People who use social media do so primarily to entertain themselves. Depending on what social media sites they usually engage to socialize with their online friends or followers, these people would most likely be doing the following things:
— Make current status postings
— Post tweets
— Hit Like buttons for postings
— Comment on other people’s postings
— Pin/view images on boards
— Post/view pictures and tag friends
— Post/view videos and tag friends
— Write blogs
— Send private messages
— Retweet other people’s tweets
— Favorite other people’s tweets
— Follow other people’s pins
— View/Reblog other people’s pictures
— Comment on other people’s videos
— Share other people’s postings
— View other people’s profiles
— Troll or stalk
— Passing idle time chatting with friends
— Play online games via social media apps
— Blocking friends and other people who annoy you
However, if you’d rather engage in social media as a business tool, it would be more likely for you to be busy with the following things instead:
— Viewing career opportunity postings
— Accessing information from career assistance apps
— Accessing marketing info from business accounts
— Exchanging information with colleagues
— Viewing viral videos
— Spamming away at various causes and advocacies
— Measuring analytics in business accounts
— Posting marketing content
— Measuring virality of strategic content
The fascinated distributor
Social media engages various people in various ways. Now that business has found it to be rich breeding ground for markets and consumer groups, companies and brands are making the marketing exodus into this new frontier. This is where all of the above activities converge to make each and every social media user intent and purpose relevant to the retail cycle. The main reason why information travels quickly on social media is because it gets passed around so efficiently in real-time and with amazing interactive fascination among its users.
You tend to get yourself involved in any social media frenzy the moment you begin to share viral content with other people on social media. This could be an entertaining video that makes you laugh; moves you owing to its compelling narrative; or makes you indignant of a terrible misdeed. Sometimes these could be pictures or images that friends post that more or less inspire you along the same sentiments as viral videos do. There would be times, of course that certain phrases or keywords prettified into being by snappy typographic art; or even large chunks of useful information explained via cool graphics and some buzzword-laden text — elicit the same excitement in you.
Companies and brands and their shrewd crew of content strategists know this. These are the people behind many of the viral videos, infographics, online marketing information, and other various shareable content people like you pass around on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn and the like — without you even knowing it.
Why content strategists do it
The value of shareable content could be felt in the way consumers on social media are swayed by various kinds of information and online content that gets spread about as viral material. A viral video like the Coke Happiness Truck, for example, once it gets shared on Facebook could potentially conjure for the soda pop brand a measurable amount of publicity mileage capable of being perpetuated online. This could possibly reach audiences previously inaccessible to the brand and make it enjoy a wider market reach.
Analytics enables marketers to measure social media user response. Subsequent marketing efforts at the retail end of the process could be strategically done owing to the kind of information accessible to marketers. So much so that whenever you decide to share viral video of this sort — you might be unaware that you could just as well be convincing someone somewhere to grab a cold one and drink to happiness. That is the ultimate logic of social media share.