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Welcome to social media training.
In this training session we are going to learn about social media and evaluate if it is right for you.
We are going to first look at an overview of social media. We will see the definition of social media, and review the benefits of an effective social media campaign. We will also look at some of the challenges that can arise in social media.
We will examine the goals that you might have in mind when you were considering a social media campaign, and how that should impact your decision-making.
We will then take a look at the available social media platform options, including a look at the demographics that are reached by the main social media platforms. We will give you the tools to evaluate how the platforms match up with your target audiences, goals, and the risks that can come with social media campaigns.
Finally, we will look at the decision whether or not you should go ahead with a social media campaign.
According to Wikipedia, social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks.
That definition shows how expansive social media is and all of the things that it can do. However, we can simplify that a bit.
For our purposes, social media is online communications to either tell people about our products and operations, or to engage with them in a discussion about our products and operations. Whether it is one-way communications or two-way engagement, social media takes advantage of computers, the Internet, and social networks to reach audiences around the world in a manner that was not available before the invention of the Internet.
It is now possible to reach vast audiences at a fraction of the cost before the advent of social platforms.
So what does social media do for us?
The power of social media is that it connects us with many other people. Those connections are either direct or indirect. Look at that photo. The woman at the bottom is looking up at a vast network of people. She is not directly connected to all of those people. But she is connected indirectly to all of them by leveraging their relationships with other people. That is the power of social media networking.
When you put an ad, a video or a statement on social media, people tend to share it within their groups. That sharing increases your reach to audiences exponentially. That is something that could never have been done with magazine ads or direct mail or news releases other traditional forms of marketing because the sharing option just was not there.
So the major benefit of social media is extensive reach through leveraging relationships of people have. And a lot of it is free. Even if you do have an ad campaign, it costs much less than it would to buy ad space on television, radio, billboards, newspapers, or magazines.
Another benefit of social media is that in some cases, like on Facebook, do you have the ability to target certain audiences by demographics such as age, gender, geographic area, or interests. And you only pay based on the number of people you reach.
With traditional ad campaigns, marketing agencies will tell you your ad was successful because 100,000 people drove by your billboard during the months that you had it up. However with social media, you can decide that you would like to reach 100,000 people in a particular area in a certain age group and with certain interests. That level of targeting translates into more effective campaigns at much lower costs.
However those benefits do not come without challenges.
There can be significant downsides to social media. For example, there are anonymous trolls who write vitriolic responses to ads and messaging. There are even computer programs called bots that search through social media for topics, pretend to be people and will post automated messages in reaction to your campaign. Russia has become known for the bots it has used to sway public opinion in other countries, particularly the USA.
There is also fake news. You may find that if you post some information to social media, somebody will post untrue information in an attack on what you have communicated. It can be very difficult to have that untrue information removed, and it is virtually impossible to undo the damage created from other people reading it.
As well, social media is susceptible to organized attacks by people who may oppose your operation or business. It is possible to reduce the risk by managing your platform carefully, but it takes some special knowledge to do so.
With some platforms it is virtually impossible to target local areas. So SeaFarmers could find themselves facing attacks from the other side of the planet when they really want to just engage with people in their local community.
It is good to know about those benefits and risks. Don’t let the risks turn you away from social media. It is good to know about them and assess them before deciding how to move forward.
It is important to consider what it is you want out of being on social media. Why do you want to have a social media campaign? What are your goals?
There are two main reasons for a business or organization to be on social media. The first is marketing. You may wish to sell a product or service. Social media marketing can connect you to new customers and increase sales to existing customers. You may wish to identify new distributors who can place your products in new markets that seemed unreachable before.
Anyone that has bought anything on Amazon understands how powerful social media is for marketing. If you are trying to increase sales, you probably want to be on social media.
The second reason for being on social media is to engage. You may wish to show the local community how environmentally sustainable your operation is. Or you may want to show how you contribute to the local economy by hiring people and buying goods and services from other local businesses. Social media can help increase goodwill and develop support for your business and your site, and even expansion plans that you may have for the future.
It is important to identify your goals before deciding which platform you were going to use for your social media campaign.
So if you know why you want to get on social media, let’s look at some of the options available.
We will look at the larger platforms. I have data on them, and we will look at some of the features available.
Like traditional marketing, social media marketing involves trying to reach your target audience. The table above has data from 2022 and includes the number of users and the percentage of youth by several age groups. There is also information about youth by gender and the average time spent per day on the platform.
The data above is correct for 2022. If you were looking at this training at a later date, just Google social media demographics and the current year and you will find lots of information readily available.
You can see that there is a lot of difference between the different platforms on the age groups that they reach. Instagram and TikTok for instance reach a fairly young audience as compared to YouTube and Facebook, which do well with all age groups.
