Social Media is a powerful tool to grow any business around the globe. It gives a diverse customers basket which was impossible before. As technology is evolving rapidly, new development in communication devices such as mobile phone, tablet laptops, etc., and advancements in faster network connectivity increases the penetration of social media to the people. According to a report published in January 2022 on Datareportal, there are more than 4.6 billion social media users around the globe which is equal to 58.4% of the total global population. Social media usage and engagement have changed drastically during the pandemic.

Impact

After the surge of covid-19 infection around the globe, all industries face heavy loss due to total lockdown & restrictions for several months. The increased usage of social media among people has created an increased amount of engagement with social media ads and led to customers making more purchases through social media than ever before. Therefore, social media has become a great tool for advertising and allows businesses to reach diverse audiences, grow brand awareness, and acquire new customers. This development created an opportunity to target the right audience and increase sales in this pandemic and even after the pandemic. Therefore, all companies have adopted virtual practices in their business. The traditional way of doing business has been disrupted by the onslaught of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube. These platforms have created a fertile ground where e-commerce businesses are holding various brand promotional tactics.

Customers gain more power through social media, for instance, if a customer is not satisfied by a product, they can easily give their opinion by using social media which may influence the decisions of millions of other customers. Along with that as social media users are growing, the number of influencers is also rising that have a large fan base who values their views and opinions, therefore many brands collaborate with them to gain a large number of customers.

Like all things equally have positive and negative aspects, social media also has its own. For instance, rumors can easily spread among people which may negatively impact a brand even if it’s a good product. And using social media in business may have privacy or security issues because social media are an open door for spreading details about the customers and companies. By using social media competitors can easily study their competitor’s businesses.

Conclusion

The future is always uncertain, but we can predict that social media will positively impact the business. Because customers are now willing to place orders online without physically visiting the store. It will motivate the business owners to place advertisements on social media for gaining more customers and stay ahead in the race. It will also help the business to closely monitor the past and future trends of social media and make some small changes in their strategies to increase customer traffic on their websites. Engagement with social media for advertising was a growing trend prior to Covid-19, but this pandemic has boosted its growth by an extraordinary level.