They are cool, young, smart, working-from-home individuals who have money, fame, success, and notoriety. They are the new-age professionals called social media influencers. These social media influencers are students who are either still studying or have left their education or have studied to become an influencer. They are a different breed from the traditional influencers who were either social activists, intellectuals, politicians, or change-makers in society.
As per Meta (formerly Facebook), they have seen a year-on-year rise of 35% in the number of social media influencers in India as of September 2021. One of the fastest growing industries globally, the influencer marketing industry in India has valued at INR 900 crores and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 25% to reach INR 2200 crores by 2025.
Reasons for the Rising Popularity of Social Media Marketing
1. Targeted Audience
This is one of the biggest advantages for brands as they can choose influencers based on real-time data. Brands can access the age group that the influencer is targeting, their interests, gender, etc. Celebrity marketing on television targets a wide section of the audience without understanding its relevancy.
2. Cost Effectiveness
This is the bottom line for any business. As an industry, influencer marketing is in a nascent stage and the competition between influencers affects the cost of collaborations. Brands are able to collaborate with many influencers with the same budget and reach a more relevant audience. The value for money in this case is higher.
3. Ease of Platform
Instagram, YouTube, or Tiktok as platforms are free of cost. Brands can advertise their products either with a single photo or a video that reaches audiences without it weighing heavily on the company’s pockets.
4. Trust
Influencers have already built a loyal audience that trusts them. Brands depend on this trust that is automatically transferred to them on the influencer’s advice. Influencers are protective of their audience and are wary of promoting products that are questionably in quality.
The Growth of Influencer Marketing in India
Social Media Influencers Demographics
It was in the year 2014 when the concept of Branded Content came into existence around the world. In India, 2016 was the year when social media influencers gained prominence as brands began considering influencer marketing as a strategy. Niche marketing and content-driven marketing were formulated and utilized. Brand success suddenly depended heavily on a combination of the authenticity of the product and the credibility of the influencer.
The sharp growth of influencer marketing and brand collaborations on apps like Instagram and YouTube was seen in the year 2019. Since then, it has steadily grown as brands have shown a growing preference for collaborating with influencers on the internet rather than proceeding with celebrities for television advertisements.
By 2021, Influencer marketing on social media has taken over 73% of the market share leaving only 27% for celebrities. Additionally, the behemoth has grown from traditional sectors like food and beverage, personal care, fashion, and technology to now include sectors like BFSI and fintech too.
How do Influencers Help
Influencers affect all the levels of the funnel metrics including lead generation and conversion. They drive user engagement by using social media tools like sharing links to product pages, using influencer-specific discount codes, and posting reviews of true use. Brands can trace the influencer by their efforts to generate leads or encourage sales.
Even within the BFSI sector brands are collaborating with influencers as people are increasingly relying on them to understand personal finance, discover new BFSI services as well as make important financial decisions.
Over the years, brands have come to heavily rely on value addition through influencer marketing which is much higher than other marketing gimmicks. As per the India Influencer Marketing Report of 2021, 80% of the brands that have collaborated with influencers are of the opinion that the return on investment from influencer marketing is better than other marketing channels.
Governing the Influencer Marketing Sector
Rules for social media influencers, up to $62,000 fine for failing to disclose financial ties
With the sector growing leaps and bounds, there are genuine concerns regarding dubious market practices in absence of any governing body for Social Media Influencer Based Marketing. In July 2021, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) had begun monitoring digital and social media platforms in an effort to reign in violations of its Influencer Advertising Guidelines.
By May 2022, ASCI along with the Department of Consumer Affairs held a virtual meeting with the stakeholders including e-commerce entities, to discuss the magnitude of fake reviews on their platforms.
As early as last week, the central government has decided to introduce a new set of guidelines for social media influencers in an effort to regulate the sector by introducing transparency of collaborations. The new guidelines are likely to be rolled out within the next two weeks. Among other regulations, the government will make it mandatory for social media influencers and creators to disclose their collaborations for paid reviews and paid promotions. The guidelines would also penalize the creators and influencers up to INR 50 lakhs for non-disclosure of financial ties with brands.
What are the Influencers saying about Guidelines?
The central government’s move to introduce these guidelines has met with unanimous consent from several content creators and influencers. They feel that these guidelines will encourage transparency in sponsorships as well as induce responsibility in large platform product promotions and curb scams. This move will also bring more clarity to users while recognizing social media influencers as legitimate professionals.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing in India will grow and continue to evolve as more and more brands are utilizing this platform for brand awareness and customer acquisition. With India’s vibrant startup ecosystem and bigger established brands looking to expand their customer base, influencer marketing is set up for a bright future as it continues to innovate and upgrade itself.
FAQs
Can we regulate influencer marketing?
The government is set to introduce rules to regulate social media influencers, including penalizing them by as much as ₹50 lakh for failing to disclose financial ties with brands, Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) chief commissioner Nidhi Khare said.
What makes a good social media influencer?
The best influencers engage with their audience, take time to answer questions, stay active on their respective platforms and publish content consistently.
What kind of content do influencers post?
Nowadays, video is perhaps the most popular kind of content they post.
What content is not allowed on Instagram?
Instagram is not a place to support or praise terrorism, organized crime, or hate groups. Offering sexual services, buying or selling firearms, alcohol, and tobacco products between private individuals, and buying or selling non-medical or pharmaceutical drugs are also not allowed.
Formerly a Big Tech giant, Facebook (now Meta) isn’t even among the top 20 most valuable American companies today. Facebook, which has a market cap over $1 trillion, was one of the top five most valuable American businesses last year. The company is currently valued at around $270 billion.
Most people don’t expect a business the size of Facebook failing with any of its creations or products. However, this is untrue! Well-known businesses have experienced numerous setbacks along the way. Facebook has had some particularly severe setbacks among these.
Facebook has always been open about its development plans. Few people are aware Facebook struggled in many areas during its early years. Many of Facebook’s inventions either received harsh criticism or weren’t working for general users. Some of the products violated both internet neutrality and user privacy.
There have been instances where Facebook received harsh criticism in the US and Europe for some of its monetized services that ultimately proved to be a complete failure. In this article, we’ll talk about some of Facebook’s most notable mistakes. Let’s get going!
By the end of 2012, Poke, a Facebook application resembling the well-known Snapchat, was released. Since it copied Snapchat’s feature of disappearing photos and texts exactly, it was initially quite popular.
In an interview, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Poke was entirely developed in just 12 days by a small team of programmers. It was a result of a marathon coding session called a hackathon.
Later, in comparison to other well-known Facebook products, Poke was One of Facebook’s biggest failures.
