Objectives of Social Media: Its Importance and Purpose (2023)

Social Media is the new trend in today’s time and age. Social media has become an integral part of everyone and is basically considered this generation’s language. Again what is to be noted, is that social media is not only limited to the millennials but people of all ages.

Be it making a Post or uploading one’s moments on Facebook or even Instagram, Or even making a statement or putting down one’s opinion, say on a platform like Twitter, Social media not only has made lives and moments special but also a tool to market, advertise as well as to spread awareness.

What Is Social Media?

Technically and strictly abiding by the definition of social media as per Wikipedia, 

Social media are interactive, computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation or sharing of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. 

 

Simply speaking, this can be interpreted as a medium to document or create memories, ideas, and such. 

Now again, we can find many definitions of Social Media as it is. Below you will find a few :

As per Investopedia,

Social Media is a computer-based technology that facilitates the sharing of ideas, thoughts, and information through the building of virtual networks and communities.

As per the Oxford Definitions,

Social Media constitutes websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.

And as per the definition of Social Media by Merriam-Webster,

Social Media is the form of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos).

 

That being said, to put these definitions into an easy sentence and simplify it, we can easily agree that the ‘Social’ in ‘Social Media’ refers to the sharing of ideas, information, messages, and other forms of content amongst people.

On the other hand, the ‘Media’ in ‘Social Media’, thus, refers to the forms, or the medium through which this content is communicated and shared among the people.

Therefore, putting these definitions together, we can definitely say that ‘Social Media is the series of websites and applications that allow people to exchange information and content on a real-time basis.’

Social Media Platforms, as stated before, refers to the platforms or the stage through which these content are exchanged and includes several websites and applications like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and over 300 other social websites that contribute to even social media marketing as well. 

Learn to create social media content that will yield results. Enroll in the Best Content Writing Course

Why do we need Social Media? What is the purpose of it?

 We are dwelling in an era, in an age where it is possible to be connected and to stay in touch with every one of our acquaintances, idols, our near and dear ones. Even though we may not be physically present to actually communicate, we can still be connected to everyone we know – our childhood pals, high school friends, college batchmates, teachers, our loved ones staying abroad – the list goes on.

All thanks to Social Media, we are connected and stay connected and keep updated on the lives of the people we know, or even the people we want to know about.

Through Social Media, a single post can get viral and reach hundreds and thousands of people at the same time through their phones, all at the same time. A single video, having the right kind of content can easily cross a million views on YouTube nowadays. In this 21st Century, Social Media plays an important role in defining the success or the failure of a business. That is how crucial Social Media content is!

Be it a small business or a big one, or even startups, see quite a profit potential through Social Media. This is only possible due to its easy availability, accessibility, and response due to the millions of people utilizing social media websites and apps for various purposes.

This can also be explained in the fact that nowadays if a business has social media presence, a ton of money automatically gets saved instead of being invested in all promotion methods like hoardings and advertisements to make its presence known.

However, just owning an account or having a simple social media presence is not enough to push the business to profitability. What drives the business is the active presence of the business on social media platforms. This directly as well as indirectly brings in brand loyalty for the business.

Social Media is an integral part of any digital marketing strategy. Get your free ebook here on the ultimate guide to becoming a prolific digital marketer.

Leverage the Benefits of the Web Domain by Signing up for the Best Online Digital Marketing Course

This ultimately implies that social media gives the greatest advantage of the reduced cost of marketing.

Social Media builds trust between businesses and their clients, helps to bridge distant relations by helping friends and family stay in touch, brings people closer, and keeps them connected through shared moments, videos, pictures, and such content.

The main content of social media is generated through creative ideas and strategic social media marketing. Social Media Connectivity is not only easy nowadays but also fun to use and create interesting content and topics.

Talking about the purpose and importance of Social Media and social media marketing, there are few basic objectives for a social media platform, and more so, a business having social media presence. Not only do such businesses need to have a set of goals and objectives for themselves to be marketing through social media, but they also need to achieve those goals and fulfill their objectives for their businesses to grow and get successfully marketed.

This makes sure that the content and the information reach the required clientele and thus helps in creating a customer base, indirectly. This can further be achieved by encouraging the visibility of the business and the brand through Search Engine Optimization, thereby, also increasing brand recognition. This leads the business or the brand to stand out from its competitors and generate more views as well as sales.

Objectives of Social Media

As stated before, Social Media plays a crucial role in the creation as well as the exchange of content. However, apart from this, the Social Media platform aims to serve and fulfill its core objectives along with the objectives of the business or the brand using social media as a tool to market their brand.

