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In the world of today, it will be very shocking for us if we come to know of a person who does not have a social network. Especially, the youth of today!
Surveys have shown that it was only social media that helped people survive the quarantine phase during the coronavirus pandemic.
People were staying home while getting all the updates on social media platforms. Almost all the work places were shut down and working from home had become common.
Nowadays, in order to stay connected to the people you know, social networking is really important. It helps us to stay in touch with people of our acquaintance despite the busy schedules we have.
If we state the statistics, there were 233 million social media users in the United States as of 2021. It is not surprising that the use of social media networks is rapidly increasing. The rate of global social media usage stands at 49% as of 2020.
Advantages of Social Media
1. Social Media is Cost-effective
Social media applications like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linkedln, and many others are free. You can sign-up for free and use it throughout your life.
These platforms do ask for your personal information that you have to give away or else you can not sign up.
Many small and large scale businesses are using these social media platforms in order to market their products to a large audience.
However, a small business is able to get more benefit of social media marketing than a large business. Small businesses have a limited advertising budget while large businesses set a separate budget for advertising.
Social media marketing is cost-effective for them as they do not need to set a huge amount of budget for it, a little amount will do the job perfectly!
However, the traditional ways of advertising and promoting are expensive in front of social media platforms.
Because of it being cheap, every social class is able to afford it. Hence, resulting in an increased rate of social media users worldwide.
2. Social Media is Fast and Targets a Huge Audience
As mentioned above, Social media has a huge audience which makes it easier to spread information to a large number of people in so little time.
Businesses today prefer digital marketing over the traditional marketing ways.
Below are the audiences for a single post on social media:
- Facebook : 2.9 billion users
- YouTube : 2.3 billion users
- Twitter : 436 million users
- Linkedln : 800 million users
- Instagram : 1.3 billion users
With a good marketing post, and some clicks here and there, you will be able to target a large number of audience. The potential outreach is high, you just have to learn the little tactics in order to boost your posts.
Many people and products have gone viral because of their reach to the potential audience who then share it to even a larger audience.
3. Social Media helps you stay Connected
With our busy lives, it is not possible to catch up with friends and family often. Social media keeps us connected with our friends, family, and other people we know.
Through posts on Facebook, Instagram stories, and stories on Snapchat, we come to know what someone is up to.
It is also beneficial for businesses to stay connected to their customers and potential customers through a two-way communication on their social media platform.
It is a great way to increase customer engagement and create brand loyalty. Ideally, it can also be a chance for your business to start a conversation with a potential customer.
The more updated and responsive you will be on your social networking sites, the more you will be able to create brand awareness and grow your business.
4. Social Media Promotes Social Change
In terms of influence, Social Media is really strong and has a lot of power. Young people realise it and use it in order to create room for change.
Due to the fact that it does not require money, campaigning on a social networking site is easy and is really effective.
People can speak up on social media platforms and put pressure on any government to take action and come up with fair solution.
Youth has been able to carry out campaigns where they have highlighted the problems they face in regards to the educational systems, basic facilities in their area, or even when they have faced biases at work place.
5. Get Support and Encouragement through Social Media Channels
If you have an art or a skill that you wish to showcase, you can easily do that on social media. Create an account on any of the social media sites that you like, and start posting the content you make.
Those people who will be attracted by your content will support you and encourage you. You might also be able to turn it into a business if it goes well and people think it is worthy enough to buy.
There are groups on Facebook that allow you to showcase your talents and get feedback from the members. It helps you to improve your skills if there is room for it.
6. Social Media Boosts up the Economy of the Country
Social media has managed to become an important part in the growth of an economy. Social media platforms have created so many employment opportunities for people throughout the world.
Remote job opportunities have made it very easy and flexible for people to earn money by working from homes with flexible working hours.
According to a study done by McKinsey Global Institute, social media added up to $1.3 trillion to the economy. This is done through catering to a large number of people with increased productivity and customer service.
There are so many jobs posted on Facebook and Linkedln which makes it easier for both, the employer and the job-seeker to find their best suit.
The U.S. Trade and Development Agency and other such organisations in many countries are also making use of social media networks and creating awareness of trade and development opportunities.
In this way, these organisations have been able to connect to development opportunities abroad which aids in sustainable development with other countries.