Parse
Parse
Facebook purchased Parse, a mobile app development platform, in 2013. Facebook had a good feeling about running Parse and growing it to heights, as the business was doing well and had big clients. But when Facebook bought it, things didn’t turn out as planned. Facebook discontinued Parse citing a desire to focus more on its core offerings.
Beacon
Facebook Beacon
Beacon, a 2007 release from Facebook, was yet another resounding failure. It was essentially a tracking program that recorded about 50 online activities and purchases of the users. Beacon then published the user’s purchase to its News Feeds without getting the user’s permission.
Thousands of Facebook users signed petitions calling for the removal of Beacon as it went into effect. Following this, about a month later, Facebook finally stopped using the tracking program Beacon.
Later, Mark Zuckerberg apologized to its users for the bizarre design and promised to do better.
Facebook Credits
Facebook Credits
Facebook developed a new shopping app for users to shop using the credits they accrued from playing games like Farmville. It was entirely for customers’ fun and benefits. However, it was a complete failure because the user couldn’t comprehend the procedure. Facebook credits ultimately shut down because of their complicated functioning and process.
Creative Labs
Facebook Creative Labs
To encourage designers and developers to create more inventive and distinctive mobile apps, Facebook introduced a new product in 2013 called Creative Labs. But the outcome was the opposite. In fact, because of this alone, Facebook experienced two significant failures: the first was Paper, a new reading app, and the second was Slingshot (the second failure of an attempt to duplicate Snapchat).
The majority of Facebook’s unsuccessful apps were products of Creative Labs. If it had persisted, it would have led to more failures for Facebook and was the primary reason for the low overhead.
Sponsored Stories
Sponsored Stories by Facebook
Sponsored Stories, one of Facebook’s most complicated and controversial products, was immediately banned because it might have to misuse risks and threats. But later, Facebook revived it with altered specifications.
Conclusion
One of the most popular social media platforms is Facebook. It has many incredible features and services that enchant the users in all regards. Initially, it faced criticisms and failures with its unusual yet innovative products. Although the ideas were pretty good in most cases, it was not enough to hold onto the audience.
This article clarified a few things regarding the unsuccessful Facebook products. Stay tuned for more articles like this!
FAQ
What are some of the failed Facebook products?
Beacon, Sponsored Stories, Creative Labs, and Facebook Credits are some of the failed Facebook products.
What are some of the companies owned by Facebook?
Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus are some of the Facebook owned companies.
What are some of Mark Zuckerberg’s failures?
Facebook crisis, Criticism for his inventions, Securing investment and funding, Invasion of privacy scandal, and Critical need for massive users are some of Mark Zuckerberg’s failures.
Who is Facebook’s biggest rival??
Facebook relies on Ads as a source of revenue. So Google is the biggest competitor of Facebook when it comes to advertising.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Twitter.
Updating the status of the current scenario is one of the leading trends followed by today’s generation. The same trend allows people to describe their days, habits, thoughts, and any important message on a larger scale with the help of social media. There are multiple social media platforms available on the web to take the habit on. One amongst them is a bluebird icon platform called Twitter.
Twitter is a microblogging platform along with a place where people can easily interact and share their thoughts in the form of tweets. Initially, it was invented with the thought of sending an SMS to a group of people. Now Twitter stands at the rank of 16th position in the category of most popular social networking sites globally.
Twitter was set to be acquired by Elon Musk, according to the news dated April 26, 2022. He had previously announced a deal worth $44 billion to acquire a majority of Twitter’s stake and make it private. This had valued each share of Twitter at $54.20, at which Musk valued them. However, later, the deal, which was said to be on hold, had actually been pulled by Elon Musk, and the Twitter team was all set to sue him. Twitter actually sued Elon Musk, as per reports dated July 13, 2022, on Delaware’s Court of Chancery. The social media giant reportedly accused Musk of “hypocrisy” in court on July 12, 2022. The judgement that was pending from the Court of Chancery was ruled in favour of Twitter, who was then asked to force the completion of the deal.
After an almost seven-month-long saga of various business and legal conflicts, finally, on October 27, 2022, Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter and appointed himself as the new CEO of the company.
The journey covered by Twitter from its start till now is commendable. This article highlights all essential aspects of Twitter such as its business model, revenue model, competitors, funding, and more in the form of the Twitter success story.
Twitter is an America-based microblogging platform founded in the year 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, and Noah Glass. Twitter has evolved as a social media platform cum microblogging platform giving out information on a range of topics.
People can easily interact with each other based on their interests and can also tweet on the platform to share their thoughts with a larger audience. Twitter was founded by a failed podcasts producing company named Odeo. Earlier it was termed as Twttr and then changed to the name, which is currently written as Twitter.
Twitter has more than twenty-five offices across the world. Tweets used to be originally restricted to 140 words, but in November 2017, the maximum for non-CJK languages was lifted to 280 words. Video and audio tweets are still limited to 140 secs over most profiles.
Both, as a sender and a receiver, Twitter is easy to use. You may easily join this platform with a free basic account and a Twitter handle or unique username. Then, on a daily, hourly, or as-needed basis, you may send out broadcasts, often known as “tweets.”
In the “What’s Happening” box beneath your profile picture, input 280 words or less, then click the Tweet button to post your tweet. Those who follow you and maybe those who do not will see your tweet if your account is public.
You can follow anyone, including celebrities and your favourite influencers, by selecting follow button on their profile to subscribe to their tweets on Twitter. You can simply unfollow them if their tweets aren’t as entertaining as you thought. Visit Twitter.com at any time of day or night to see your Twitter feed, which is updated as people tweet. Look at what’s trending to see what’s going on around the globe. That’s all there is to Twitter.
Twitter – Industry
Twitter belongs to the largest growing industry, the internet. The internet industry deals with the integration and linking of big data, analytical tools, and a wireless network. The industry is leading the way for a big change in the future due to more and more usage of internet-based platforms.
It provides a way for multiple activities to take place without the need for physical appearance. Some of the popular day-to-day activities seen by the internet industry are microblogging, social media, advertising, etc. The future of the Industry can be assumed as bigger, faster, and safer internet growth.
A social networking site is an online platform that allows users to develop social networks or connections with others who have similar professional or personal hobbies, interests, experiences, or legitimate connections. Social media is currently used by more than half of the world’s population (58.4%).
Around the world, 4.62 billion individuals use social media, with 424 million new users joining in 2021. Every day, people spend an average of 2 hours and 27 minutes on social networking sites. The emergence of social media has been fueled by the human tendency to connect, as well as advances in digitalization. It’s a story about large-scale personal friendships being formed and nurtured.
