I think all of us saw in the movie ‘The Social Network’, what Mark Zuckerberg did and went through to create his popular social media platform Facebook. Mark had no idea that at the time the website he was creating, was going to become a worldwide phenomenon within the next decade. As per Facebook’s latest analysis, there are about 185 million people logging on to Facebook daily. Yes, you heard that right, approximately 185 million people daily! If Facebook were a country, then it would have the 8th highest population in the world based on its daily active users, more than the population of countries like Russia and Japan.
Facebook might have been invented as a platform for college students or teenagers, but today people of all ages use it. Facebook allows any user above 13 years to sign up on its website or app. With certain surveys concluding that the use of Facebook is most popular in people between the ages of 18-30 years. But there is every reason to believe that it is heavily used by people of others ages as well. Facebook attracts users that vary from the young to the older demographic.
With such an enormous user base, there are customers and potential customers of every brand category on Facebook. It doesn’t matter what product or service, a brand will find a group of people that are its target audience. On top of that, Facebook is also a great medium to attract people and make them a part of the product’s target audience by influencing their thinking. If a brand can change the perception of the product in a person’s eyes, then he or she could become a potential buyer. And this ability of Facebook is what makes it so crucial for businesses and their struggle for success.
It did take time for Facebook to realise its potential of being more than just a website that lets people connect with their friends. Fortunately, Mark Zuckerberg and his team realised soon enough that Facebook could be used for a lot more. Not only for contact between a user and another, Facebook could be a medium of contact between a business or brand and its potential customer. This gave Facebook an opportunity to transcend from just a social network to a potential website that could influence people’s buying decisions and in return make money from the brand advertising.
Facebook didn’t miss the opportunity to incorporate marketing into the core aspects of its social media platform. Facebook’s team after establishing themselves as the premier social media platform in the world turned its focus on creating features that could benefit brands to advertise. But the team made sure that while doing this, they do not lose the important aspects that had made the platform popular in the first place. The team cleverly introduced advertising into its interface that enhanced user experience in terms of their interactions with brands. And on the other hand, they also gave brands the options to target their audience based on demographics, gender, location, and interests. With options like pages, groups and ads, the brands had a plethora of ways to share their content with their potential customers.
So, as we read above Facebook not only pioneered the way social media let people interact with friends. It also paved the way for the future of marketing through social media and gave a boost to the online marketing space, which didn’t have such growth prior to Facebook. And Facebook hasn’t stopped. It is still pioneering new ways for brands to improve their content sharing abilities and interactions with their customers.
