In 2021, it would be a bit of a challenge to find more than a handful of people in your circle who are completely offline and have no social media presence. At the very least, popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok are familiar names to most people— even for non-active social media users.
They’re popular because they help connect people around the world and their possibilities for communicating are endless. Whether it’s for your business, work or personal use, there’s no doubt as to its importance in all of our lives.
Social Media: What Is It?
Social media refers to any applications or websites that were created for people to share content quickly and in real time. Those with smartphones and tablets can access anything they’re looking for with a tap of the screen or click of a button.
Through personal “feeds,” users are able to scroll endlessly through perfectly-curated content that can mold, shape and transform a person’s perception of nearly anyone and anything.
In today’s society, social media has become an essential daily activity. Because anyone in the world can access it, social media has the power to connect strangers, families, friends and long-lost childhood friends. It can keep high school graduating classes in contact with one another and allows our cousins and grandmas to stay updated with any new life events.
In essence, social media is important because of the power it has on communication. Whether it’s with our friends, families, news sites or our favorite brands, it impacts the way a person views topics, molds relationships and spreads information.
A Marketing Powerhouse
Though it’s inherently present in the average person’s day-to-day life, the impact social media has on brands, companies and marketers is beyond comparison. These social networking platforms have increasingly grown beyond personal use. Because we live in the Digital Age, it makes sense that social media has become a hub for brands and businesses. Utilizing all of its tools, it helps offer brands everything they need to advertise natively and get their message to current and potential customers.
The key for businesses to successfully control their social media presence lies in its very name: being social (Garrison, 2021).
Social media marketing gives brands a front row seat with their target audience. It also allows them more time to communicate and connect with consumers since they’re more online than ever before.
Capturing the Consumer with a Campaign
A great way to visually see what successful social media marketing looks like is to examine social media campaigns executed by different brands. A social media campaign is basically coordinated content aimed at carrying out a specific goal with results that can be tracked and measured. Campaigns can be on one platform or all of them— as long as it has a purpose and objective.
During the pandemic, most of the world was online a lot more because we had no other choice. It was a scary time, but there’s only so many serious posts a person can see on their feed at a time. So, while the world was self-quarantining at home and people had reached the bottom of their TikTok and Twitter feeds, brands were looking for creative ways to keep their audience engaged with their messaging.
A lighthearted strategy that kept me going back to Instagram this last year was the “Getty Museum Challenge” by the Getty Museum. In this improvised campaign, the marketing team took to the people to help spread brand awareness with a user-generated approach. At a time when everyone was home, they were able to help bring lovers of art and museums together on social media for one hilarious ride.
The challenge started when a woman started an Instagram page where she recreated famous works of art with household items, using the hashtag #BetweenArtAndQuarantine. In March 2020, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam picked it up and the Getty Museum followed suit by sharing the idea with their followers.
The museum encouraged users to look through their searchable online collections for inspiration and the challenge took off, creating some of the most impressive and hilarious masterpieces on social media. By taking the reins on this challenge (and also giving credit to the original creators), the Getty was able to create a fun space for people who were bored at home and also direct traffic to their website and social media platforms. They took a developing trend and took advantage, which helped them get their purpose to the public eye. Below are a few of my favorite shots from the challenge. Spoilers: there were A LOT of toilet paper and cleaning products.
Engagement for the challenge was steady for several months and as of the date of this post, the hashtag #GettyMuseumChallenge has been used nearly 60,000 times on Instagram alone.
This simple, but effective challenge helped the Getty reach millions of viewers around the world, which brought more awareness to the brand, even though it wasn’t even open at the time. It may have been an impromptu social media campaign that was taken from a trend, but it shows just how impactful social media can be when used at the right time.
The Future of Social Media
Social media has come a long way since it first began in the late 90s, so it’s hard to say where it’ll be for certain in five to 10 years. But as the saying goes, you can always look to the past to see the future. With that in mind, there are possible trends we could be seeing on social media as the years go by.
One of which is more video and visual content. We’ve all heard that brands are more likely to get noticed or get engagement when video or graphics are involved. Users have probably seen it more and more the last couple of years, but as we move toward a fully digital world, it’s safe to assume we’ll see content that is mostly video or at least has a large visual element.
Right now, brands and marketers are also relying heavily on analytics and what algorithms can tell them about user-engagement. In the future, they will probably have more access to user-data and therefore know more about their audience and will make even more targeted and shareable content directed at them. Right now, it’s safe to say that users (myself included) get frustrated with how bombarded we are with ads on Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and every other social media platform. By creating smarter and more engaging native ads, it’ll be easier for brands to target their messaging in a cleaner and in a less “in your face” way.
Regardless of how social media ends up, with the way it’s going now, it’s probably safe to assume it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So, the only way brands and individual users will continue to get the most out of it is to use it to their advantage.
References:
admin, B. (2019, October 22). Reliance on Social Media in Today’s Society. Digital Marketing Blog. https://www.insegment.com/blog/reliance-on-social-media-in-todays-society/.
Barker, J. (2021, May 11). 7 of the Best Social Media Campaigns We’ve Ever Seen. Brafton. https://www.brafton.com/blog/social-media/3-brands-with-the-best-social-media-campaigns-in-2016/.
Chiaruáin, A. N. (2019, February 15). What Will Social Media Look Like in the Future? LogoGrab Blog. https://blog.logograb.com/social-media-future/.
Garrison, O. (2021, April 19). The Importance of Social Media Marketing: Is Your Business Socially Strong? Creative Click Media. https://creativeclickmedia.com/importance-of-social-media-marketing/.
Hudson, M. (2020, June). What Is Social Media? The Balance Small Business. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/what-is-social-media-2890301.