Social media was far less complicated 10 years ago. Sponsored posts were not common at all and the term “social media influencer” had not yet been coined. In the space of just 10 years, it went from a place where you’d just contact your friends and relatives to an outlet where you could brand yourself and your company in general. If you want to find out more about the social media networks that are out there, then this is the post for you.

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The Rise of Social Media

Social media has rocketed as a result of tech. Now you are able to connect with your audience on a much more personal level and you may even find that you can private message them as well. This has all broadened marketing potential, while also making it easier than ever to reach out to every demographic. If you want some help with your marketing, then FireText offer some great SMS Marketing advice, you can find their website here. If you want to learn more about how social media has changed the landscape of marketing then take a look below.

Facebook

At the start of the decade, the key structure for Facebook was “The Wall”. This is a place where you could leave a media post and tag your friends. Mark Zuckerberg then turned it into a Timeline. From that moment on, social media was destined for change. It has been through many redesigns in the past and businesses also use it to try and rocket their online presence. This is all very interesting and it just goes to show that it has radically transformed both the personal landscape as well as the marketing world.

Twitter

Twitter is a microblog platform and it launched in the year 2010. Ever since the platform started out, the posts were all limited to 140 characters. Twitter’s interface has evolved to the point where GIFS, videos and even photos can now be integrated within the posts. The stars were changed in favour of hearts and now the character limit stands at 280, giving people more creative options.

Vine

Vine, a video messaging platform launched in the year 2012. Audiences were given video content that had to be 6 seconds, and this sparked a lot of creativity from users. Twitter purchased the platform and aligned the short-video content strategy with tweets. When Instagram launched in 2016, the plug was pulled for Vine.

Instagram

Facebook bought out Instagram in the year 2012. The image-sharing platform wasn’t even two-years-old at that time, but it was a steal to say the least. People started creating their own photo collages, they used filters and they then posted them online. Instagram quickly reached over a million downloads and this happened in the first 3 months of it being launched. There are over a billion active users on the app right now, and even celebrities are using it. Virtually every social media influencer has been able to build a career on it. In this day and age, Instagram have adopted features from Snapchat and even TikTok so that they can align themselves with the behaviour of their users.

Snapchat

Snapchat was a very big turning point in the world of social media. Stories content disappeared 24 hours after it was posted and in 2012, they reached a total of one million active users. Snapchat was known for having privacy issues, but people used the platform regardless. Instagram and Facebook then launched their own version of filters and Stories.

TikTok

Since TikTok launched in the year 2016, the amateur music videos platform quickly reached 1 billion installations. The app embeds music in a way that no other social networking platform does. TikTok is still an emerging tech to say the least. It still ranks behind Messenger and WhatsApp when it comes to downloads but at the end of the day, the platforms have all become a very integral part of any marketing strategy. There are over three billion users on social media right now and the opportunity for brands to reach their target audience is continuing to grow quite a lot.

Of course, all of these sites have had a huge impact on the social media world as we know it, and it’s safe to say that things have changed quite a lot as well. Only time will tell how things are going to change in the future but right now people are more connected than ever, and this has brought about a wave of positive change.