The Social Media Revolution: An Appreciation!

One of those captivating lines from Wolf of Wall Street is, “Sell me this pen.”

These concepts from are still powerful aspects of the business world, which builds itself on these basic foundations. For a successful business, you need to have integrity, reliability and a good reputation. The company as well as the product has to have an aesthetic as well as emotional appeal to it. And you have to be able to persuade your audience that they need THAT pen.

There was a time when you gained a following with the help of word of mouth or advertisements. Of course, that was also the time when we had telephone-line internet -dance a little, fix yourself a sandwich, drink some water, or sing a song while waiting for your modem to start.

In our present age of high speed wireless internet and digital media, the entire structure of commerce has changed radically. With the deep integration of social media in the lives of ordinary people, it is the broadest and freest mediums of communication with an instantly available and extraordinarily wide audience.

Take the example of restaurants on Zomato. Once just a website offering listings, Zomato has now cultivated a community of food critics offering free reviews. Its integration within Facebook means that every user who posts a review on Zomato has the option of sharing it with a broader audience - family, friends and strangers alike.

With the rise of the social medium, another rapidly growing industry is the home-based one. From confectioners to producers of DIY articles, social media is the easiest platform for these homespun industrialists. Take the example of a Facebook product page that goes around by the name of Papercup. Papercup has its own website, but mostly operates from within Facebook.

These statistics should give you a fair idea of the power of today’s social media. About 85% internet users have Facebook accounts, and 49% are on Twitter. 84% of online shoppers also use social networking sites that offer seamless access to the online marketplaces. 60% of online consumers follow or give feedback to brands on social media sites - which help in growth of brand image as well as product quality. Purchase too is affected by the social media. 81% customers are influenced by friends’ posts, 78% purchased items based on the company’s social media page, and social media referrals increased chances of buying by 73%.