2.1: How Did We Get Here?
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To understand why social media are so powerful and so ubiquitous, it helps to understand a key fact: Social networks are not new. Social networks are as old as civilization itself. The term refers to groups of people collaborating to support each other and get things done.
The formal analysis of social networks dates back to the 1930s. Anthropologists, sociologists and others have worked for nearly a century to map and study how and why people form social groups. We develop and nurture social groups for safety, friendship, trade and to get things done that require large numbers of people.
The most relevant lessons from fields that study social networks in depth for those who need to use social networking communication tools as professionals involve how people connect and communicate in order to live and work together.
We have been successful at networking socially since long before there were digital social networking applications. Digital tools enhance and extend capabilities we have had for tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of years.
For example, global trade routes date back thousands of years. Global empires and religions are built on social networks. One way of looking at colonialism is as an effort to make some human social networks more powerful, successful and efficient by decimating, displacing or disregarding others. Many shipping routes, i.e. oceanic shipping, are hundreds of years old. In the name of building stronger social networks, some people were lifted up while others were subjugated.
Humans built networks of networks and used them to connect, communicate, commingle, do commerce and do combat with each other from the dawn of society through the 20th century.
In the 21st century, for the first time, we have the power of fully networked, global high-speed electronic communication networks to utilize and to try to manage.
It should come as no surprise that at the same time we are developing more powerful ways to live, work and play in networks that we are also more immediately aware of the downsides of the use of power around the globe.
Figuring out how to make the most of digitally connected human networks without destroying society is probably the most important social challenge of this millennium next to dealing with global climate change.
What digital social networking capabilities afford is near-instantaneous access to existing human networks as well as the ability to quickly create and leverage new digitally connected networks of people. We can pretty much disregard the limits of space and time on this globe when it comes to matters of communication, and we have only begun to understand the power of social networking applications to disrupt, augment, and build new social structures.
Every Network is an Island
(This section is remixed from Intro to Social Media by Cheryl Lawson, CCBY-Attribution)
Navigating your path through the terrain of social media can seem daunting, particularly when deciding which social media platform is most suitable for your business. You’ve defined your objectives; you may be aiming to hone your skills as a social media manager for a business or leveraging your knowledge to boost your organization’s reputation or growth. In either scenario, the question of “Which social media platform is the best for my business?” inevitably arises.
This is a longstanding debate, yet it’s important to realize that each network carries its own significance. The choice of platform hinges not on general perceptions of ‘the best’, but on what best aligns with your unique business goals and fits the specific needs of your target publics.
Social media platforms were developed with distinct objectives in mind. Facebook sought to unify individuals worldwide, LinkedIn established an avenue for professional networking, Instagram provides a platform for all age groups to capture and chronicle their significant moments through photos. Consequently, understanding the benefits unique to each platform is vital. It’s about deciding which platform offers the capabilities that best serve your business goals, aligns with your industry, and resonates with your target publics.
Keeping your specific industry and your target publics in mind is key when assessing these platforms. Each one offers unique benefits and reaches specific demographics, so consider where your publics are most likely to be active and engaged. The platform that best reaches your publics and aligns with your business objectives is the one you want to focus on.
Side Note:
Regardless of whether you’re a budding startup or an established brand, it’s wise to secure your brand name across all social media networks, even if you’re not actively using them in your current strategy. This preemptive measure ensures your brand name isn’t hijacked or misused by others. The last thing you want is for someone else to lay claim to your brand’s name.
Who Lives There?
A primary appeal of social media for communicators is the extensive targeting options it provides. Unlike traditional PR and marketing which often focus on mass media relations and mass marketing, social media communication allows you to target precise audiences for your PR campaigns.
Facebook is populated mostly by adults of the 25-34 age group. The second largest group is 18-24 years, who make up 23.8% of Facebook’s population, and only 4.8% of users fall into the senior age group. The biggest country present on the platform is India, while users from the US and Canada are only 10% of the total Facebook population. As for gender, males dominate the platform with 56% of the total population. Also, 51% of active users visit the website several times a day, and 75% of Facebook users are at least college graduates (Statista, 2024).
