Social media is the most profitable and indeed the most used platform among all the digital marketing channels. This powerful tool for social communication has in recent times, started showing a trend whereby social media companies are beginning to introduce and implement enhanced business communications services on their sites, which companies such as Zoom, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are now spear-heading the race and taking steps to expand their video conferencing capabilities on their apps.

The Transformation

     Many companies across the globe are now using these and other related platforms for meetings and for trainings. As social media companies continue to provide new solutions and introduce new features on their platforms, the onus has squarely resided on the hands of the user, be it private or business users, who have in no small measure, determined the pathway for the growth in the social media industry.

     This increasing need by social media users for better interactive tools on various platforms, have led to an upsurge in the number of companies introducing teleconferencing features on their sites. This rapid transformation of the social media industry has equally imposed so much responsibility on the users as well, who must now also adapt and learn to use these new tools for them to remain relevant.

     Social media apps are increasingly becoming multi-functional with the enhancement of existing tools to allow the user take control of their apps and better their social media experiences. Tools such as the share tool, telephony, video call and teleconferencing have enhanced features for better performance and these tools have made social media the powerful channel it has become today.

The Share Tool

     The Share tool is one of the most important and highly used feature on social media apps. The share tool allows users to distribute content on their social media pages to friends and contacts. This tool is also quite handy when you want to forward photographs, documents and other media files to your contacts. Due to the ease of use and convenience the features it provides, it has become popular even in business circles for sending unclassified office correspondence to colleagues in other locations instead of using the email.

The Audio Call or Telephony Tool

     Social media apps such a WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger are two of the most favourite audio call apps that allows users to make calls using data instead of the regular mobile call option. The shift from mobile to data calls is because of the long talk time and low call changes that users enjoy when they use social media apps to make both local and international calls.

Video Call Tool

     The video call feature is another fascinating tool that has increasingly become popular worldwide, both for private and business video calls. Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp video call and Messenger Video calls are some of the most used apps in this category. Video calls have become a vital tool for verification, for both business and private purposes used for the identification of parties on the other end of the connection.

Teleconferencing Tool

     Teleconferencing is not quite new on social media, however, recent developments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to a rapid increase in the number of social media apps that have upgraded their features to accommodate the rising demand by users for teleconferencing services. WhatsApp just recently, was in the news, where it upgraded its video call feature to allow the merging of multiple video callers to participate at the same time, which technically, paves the way for WhatsApp to become a tool for teleconferencing.

     There are several other popular social media apps with much more powerful teleconferencing capabilities and Skype leads in this category. Zoom has recently showed it could also perform effectively well in the video conferencing environment. WebEx, GoToMeeting, WhatsApp and FaceTime are other strong contenders.

Social Media Engagement

     Traditional social media is famous for being the most powerful tool for social engagement and its ability to leverage on direct one-to-ne interaction between the sites owner and the followers are un-parallel. The ‘Like’ and ‘Comment’ tools have equally become of the most powerful tools on social media for sampling public opinion as well as for survey purposes, both by corporate users and big brands, including influencers.

     These tools are fascinating feedback tools that shows instantaneously, how your content or campaign is fairing and how the public is reacting or accepting their brand; in that regard, it helps in the remodeling of the corporate social media policies and improvement of their strategic planning.

Enhance Mobile Capability

     It will be incomplete talking about growth in the social media industry without talking about the very technology that made all that possible, which is the mobile device. New enhancements and improvement in video and camera capacities, increased voice functionality, processing speed and large storage areas are some of the technologies that have provided the environment that have supported the expansion currently experienced by social media companies.

Commercialization of Social Media

     Social media, though, informal and personal, is gradually becoming an aggressive marketing tool used by the corporate sector to target their consumers directly. This development has elevated social media in the last few years, from the personal and informal platform that it once was, to more of a business application. Advertisers are now willing to a pay fee to private social media account owners and influencers who have large numbers of followers for placing ads campaigns on their pages.

     YouTube and Instagram are examples of some of the platforms that pay-per-click for adverts placements on such pages. Social media has become a great money-spinner for both private and corporate users. This commercialization of social media has caused a dearth of social engagement activities, and post on social media pages, attract less reaction, because the public has become more aware now than before that the page owners make money from their reactions.                          

Conclusion

     This increasing difficulty in trying to get followers to react to post, is negatively affecting public interest on social media, thereby, making it increasingly unattractive to many private and corporate users. If we must rebuilt the excitement we once experienced on the traditional social media pages, owners and influencers must be ready to part with a portion of the earnings from their sites.

     The future of social media is full commercialization, and only pages that offer followers some form of incentives would enjoy their patronage. The days of spontaneous reactions by followers are almost over and the benefits we used to enjoy when we had the traditional social media are fast weaning. Therefore, we must brace up for the new pay-per-click social media era.