Influence of Social media

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Let me begin by saying that everyday we are influenced in some way, shape or form by this multi-billion dollar industry called entertainment.

My generation has grown up in a time when media and entertainment advanced and changed at the speed of light! From the advancement of VHS, Laser Discs, DVDs, BluRay and even 3D, all the way to cassette tapes, CDs and MP3s, the entertainment industry has changed drastically and we've all seen it firsthand.

In the past 20 years, forms of media and entertainment evolved more than in the previous 90 years. When the Internet became commonplace and cable television consisted of over 100 channels, we entered an entirely new level of the digital media era.

Looking at the graph above regarding Social Media growth, provided by one of my favorite social media blogs, "Social Mouth", it shows the US Internet users who use social networking sites has more than tripled for 18-49 year old's. Even those over 50 years old have more than doubled in their social networking usage. In fact, when my grandparents registered on Facebook a few years ago, I laughed at the thought of them participating in such a growing trend. Now, it's one of the best ways for them to see how their grandchildren are doing around the country. 

With this shift in technology and our commonplace use of it, we don’t realize how influenced by social media and marketing we are on a daily basis.

The entertainment industry has infiltrated social media in such a way that it’s become an integral part of our lives. We “share” and “like” movie reviews, comments and trailers about upcoming films; we “pin” celebrities’ outfits, hairstyles and red carpet images. We, in essence, have assisted the entertainment industry in marketing to ourselves, our friends and family.

This next graph shows the scope of power that entertainment and advertisements have become in our social worlds: 75% of Brand "Likes" come from advertisements.
 

Through the use of emotion, the entertainment industry has used their influence to make our daily lives part of their social marketing. This is why it’s important to be aware of the constant changes.

As a result of my love of social media and technology, I follow social marketers and media futurists that discuss and show the growth in social media through numbers and ideas; even large companies have blogs on what they're doing and what's moving in the social arena.

In a post on targeted ads, Scott Monty, Ford Motor's global head of social media, noted that "in March of this year, behavioral targeting company Q Interactive did surveyed 1,800 female Internet users about the practice of targeted advertising. It turns out that women are actually okay with it - to the extent that they view it positively and actually want more of it." 

Interestingly enough, he continues to discuss that with the recent uproar about Facebook's privacy policy - "or rather their public handling of their privacy policy changes - the trust factor becomes even more important. And that's borne out in the survey, which states that over half of the respondents indicated that trust was a prerequisite to targeted ads."

In essence, people want to trust the social media networks before being the target of ads. As a female and an avid shopper, I prefer to have ads sent my way that actually appeal to my interests and not something so off the wall that it is irrelevant with anything that pertains to me. However, when you realize that in order for companies to know what appeals to their customers they have to see what they are searching for, the tables turn a bit. 

The majority of our social media lives can be summed up into the six websites below, Facebook taking the cake. Each one of these companies uses social media for marketing to their target market: Y-O-U.