Week1 B: Social Media Use Today

 

I believe that social media is a mix of things, users can be funny, scary, goofy, and engaging however, the biggest use is for businesses to access specific audiences and engage potential customers. I think that all the platforms are really focused on advertising dollars and revenue generation from businesses which is why they provide the platforms at no-cost to end-consumers.

            Social media use by businesses can use a range of applications to access users, some of these tools allow companies to understand time-sensitive awareness of users and target products based on time of interest. Often, social media users will receive special sales promotions and targeted discounts in near real-time based on a particular interest. For Facebook, guides exist to help businesses cover interest targeting including using targeting tools, strategies, finding the right interests, interest testing strategies, and scaling interest based advertising campaigns to connect to social media users.

            In the political space, social media is also used to try and sway voters by targeting swing voters with information politicians feel will have an emotional connection to an issue. Many people are aware of Cambridge Analytica based out of the UK that collected personal data of millions of Facebook users to push political advertising under the guise of using the data for academic purposes. The company used advertising schemes to discredit politicians based on opposition research and target large numbers of users to swing their political votes. Cambridge Analytica data analysis methods were based on those originally patented by Facebook.

            It seems that social media is a powerful toolset to interact with users, in both ethical and in some cases, unethical purposes. While I feel the main goal is revenue for these platforms, I also believe that we will start to see big-change in how these platforms operate due to politics. In the US, many citizens feel that free-speech was cancelled by moderators and this may have some future consequences for all the platforms. In the case of Alphabet, the government is considered forcing them to break-up parts of their business and possibly spinning the advertising business out. Additionally, we are starting to see Supreme Court cases from the states trying to force the platforms to allow free-speech as they are the new “town hall” of America. These trends will become interesting to follow over the next few years to see how these Social Media platforms are impacted, along with the businesses that use them and revenue.

            Regardless of how social media platforms change over-time, I think that everyone will adjust with those changes because targeted marketing is essential for businesses to sell products. My main goal is to understand how I can use the social media tools of multiple platforms to drive marketing campaigns, and scale them, to targeted audiences. The goal, of course, is to help grow a business by leveraging advertising dollars and providing a strong return on investment to the business.