campaigns online.
According to We Are Social and Hootsuite’s Digital in 2019 Singapore report, in Singapore alone, there are 4.6 million active social media users, out of which, 4.2 million use Social Media through their mobile phones. The reach to market has increased. What kind of apps are more popular in Singapore? Let’s take a look below!
YouTube, WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram topped the list to have the most active users. While Facebook, Instagram, Twitter has more than 1 million active audience for Social Media Advertising.
Tips for Social Media Marketing
According to Kaplan & Haenlein (2019), Social Media decisions is broken down into 2 points. Media and Social. Here are some tips when using Social Media for marketing. For the Media aspect, users have to:
- Choose carefully
- Pick the application, or make your own
- Ensure activity alignment
- Media plan integration
- Access for all
For Social aspects, users have to:
- Be active – take the lead, create relationships
- Be interesting – listen, and enable others to contribute
- Be humble – learn how to use the platform
- Be unprofessional – be personal and fun
- Be honest – e.g. wikipedia ≠ advertising
Final Thoughts
Given the accessibility of internet today, Social Media becomes extremely accessible. Understanding Social Media and users’ intention on using various apps gives Digital Marketers an upper hand to market appropriately and effectively.
For example, Facebook users are looking for community connection and medium self-disclosure. This provides Digital Marketers with information on how to connect with the users and what kind of advertisements to post (in this case, an advertisement that makes users feel connected).
As users of Social Media and Digital Marketer, I want to encourage you to use the above information and statistics to think about this: In what ways do you think marketing can be improved by using Social Media. I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Digital Marketing in a Millennial's World 
Dear Dian Tian,
Wow! Thank you so much for the interesting and engaging post written! I love how in-depth the analysis is and I feel so well educated on the origins of social media. I think marketing can be improved using social media to educate customers on their brand products and I feel that that’s the next direction for companies to use social media to their advantage.
Overall, very well done to your post! Looking forward to much more content from you!
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Hey Dian Tian!
As a fellow millennial I’ve been a consumer of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram for years. I’ve always considered social media as nothing more than a way to pass time until recently during our digital marketing class. Now I enjoyed your post as it basically splits the topic of social media into four bite sized pieces of information namely; 1)What is social media? 2)Examples of social media platforms. 3)Impacts of social media. 4)And finally the Impacts of Social Media.
Good that you listed down the different examples of social media including lesser known ones such as blogs and social software, most millennials don’t know that there are social media platforms besides Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Very clear classification on the social media platforms, both according to their purpose and their self presence and self-disclosure. Detailed and colourful charts used to present complex points simply.
However under tips for social media advertising, under social aspects, stating that users have to be unprofessional, personal and fun may not apply to every single target audience in my opinion.
Overall, clear content, clear formatting and great use of charts!
Cheers!
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Thank you so much for your very insightful sharing Dian Tian. Personally I think that marketing can really use the reach that social media has to multiply their efforts. Also, given the current usage stats of social media, it would be a huge mistake not to jump in! Thank you for patiently breaking down everything so that a complete novice like me can understand this insiders perspective! 😀
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Yes, Dian Tian thank you for the beautiful writeup i understand more on Social Media now! The visual showed in your blog are very informative ! I like how you went to deep dive into how social media works! Thanks!
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