The market size of social media is growing exponentially with the estimated calculation for the US market size in 2022 to be $72.2 billion. Total growth of 15.6% is noted in the US for the social media market. As for the future, according to a report published by statista.com, over 4.41 billion users are expected to use social media by the year 2025.
Microblogging stands for the combination of instant messaging combined with content production. It differs from the natural blogging industry of the limited size of the content delivery. Microblogs include content with specific data ranges. They can be in the form of short videos, audio, or simple texts. The microblogging industry is not up to mark and is in a constantly evolving stage. It is emerging as one of the fastest-growing industries.
Twitter – Founders and Team
Twitter was not founded by a single person or by the efforts of one person. It took a whole group of four people to get together and launch a microblogging platform.
Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey – Co-Founder of Twitter
Jack Patrick Dorsey born on November 19, 1976, and a native of the United States was the former CEO of Twitter. He was born and brought up in St. Louis, Missouri, where he went to complete his schooling too. He started programming while being a student only due to his unavoidable interest in programming and computer communication.
He completed his schooling at Bishop DuBourg High School. He was more than interested in the logistics and their working methods. At the age of 15, Jack Dorsey created a dispatch software that was still in use by many taxicab companies for a longer period.
To get a degree, Jack Dorsey went to the University of Missouri. However, due to some unavoidable reason, he was transferred to the University of New York, which he dropped from six months of getting the hold of his degree.
Jack Dorsey instead went to Oakland, California, and started a company offering dispatch software by the medium of the Internet in the year 2000. While working on the dispatch software, he came up with the idea of having a platform that combines instant messaging with his dispatch software for ease.
With the same thought, Jack Dorsey approached the company named Odeo. After successful talks and some work, in 2006 Twitter was launched successfully with the first tweet done by Jack Dorsey stating “just setting up my Twitter.
In the year 2010, Jack Dorsey co-founded a small business platform that accounts for debit and credit card payments on a mobile device named Square now changed to Block. Jack Dorsey serves as the CEO of Square. In 2021, the name Square was changed to Block to show interest in Blockchain. The former CEO also stepped down from the Twitter board on May 25, 2022. It was noted that Jack Dorsey had planned to leave the board when he chose to step down from the CEO position, however, the company mentioned in a statement that Dorsey would be staying on the board “until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders.”
Noah Glass
Noah Glass – Co-founder of Twitter
The American Technology Entrepreneur Noah Glass is one of the co-founders of Twitter. He was the co-founder of a failed company called Odeo.
Odeo was a podcasting company that failed after a few years of work and somehow gave rise to what we call today Twitter.
Noah Glass was known to work on multiple projects before founding a podcast company. He was known to work at Industrial Light and Magic. He left work from there to join and co-work with Marc Canter.
Marc Canter was the founder of Macromind. After that, Noah Glass developed an application named AudBlog which earned a partnership with Evan Williams. Together they created the podcasting company named Odeo.
In 2006, while working on Odeo and its failing future, the basic idea for Twitter was invented.
Noah Glass is highly acknowledged for giving the name “Twitter” to the newly developed platform with an abbreviated name “Twttr”. Noah Glass is considered a forgotten Twitter co-founder who gave a few essential core features and ideas in the development of the platform.
Biz Stone
Biz Stone – Co-founder of Twitter
Co-founder of Twitter named Christopher Isaac “Biz” Stone was born on March 10, 1974. Biz Stone completed his graduation from Wellesley High School in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He then attended Northeastern University and the University of Massachusetts Boston but without getting a degree at both place.
In the year 1999- 2001, Biz Stone was recorded to serve as a creative director at Xanga. For the year 2003-2005, Biz Stone was given the title of senior leadership at Google. In 2006, Biz Stone rolled out Twitter along with other co-founders and holds a patent to Twitter.
In the year 2014, Biz Stone launched a new search engine named Jelly. Jelly was a search engine driven by factors of visual imagery and discovery. Stone served as CEO of Jelly till the time it was acquired by Pinterest. In 2017, Biz Stone showed intention to return to Twitter.
A few Awards and Recognition of Biz Stone would include:
International Center for Journalists Innovation Award
Listed as One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time
Nerd of the Year by GQ
Innovation Award by The Economist
Evan Williams
Evan Williams – Co-founder of Twitter
The fourth Co-founder of Twitter Evan Williams was born on March 31 1972 in Clarks, Nebraska. He went to attend the University of Nebraska–Lincoln for just one and a half years and left with no degree. Evan Clark Williams went out to work at different technology jobs after leaving college. He went to places like Florida, Texas, etc before returning to his family farm.
In 1996, Evan Williams went on to work at O’Reilly Media in a marketing position. Further, in the same firm, he got the promotion to work as an independent contractor writing computer code. This opportunity gave him the chance to work as a freelance coder and he took happily to work at different popular companies such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard.
While working at O’Reilly Media, Evan Williams started his website to post his thoughts. In the year 1999, Evan Williams along with Meg Hourihan co-founded an initial blogging software named Pyra Labs. In 2005, Evan Williams along with Noah Glass went on to co-found a podcast company named Odeo. In 2006, Evan Williams along with other co-founders gave rise to social media platform named Twitter. In 2012, Evan Williams led to the launch of a publishing platform named Medium.
A few Awards and Recognition for Evan Williams are:
In 2003, Evan Williams was given the recognition of MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators of the World under the age of 35.
In 2004, he received the Recognition of “People of the Year” by PC Magazine.
Twitter consists of 7000+ Tweeps (July 2022). Twitter employees are given the special tag “Tweep”. Just the way messages posted on Twitter are called tweets, the person working for Twitter is termed a Tweep. The journey that Twitter is remarkable indeed. Looking back at the initial days, Twitter only had 8 employees back in January 2008.
Here’s checking out the gradual expansion of the Twitter workforce:
Twitter is one of the successful platforms for now. However, the origin of Twitter lies in the ashes of another failed startup. The idea behind starting an instant messaging platform was taken from Jack Dorsey. And the name for the platform was given by Noah Glass.
When Jack Dorsey was pursuing his bachelor’s at NYU, he proposed the idea of a person using an SMS service to connect with a small group. The service’s initial project code name was twttr, another variant of the term twitter, an idea credited to Noah Glass and inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS shortcodes. The choice was also affected by the fact that the URL twitter.com had been in use when twttr was launched, and it took the team 6 months to acquire the site and convert the company’s name to Twitter.
The year 2007 was a watershed moment for Twitter’s evolution. During the episode, Twitter traffic increased from 20,000 to 60,000 tweets per day. Twitter began rolling out “New Twitter” in September and October 2010, a totally overhauled version of the site.
