Content:
Social networks have the following features:
- They support a variety of content formats, such as text, video, photos, audio, etc. Many of them make use of more than one of these content options.
- They allow interactions that cross one or more platforms through sharing, email and feeds.
- They are characterized by different levels of user interaction who can create, comment or follow-on Social Media networks.
- They simplify, improve the speed and scope of information dissemination.
- They offer one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communication.
- They allow this communication to take place either in real time or asynchronously over time. - They are device independent: A user can use a computer, or mobile devices (tablets and smartphones in particular) to connect to social media.
- They extend engagement in three ways: by creating real-time online events, by extending online, interactions offline events, and lastly by supporting live events.
An alternative categorization results in the following seven types of social networks:
- Social news and recommendations (e.g., digg.com)
- Social book-marking sites (e.g., delicious.com)
- Micro blogging services (twitter)
- Blogging systems (e.g., blogger.com)
- Social networks (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn)
- Social sharing (e.g., YouTube, Flickr)
- Wikis (e.g., mediawiki.org)
Facebook is a social networking platform launched in February 2004 and nearly 2 billion people use it to connect with their friends and family. It was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with the main objective of communicating users, through messaging with their contacts and the ability to update according to the latest events their personal information. Initially, only Harvard students were eligible to participate and later extended to the Ivy League (a designation of a group of eight 'elite' US universities). The name of the site comes from the introduction documents of the members of the university communities of some American colleges and preparatory schools used by incoming students to get to know each other. In 2005 the right of access was extended to certain high school students and members of certain student communities, and in 2006 the service was made available to every person on the planet over the age of 13. More than 1.5 billion people use Facebook on 1.1 billion people use Facebook on a daily basis and around 2.3 billion people use it on a monthly basis to discover interests, news, thoughts and ideas and there are already over 7 million active advertisers on Facebook.
Businesses soon realized that Facebook was an integral part of the consumer's daily life, which they could 'penetrate' by promoting the right products and services according to their interests and preferences without incurring particularly high costs. Facebook's advertising formats and pages are designed to attract the attention of the audience and drive them to action, offer flexibility and innovation, work on any device and are designed to help businesses achieve their goals. Facebook ads are extremely flexible, but they work best when the business knows clearly what it is they want to achieve. That's exactly why advertising objectives exist, which help clarify the marketing goals of its campaigns or even individual ads. Although the objectives are detailed, they fall into three broad categories of objectives: awareness, interaction and conversions.
Another widely known app Instagram, created by two Stanford University graduates, Kevin Sturm and Mike Krieger, was launched in October 2010. It is a free social networking app that enables the editing and sharing of photos and videos online. Users can share photos and videos with their followers or a selected group of friends, comment and indicate that they like a post. (Wikipedia, 2019) In December 2010, the number of registered users had reached one million users, and today the app counts 20 billion photos from around the world and 1 billion active users. Its name comes from the combination of the word Instant (instant) and telegram (telegram). In 2012 the app was purchased by Facebook, for a U.S. $1 billion, and as a result it soon gained Facebook features such as business features. 80% of accounts follow a business on Instagram. More than 500 million accounts use Instagram Stories daily. Like Facebook, Instagram has promotional features, optimizing ads by sharing photos and videos that drive business results, targeting engagement, video views, traffic, conversions, app installs or brand awareness. All of the above is achieved through telling a compelling story about your business to the 500 million people who use Instagram Stories every day, and encouraging users to take action through visual expressions of the business brand. People log on to Instagram to get inspired and discover things they are interested in, so the business needs to connect with the audience based on what they are passionate about and encourage them based on their interests. Now any business can tell its story using unique creative tools and immersive forms that inspire action, encouraging exploration, enabling it to connect with new customers and strengthen relationships with existing customers. Statistics showed that 1/3 of the most viewed stories on Instagram Stories are from businesses, 50% of businesses on Instagram globally have created at least one story during a typical month, and 96% of US advertisers surveyed said they plan to continue using Instagram Stories ads in the next six months. From the above we can see how important Instagram has become for business advertising in the digital world and how much of a positive impact it has had. Instagram could be described as the largest online space, with the least distractions as stories take up the entire mobile screen, offering businesses a stylish canvas free of elements that could distract users which is the secret to its success.
Instagram has always been a place where users could share important moments in their lives. Now, Instagram Stories also enables businesses to share everything, even the smallest moments and infiltrate the lives of its users. From top brands to neighborhood small shops, businesses around the world are achieving the results they seek through Instagram.
Twitter is one of the most popular social networking platforms, where it allows users to read short messages called tweets. Messages are public and can be read by all users, while to post messages, users need to create a twitter account. The platform has around 370 million monthly active users and is one of the 10 most popular websites on the internet. It was created on 21 March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, and published in July 2006. In mid-September 2019, Twitter was ranked thirty-second on the world web by web traffic analysis by Alexa. Users can self-promote on the platform by building their followers through their website, television, or other social media and send tweets to their followers with relevant content. Of course, there is also the possibility of paid advertising but so far it is not very widespread. The majority of its users are public figures and big chains where it is easier to advertise their existence and gain followers. It is considered by marketers as a good way to build company image, showcase their brand name, communicate with their audience quickly and easily as well as raise their brand awareness. Through Twitter, the business is given the opportunity to discover developments as it gives instant access to events happening in the industry, the community and even around the world at any time. This is a great advantage given to the business since it can read and "listen" to conversations with relevant content happening at that particular time, jump into them and add value. At the same time, it could increase brand awareness (brand name) through regular communication with existing fans and new ones. Also, another action that the business can do through Twitter is timely customer service, as it has been observed that Twitter users often comment on products they use in their daily lives, thus making Twitter a place where the business can immediately respond to these comments. According to 85% of Twitter SMEs said that it is important that they can provide this kind of support to their customers because they can easily and quickly respond and this helps them develop a good reputation. Finally, the business can get in touch with either potential customers, brand-brand advocates or influencers. From all of the above we can conclude the importance of twitter in terms of interacting with people outside the personal network of the business and discovering new circles that had not known before in order to create valuable links.
