Social Media lessons

This year has been a successful one for social media. Not only have we seen the usage of Twitter and Facebook rise, but we have also seen some (well quite a few) new social media platforms arise.  Starting with Snapchat; which has become a very popular way to send images to friends and just communicate for fun. Not only is Snapchat one of the newest popular social media platforms but we also have the likes of Instagram (including features such as InstaVid & Instagram Direct) and Vine; which is a platform that allows its users to upload video’s which can be a maximum of 6 seconds.

Social media is more visual

Social media, in my opinion, is beginning to get more and more visual. First, we had Facebook and Twitter starting off as text based social media platforms, now they (more so Twitter than Facebook) are encouraging its users to use pictures, making Twitter more visual as they recently released the feature which allows its users to send images via. direct messaging when using a Twitter app on IOS, Android etc. Not only have Twitter added this feature to make their platform more visual but they have also recently changed the way in which images are displayed on both the app and Twitter.com. As tweets/links no longer need to be clicked to view an image, as the image is already open and visible on your Twitter feed. This is better because it catches your attention more..also it would seem that people prefer visual tweets over textual tweets; as it’s known that tweets with images are 94 percent more likely to be retweeted

Also, the fact that social media is becoming much more visual could’ve played an important role in Facebook wanting to buy Snapchat, as well as (should) know that Facebook offered Snapchat a hefty sum of $3 billion, resulting in Snapchat declining this. Maybe this was because Snapchat have envisaged that social media is becoming more and more visual, or do the creators of Snapchat think their app is worth, or will be worth, much much more than $3 billion?!

Social media’s for kids?

No, social media is not just for kids. Some people have a misconception that social media is for kids; talking to friends, making new friends, playing games etc etc. However, it’s much more than that. Why? How? Well it’s pretty clear that social media is a very influential platform, and this is why social media can have effects on people; it can effect whether somebody gets a job (or not), it can affect your relationships..

Twitter can help you get a job, so can LinkedIn and many other platforms..but they (if used wrongly) also do the opposite. Use your social networks wisely, keep it (relatively) professional; don’t let an employer see anything you would be embarrassed about (i.e. a drunken picture on your Facebook profile).

Related articles

• Social Media Marketing in 2014: What Lies Ahead (asecinteractive.com)
• Five Biggest Social Media Lessons of 2013 – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)
• 5 Biggest Social Media Lessons of 2013 (mashable.com)