The possibility to see videos and pictures without exiting Twitter by tapping on individual tweets that contain links to photographs and videos from a wide range of supported websites such as YouTube and Flickr, as well as a total revamp of the interface that moved links such as ‘@mentions’ and ‘Retweets’ above the Twitter stream, while ‘Messages’ and ‘Log Out’ became accessible via a black bar at the top of twitter.com.
Twitter – Acquisition by Elon Musk
Elon Musk – CEO of Twitter
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who is a prominent global entrepreneur, declared on April 4, 2022, that he had acquired 9.1% stakes in Twitter for $2.64 billion. As a consequence, Twitter’s shares rose as high as 27%, marking the largest day rise since the firm’s Offering in the year 2013.
Elon was granted a seat on Twitter’s management board committee as part of a contract that prohibited him from owning more than 14.9% stakes in the corporation, but he refused before his participation went into effect on April 9.
On April 14, Musk made an unexpected bid to buy Twitter for $43 billion and make it private, claiming that he stood for the value of free expression for global democracy. On April 15, Twitter’s board of directors approved a tactic that would enable shareholders to buy additional shares in the case of a truculent takeover, preventing Musk’s invasion.
On April 20, Musk got $46.5 billion in a deal offer to buy Twitter. On April 25, it was reported that Twitter was preparing to approve Musk’s bid, and the board members officially authorized the deal, which became $44 bn shortly after on the same day.
Musk has stated that his first goal in promoting openness is to open-source the system that promotes tweets in the content stream. He has indicated that he intends to eliminate spambots and verify all legitimate people. However, the deal was still on hold, as per May 2022 reports. Twitter had declared that it was facing recurring challenges with spam and fake accounts soon after Elon Musk thought it fit to acquire the platform. This is what Twitter is investigating currently, where it is checking whether the existing spam/fake accounts represent less than 5% of Twitter’s users. On the other hand, Musk was still reported to be “committed to acquisition.” As per the reports dated June 9th, 2022, Elon Musk has threatened the social media giant to blow up the deal over the bot issue. Soon after this, reports mentioned that a Twitter stakeholder wanted a judge to order the microblogging site to turn over internal papers that would prove the existing spam and fake accounts on Twitter. The Twitter acquisition deal of Elon Musk worth $44 bn had been unanimously approved by the Twitter board on June 21, 2022. However, along with it, there were uncertainties about whether that will happen because Twitter share prices have dipped far below Musk’s offered price. Besides, Musk had also mentioned some unresolved issues concerning the debt and the spam and fake Twitter accounts, which he had doubted that they were not less than 5% of the monetisable daily active users.
Elon Musk had then decided to abandon the Twitter acquisition, as mentioned in reports dated July 9, 2022. Twitter, in return, then mentioned that it will sue Musk and is determined to see the deal go through, by hook or by crook. Also, by the mutual agreement between the two parties, both Musk and Twitter agreed to impose a fine on either of the parties if they chose to back out from the deal. This stood valid, in case Musk decides finally to terminate the deal. He did back out from the deal, and eventually, Twitter sued him in the Court of Chancery, Delaware. The case was presided over by Kathaleen McCormick as the chief judge, who asked to complete the deal by force, thereby standing by Twitter. Now, the deal can either be completed or pushed further. The legal battle in this colossal acquisition deal is already at its climax!
Twitter proposed that it would conduct a meeting of the shareholders on September 13, 2022, and would vote on the proposed $44 billion takeover of the social media company by billionaire Elon Musk. At this meeting, Twitter would also have shareholders vote on the approval of the compensation that Twitter would extend to some of its executive officers.
On October 3, Musk’s legal team informed Twitter that he was ready to complete his planned acquisition deal at the original price offer of $54.20 per share, a total cost of nearly $44 billion, reversing a months-long attempt to end the agreement.
On October 27, Elon Musk finally closed the deal to acquire Twitter, becoming the new owner of the social media giant. Immediately after the takeover, he fired top executives of the company, including Parag Agrawal (CEO), Ned Segal (CFO), and Vijaya Gadde (legal affairs and policy chief).
As a part of the many changes coming after the acquisition, Musk recently announced that Twitter will charge users $8 per month for a blue tick on Twitter. This decision has been criticised by many users, but Musk does not seem to have any plans to take it back.
Twitter’s mission statement says, “The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve – and do not detract from – a free and global conversation.”
Vision- “To be the world’s most diverse and inclusive company”.
Twitter – Name, Tagline, and Logo
Name
The initial meaning of the name Twitter means “a short burst of inconsequential information” or “chirps from birds”.
The initial thought for the name was “status”. However, after going through the Dictionary, Jack Dorsey came across the name Twitter and instantly liked its definition. As he felt, the definition of the word is what they were doing. However, the domain under the name Twitter was not available for purchase and they have to go with its abbreviated version.
After six months of launch, the domain name Twitter was purchased and the platform was renamed. The credit behind naming Twttr and Twitter goes to Noah Glass.
Tagline
Discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world.
Logo
Twitter Logo
The original name of the Twitter Bird is “Larry The Bird”. The bird was named after the basketball player Larry Bird. Biz Stone can be said as the major reason behind selecting the logo for Twitter. He studied at a school outside Boston and hence had the same craze for basketball players who won three NBA championships for three years from 1981-to 1986. In the year 2012, the bird was given a haircut and started resembling a mountain bird.
The current logo of Twitter consists of a blue-coloured bird on white background with no text attached to it.
Twitter – Business Model
The business model of Twitter is a platform business model. A platform business model can be defined as a business model that creates value by facilitating exchanges between two or more two people and groups of people, especially in the case of consumers and producers. The majority of social media works on the same platform.
Twitter has the same working pattern as other social media platforms. The user needs to register with a username and password for the use of Twitter. Unregistered users can also use Twitter but only to read tweets. Only registered users are allowed to tweet on its platform. A registered user can share text with 280 characters or a video of 140 seconds with a size ranging not more than 1 GB.
Twitter allows its users multiple benefits such as the user can make their thoughts reach a global audience. The advertisement done on it can also reach a large audience. The data partners can easily search and navigate information from Twitter to create insights.
Twitter currently generates revenue primarily through ad campaigns and data licensing. Twitter is continuing to expand its current income streams while also experimenting with new potential revenue streams from users and companies. The firm believes that its revenue channels may continue to develop at a quick pace, and it plans to double its revenues in 2022.
Twitter’s business model is created in a way that allows advantages to its users, advertisers, and data partners.
Twitter – Revenue Model
Twitter Revenue Worldwide from 2010 to 2021
The annual revenue of Twitter for FY2021 was noted to be $5.77 billion. There was a whopping increment of 36.63% in revenue from the year 2020.