YouTube
YouTube is a social networking platform that allows users to upload videos with their own content and interact with videos from other users. The platform - which was created in 2005 by former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steven Chen and Jawed Karim - is web-based and also has a high-performance mobile app.
Google acquired the platform a year later, which is why YouTube accounts are linked to Google Plus. Alexa, a provider of internet-related statistics, currently ranks YouTube as the second largest provider of domestic and global web traffic. It has over 1.9 billion active monthly users, around 5 billion videos watched daily on average, and over half of its views come from mobile devices. Through the platform, businesses are given the opportunity to create a business channel account where they can update new or existing customers. 83% globally prefer YouTube as a social networking tool, while 93% of youth use YouTube as a way to learn skills or practices and the average usage for a person per day is 40 minutes.
There are over 50 million active users creating content on YouTube and half of users use it to learn how to do things, while over 70% of users use YouTube to search for content for their children. Only a small percentage of around 9% of SMEs use YouTube which contrasts with the 68% of users who consult YouTube videos before making a decision to make a purchase. However, Marketers soon realized the potential that YouTube offers and each year 40% more ads are being generated as more and more companies utilize the channel as a means of promotion. YouTube users are approached by age and gender as follows: In terms of gender 55% are male and 45% female, in terms of age 18-24 makes up 11%, 25-34 makes up 23%, 35-44 makes up 26%, 45- 54 makes up 16%, 50-64 makes up 8%, 65+ makes up 3%, unknown age makes up 14%. 55% men and 45% women. It is now certain that YouTube plays an important role in a person's daily life and even and even influences their consumption habits. This is why influencers and Youtubers have flourished.
A professional YouTube channel adds more interaction with the buying and non-buying public. Managing a YouTube channel has a lot in common with managing a business, it requires like a business that wants to build and maintain its customer base, a business channel needs to attract new visitors and also keep the interest of those who have already visited it. When converting the channel into a business, the ultimate goal of the channel, the reason for its existence, the product - the content to be created and the plan for the future development of the business through the channel should be defined. Through a series of actions, businesses can achieve the maximum possible effect and gain "followers-viewers" who follow each post, interact with each other and are then driven to purchase the service or product being promoted.
LinkedIn is the meeting point for all professionals. It is specifically a Social Network, whose goal is to connect all the professionals in the world, making them more productive and better at their work.
The use of LinkedIn is mainly about updating around the user's contacts, their industry of work, etc., all the previous in a more serious style than other Social Networks. Also, the professional Social Network is also used by companies as an online resume, whereby users can find jobs by responding to job advertisements within it.
On LinkedIn, each user creates their own profile, to which they can add information such as their current and previous employment, volunteer activities, languages they know, skills, education, etc. In other words, information that can help the user to find a job or to establish partnerships and relationships with other professionals. Each profile sends a connection request to other profiles, which means that the other profiles must accept or reject the request. In recent days, a follow option has also been noticed, which links a user to another user's public information and posts. In addition to actions to like, comment and share other users' posts, users can leave recommendations on their network profiles, as well as confirm skills that their contacts have added, or have not yet added, through the Endorsements feature.
Moving away from profiles, the professional Social Network also contains groups and company pages, in which the user can be updated around a specific topic or a specific company, respectively. Continuing, LinkedIn offers users the possibility of searching for a job through job advertisements published on company pages. Therefore, it is very important to have a good and serious profile.
Finally, LinkedIn has many other functions, for example for students who are looking for their professional future, for professionals who want to learn more about the relationship between study and work, for students who are looking for a university and field of study, etc. In contrast to other Social Networks, LinkedIn provides premium packages to their users, with which they gain access to more or improved tools compared to ordinary users.
Pinterest is a social medium dominated by images, both static and animated (GIF), and video content is also supported. In recent times, and with new features such as Guided Search on computers and mobile devices, Pinterest was seen by many as evolving more into an image search engine than a Social Network. Since its inception, Pinterest attracted more women than men, since its topics were mostly about fashion, marriage, cooking, etc.
Now, there are all kinds of topics and the Social Network is used to store images on boards, like folders, with users organizing their images based on events, cooking, etc. Each user creates their own personal profile, in which they create boards, also known as boards, in which they can store images and videos, also known as pins. The user can create as many boards as he wishes, either openly to other users or secretly for personal use only.
The user can then collect pins for his boards either through other Pinterest users, or via the internet from (almost) any site, by making use of the Pin it Button in the browser bookmarks or as a browser extension. Any user can follow other users, without necessarily having them follow him. By following a user, the user automatically follows all of his boards, and has the option to follow only one or more boards and not all of them. The content of the boards the user follows is displayed on their home page, and there are also options to search by categories or popular pins.
Pinterest is considered simple to use, since it does not contain groups or company pages, but rather company accounts that function almost like other users, i.e., having profiles and boards. Each pin within the boards can accept the "pin it" option, which is considered a share and the pin is added to one of the user's boards, the "like" option, which is added to a list on the user's profile, the "visit website" option, which is used to visit the site the pin came from if it has not been uploaded directly to Pinterest, the "send" option, which uses the chat function to send the pin in a private message, and finally the comments option.
Finally, on Pinterest you will find different kinds of pins, as some of them can either contain a price if they come from an e-shop, or ingredients if it's a recipe, or even a location on a map if it's place pin.