Facebook, one of the most widely used
websites in the world ranks second following, Google. Having an enormous
viewership of 552 million users per day and 995 million users per month,
notably a very young organization compared to its peers. One in every 13 people
around the world checks their Facebook profile each day.
Facebook is the trend setter and the center
of attraction at the present, but at the same time has an equal chance to be
easily overtaken by other social media companies in the very future. Facebook's
power to connect people could be easily overridden by Google's already strong
social network combined with its brand new augmented reality- 'Project Glass'.
Google’s far-reaching services may even remove Facebook without trace making it
an obsolete platform lacking dynamic flexibility.
Below is a graph which portrays the average time spent by Facebook users worldwide,
China ranks first among the countries with
most internet users with India occupying the third place. India is the second
densely populated country in the world, yet never spikes high in the above
chart. Factors that add to India’s lower level graphical representation in the
graph are:
·
Indians
never access Facebook during their office hours
·
Comparatively
high costs of smartphone and iPad in India compared to the U.S.
These factors are likely to change by
2014.
Social media advertising
When it comes to social media advertising,
Facebook aims at building brand awareness and building word of mouth fan-base.
It is not necessary that all ads that you place on Facebook convert into
profitable business leads, since the domain engages only people who dig in to
revive/retrieve their friendship circles and not necessarily of those who have
a business development motive/ intent to go places seeking opportunities.
Business lead generation and output is only possible when Facebook lands their
advertising plans into a much more serious and professional and alternate domain
page.
When it comes to LinkedIn, the exposure
would be very low, but the conversion rate would be solid. They never fall into
a follow-up or waiting or no-further-response category. Whereas, in case of
Google, response and intimation rate will be very high but notable conversions
into business deals is very rare, ending up in pipe line after negotiation and
hold back.
Customer
satisfaction VS social media sites
According to the American Customer
Satisfaction Survey, Google+ and Wikipedia outsmart all the other social media
platforms, proving it to be people's favorite merely a year since its launch.
The major reason behind Facebook’s pull-back was the Timeline feature it added
to the homepage of users. Despite the visionary approach that Facebook had to
enhance their user’s wall page, most Facebook users were completely ignorant
about it. More ad space set to the already clumsy looking home page was another
blunder, which was somehow beneficial to advertisers and not to regular users. Meanwhile,
Google+ added fantastic features like updates in Gmail, circles and hangouts
that turned out to speak for better user-experience, surging their fan rate.
What about social media’s future?
A recent study states that 81% of the
consumers trust their grocery stores to share their personal information with, more
than social media sites. They are ready to share their details with their local
merchants (for them to advertise new products), whereas feel Facebook or Google
or others never to be trust worthy and a nightmare.
Social media is a trustworthy and effective
platform for people to engage with personally as well as for business nerds
looking to develop an efficient and inexpensive advertising campaign. Share
only the information you feel is not going to hurt you in any other possible
way. Building appropriate knowledge over these sites and identifying the
intention behind their existence leads to exciting results in your venture.