Moreover, because of the ease and effectiveness of social media platforms, the upcoming small businesses and organisations are aiding to the economic growth of their countries.
Disadvantages of Social Media
1. Costs you a lot of Time
Although the use of social media is cost-effective, the cost we pay is our time and energy.
You need a lot of time and patience when working and marketing on social media. People will also try to drag you down through various demands on your time but you have to stay put and be consistent with what you are doing.
In order to gain the expected results, you have to keep going and do not let anyone interrupt your focus.
But, one thing is for sure that if you stay committed and give time to social media, you will be successful and get the desired results.
2. Use of Social Media can be Addictive
This, I believe, is the biggest drawback of social media!
Despite being so useful, social media does have its disadvantages. Internet addiction is getting very common nowadays. It was on the rise when the coronavirus pandemic hit and people were forced to stay home.
Staying at home, a trend of online gaming began which became habitual and then turned addictive. The teenagers and young people became victims of it. Some became so addictive to it that they even killed themselves due to silly reasons.
Spending so much time on social media platforms leads you to avoid people physically. People end up neglecting face-to-face interactions with others. This may lead to increased social isolation.
3. Signs of Depression
No matter what, the life people show on social media is sometimes not always true. It is usually made to show the writer in the most attractive way. Some people get triggered by them and then start to show signs of depression.
When you see others happy, living their best life, achieving their life goals; you get insecure and start comparing your life to theirs.
We have to be firm about a fact that every one of us is different and we have different things to offer to the world.
You should not let the happiness and achievements of others bring you down, instead, you should feel influenced and motivated.
Depression is not good for our well-being that is why it is very important to balance your life and not spend your whole day using social media platforms. You have to put a limit to your social media use.
4. Marketing on Social Media can Backfire!
Promoting and marketing your business on social media has pros and cons both. While it creates awareness of the products and services you offer, it can bring about negativity too.
People start questioning your business under the posts and bombard the posts with unnecessary queries.
Any of your unsatisfied customer can also post a bad review about the product or service which will have an adverse impact on your business.
Businesses end up creating a different department for such issues. That department only works towards dealing with people’s issues and resolving them.
If you fail to respond and cater to the negative feedback, it will result in a damaged reputation.
5. Increased Resources
As mentioned above, in order to tackle the negative feedback, companies are making a new separate department. This means that you will have to hire people for that department.
In order to manage your social platform, you will be needing more staff which will aid to your expenses.
When your business is doing well, you move towards paid social media advertising.
When you wish to create video content with bloggers and influencers, you need to pay them to collaborate with you.
This is also known as influencer marketing.
All these things increase your resources as well as expenses but at least your business is going well so you may be able to afford it!
6. It is a Fast-Changing, Dynamic World
We are living in a world that is very fast and things are changing constantly. On Social media platforms, we experience changes every now and then.
Facebook and Instagram are rapidly making changes in their algorithm. Nowadays, there is a limit to the length of your posts and to its reach.
Therefore, it is almost a full-time job to keep updated with the latest trends and practice the current processes in which things are taking place on social media.
There is an on-going war between the social media platforms with new and better ones being introduced lately. When the new and innovative one is doing better, you have to be active on that.
You will have to keep on revising your marketing strategy and create changes in your strategic planning as well.
Currently, TikTok is on the verge of becoming world’s most popular platform on social media. It has a large number of users globally and they are getting famous in regards to their videos going viral.
Conclusion
To summarise, social media is by far the most popular digital network and its pros definitely outweigh its cons.
In order to get the best use of social media platforms, you have to use it wisely. It is a powerful network which needs to be used correctly in order to get the desired results.
Social media platforms are proving to be a great source of marketing and promotion of various businesses throughout the world.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What are pros and cons?
Ans. The pros and cons are the advantages and disadvantages of something. When you are comparing two things, these help you make a better decision.
2. Do the pros of social media outweigh the cons?
Ans. Yes, they do. Social media is a very powerful network which has a lot of pros. When we compare the pros with cons, the pros outweigh the cons.
3. What is an example of social media marketing?
Ans. WWF’s Endangered emoji campaign on Twitter. WWF started this campaign in order to collect donations for the endangered species. For each retweet of the animal emoji posted by the WWF Twitter account, users of Twitter were making a donation of 10 cents.