The Twitter revenue model helps the social media giant generate revenue in two ways –
Data licensing accounts for around 14% of Twitter’s income. In 2020, this will account for around $509 million, up from 9.2% in 2019. Subscriptions to public data are sold to organisations and developers under this income stream. The information gives both historic and current insights into user demographics and platform trends.
The majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising. Advertising accounts for over 86% of the company’s revenue. Promoted Ads, Follower Ads, and Trend Takeovers are examples of advertising. On the stream, all adverts are always labelled “Promoted.” Advertisers buy Promoted Ads to get their product or service in front of a larger audience of Twitter users. Follower Ads propose new Twitter accounts for you to follow based on your interests, so you’ll see Promoted Ads from people you follow. Trend Takeovers place advertisements next to trending issues to generate views based on what is most trendy and interesting on Twitter. The cost of Twitter advertisements varies. A sponsored tweet might cost somewhere between $0.50 and $2 for every action, while a promoted account can cost anywhere between $2 and $4 per new follower. Promoted trends may cost up to $200,000 per day if they are linked with the most popular subjects on Twitter.
Twitter – Funding and Investors
Twitter has raised a total of $12.9 billion in funding over 15 rounds.
Date
Transaction Name
Money Raised
Lead Investors
June 1, 2022
Post-IPO Equity
–
Greenlight Capital
May 4, 2022
Post-IPO Equity
$7.2B
–
Mar 4, 2022
Post-IPO Equity
$2.9B
Elon Musk Revocable Trust
Mar 1, 2021
Secondary Market
$1.3B
–
Dec 20, 2011
Venture Round
$300M
Alwaleed Bin Talal
Sep 8, 2011
Secondary Market
$400M
–
Aug 2, 2011
Series G
$400
DST Global
Feb 9, 2011
Secondary Market
$80M
–
Dec 15, 2010
Series F
$200M
Kleiner Perkins
Jan 8, 2010
Series E
$5.2M
–
Twitter – Investments
Twitter has made 10 investments throughout the years. Here’s looking at them below:
Date
Organization Name
Round
Amount
Feb 8, 2022
OpenNode
Series A
$20M
Jan 11, 2022
Aleph Holding
Corporate Round
–
Oct 7, 2021
Alter
Seed Round
$3M
Apr 8, 2021
ShareChat
Series E
$502M
Sep 24, 2020
ShareChat
Series E
$40M
Sep 2, 2020
Skillz
Post-IPO-Equity
$159M
Aug 15, 2019
ShareChat
Series D
$100M
June 2, 2017
PlaySight Interactive
Series C
$11M
Oct 1, 2014
MIT Media Lab
Grant
$10M
Oct 18, 2010
Overdrive
Private Equity Round
–
Twitter – Acquisitions
Twitter has acquired about 67 organizations. Here’s a glance at the most recent acquisitions made by Twitter:
Acquiree Name
About Acquiree
Date
Amount
OpenBack
OpenBack offers a push notification platform designed to deliver personalized notifications in order to increase engagement.
Apr 12, 2022
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Quill
Quill is a computer software company that provides a messaging software built for productivity, not engagement.
Dec 7, 2021
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Threader
Compile your favorite Twitter threads in one place
Nov 15, 2021
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Sphere (Acquired by Twitter)
Now part of Twitter! Sphere is a community chat app turns groups into close, vibrant, purposeful and productive communities, instantly!
Oct 19, 2021
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Brief
Brief is to foster healthy discourse by rethinking the way we read the news.
Jul 28, 2021
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Scroll
Scroll is creating a sustainable experience that puts amazing content in front of engaged users without all the noise.
May 4, 2021
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Reshuffle
Reshuffle is an open source integration framework that lets developers build workflows & connect systems.
Mar 24, 2021
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Revue
Revue is a developer of an editorial newsletter tool designed to build a direct relationship with the readers.
Jan 26, 2021
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UENO.
UENO is an operator of a digital design agency that specializes in designing and building products, brands, and experiences.
Jan 6, 2021
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Breaker
Breaker is an audio company that develops a podcast listening and discovery application.
Jan 4, 2021
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Twitter enjoys 237.8 million monetizable DAU (Q2 2022). Twitter measures its user base by the metric called monetizable daily active users (mDAU). monetizable daily active users (mDAU) is defined as the total number of user accounts that were logged in and accessed Twitter on any given day.
If you’ve used Twitter for a long time, you must be well aware that not everybody has noble motives. Sadly, whether you’re a regular citizen or a well-known personality, many users face a deluge of hate in their comments daily.
Twitter has made efforts to combat abuse, to be sure. Users can, for example, filter the mention that they see. Furthermore, in 2021, Twitter launched “Safety Mode,” which allows you to temporarily ban profiles that use abusive language or post inappropriate comments.
Nonetheless, there is indeed a considerable distance to cover until harassment and bullying are no longer prevalent on the platform. Agrawal, the CEO of Twitter said that his main focus will be to combat this problem. On Twitter, misinformation spreads rapidly, and preventing this requires a collaborative effort from both the company and its users.
Twitter is yet one of the most trendy and popular social media platforms in today’s world. However, in recent years, it has experienced stiff competition from apps like TikTok. While it has initiated several advancements, it also needs to look beyond the box.
The firm still has a sizable customer base and a valuable offering. However, Twitter’s income increased by just 7% in 2020, to $3.7 billion. This amounted to $26 million in operational profit. COVID-19 undoubtedly contributed to Twitter’s profits, but others may claim that the network has done very little development in an intensely challenging social media world.
Twitter, ever since the social media platform has been founded, has witnessed its own share of challenges and mishaps. Twitter was down on Friday, February 11, 2022, due to a global outage. This was really a piece of big news, which prevented thousands of Twitter users from accessing their accounts.
The Twitter accounts of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Barrack Obama, were hacked in a cryptocurrency scam. Late on Wednesday, July 15, 2020, there were irrelevant Tweets about cryptocurrency by Famous twitter personalities. This left some users baffled.
It turned out that the Twitter accounts of these personalities were compromised. However, users soon realized that it wasn’t just these accounts, but the Twitter accounts of Jeff Bezos, Kayne West, and many famous personalities were also compromised. While these types of scams are fairly common the question that arose was how these hackers gained access to high-profile Twitter accounts.
Nearly two hours after the hack, Twitter locked down and prevented at least some verified accounts from posting any tweets. After their first tweets were deleted the same bitcoin scam tweets were made again from the official accounts of Bill Gates, Obama, and high-profile personalities.
