Pros and Cons of Using Social Media in 2021

Networking today

Most marketers and entrepreneurs have discovered social media advertising to be a powerful answer for selling their products or services. Some have pushed traffic to their eCommerce web page via Instagram Stories, a chain of multimedia content material that vanishes within 24 hours, or boosted the income of a brand new product via promotional YouTube content material. Others have hopped on hashtag traits on Twitter. 

In 2020 alone, extra than 1/2 of the world (3.96 billion) was on some form of social media. Industry professionals trust that quantity will maintain upward thrust due to the fact social systems have now no longer captured all 4.57 billion net customers (Smart Insights, 2020). With such a lot of customers but to enroll in social media, it’s far totally feasible that the recognition of any social media platform for advertising has now no longer even peaked but.

Evidently, there’s nonetheless a whole lot greater to be received through folks who upload social media to their advertising and marketing blend in 2021.

Networking nowadays doesn’t price you an arm and a leg anymore. Welcome to the sector of Social Media – it brings greater than 4.2 billion social media customers to you. Imagine how many of them will be your capacity customers!

But in case you aren’t doing as great as your competitors, you should up your social networking game.

.

Social media is all approximately the way you portray yourself. So if the content material in your channel is excessively fine and relevant, your target market will without delay expect that your product/carrier is right fine, too.

What is Social Media Marketing?

So, what’s social media advertising? Also known as SMM, it’s the technique of crafting content material for social networking structures to gain your enterprise and advertising objectives. You use the content material to elevate logo awareness, interact with your target market or generate conversion which includes riding site visitors on your webpage or compelling fans to touch you.

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website traffic. This involves publishing great content on your social media profiles, listening to and engaging your followers, analyzing your results, and running social media advertisements.

The major social media platforms (at the moment) are Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, and Snapchat.

THE TOP THREE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 

1.  Social Media Outreach is an Economical Choice

It’s crucial to keep your business alive by reaching out to your target market without breaking the bank, as the Covid-19 crisis bleeds into the new year. 

This makes social media an amazing place to start. It is less expensive for organizations to build their logo and have interaction with their clients via social media.  Setting up an enterprise account on a social app is free, as is posting content material to your enterprise page. Some primary functions like messaging and analytics also are free.

Of course, you need to begin paying in case you need to use the advertising  and targeting features. But spending on advertisements can easily be aligned together along with your budget. For what it’s worth, hiring a social media management team allows you to run a powerful advert campaign, which in flip will pay for itself.

2.  Raising Brand Awareness Can be Streamlined

Tap into the broad user base of social platforms to gain exposure for your brand. You can enhance your likelihood of being recognized by more users when you put up a page or profile on each of your chosen channels. Work on increasing your followers, sharing content consistently and interacting with your community to familiarize people with your presence.

Tap into the broad user base of social systems to benefit publicity in your brand.

But achieving visibility also depends on the viability of the social media apps. Take a look at the traditional ones, which have been here since the early 2000s and have not shown any signs of slowing down during the pandemic. To give you an idea of how large their scope is, here are their growth numbers as of October 2020:

Monthly Active Users, as per Statista.com:

•  Facebook – 2.7 billion

•  YouTube – 2 billion

•  Instagram – 1.16 billion

•  Twitter – 353 million

More recent types of social media with remarkable user surge:

•  TikTok – 689 million

•  Snapchat – 433 million

3.  Customers Can Connect With You Directly

One of the advantages of social media is making interactions seamless and convenient. Through post or comment tagging and messaging features, you can reach out to another person or an organization in seconds.

These elements can also be turned into social media marketing tools, so you can easily cater to the needs of your customers. Likewise, you can ask them about what they want, announce promotions and sales and educate them about your products or services.

Online users aged 16-64 find new brands or products through social ads, use social networks to research new brands or products and rely on social proof (such as likes and positive comments) to influence their purchase decisions. (GlobalWebIndex, 2020)

FIVE PROS AND CONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA 

Positive impacts of social media:

1. Good form of communication

Social media allows us to communicate with our family and friends as well as people from all over the world. It is cost effective and in most cases free. It has opened up a whole new way of communication and has brought the world closer together.

2. Educational and more information

We can utilise social media to educate ourselves. There is always so much to learn and this can help us to spread goodness and obtain accurate information. Here we have IlmFeed which aims to spread positivity and create awareness about many things.

3. More knowledge and increased skills

I’ve come to find that people have become more aware of things in terms of knowledge as everything is now easily accessible. Moreover we’ve become better skilled at things such as creativity, writing and general IT skills. We are now more sophisticated, positively changed and computer literate.

4. Better quality of life

Social media is a powerful method to improve your quality of life. You can easily up skill and improve your knowledge thus gaining new work and a potential income stream. You can readily train online through carrying out courses etc. from the comfort of your home and subsequently have an improved life.

5. Sharing of expertise and awareness

In relation to this, this gives you an opportunity to talk about what you know, share your area of expertise and also spread information on pertinent matters. You can use the internet to gauge the attention of the world on various key issues and bring them to the forefront.

Negative/Adverse effects of social media:

1. Highly addictive

As a professional involved in youth work and community engagement, I have encountered a high volume of people gravely addicted to social media. It can be harmful if not managed in the right way. Take every effort to control this and seek alternatives to this if you can! Get help if need be but make sure this is tackled.

2. Depression and anxiety

It is deeply worrying to see how social media has quite frankly taken over the lives of some people. Many people suffer from depression and anxiety as a result. The recommended amount of time you should spend on social networks is half an hour per day. So, as with so many things in life, it’s all about moderation.

3. Cyber-bullying and keyboard warriors

Before social media became popular, bullying was something only done face-to-face. However, nowadays people can be anonymously bullied online. This is unacceptable and wrong but this is a real danger. Be vigilant, be on guard and most importantly immediately report anything out of the ordinary. We also have keyboard warriors who will hide behind a screen. Do not tolerate this at all!

4. Unrealistic expectations

This one probably comes as no surprise, but social media can sometimes form unrealistic expectations of life and friendships for people. Some people live in a bubble and also think the lives of us all are brilliant and fantastic. Little do we know that it may be just a front. Life is not perfect and we all have up and down moments. Accept who you are and be realistic!

5. Fear of missing out (FOMO)

Unfortunately, this is a phenomenon that is one of the most common negative effects of social media. This is basically a form of anxiety that you get when you’re scared of missing out on a positive experience or emotions that someone else is getting.

This fear is constantly fueled by your social media engagement. The more you use social networks, the more likely you are to see that someone is having more fun than you are right now. And that’s exactly what causes FOMO

Conclusion

Social media has effectively changed our lives in many ways. Along with the negative effects of social media on our society, there are some positive benefits too which I have touched upon. We should recognise these in order to avoid any issues and to ultimately safeguard ourselves from any dangers. Do the best that you can do but make sure you strive to strike the right balance. If need be, have a social media detox every once and again but be realistic with yourself and try to maintain a good middle ground.

Share Article

Follow Us

Return to Previous Page