What are the Impacts of Social Media?
What is the Impact of Social Media on Commerce, Business & Society?
With the emergence of social media, we have seen a considerable amount of change in information and communication technology. Social media has played a key role in this transformation.
From the 4.2 billion users, Social Media has 3.03 billion active users
More than 90% of the global brands use at least 2 Social Media Accounts
Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp is responsible for handling around 60 billion messages every day
The process of change is not over yet and we are still witnessing ongoing changes in this sector.
The impact has witnessed heavy growth with the advancement of mobile technology. People spent a large share of their time on mobile devices. Mobile devices provide you with ease to connect with anyone at anywhere and at any time.
This has been a prime reason behind the great upsurge in the use. Let us have a look at the number of users that different Social Media platforms have:
Number of Social Media Users
- Facebook: 2.072 billion users
- YouTube: 1.5 billion users
- Instagram: 1bn users
- Flickr: 90 million users
- Google+: 111 million users
- LinkedIn: 562 million users
- MySpace: 15 million users
- Periscope: 10 million users
- Pinterest: 200 million users
- Reddit: 542 million users
- 4Chan: 27.7 million
- Airbnb: 150 million users
- Snapchat: 186 million daily users
- Twitter: 326 million users
- Wechat: 1.12 billion users
- Weibo: 600 million users
- WhatsApp: 900 million users
So seeing such an enormous user base, have you ever wondered how social media puts an impact on our lives, let us understand that in a few ways:
Impact of Social Media on Commerce
Since the rise of social media organizations and businesses use this platform to connect with their customers and it has become really popular among them. You will hardly find any organization that doesn’t use it to establish a connection with their users.
The impact on business is no doubt huge. Organizations understand the essence of social media in building the brand and increasing the overall revenue.
Organizations can use this platform to create offerings for targeted groups and generate insights at the same time. Hence social media plays a major role in the commerce sector.
It has been proven that knowledge sharing can be marginally improved with the usage in the workplace. Full usage at the workplace is recommended by experts as well because it helps in reducing the boundaries, disparities and help in creating skilled as well as knowledgeable workers.
There is also a negative side of this when lesser social shares can degrade the overall business credibility by leading it to negative social proof.
The use in businesses is very common these days. Unlike the past, such usage of social media in businesses is no more an exception. Whereas a few companies when experiencing the negative side of social media in their business develop a kind of insecurity with it and tend to remove the sharing button on their website.
Taloon.com from Finland is an e-commerce retailer, and a study has shown that their overall conversion rate witnessed a rise of 11.9% when they removed the sharing button.
Hence the impact of social media on your business can be both positive as well as negative. If you are able to develop trust among your users through social media your overall conversion rates would go high, whereas if the trust of users shook, it can be detrimental for your business and you may experience heavy loss.
Positive Impact of Social Media on the Professionals
It affects the recruitment and hiring sector heavily. The phase of this sector has completely changed after the emergence of social media.
Now your resume is not enough to decide your selection but your social media account also plays a very important role in deciding your fate with the hiring company.
Impact on this sector is heavy and this can be estimated by the fact that around 19% of the hiring managers tend to check the social media of the interviewee before making their decision. And the social media profile of that person can become a deciding factor as well.
Another study suggests that more than 60 percent of the employers took the help of social media to research job candidates. This is another positive impact of social media as it becomes a medium between hiring authority and the candidates searching for jobs.
LinkedIn is a really popular platform when it comes to job search. Candidates use this platform to search for various job opportunities whereas companies post their requirement on this platform and for this, you will have to create your own profile on the platform.
The Impact of Social Media on Training and Development
Companies these days look for candidates who hold skills in social media as well. If your resume speaks about your professional skills and advanced techniques then you become more employable.
It has emerged as a learning platform as well. According to various reports, the use has considerably increased in recent years when it comes to using it as a learning platform.
In an interview, more than half of the educators agreed that social media plays a major role in encouraging interactions and creating an environment for learning. Hence we can say that the impact of social media on learning is huge.