Twitter’s Response to the Hack
We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools, said Twitter support.
Twitter Layoffs
While Twitter was upset about its shareholding pattern, hardly could anticipate its acquisition, and then nodded for the same, but was in trouble with its spam and fake accounts, the popular Twitter social media platform parted with 30% of its recruiting workforce, which was less than 100 employees, as far as reports go, dated July 7, 2022.
Just a week after the company’s takeover by Elon Musk, Twitter laid off 3,700 people, which accounts for nearly 50% of its workforce.
Twitter – Competitors
Twitter has several Competitors in the same industry but all with different features. Some of them are:
Facebook is an American online social media and social networking Service owned by Meta Platforms, formerly known as Facebook. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Facebook enjoys 2.85 million active users per month (31 March 2021).
Pinterest
Pinterest is an image-sharing and social media service platform headquartered in San Francisco. It was invented in 2009 by Paul Sciarra, Evan Sharp, and Ben Silbermann. Pinterest is an image discovery tool mainly consisting of pins and boards. Pinterest currently enjoys 431 million active users globally (February 2022).
Snapchat
Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app. It was introduced by Snap Inc in the year 2011. Snapchat is more popular for its ability to share images and videos with the addition of filters. Snapchat enjoys active users of about 319 users per year (2021).
Twitter – Future Plans
Twitter has more activity than any other social media platform right now. A few months ago, the microblogging site famed for its 280-character restriction attempted to relaunch itself with a slew of new features while maintaining its distinguishing qualities.
Twitter has also shown social responsibility by installing powerful measures to keep fake news and hate speech out of its virtual debates, with even former US President Donald Trump being banned.
Twitter is continually improving while also introducing new features like Spaces and Super Follows. When it comes to advertising, Twitter will be pushing performance marketing ahead in a big way. The company also wants to increase the number of technologies and marketing alternatives available to both major brands and small and medium enterprises.
Twitter wants to double the number of its active users till the time of 2023. The Twitter team wants Twitter as a safe platform where people can easily share their thoughts without the worry of backlash or similar uncertainty. Twitter also plans to expand its marketing performance with better innovation and ad creation.
Twitter plans to increase its daily users to 315 million users and the revenue to be at least $7.5 billion by the year 2023. Twitter plans to launch new features for more users to gain its attention.
After acquiring Twitter, Elon Musk is taking drastic actions for the company, like mass layoffs and implementing a charge for a blue-tick verification mark. Now, only time will tell what other future plans Musk has for Twitter.
What is the best method of marketing? Probably, when your customers talk and rave about your product. When they sell your product by recommending it on your behalf. Right? I am talking about word of mouth.
Word of mouth is when your customers love the product/ service so much that they give references and tell people about you. Word of mouth is powerful and can impact your business revenue and brand image.
User-generated content is today’s social media era’s word of mouth. People share their positive or negative experiences on the internet with their friends and family. But the scope of UGC is beyond social media. So, Let us first understand what exactly is user-generated content.
User-generated content (UGC) is the content produced by the end user of the product.
For instance, if a person buys a phone and posts its review on YouTube, that is UGC. Similarly, if you post a picture of that cute cafe you visited last week on Instagram, that is UGC. In a way, you are marketing those products. You let your circle know about a particular product you liked or disliked.
UGC is not restricted to Instagram posts, YouTube videos, or visual images/ videos. It includes:
Images
Videos
Social media posts
Testimonials
Product reviews
Blog posts
YouTube content
Live stream
So, whenever your customer talks about your product on the internet, it becomes user-generated content. Apart from customers, posts by brand loyalists and employees are also part of UGC.
For instance, your employees could post about the production behind the scenes. Similarly, the brand loyalist could show the product in use.
But what makes UGC so crucial for a brand? No doubt, it saves money and time for you but is that it? Let us look at some benefits of UGC.
Why Do Companies Love UGC?
Forecast for the Global User-Generated Content Platform Market
How many times have you ordered something that you saw on someone else’s table because it looked delicious?
This is how UGC works. People post about your business and create awareness with authenticity. Let us see some benefits of UGC:
UGC gives a better understanding of the target audience. Since UGC comes directly without any filters from the end user, you get their honest feedback and review. It is not necessary to just look at the testimonials. For instance, people tweet about their grievances on social media.
UGC improves site engagement. When users post about your product, people search for it. As a result, site traffic and engagement get a boost. Also, this increases the conversations about and with your brand on a larger scale. This allows brands to connect with their audience and build credibility.
UGC is hard to copy or plagiarise, this gives you a competitive advantage. You build your content library which is authentic and builds authority in the market.
UGC enables brands to build brand loyalty and grow communities simultaneously. You get to connect and communicate with your audience. Also, you do not pay your users to generate content and boost brand promotion. In a way, it becomes more cost-effective than influencer marketing.
UGC covers the top and bottom of the funnel content. It creates brand awareness and provides different use cases for your business. This adds to the social proof and enhances conversions.
Even though UGC takes away the control and moderation of the media, if your company can leverage it correctly, the benefits are immense. But is there some way to leverage UGC? Well, there is no correct way or playbook but here are 5 ways to extract maximum value out of UGC.
How to Leverage UGC?
Often when we as brands create content for the audience, it has gaps such as technical or product-centric content. However, UGC is not only simple but focuses on the product more naturally and authentically. Those brand reviews, press releases, and recommendation articles boost brand awareness and build trust. But, how do we ensure to extract the maximum value? Let us look at 5 ways you can leverage UGC.
Get Reviews
Try and get customer feedback at different stages and platforms. Reviews are a great way to gain insights into customer’s pain points and product deal-breaking features.
What are the features that make the customer switch? What are the features that customers love? Which features are difficult to use?
You could use these as product development feedback, and push the positive reviews as use cases for better conversions. You could highlight the reviews by popular/ notable entities on your website, landing pages, and in your email sequences.
Hashtag Contests
Coca-Cola #ShareaCoke Hashtag Campaign
Run hashtag contests on social media. Pick brand-specific hashtags which are short and catchy. Ask people to post about your product with the hashtag in exchange for gifts, discounts, coupons, or any other incentive. This incentive is crucial to motivate people but should cost you a bit. Alternatively, you could opt for dedicated hashtag campaigns where people post your new product and help in brand awareness.
For instance, Coca-Cola had a hashtag campaign #ShareACoke to promote its personalized coke labels for gifting options. It collaborated with the actors to reach the masses. Result? Even after the campaign ended, people post and order personalized cans boosting the company’s revenue and customer engagement.