YouTube's user base in 2024 is diverse, with 25-34 year-olds making up the largest age group, accounting for about 12% of the total users. The platform has 2.5 billion monthly active users, with India leading in user numbers, followed by the United States and Brazil. In terms of gender, 54.3% of users are male and 45.7% are female globally, though in the U.S., this ratio flips, with more female users than male. YouTube is heavily accessed by younger users, particularly males aged 25-34, who form the largest demographic segment. The platform is also available in over 100 countries and supports 80 languages (Statista, 2024).
On Instagram, the highest population is 25-34-year-olds, who make up 33.1% of all users, and the age group of 18-24 years is second with a 29.6% share. Most of them come from the US, whereas India and Brazil hold second and third positions respectively. 43% of these users are college graduates, and 42% earn over $75,000 per year. Over 510 million users are female, with males behind by 20 million. These users spend around 28 minutes a day on Instagram. Most users follow at least a single brand on the app, and 73% of teens in the US find Instagram the easiest way to reach and interact with a brand (Statista, 2024).
TikTok is a customer-favorite app. Its users are present in 141 countries. China, India, United States, and Turkey are among the countries where it is most frequently downloaded and used. About 44% of TikTok users are female, and 56% are male. Out of these, 41% of users are aged 16-24 years and spend at least 52 minutes every day on the app, watching videos related to entertainment, dance, pranks, fitness, and other categories. 90% of TikTok or Douyin users access the app via Android smartphones and maintain a healthy engagement rate of 52%. In 2019, people spent $115.3 million on the app for in-app purchases, influencer marketing, etc. In September of 2023, TikTok launched the TikTok Shop, which enables users to explore deals without leaving the app. The addition of the shop spawned the growth of content creators whose sole aim is to drive users to their shop. Often a link to a specific item within a shop will appear in videos on the “For You” tab.
Snapchat is predominantly used by younger audiences, with 48% of users in the 15-25 age group. Another 30% of users are aged 26-35, while only 5% are over 55. This makes it especially popular with Gen Z and Millennials. The platform also maintains a near-even gender distribution, with females slightly dominating at 51% of the global user base. In terms of geography, India has the largest number of Snapchat users, with over 200 million, followed by the U.S. with about 106 million users. Snapchat is known for high engagement, with users opening the app around 40 times a day on average.
While many brands still use X, formerly Twitter, for promotional purposes, attitudes about X are mixed and evolving the more partisan the site becomes and the less the site restricts hateful content, which can be detrimental for brands to associate themselves with. Consider this article from PR News, which states that opinions among PR professionals about X are starkly mixed as some are moving away completely while others have seen competitors to X rise and fall several times.
Bluesky is a popular microblogging app built on an open source protocol. Its user base grew substantially in October and November of 2024 after it announced the ability to easily block users, a feature no longer fully functional in X (Twitter).11
For most brands engaged in debating whether to use X, Bluesky or both, the most reliable approach continues to be to go where their customers are.
This was a brief overview of some popular social platforms. You should opt for the platform that suits your business needs.
What Language Do They Speak?
Whether you’re talking to friends at a party, communicating with little kids in social gatherings, or sharing thoughts with business associates in a professional setting, you should always be aware of your audience. When you choose the language or tone they understand, you can conveniently communicate with each other without misunderstandings.
The following graphic is based on a longstanding tradition of using donuts to explain how social media platforms function. Often times, the functions afforded by the platform will shape, or at least influence, the audiences you encounter there.
Do not forget to consider the relationship between platform and audience. This will help when you need to target publics on social media.
Creating social media profiles is easy. What is more difficult is spreading your message and getting people talking about your organization in a positive manner; however, this objective can be achieved by determining what type of content the audience prefers and creating posts that are relevant to that group and that uses a tone they are familiar with and comfortable with.
