What is Social Media?

Written by Daniel Maddox

Aug 15, 17

ISolutions Technology are starting a new four part blog about social media. We all pretty much use it, but do we all really know what it means? What it does and how it can benefit you as a business?

So, what is social media?

Instead of us giving you a plain and basic meaning found on Google, we are going to break the term down into simpler terms and work it out from there.

The term ‘social’ refers to the interacting with other people by sharing and receiving information from them.

Then the term ‘media’ is referring to the instrument of communication, so in this case we are using the world wide web - the internet! (TV, radio newspapers are other examples of what media is)

Ok so from breaking down the two parts of this term we can basically summarise that the term social media is a web-based communication tool that enables people to interact with one another by sharing and receiving content and information.

General features

So now that we know the general meaning of the term social media, the next part i knowing what it does! What are the basics to social media you may be wondering? Well, heres what they mostly can do;

- User Accounts: If a website you use often such as a online grocery shopping store allows people to create their own accounts that they can log into, its a good sign there is going to be some form of social interaction or information given to the user online specifically for that user.

- Profile Pages: Social media is all about being somewhat social, right? So there needs to be a function for you to create a profile about yourself, whether it would be just text, or with images.

- Friends and Followers, groups and hashtags: The way you connect with fellow users is adding there profile as a friend or follow them to keep up with that persons content that they post

- Feeds: Every social media has a feed of some sort where you can keep up with business or friends post they publish.

- Notifications: Every time someone wants to interact with you while you are away from the platform will send a notification to your phone or computer while you are away. These are completely flexible with what notifications you do and do not want to receive.

- Likes and Comments: Generally, a platform that a user is allowed to publish text or a image is allowed to have other users like or comment on that text or image, allowing the interaction

So there you have the general features of a social media application. So.. What are the benefits, especially relating to business you may ask?

The benefits of social media regarding business is exposure. It helps build you an audience for your business to grow and get those customers and clients you have always wanted to have. The more you post on your company page things related to your business and people see these posts, they can then share, comment and like on this. What this then does is allows that users bunch of friends that they are connected with to see that content you have posted. If they then like, share or comment then the chain will keep on going. Allowing new followers, friends and activity for your page and your business itself.

If you would like to keep up with this blog, stay tuned for next weeks post about social media on how it helps with SEO, what content to create and much more.