You might have to motivate the audience with monetary or non-monetary incentives. However, the mass reach, customer engagement, and increased conversions cover the costs faster than ever. Plus, it has a long-lasting effect on people as hashtags don’t die, and you can reuse the strategy/ hashtag multiple times.
Video Testimonial
Sugar Cosmetics Video Testimonial Example
Not every customer can give a video testimonial. However, your brand loyalist and employees would help you cover the gap. Also, in the present-day era of Instagram reels, getting video testimonials is easier. It doesn’t take time and gets done with a few clicks.
A video testimonial could include product use cases. What problems did the product solve for them? Are product adoption and usage easy? What are the plus points of the product? Why did they choose your product over others in the market? What are their favourite features? You could even try to cover the FAQs or brand queries within the testimonial.
These testimonials can be added to the website, brand decks, high-value website pages, and email sequences. They are way more credible than any written review. Also, for YouTube video reviews, you could share a portion/ clip of the video. In the case of reels, you could repost them on your stories. Also, in case of poor feedback, you could interact with the post and try to resolve the issue.
Social Media Shares
Social media platforms have made extracting UGC easier. People post about the product they love/ hate on social media channels like Twitter and Instagram.
People post stories, post reels, and put dedicated/ integrated posts, and tweets about your product. These could be general feedback, product recommendation, how-to guide, or generic update.
You can leverage these by resharing the posts and building credibility. Also, these social media posts bring a lot of traffic and an engaging audience.
Showcase Customers as Experts
This tactic is very useful for B2B brands, where your customers create content about your product as a niche expert. It works great for almost all the industries, such as food, electronics, retail, and SaaS.
Your customer talks about your product as the niche expert. They could mention your product as a recommendation. It is somewhat similar to influencer marketing, except that it can go beyond social media.
For instance, often, book publishers reach out to professors and give them their books complimentary. This is to reach a larger audience through a credible and authentic source. In the case of B2B companies, your customer could write a review, a product blog, or create a YouTube video to include your product.
In all these ways, not only do you reach an engaging audience with credibility and authenticity but get an in-depth review from your customers. You could understand what features are most crucial and which ones need modifications. It also assists in mapping customer journeys in a way.
UGC will not generate the best results by sitting on your or customers’ feed. You have to take a step further and leverage it efficiently. So, here are 5 tips to manage UGC to extract maximum value and boost conversions.
You should acknowledge and encourage people to talk and post about your product. This could be through a dedicated hashtag, some incentive, or personal product giveaways.
You should request permission before using or sharing the post with the customer. This ensures transparency and a good relationship with them. Also, with this, you could use the content in multiple ways, like website/ email sequences easily. Additionally, it shows the brands’ professionalism.
You should always source back the credit to the original creator. Do not just use the content without mentioning the source. By giving credit, you invite more people to post about your product and enhance brand loyalty.
You should try to reward people for sharing your content. This could be a discount or some offer to motivate customers to post about your brand. It could be as simple as using a hashtag on Twitter to avail yourself of 10-15% discounts.
You should try to find shareable content that can be repurposed in multiple ways. You don’t want a review that lies on your website. You should look for blogs covering your business and other content which could give you SEO benefits, generate traffic and boost conversions.
These tips will help you to manage the UGC efficiently. You can repurpose them and reach the masses as you build credibility and authority simultaneously.
UGC can assist a lot in scaling when you have a moderate user base and some brand loyalists to talk about your product. You reach more people as a trusted brand. Also, you get insights into the customer product journey, which helps you understand road blockers and map vital product features. So, if you are in the market for some time serving satisfied customers, and wish to scale, look for UGC.
FAQs
What is User-Generated Content?
User-generated content (UGC) is the content produced by the end user of the product.
What does Word of mouth mean?
Word of mouth is when your customers love the product/ service so much that they give references and tell people about the product.
What does UGC generally include?
Images, Videos, Social media posts, Testimonials, Product Reviews, Blog posts, etc.
Myspace, launched in 2004, was one of the biggest social media giants of the early 2000s. However, it failed miserably. What happened? Was it running in loss, was it facing stiff competition from Facebook, was it about the acquisition from News Corp, was it the legal battles, etc. We are here to decode the probable reasons for the failure of Myspace and why it couldn’t compete with Facebook. Let us first see the introduction of this social networking site called Myspace.
In the early 2000s, social networking sites were a new thing. MySpace dominated the social networking space online, averaging over 75 million visitors per month at its peak.
MySpace was extremely unfortunate or rather went weak because Facebook, with its cutting-edge features like the uber-cool and updated news feed, quickly outperformed it and never looked back. However, this does not mean that Facebook’s emergence was the sole cause of Myspace’s downfall.
The meaning of social media has evolved a lot in the current times. We’ve evolved to be real and fearless on social media because it is one of the other worlds we live in. However back then it wasn’t like this, people were not easily open on social media platforms. They feared being online.
To engage with other users, Myspace users would construct web pages for their profiles that showcased their interests. Instead of using their real identities on Myspace (as opposed to Facebook), users frequently used a made-up nickname.
Myspace Profile
Users could post blogs, participate in forums, follow official accounts, and connect with friends in addition to interacting with friends. The primary goal of Myspace was to promote other musicians.
Users could even listen to music and discuss them with others in a special section of the website. Later on, it added a classifieds and video area, which ended up being a smash hit, to compete with sites like Craigslist and YouTube.
Myspace took huge steps in the advertisement and marketing industry and signed big deals with Google and hit record stats as well. Myspace was having a gala time in the next months of its launch.
What Was the Reason Behind Mindspace’s Failure?
Even though, we see that Myspace was launched back in the early 2000s when there were no or negligible competitors in this market. And of course, the site attained heights of success too.
MySpace’s popularity can be credited to easy accessibility and synchronicity. The website was one of the earliest social media platforms when it was introduced in 2003. It was preceded by Friendster, which was also well-liked at the time. However, as a consequence of technological issues and an overabundance of targeted advertisements, Friendster’s popularity decreased.
MySpace made it more convenient and was open to all users, allowed them to personalize their pages, and periodically added new features in response to user demands.
Additionally, it served as a kind of forerunner to contemporary influencers by attracting a lot of creative individuals and enabling brand and user interaction. But as Facebook was launched, people got a wider platform with better facilities. People had the facility of making accounts with their real names and could use their real details, and photos which made them feel more connected with the outer world.
On the contrary, it was the opposite on Myspace where people used fictitious names and photos which was not only harmful but the sense of connection was absent. Hence, Facebook was a whole new evolution. As a result, the majority of the users shifted to Facebook or rather made accounts there as well and with time forgot about Myspace being an online space.