The First and the Foremost aim of Social Media like any other media tool is to Educate Society. One of the most important objectives of any media tool is to take on the initiative to educate our society as a whole, to build our society up, and spread awareness. 

This objective is not just applicable to mainstream media but also applies to Social Media. It rather should take more priority as it is such a tool which connects everyone in today’s time, all around the globe, just through the click of a button; easily accessible through the internet, websites, and application designed for just the same.

One can conduct surveys through social media and ask anyone in their reach to voice their opinions. Social media has made connectivity so easy that even though people are not within each other’s immediate reach, they are still connected and can easily voice their own opinions as well as encourage others to state their opinions. 

Society can not only be educated about products but also on topics relevant to society. Apart from advertisements, a consumer can explore, analyze, and make informed decisions about products they are interested in acquiring. That way they can make an informed purchase that is perfect for their specific requirements.

This is further encouraged and facilitated by the fact that nowadays people can make such informed decisions by also analyzing the product reviews by other consumers and have an insight as to what should or shouldn’t be bought. Social Media also helps promote and stabilize the buyer-seller relationship and helps the buyer to compare the prices of similar products across several websites.

One can read about trending and important news about hot topics around the globe, news of genres ranging from weather, fashion, health, lifestyle, entertainment, politics, and thus, be informed with the help of social media apart from the mainstream media.

Another primary and important objective of Social Media is to Encourage and Increase Customer Engagement and Loyalty. One of the most important objectives of marketing through social media is to establish its brand and its product and encourage a long-lasting relationship between the business or the brand and the target audience.

This is where social media influencers play a vital role. An influencer is a social media user who has a certain level of established influence and reputation, has great accessibility to be able to reach a huge width of the audience, and can promote the brand or the business, thereby encouraging the target audience to act based on their suggestions and recommendations and promote sales and generate leads for the brand or the business.

Influencers have a built reputation and an audience base for their knowledge and expertise on their particular niche – be it fashion, food, lifestyle, or any other genre. Hence a social media influencer plays a vital role, indeed, in, effective brand marketing through social media means. 

Another objective of Social Media is to Create Brand Awareness. Generating brand awareness is a crucial role of Social Media to develop the business and create awareness among the clients, the customers – both existing and potential prospects. Heightening and encouraging the awareness process of the brand helps to shorten the chain of sales, and increase its share in the market all the while keeping the marketing and brand promotion cost reduced. 

There is also a very important objective of Social Media Marketing and that is to Increase the Social Media Community. Every business aims to grow and increase its audience and increase its consumption. The same goes for Social Media as a whole business as well as businesses marketed by Social Media.

If we consider Social Media as a whole business constituting an array of websites and application like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – to name a few – one of their primary objectives include increasing their target audience, generating lead through more traffic and usage of the websites and application as well as to create a reputation.

On the other hand, when it comes to Social Media Marketing the same thing applies because then the brand or the business promoted and marketed by social media tools aims to increase their followers, their audience base and broaden their customer base by aiming to appeal to a large base of their target audience.

This is calculated and counted by keeping in mind several parameters like the number of subscribers, the number of followers, the growth of their audience base, which is the rate of the growth of their fan base and their subscribers. The growth rate of these followers, subscribers, and fans as compared to that of their competitors and their competitor’s presence – both mainstream (offline) and social media presence (online) – also help determine the success of the brand or the business.

Ultimately all these objectives aim at customer satisfaction and emphasize user experience. Therefore, we can easily derive that the most important objective of social media is to aim at Better Customer Experience. And to better customer experience, social media helps to capture customer feedback and opinions. Consumer perspectives regarding the target products, once analyzed, would encourage and build consumer satisfaction and also help promote the growth of the consumer base.

Several parameters play a key role in determining the consumer experience, like perceiving the opinion and the emotions people associate with the brand along with its products, the rate of growth of consumer base from the percentage of the difference between the positive and the negative response and such.

Each of these social media objectives impacts a brand or a business either positively or negatively. And the main focus is to enhance the opportunities and make a positive impact on society.  

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is the importance and impact of Social media?

A. The impact of social media is wide and immense. Given the extensive digitalization and globalization, the importance of social media is on the rise. More and more businesses are joining the social media bandwagon to increase their customer base, and reach a wider target audience.

Q2. What are the benefits of social media?

A. Social media has manifold benefits, which include:

• Enhance brand activity
• increase traffic
• parenting with influencers
• competitive analysis
• Validating brand authority and loyalty

Q3. What is social media marketing?

A. Social Media marketing is the use of social media channels to reach the target audience, enhance brand authority, and drive more traffic to your website.