It is important to look at up-to-date data. New platforms can often impact other platforms. For example, Instagram and TikTok both feature short videos and they have been so successful that Facebook has adopted a short video feature as well. So depending on who you want to reach, you are going to want to analyze the demographics of the users.
That said, there are other features of these platforms that are very important and will look at each platform separately next.
Facebook has a very large following at 3 billion users across the world. Facebook is probably the very first social media platform that was ever created. It started as a small group of students chatting at a university across a small computer program they created for themselves. In 2021 Facebook had $118 billion in revenue.
Facebook has a reputation for having a lot of seniors who are sharing photos of their grandchildren. While that is true, the fact is the people of all ages are on Facebook. That is helpful if you are trying to reach a broad range of people.
If you are concerned about people and bots attacking your presence on social media, you can take advantage of security tools that Facebook provides. You can limit conversations and you can limit the amount of people who can see hostile messages. But it is important that you set up your account with the right security settings at the beginning. If you were unfamiliar with how to do that, you may want to ask for some help.
By the way, do you want to make sure that your business and your personal Facebook preferences are completely separate. You do not want to make the mistake of posting a personal message for your friends that shows up under the business account.
Instagram has a large following with 2 billion users and has a strong following by all age groups except for those people 65 and over.
Instagram is a visual medium. People post photos and short videos, often taken quickly on their phones, although sometimes they are very polished professional videos. Advertising is available on Instagram.
Instagram also has many influencers, who endorse products and services for a fee. These influencers gather many followers, and then are able to contract with businesses to promote their products.
Instagram is good for marketing products and services but is not very good for engaging with people and there is not much of a platform for back-and-forth communications.
TikTok has 1 billion users and is growing rapidly. It is very popular with younger people but few older people engage with it.
Young people like to post dances and fun stuff that they quickly record on video.
Tick-tock is useful for marketing to a younger audience, but will not reach people over 40. Also there is virtually no engagement opportunity with TikTok.
Twitter has a smaller audience of 211 million people. The users span all age groups. Ads are available although users do not like ads.
Twitter has a reputation for being a toxic place with a lot of trolls, bots, fake news and attacks. While it is possible to stay above the fray, it can be very risky as there are no security tools available on the site.
Twitter also does not have a feature where you can limit your messaging to a target audience or geographic location.
Twitter can be OK if you do not have any concerns about potential attacks. But if you are susceptible to any controversy at all, it would be best to stay off Twitter or maintain a very low profile.
There is an opportunity for a lot of engagement on Twitter, but it can easily be very toxic.
YouTube has a large following at 2 billion users. Like Facebook, its target audience spans all age groups. YouTube is a video platform with longer videos than the short ones that usually end up on TikTok and Instagram.
YouTube has some features that are very good for getting the message out in one direction to a target audience. Users can set up channels with a series of videos that can be subscribed to by people that are interested. This makes for an organized platform quite different than the randomness of other social media sites like TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.
YouTube requires a capability of recording video and editing it. There is an expectation of some professionalism in the videos on YouTube channels.
There really is no opportunity for engagement on YouTube other than allowing people to comment on your videos if you wish.
When you know what the different platforms can offer you, it can be easy to choose the right one for you.
Look back to the information provided on the previous slides and consider the questions listed here.
What demographics do you want to reach
Do you want to engage people in a discussion or do you want to market your products and services.
Are you trying to reach people in your local community or are you looking for a wider audience. If it is a former perhaps you are engaging. If it is the latter then you are likely trying to sell more product
Do you want to have control of the conversation so you can prevent malicious actions? If so choose carefully.
Then you have to ask yourself do I have the expertise and the ability to create the type of contact for the platform.
For example, if you decide you want to use youTube, then you are going to need to be able to create and edit and post videos. If you can’t do it yourself you may have to hire somebody who can.
Don’t forget though, you don’t have to go with just one platform. Some very successful social marketing is done by having a presence on several platforms. That does take a lot more work though.
So you set your goals and you’ve looked at your options and you’ve chosen one or more platforms that you think would be best suited for your social media program.
There is only one question left.
You have to decide if you’re going to dive into the social media marketing pool. If you do, you will need to make a very strong effort in order to do it well. You need to be committed to watching what is happening if you are engaging in the community because if someone does spread lies or maliciously attacks you on social media, you want to deal with it very quickly before it’s out of control and spreads.
You also want to be committed to a long-term effort. It takes a while to attract followers and get attention to your postings on social media.
If you think that you should really do social media but aren’t sure that you’re going to be able to do it well due to limitations of ability or time, and look to hire some help. That could be an employee or it could be a contractor who will post your social media materials for you. There are many experts in social media available.
If you do decide to go ahead, I wish you the best of luck and success on your journey.
That concludes the social media course.
Good luck!