Hashtags (#)
Hashtags were introduced by Chris Messina in an attempt to organize content on social media. Twitter (now X) first introduced this feature in 2007. It was later adopted by Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and TikTok due to its utility. A hashtag categorizes content on the basis of a topic. If you want to reach the right audience for your business, you need to target popular and relevant hashtags. You can also create custom hashtags to promote your campaigns.
Here is an example: Imagine a roofing service provider hires you as a social media marketer. To build their business online, you need to come up with suitable hashtags for the social media strategy. Here are a few trends and hashtags that may prove useful:
- #roofing
- #roofingcontractor
- #construction
- #greenroofing
- #roofrepair
- #roofgutters
Long Form vs. Short Form Content
Those of us who spend a lot of time online tend to have short attention spans. We easily get distracted and can ignore posts if we don’t find them interesting. This is why campaigns using digital media focus on concise, captivating content that can keep readers hooked till the last line.
If we need to keep the content short, how can we share important information with the target audience?
It’s common for social media communicators to get confused about the ideal length of content in posts. Remember that the content length depends on audience interests as well as the norms and trends of the platform where you intend to post it.
Long-form content
If you are planning to publish long-form content, it is best to set up a company blog. The purpose of blogging is to educate people about a relevant topic and offer comprehensive solutions to problems. For example, if you are an expert in providing electrical installation and repair services, you may want to write posts about safety tips for customers. Blog posts can be 500-1,000 words, but you should aim to publish blogs of 2,000-2,500 words to boost SEO.
LinkedIn is also suitable for posting long-form content. You can write about your area of expertise and experiences to share knowledge with other professionals.
Other social platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, etc. may be suitable for short-form content. Whether you are thinking of creating text posts, videos, or images, it’s a better option to keep the content short for better engagement.
Don’t forget that long form videos aren’t compatible with most social websites. So, if you are creating long-form informative videos, it may be a good option to post them on YouTube and share a brief snippet on X and other social websites.
Take, for example, stand-up comedians. Their career depends almost entirely on their ability to garner and hold an audience’s attention. A common approach for stand-ups is to publish long-form videos on YouTube or possibly as a podcast and then to clip their stand-up sets into brief videos for Instagram and TikTok. This allows for audiences to find them on different apps and to check out longer sets, which might encourage them to become more serious fans.
Importantly, information about upcoming live shows is usually shared on all platforms, whether the videos are short-form, long-form or somewhere in-between.
If you are representing a brand, it is not necessary to try to be funny, but you do need to locate followers who find your topic interesting where they spend the most time on social media. If you grab their attention with a quick teaser video clip and make easy-to-follow links, many will visit your YouTube channel to watch the entire video.
What’s Their Favorite Dish?
Back in the day, social media campaigns were all about text posts and still images. With technological advancements, a wide variety of content is now available to internet users. Let’s first take a look at the most popular types of digital content. After that, we will discuss which content goes well with popular social media apps and sites.
- Blog post and other articles
- eBooks
- Images (still images, GIFs, 360° images)
- Videos (recorded videos and live streaming)
- Infographics
- Testimonials
- Contests
- Polls
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- How-to guides
Instagram is an image-based platform. To promote your brand, you can share high-quality photos and videos of products, team members, as well as stills and videos from events. Reels, 15- to 90-second vertical videos users can create, edit, and post to their profiles tend to perform better than photos on Instagram and appear to be favored by the Instagram algorithm with the added benefit that Reels do not disappear, unlike Instagram Stories, which automatically disappear within 24 hours. Adding relevant captions and hashtags to your Instagram content is essential.
A similar strategy is suitable for Pinterest where you can capture attention via images. Your brand may find it necessary to become a verified merchant on the platform and to publish content regularly to well-organized boards. Brands should not assume that they can simply create one aesthetically pleasing board and leave it up for weeks at a time. Pinterest is meant to be a dynamic and fast-changing social media platform like many others.
