Week Two

The benefits of Social Media 






In class we learnt the 5 main factors of the difference between social media and traditional media. 

• Reach
• Accessibility
• Usability 
• Recency 
• Permanence 

By using social media the reach is widespread and instantaneous. No matter which part on the globe you are at, as long as you have access to the internet, we are 'reachable'. Videos get viral and messages are spread quickly. This not only makes social media accessible, but also affordable in terms of marketing. Putting an ad on a TV or newspaper is so much more expensive as compared to social media marketing i.e. Facebook. Furthermore, with the technology these days, it is user-friendly too! Even babies and grannies know how to use an iPad! Social media is instant, which is why we say 'Recency' is high. The news we read on twitter, are newer than those written on the papers. Lastly, social media allows us to edit and update our contents. 

Personally, I love to use social media because it allows for user-generated content, and filtering of information to cater to our specific interests and needs. I am an avid user of Twitter. &.... I have 3 different accounts to cater to 3 different... ME! 

Some people might find me odd but I find this extremely useful. Each account serves different purposes. The first one is for my interest where I follow news on all my favourite celebrities. My newsfeed only consists of news about them and I follow the celebrities' twitter accounts and my friends who follow this accounts are my friends who share the same interest. This way I won't annoy my other friends who have no interest, neither will I spam their news feeds with stuff they don't want to see. News are spread so quickly on twitter, I am always getting first hand news on my favourite celebrities! (No this isn't regarded as stalking) 

The second account is my personal account aka my 'English account', where I mostly vent my anger... Friends who follow this account are my Singaporean friends aka school friends. The last account is my Japanese account where I tweet only in Japanese and communicate only with my Japanese friends. 

As you can see, social media helps to create a network with people of similar interests. News are also disseminated very quickly and in bite sizes. :) 

Instead of talking about how companies use social media to market their products, because there are so many of such companies, I am going to talk about celebrities who use social media to reach out to their fans. This way, they are also actually marketing or promoting themselves in a way. Below are some of my favourite idols who uses instagram. 

So cute right.

This is why I love social media. Without social media I won't be able to see their cute photos.