The Future of Social Media

Social media has grown from a way to connect with your best friends to a commercial entity which allows regular people and businesses to build relationships, attract customers, and grow their product or service. We all understand the power that social media has today and the kind of prospects it has in the future, but what exactly can we expect in terms of personal and business oriented social media?

Social media and our Personal Brand:

                Social media can help any individual build their own personal brand. They can portray an ideal image of themselves to others so as to grow their connections and value. Much like LinkedIn currently, social media in the future will allow us to connect with the people we know and build connections in our chosen profession. Employers will also be able to check our work experience, our references, and even what kind of person we are based on our social media profiles. On a more personal note, our social media applications will let us see exactly what friends think of a certain restaurant or what they recommend to order and, much like this proposed product from Google, will let us see these things on the fly with a type of augmented reality.

A way augmented reality may work in the future.

The Future of Social Media in Business:

                Today, businesses can attract customers and increase sales with social media, but as it evolves, social media will help in a number of ways. Social media will be a great avenue for businesses to gain access to its customer’s activities and ideas. For example, businesses could further define their most frequent customers and target them over less frequent visitors. This increase in awareness of customer traits will also result in more personalized products and experiences. Also, because users can “check in” when they go somewhere just like in the Google video, the business will be able to see when a person enters their store and can send the customer information about sales or even directions to a specific product through their social media application. Essentially, the future of social media in business will allow companies to personalize the customer experience and gain further knowledge of its target markets.

An interesting video on social media

The future of social media is already happening today, such as the “check in” feature on Facebook, and these services will continue to evolve and change as time goes on. Eventually everything will be integrated and will let businesses and consumers expand their reach and gain access to other people’s opinions and thoughts on specific places or products. How do you think social media will change in the future?

Thanks for reading

Dusan Andic.

By the way, here’s an interesting article which interviews various people about their ideas of what the future of social media is: http://www.businessinsider.com/future-of-social-media-2011-11?op=1

Article Sources:

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/status-update/2012/may/9/charlene-li-future-social-media/

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/status-update/2012/may/23/liz-strauss-future-social-media/

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d9b331e0-9f7e-11e1-a255-00144feabdc0.html#axzz28jklnLuE

Business Models

Before we start talking about business models, it is important to know what a business model is. According to our text book, “a business model is how a company makes money or a non-profit organization achieves its revenue objectives, how an entity sustains itself”. The most common way for a website to generate revenue is to sell goods or services. Non-profit organizations can raise revenue through donations.

Making money on the internet seems easy, but it is not. Even successful companies have a hard time expanding to the internet, especially when trying to engage with social media. As a business owner who operates solely on the internet, I can assure that it is a competitive, aggressive and hard-to-understand market. But, once tamed, it can also be very profitable and fun – especially when you, just like me, play videogames for a living.

The basic web business models described on our text book have both B2C and B2B applications, a few have non-profit applications, and are the following:

1)Brokerage Model: brings buyers and sellers together.

2)Advertising Model: displays advertisements during navigation.

3)Infomediary Model: resells useful information.

4)Merchant Model: provides good and services.

5)Manufacturer Model: takes place when a manufacturer reaches buyers directly

6)Affiliate Model: offers incentives to partner sites.

7)Community Model: connects individuals and groups.

8)Subscription Model: delivers services and content for a fee.

9)Utility Model: delivers services and content on a paid base.

Machinima Logo

As I mentioned earlier, I play videogames for a living. How do I do that? Well, I work under a modified Brokerage Model. I own two Youtube channels – http://www.youtube.com/BRKsEDU and http://www.youtube.com/PequenoSapeca – and both are partnered with a Youtube Network called Machinima. What Machinima does is place advertisements of companies willing to promote through Youtube on my Youtube channel. Basically, I sell advertisement space, which is bought by the advertiser through Machinima (the broker).

I can also, on my own, sell ad placements on my Youtube channel (on my channel’s background or on videos), which is shown below, and promote products, brands and services on Twitter and Facebook, which I use to better engage with my audience but which also work as a form of promotion for me and / or for other companies businesswise.

BRKsEDU Youtube Channel - 288,240 subscribers - 32,338,072 total views

If you have any question related about Business Models, Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, feel free to ask them in the comments section or to contact me via Twitter or Facebook.