Understanding the factors that drive social media

Social media can mean all sorts of different platforms. The prime aspect that distinguishes it from other online avenues is interactivity.

The best description of social media in this context is content created solely by its audience. For example, Facebook is not a hardcore publishing company. It does not produce any content on its own. It neither creates articles or posts in house nor uploads videos or images for visitors to view and enjoy.

What it does is let its users do all of these things on its behalf. It’s like a production house telling the whole world that all creative minds are welcome to shoot their own programs and allow them to broadcast them on its networks without charging anything.

If that were to actually happen, you would still have to inform people what channel they could watch your program. You would still need to produce content other people might like to enjoy. Inevitably, those who adopted the most professional approach towards what they were doing would be the most successful. This is because they would be able to connect with their target audiences.

This also is the key feature of social media – the ability to connect with your audiences. But there is one basic difference. Active user intervention in the process of content creation instead of passive participation forms a vital element of social media.

Keeping this interactive aspect in mind, the outlay for social media advertising can be conceptualized in various innovative ways.