Addicted – A Blessing Or Curse

Hey dears, how are you doing today?

I guess you all enjoyed my last posts on Addiction and I am pretty sure most of you have downloaded some of these apps. Please drop your usernames in the comment section so I can follow you.
Today, we shall be exploring the positive effect of social media.
Despite the alarming negative effects of the social media, we cannot rule out its positive effect. I will try as much as possible not to do any mention for this post so I am not labelled biased.

MONEY MAKING VENTURE
In my last post, I mentioned that people make money via social media and I did a little introduction on that. It is quite unfortunate that most of us do not exploit what we have deeply but only enjoy its surface benefit. Let me use Instagram as an example, the number of followers you have sometimes is a good source of money making. Never think of followers as a way of gaining cheap popularity which will not go beyond the Instagram application but consider it as an opportunity to reach out to the thousands of people that see your posts on daily basis.

Pick an interest, say fashion for instance. Upload fashion style, tips and inspiration. Please do not make this an occasional post. Consistency is the key. When people become familiar with this on your page, the like increases as well as the followers and then they begin to tag other users creating an awareness for you. With these new development, I foresee two things happening : people contacting you for fashion advice which you may charge them for or people contacting you to place an ad for them on your page as a result of the traffic on your page which you will definitely charge them for except you do not like money.
And who doesn’t?

MARKETING STRATEGIES/ AWARENESS
I will mention Social CRM here which stands for Customer Relationship Marketing. This is a very powerful business tool. For example, establishing a Facebook page allows people who like your brand and the way you conduct to Like your page, which creates a venue for communication, marketing and networking. Through social media sites, you can follow conversations about your brand for real-time market data and feedback.
From the customer’s perspective, social media makes it easy to tell a company and everyone else about their experiences with that company- whether those experiences are good or bad. The business can also respond very quickly to both positive and negative feedback, attend to customer problems and maintain, regain or rebuild customer confidence.

Musicians make use of the social media in a very good way to market their songs. The use of hashtag on twitter and instagram helps in this respect. Once a musician is about to release a new song, hashtags of the song title begin to trend. And the moment such track is released, the link would be find on their bio for easy download.
On Instagram, you can see a movie producer or writer posting pictures of behind the scenes of his new movie just to keep his audience informed on the upcoming movie.
You can use the social media to make your message heard and possibly impacting humanitarian causes, environmental problems, economic issues, or political debates.

COMMUNICATION
Using social media sites can help promote creativity, interaction, and learning. It helps you keep in touch with friends and family who are out of reach. The use of Skype (a form of video call) can help you make free calls to friends and families you have not seen in years. BBM and Whatsapp are also effective tools of a quick communication with friends, colleagues, family and boss’.

Many social media sites are designed primarily to facilitate conversations among individuals and groups. These conversations happen for all sorts of reasons. People tweet, blog, facebook or instagram to meet new like-minded people, to find true love, to build self-esteem, or to be on the cutting edge of new ideas or trending topics.

EMPLOYMENT IMPACT
Most entrepreneurs post vacancies ads on their social media account more than using electronic media to reach out to people. Even with the use of a LinkedIn, it makes it easy for employers to access a person’s resume and to decide if such person fit in the job or not.
Once they realise the person will be an asset to their company, reaching out via the contact provided makes it easy. And from there a link is established. An interview could even be set up via Skype if distance tries to create a barrier.
Isn’t the social media a beautiful tool if well utilised?

Now tell me, is your addiction- if you are a social media addict like me- a blessing or distraction?

I look forward to reading your opinions on this. Until then, keep staying fabulous and keep exploring to your advantage the various social media applications at your disposal.