As for Facebook, videos perform far better than any other type of content. This includes live streams as well as edited images sharing the highlights of organizational events. You can also post videos developed with the aim of advertising on your Facebook page.
With the increasing popularity of TikTok, you shouldn’t ignore its importance in your marketing plan. You can complement videos with captions and can include links to your website to increase web traffic. For brands considering creating a TikTok shop, there are good reasons to do so. TikTok reaches a younger demographic than other platforms. It may be a space to find long-term customers in their youth; however, the platform is regularly threatened by regulatory action in the United States because it is owned by the Chinese corporate ByteDance (although TikTok has headquarters in Singapore and Los Angeles). TikTok is also regulated relatively heavily by the Communist Party of China, which traditionally regulates all types of media, whether they originate in China or not, with tight controls.
In the past, the Twitter network (now X) was mostly known for its credibility in news and information. Users of this platform showed more interest in professionally published content, which includes text posts, text threads consisting of multiple posts discussing a single topic, informational infographics and videos. As of 2024, the credibility of the platform has tanked and active users have dropped precipitously as Elon Musk’s new rollouts (the ability to pay for verified status, for example) have blurred the lines of trustworthiness on the platform. Use of this platform for any campaign should be carefully weighed against the potential of having brand content appear alongside hateful and racist rhetoric, which tends to plague the platform whenever its publishing guidelines are relaxed.12
While Bluesky is not a perfect replacement for finding Twitter-like audiences, many of its functions as well as its growing popularity with journalists and influencers may make it a viable option for presenting certain newsworthy content in quick posts or brief threads of text and photos on a reliable platform that functions much like Twitter did historically. After all, Bluesky was created by Jack Dorsey, the former CEO of Twitter.
For LinkedIn, you can turn to long-form articles, user guides, and eBooks to increase engagement.
YouTube has long been one of the most popular sites for pre-produced videos and for streaming live events. Brands can post videos on this platform regardless of the file size or length. Many brands are familiar with YouTube and might not consider it a top social media app, but they should know that YouTube shorts have more than 70 billion views per day, and YouTube is popular across age groups.
Suggested Reading:
https://www.oberlo.com/blog/social-media-marketing-statistics
https://backlinko.com/social-media-users
- The Evolution of PR Campaigns: As social media evolved from early platforms such as Friendster and MySpace to today’s global networks including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, etc., how have public relations campaigns adapted their approaches to publishing on social media? Discuss specific changes in tactics, audience engagement, and message dissemination, and consider how social media’s growth has shifted the balance between legacy media (newspapers, magazines, radio, television, etc.) and digital PR strategies.
- Power Dynamics in Digital Networks: The reading highlights that while digital networks connect people globally, they also magnify the risks of the misuse of media power. What are some examples of how digital social networks have both empowered and subjugated communities in recent years? How should social media platforms handle these power dynamics? What is the role of public relations organizations in navigating or demanding change in these platforms? What is the role of brands in pushing for change in the way social media platforms are managed when they deem it necessary
- Choosing the Right Platform: Each social media platform prioritizes particular purposes and patrons. How should a public relations professional choose a platform for a campaign? Discuss how the target audience, business goals, and platform capabilities should influence this decision.
11. Gael Cooper, "Bluesky Explained: Why This Social Media Network Is Growing by 1 Million Users a Day," CNET, November 18, 2024, accessed November 18, 2024, https://www.cnet.com/tech/bluesky-explained-why-this-social-media-network-is-now-growing-by-1-million-users-daily/
12. Emmet Lyons and Joanne Stocker, “World Bank Halts Paid Advertising on X after CBS News Finds Its Promoted Ad under Racist Content,” CBS News, September 3, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/world-bank-advertising-elon-musk-x-racism-pro-nazi-accounts/