Why Social?

For five months I’ve immersed myself in the world of social media as INK’s Social Media Intern. Now that graduation is just three short months away I keep facing a question that most college students dread, “What are you going to do after you graduate?”

That’s easy. Social Media.

Next comes, “Why do you like that? I don’t really get it.”

Then it goes a little bit like this…

As an advertiser on social media we have the opportunity to communicate with people in a way that no other medium allows for. Not only is the space fun and engaging, but the results are instant. You instantly know if your idea sucked, if it resonated, or if it was worthy of engagement. You also know when you’ve done great work; the likes, comments and shares say it all.

We give brands a voice on social media. A voice that is heard but is also able to converse with others. Everyday on social media we are talking to people. We hear their thoughts, positive and negative in the like, and we get to respond to them. Engagement on social media works both ways.

With that engagement comes a growth of brand awareness and relevance. We provoke our fans to have conversations and we earn their loyalty. We change perceptions of brands on social media, because the way we advertise on social doesn’t look like typical advertising. If you’re doing it right it looks and feels organic. It doesn’t seem like advertising because we take a brand and we transform it into a living, breathing thing that lives on our phones, tablets and desktops. Social media is a land of its own, in which brands have been transformed in a way that makes people want to like and share what it has to say.

It isn’t like other advertising mediums where you’re just fed a message. People can talk to you whenever they want on social media. Unlike other mediums, social media is there for anyone in the world to see at any given time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Social media never stops changing and it never stops evolving. Think about how many times you pick up your phone to find that Facebook or Instagram has been updated. With all those updates and changes to the platforms there are things for us advertisers to learn, new things to understand, new obstacles to overcome in order to do our jobs.

It’s fun, it never stops challenging me and it’s not going anywhere.

That’s why.