Businesses and Social Media

History of Social Media

Social media got its agreed upon start with a website called Six Degrees, which allowed people to establish profiles and find friends ("Then and now: a history of social networking sites", 2018).  This social media website started in 1997 before the term "social media" ("Then and now: a history of social networking sites", 2018). While it had millions of users registered to the site, network growth was hindered due to the amount of people connected to the Internet ("Then and now: a history of social networking sites", 2018).

Following Six Degrees, blogging as a platform became popular around 1999 and that popularity continues today (Karr, 2016).  LinkedIn started in 2003 and Facebook came after that in 2004 (Karr, 2016). MySpace was also around in the early 2000s and still exists today (Hendricks, 2013).  YouTube came onto the social media scene is 2005 (Hendricks, 2013). Facebook launched its first ad in 2005 (Hendricks, 2013).

Social Media and Advertising

With the advent of Facebook’s first ad in 2005, things changed for companies (Hendricks, 2013).  Suddenly, a new way to interact with consumers appeared. Instead of putting out a message through traditional media and hoping that the right people would see it, there was a way to know that people wanted to see what companies had to say: the companies simply had to post to their followers.

Other social media sites jumped on the opportunities that they saw in advertising.  After all, Facebook reached $50 million in advertising revenue in just a year (Karr, 2016).  Other sites followed, with LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest all launching their own forms of advertising for their sites in the following years (Karr, 2016).

How a Company Should Approach Social Media Participation

The question of how a company should approach social media participation can only be answered by the company’s goals.  What is it that the company wants to do on social media? Do they want to advertise? Gain followers? Use it for sign ups for customer events?  Track reviews of services? There are any number of goals that the company could have, but it is important that the company starts with their end goals in mind to be successful with social media advertising.

Let’s look at an imaginary, middle-sized company wanting to grow their presence on social media. Alias is a company that specializes in connecting new homeowners with services in their local community.  Those services range from dog walking and landscaping to house sitting and construction. Homeowners are able to search a database of service provides and filter that search to their specifications according to provider.  For example, if the Khans are wanting to hire a local dog walker to walk their three dachshunds, they can enter a search for a dog walker used to dachshunds’ behavior, days of the week available, and asking price.

Their new social media marketing team has been studying how to use social media in the best way to reach their target audience.  Here’s what they have discovered:

Target Audience

Alias’s target audiences vary due to the wide range of services they offer. Target audiences include apartment dwellers, young and retired homeowners, and retirees in independent living communities.

Apartment Dwellers

As of 2017, 43.3% of all households rented their homes as opposed to owning them (Cilluffo, Geiger & Fry, 2017).  This is more households as renters over homeowners since 1965 (Cilluffo, Geiger & Fry, 2017). Alias targets apartment dwellers in hopes of revealing their services, especially their dog walking, house cleaning, and house sitting services.  Other services such as grocery delivery and errand running are also offered with this group in mind. Connecting this group of apartment dwellers is a challenge due to their fast pace of life. Services like these will save time for this demographic, which may make it attractive enough to contract services on a regular basis.

Young and Retired Homeowners

Young homeowners are an ideal target audience for Alias; the number of services offered through Alias are all designed to make new homeownership easy.  With new homes comes a settling in period, and knowing that Spot gets a walk while a new homeowner is busy unpacking is piece of mind for that new homeowner.  While homeownership is not as high as it used to be, modern lifestyle changes does produce a call for services that Alias can provide. New services unheard of in certain areas even five years ago are growing and are thought to continue growing.  Grocery ordering, for instance, is growing into a billion dollar industry; as of 2017, nearly a quarter of Americans were using some form of online grocery ordering (Daniels, 2017). This is expected to continue growing and may reach up to $100 billion by 2025 (Daniels, 2017).  Other services, such as errand running, contracting, and house cleaning will free up time that new and retired homeowners may covet and are unwilling to spend it working around the house when there are others willing to do so.

Retirees in Communities

Retirees in communities are just like every other target audience: they have needs as well!  Alias’s services are designed to have something to offer to everyone, and they do not fail to offer the same to this target audience!  Retirees may need house cleaners when they discover that vacuuming stairs becomes too difficult, or they may need house sitters when they go off to visit their grandchildren or go on vacation to the Grand Canyon.  Other services like grocery delivery, errand running, or landscaping will enable retirees to maintain their own households outside of full care facilities for a longer time period.

Alias’s Goals for Social Media

Alias’s goals for social media will include:

• Establishing a strong Facebook presence to take advantage of the tools already there: chatbots, online calendaring of events, and way to reach their audiences already on the platform

The reasoning behind this goal is that almost every demographic group using it in some way.  18-29 year olds currently make up 88% of the Facebook user base, followed closely by the 30-49 year old age group, which makes up 84% of the user base (York, 2017). The older generations are not far behind, with 72% of the user base between the ages of 50-64 and a further 62% of the user base 65 years of age or older (York, 2017).   

After Alias has managed to establish a solid presence on Facebook, their focus will then shift to launch a second social media platform that can be transitioned into a customer care platform, already complete with a private messaging feature:  Twitter. Their goals on Twitter are simple:

• Use Twitter for quick updates and simple messages regarding online services and outages
• Respond to customer concerns and questions
• Use Twitter to direct interested and potential customers to more information on their website or Facebook page

Using Twitter for customer support makes sense, as “34.5% of consumers prefer to connect to customer service agents via social media” (York, 2017).  

The Company’s Target Audience on Social Media: Go Where Your Customers Are

Social media participation makes sense for nearly every company.  After all, it is an established platform that already exists and people are already using it.  Why not use an available tool that is already being used by customers? There is a type of social media available for every type of customer a company could want. Companies can figure out where there consumers already are, and then make sure that they know the company is where they are, too.

References

Cilluffo, A., Geiger, A., & Fry, R. (2017). More U.S. households are renting than at any point in 50 years. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 19 March 2018, from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/19/more-u-s-households-are-renting-than-at-any-point-in-50-years/

Daniels, J. (2017). A $100 billion opportunity: Online grocery sales set to surge, grabbing 20 percent of market by 2025. CNBC. Retrieved 19 March 2018, from https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/online-grocery-sales-set-surge-grabbing-20-percent-of-market-by-2025.html

Hendricks, D. (2013). Complete History of Social Media: Then And Now - Small Business Trends. Small Business Trends. Retrieved 18 March 2018, from https://smallbiztrends.com/2013/05/the-complete-history-of-social-media-infographic.html

Karr, D. (2016). Brief History of Social Media Advertising | MarTech. MarTech. Retrieved 18 March 2018, from https://martech.zone/brief-history-social-media-advertising/

Then and now: a history of social networking sites. (2018). Cbsnews.com. Retrieved 18 March 2018, from https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/then-and-now-a-history-of-social-networking-sites/2/

Unified Enterprise Corp. (2018). A Brief History of Social Advertising. Retrieved from https://c.martech.zone/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/history-of-social-advertising-640x4778.png

York, A. (2017). Social Media Demographics to Inform a Better Segmentation Strategy. Sprout Social. Retrieved 19 March 2018, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/