Before a decade or so, people were less connected to socialize with limited options to have a get-together. But today, people get information on their finger tips ranging from news to promotional videos. People are well informed about each others activity which makes the world to be smaller beyond landscapes with swift contact and updates via web and mobile.

Advantages of Social Media

1. Increase Contacts
The main advantage of social networks is that it allows to get the contacts of your friends and relative in order to keep in contact with them dynamically. One can be informed about latest updates. Sharing of photos, audio, and video makes the communication entertaining and interesting.

2. Product review
People get to know about the product in the form of reviews posted by other people on social network. This provides a rational opinion about the product that can act like guide to buy the right product, thus improving sales. Always, people believe in other’s recommendation to buy products.

3. Group discussion
This is one of the best feature that social media can provide to the user. The group discussion allows the user to participate in subjective discussions which may be useful to get more knowledge in focused topics. It also keeps friends together.

4. Improve marketing and sales
Social media is a wide network of people where the medium is open to communicate. It helps to find the potential customers. The company, brands, and users can follow another user’s activities or get followed by others which increase the power or value in social network. Brand name can be established easily.

5. Social media influencing Healthcare industry
Using social media, one can analyze the best healthcare in the industry. The clinics/hospital can also flash the news about the arrival of specialist doctors, resource availability etc to the patients which makes it easier for the patients to keep the communication to be active with the healthcare.

6. Impact on economy
Social media has now become an established industry which is providing a wide range of job opportunities. There are about 6337+ Facebook employees, 5000+ LinkedIn employees, and 3000+ Twitter employees. Social media organization has created a positive impact on the economy by reducing the unemployment.

7. Social media impact on Politics
Politicians use twitter, facebook etc to express their personal and political thoughts which helps them to keep in touch with the public. It is also useful for the citizens to openly discuss on politics and convey message to the politicians.

Disadvantages of Social Media

1. Transparent
Social media makes the life more transparent. It may be sometimes painstaking to interact using social media which keeps you connected every second and force you to expose or share your thoughts and privacy. You may have to forcibly get into interactions without any time scale or limit which may disturb your routines.

2. Social burden
The social media on the mobile phone keeps the people engaged but it also keeps them away from actual socializing or interacting with people on real-time basis. They chat with others on facebook while they ignore to talk with the person nearby. The personal information of a person becomes public which becomes a social burden. Around 51% of people feel stressed and uncomfortable after using the social media sites like worried or sleeplessness.

Conclusion
It may be souring for the social media haters to digest that uses and advantages of social media outweigh the disadvantage. Since social media is connected, communication is very effective. People can exhibit portfolio to checkout a job on the network. The flash news can keep one to be update on society. Social servicing can be motivated. With quick reach to persons anywhere in the world, social media plays a great role for the success of each individual.

Social Media Influence

Social media influence is a marketing term that describes an individual’s ability to affect other people’s thinking in a social online community. The more influence a person has, the more appeal that individual has to companies or other individuals who want to promote an idea or sell a product. Companies can harness social media influence to help generate brand awareness, sell inventory and increase customer engagement. This can be done by implementing a marketing strategy that focuses on increasing the company’s own social media influence or by hiring established, trustworthy influencers in the space.

Measuring social media influence

At its most basic level, influence can be estimated by examining the size of a person’s social networks, such as LinkedIn connections, Twitter followers or Facebook friends.  A more thorough analysis is required, however, to determine how a person makes social connections, who those connections are and the level of trust between the person and their connections.

Some experts advocate the use of social influence measurement tools. Klout is one such tool, providing a numerical score of 1 to 100 based on an individual’s online activity on popular social networking sites. Other industry experts have raised concerns about the validity of the metrics provided by Klout, however, pointing out that Klout does not measure all types of online activity.  For example, a blog post from a trusted author could reach a small but highly-targeted audience and potentially be more influential than a simple tweet that reaches thousands of people.

What are social media influencers?

A social media influencer is a user that has established credibility in a certain industry or content type that has access to a wide audience. An influencer should have a large enough following and the power to be able to spark a conversation and inspire an action or change in behavior. Companies can hire social media influencers to help expand their social reach, become more relatable and sponsor products or services.

Types of social media influencers include:

• Celebrity influencers- These are the most well-known influencers as they have acquired their following from their celebrity status. Since certain celebrities attract specific demographics and target audiences, companies that wish to reach those consumers can hire the celebrity influencer to promote or endorse their product to their fans.
• Consumer influencers- These are everyday people that have gained a following due to their personality and relatability. They are typically active on their social media through text posting, blogging or photo sharing. Because their audience considers them “real” or “relatable” they tend to take their advice seriously, such as when they vouch for a service.
• Microinfluencers- Also known as expert influencers, these are everyday people that have gained a following and topical authority due to their knowledge in a specific area. When they recommend or praise a product, their audience is likely to trust their opinion.
• Content creators- These include professional bloggers, vloggers and photographers. Their role includes developing new content that readers are interested in keeping up with regularly. Part of a company’s marketing strategy could be to send products to a content creator in the hopes they will review and speak positively about it to their followers. Another option is to write sponsored posts for their platform.

Before choosing an influencer, companies should consider a few qualities. The first is if the influencer’s personal message aligns well will the company and is relevant to the same target audience. The second is how engaging the influencer is with their following, or how trustworthy their following considers them. Lastly is to consider the influencer’s reach or follower count as this can help predict return on investment