Introduction
Before, getting seen in the traditional media required a lot more work and money, with no assurance that you would reach your audience or even have the slightest chance of engaging with them personally. However, with the development of the internet and the emergence of social networks, everyone now has a platform for self-expression, and small and large enterprises may now reach their target audience with little to no investment in media or equipment. In a Neal Schaffer piece, we discovered that 93% of marketers worldwide and 92% of marketers in the US use social networks for business purposes. This amazing digital platform has demonstrated its efficiency for the rate of user consumption as 97%. Share your thoughts at the Social Media Marketing Write For Us category.
History
Computers were becoming more prevalent in homes by the late 1970s and early 1980s, and technology was progressing rapidly. In 1997, Andrew Weinreich launched the first platform for social media known as Six Degrees, which pioneered social networking by enabling users to add profile images and become friends with other users. At about the same time, a number of blogging platforms like Open Diary began to gain popularity, ushering in the current-day online phenomena that everyone loves.
Shortly as social media attracted a sizable audience, it started to be exploited as a marketing tool. Social media has great marketing potential, according to marketers. It changed from being a platform for virtual community gathering and direct electronic information sharing to a retail platform and an important marketing tool in less than a generation. Young Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg was the mind behind the mammoth now known as Facebook. He established The Facebook, as it was then named, in 2004. University students took to Facebook quickly, and the same year, Peter Thiel, the inventor of PayPal, invested $500,000.
Businesses all over the world have started realising the benefits of being active on social media and started setting up brand pages to interact with their customers. The world of social media quickly became their oyster as they no longer had to rely on newspaper and television advertisements to promote their products. Additionally, marketers today consider social media to be one of the top occupations to pursue. The majority of corporate marketing decisions today are influenced by the consumer data that has been gathered and by the use of performance indicators for their marketing initiatives.
The Bottom Line
Let's turn the clock back to 1945, the year that the ENIAC, the first real computer, was created. The first method of internet access was developed with CompuServe today, and the idea of building networks between these devices was already on the table. However, it wasn't until the late 1980s and early 1990s that personal computers started to gain popularity. At that time, household names like Apple and Microsoft started to power these devices. In this location, in 1997, Andrew Weinrich founded Six Degrees, the first recognised social network.
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