These days long distance learning is possible because of social media platforms. Wiki, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc are various platforms that are most commonly used for learning purposes these days. There are certainly some flaws in these platforms like privacy concerns.
However many users have faced different issue due to these issues but the popularity of the platform has been the same as always. These platforms are still used in the field of education.
A few precautions can help you to save your data from getting stolen on these platforms and you can reduce the privacy issues to a minimum. Use social media to educate yourself.
Impact of Social Media on Business
Social media is highly beneficial for your business, if you are not using it then you are missing out a great opportunity to increase your business. Let us understand what are the major benefits for any business:
(i) Increasing Brand Awareness
More than half of the world is active on social media hence it becomes a right platform to target potential customers.
As per a report, more than 60 percent of the people say that they discover new products on Instagram hence you can now understand yourself the essence of social media for your business.
Companies have earned profits by promoting their business through social media marketing and you can also do that because it is the only platform that can make you reach a huge number of potential customers in no time.
(ii) Staying in Mind
Studies have shown that most of the social media users log in to their account at least once in a day whereas a majority of people do this multiple times in a day. Hence you can use this opportunity to stay on top of their mind.
You can use this platform to interact/connect with your potential customers each and every time they log in to their account.
The only thing that you need to take care of is that keep your posts interesting and engaging. Your content should meet the requirements of your users and you need to ensure that you are posting informative contents.
You need to make sure that users are happy after reading your contents and they are satisfied at the same time. If you are posting satisfactory contents then you will stay on the top of their mind and this can help in growing your business.
(iii) Showing the Human Side of your Brand
Studies have reported that majority of people only trust the brand that shows a human side of their brand which means that they want to know if the brand is actually meeting the expectations in the real world or not. They want to know if the brand is keeping its promises.
In order to increase your business, you will have to show the human side of your business with the help of it. You will have to answer the basic questions that every customer asks before making any purchase;
If your product really works?
What are the merits and demerits of it?
What are your brand values?
And so on.
Until and unless you answer these questions, you are not going to get good conversions.
Hence it can be best used to humanize your brand and answer all the obvious questions of users.
(iv) Increasing the Website Traffic
You want to increase the traffic on your website and social media platform can be best used to help out this process. With the help of different types of social media posts and ads, you can drive traffic to your website.
If you are writing good contents/blogs on your website then you can share them on your social media account in order to let the users know you have published something and in this way you can increase the traffic on your website.
One of the major benefits is that you can drive new users to your website by sharing your website’s content on your social media account. Before sharing your website’s content on your account just make sure that your website’s name is there in the post.
(v) Increasing Sales
Irrespective of the type of product you are willing to sell, you can effectively use social media to sell it. Your social media account plays a major role in increasing or decreasing your overall sales. You can reach to new customers through this platform.
Since the number of users on platforms is continuously increasing, you can use this platform to increase the number of your customers.
Impact of Social Media on Society & Personal Relationships
https://youtu.be/qO2onZwxBkM
The impact has changed the manner in which we see ourselves. The manner in which we see our personal relationships. It has also affected the manner in which we connect with our general surroundings.
While web-based life has numerous positive benefits such as advancing consciousness of social causes, promoting organizations and helping better relationships between people who may have never met without Social Media, the over-utilization of such web-based life systems can likewise prompt adverse ramifications as well.
While there are endless upsides in innovation and Social networking have enormously expanded correspondence crosswise over societies, it is basic that we look at the negative ramifications that web-based life use has had on the human experience.
The abuse of Social Media is a worldwide issue affecting all ages and research has appeared excessive web use can have an exceedingly negative effect on our psychological and emotional wellbeing.
Numerous individuals who excessively use Social Media as their primary type of correspondence, report feeling restless and depressed once they are out of their favorite Social Media Platform. Side effects of uneasiness, anxiety, gloom, depression, FOMO, OCD can be activated by the abuse of web-based life, as people are continually worried about their posts and speaking with others.
So, being a little conscious about the use, it is important in ensuring productive and positive outcomes for you. As the fame of Sites constantly develops, networks, for example, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram keep on advancing.
With their right use, you will be enjoying benefits in marketing, social networking, and self-articulation.