From Socially Awkward to Social Expert: Tracking Social Media Trends
Social media has skyrocketed in recent years. You probably already know that. While Facebook is currently the most popular social media platform, it wasn’t the first of its kind. Remember MySpace? What about Friendster? These are the original sites that really started the mega-era of social media — yet, it was Facebook that would come to revolutionize nearly every aspect of online communications.
With over 800 million active users, if you are not on Facebook you most likely know someone who is. Facebook is used to increase interactions between friends, family, and acquaintances. It is also used to increase engagement between businesses and the general public. Most blog posts, online articles, and brands/businesses typically have a link to either share their product on Facebook or to be directed to their own particular Facebook page. Although at times it may seem like Facebook is the be-all end-all in terms of social media, this is, in fact, not the case! Sites like Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and YouTube also hold a large stake in the future of social media.
Twitter is one of the other prime players in the game of social media. Tweeting is popular because it is all about the constant flow of short, but sweet information. A tweet is a 140-character post that your followers will see instantly. Tweets commonly reference links, videos, pictures, blogs, etc. A popular tweet will oftentimes be retweeted (RT) meaning someone else tweeted what you originally wrote. This helps bring an even larger audience to your Twitter feed and therefore help you gain more followers.
In another part of the Social Media world, Pinterest is all the rage these days. It allows for quick and easy online organizing and planning. For personal use, it is often used to bookmark recipes, workouts, fashion ideas, or event planning. For businesses, it is used to promote products, upload photos, and connect with a larger audience. If you’re thinking of starting a Pinterest board, you definitely should. It’s a great opportunity to get your name out there and people might even repin your products! To drive more traffic in your direction, whenever you pin something to your page’s boards, make sure it links back to your website.
A direct competitor of Facebook, Google+, launched with high expectations, but has yet to reach the high standards set out before them. The main feature that Google+ can reign over Facebook, is “hangouts”, group video chats that allow you to interact with all of your Google + friends. On Google+, you can add people to your circles, groups that allow you to organize your followers according to your own rules. The cool thing is that you don’t have to follow back the people that have you in their circles. This is different from Facebook where your friend requests have to be accepted in order for you to fully follow that particular person.
The platforms mentioned in this blog are definitely key players in pushing social media forward; however, they are still only a few of the many numerous sites out there that make up the world of social media. Here at WDG, we find social media to be exciting and ever-changing. Our social strategists thoroughly enjoy pushing its ever-evolving limits. Need a boost in how you fare in social media? Talk to us. We accept all challenges!