The media behemoth News Corporation was interested in MySpace because of its popularity and purchased it for $580 million in 2005. MySpace was initially convinced by New Corp that nothing will ever radically change and that this would play a passive role in the growth of the company.
MySpace was acquired with a new objective in mind. The need to increase sales was now more critical. MySpace was consequently deluged with aggressive advertisements, many of which directed users to suspicious pages requesting that they join up for credit card payments and other services.
As portions were built to try and produce income that would fulfill News Corp’s impossible targets, money was drained from developer resources. In the end, users left the site for others because the community’s needs and the usability of the platform weren’t prioritised.
Not only this but online harassment and bullying became a common thing after Myspace started focussing on News Corporations’ objectives more. There were severe cases of sex offenders trying to harass small children online. This not only raised questions on social media regulation but also harmed the reputation of Myspace as a safe space.
The anger raged when there were suicide cases due to online harassment and money-draining people. There were many cases and lawsuits against Myspace and it couldn’t handle them well. Raged people complained that they did not want their children to be a part of such a platform which could induce negativity and leads to suicidal activities.
Does Myspace Still Exist?
Today when various social networking platforms exist, where is Myspace? Myspace has been attempting to increase its efforts in the music industry ever since. It occasionally adds new music features, collaborations, and so on. It still exists as a social media site but it is primarily dedicated to music.
Myspace Website in 2022
Despite multiple rebranding attempts, MySpace hasn’t ever come close to winning back what it used to have, and News Corp sold MySpace to Time Inc in 2011 for an undisclosed sum, originally supposed to be $35 million.
The site still exists as a music-focused social media platform, but it is typically much smaller and nowhere near the powerhouse it once was. In 2019, it had to make a public apology for losing 12 years of online content matter during a server migration.
Myspace accidentally lost all the music uploaded from its first 12 years in a server migration, losing over 50 million songs from 14 million artists. https://t.co/OyKB5Dxtw9
All this accounts for Myspaces’ fateful failure and the position it is in today. The platform could have performed better had it focussed on its sole purpose of connecting people instead of generating revenue from ads etc.
FAQs
How did myspace fail to adapt?
Mindspace had aggressive ads, it had a clumsy website design and the social media didn’t add new features.
Why did myspace fail and Facebook succeed?
Myspace was a platform that allowed users to use a nickname instead of their real name as Facebook allowed users to use their real name which was one of the reasons why Myspace failed.
What ended Myspace?
There were many legal battles against myspace as people misused the platform to harass or bully others.
With the advent of social media and the kind of popularity it holds today, it would be extremely beneficial for a business to create a strong social media presence. Instagram falls among the most widely-used websites and applications that help in creating a strong buyer base, especially if the target audience for the business is millennials or Gen Z buyers.
The Facebook-owned platform, Instagram boasts of having around 1 Billion (2022 reports), active users per month, and 500+ million daily users. While the young adults (between 18-24 years), and the adults (between 25-34 years) are found to be the most active on Instagram, the platform is also used by people below and above the margin.
Instagram Users and their Age Groups
Moreover, recent reports state that the brands have seen a 4% of average engagement from their followers on Instagram, which is much more than the followers’ engagement rate on Facebook or Twitter, which happens to be around 0.1%. In fact, brands get 10x more engagement on Instagram from all around the platform than they get on the other social media platforms. In other words, Instagram is better for the visibility of the brands.
With an Instagram business profile, you can see real-time data on how your stories and promoted posts perform, get insights into how followers are interacting with your content and unlock features only available to businesses that make it easier to get noticed and drive sales. Creating a business profile on Instagram is free and can help you a lot to understand your audience.
So, let’s talk about how you can use Instagram for your business, and all the aspects that you need to keep in mind for working out your plan that way. It will help you understand the features of Instagram for Business as well.
So, now that we are all aware of how big is Instagram and how important the platform is for businesses, it is obvious that you would also want to leverage the popular social media platform to grow your business. If you are interested, then let’s dive into the primary steps that will help you use Instagram for your business here:
Create an Instagram Business Account
If you already have a personal account. Moreover, if the content of that profile is engaging and appropriate for your brand, then you can simply convert that into a business profile. After that, you will be able to access all the features and tools that are available only for Instagram business accounts.
You can easily convert your personal account into a business account by following the below steps:
In the Instagram Mobile App, go to your Profile.
Now go to “Settings“
Go to “Account“
Tap on “Switch to Business Account” or “Switch to Creator Account” as you like.
This will convert your profile into an Instagram Page. It is a really helpful feature of Instagram for startups and entrepreneurs, who are looking forward to using Instagram for their businesses.
Make Your Feed Visually Appealing
Example of an Appealing Instagram Profile
The users of Instagram are groups of people from the new generation. As Instagram is mainly an app to share photos, users need to see your product before they even visit your website. Thus, it is important to upload photos of your business and products in a way that is eye-catching and stands out from the plethora of content that is thrown at users today. Besides, it is also essential here, to maintain a proper colour scheme and aestheticism that makes the grid layout visually appealing.
When users find a post or image that is appealing, the key instinct is to open the profile and check out further products. A typical user views an image for about 3-4 seconds and on finding it interesting, takes 6-7 more seconds to skim through your profile. So, it is important to make these moments count.
One should market their products keeping in mind the current trends, i.e., the viral happenings around the globe because they bring viewers easily. People tend to be engaged more with the posts related to the latest trends in the world of marketing and beyond it, which in turn, helps brands get more shares from their followers. This is why it is essential to monitor these trends, which include technology trends, marketing or general trends. Though the videos can provide more information than the photos, they are mostly considered less engaging for the users when compared with the images. Putting up photos, especially of high quality, will increase your engagement. Typically, users view about 10-20 seconds of a video. So when uploading one, businesses should try to put more colourful content at the beginning of their videos, and try to keep the viewers engaged throughout.
Marketing On Instagram
Keep in mind, that your page is not isolated on Instagram. So, keep it up to date with the latest hashtags, trends, and content that may help sell your products/services, and gain mass approval for them. Some of the biggest worldwide trends were “Fidget Spinner” and “Mature Bag” and then the social media trend based on iPhone 11’s design came, and it continues in much the same way. When users come across your page, catch their attention by producing content that is both relevant and contributes to your business.
Write grabbing captions The captions of your Instagram posts, stories and videos are really important because it is the caption that the readers read first to check if it is of any interest to them. So, you should not miss out on this opportunity to score.
Keep your posts formal and your stories casual The stories come and go, so a more formal tone would only bore your potential customers. However, here if you pour some nice and grabbing casual content, then you might still have the opportunity to hit them!
Use hashtags A major way of attracting users is by using hashtags that are widely used, and viewed by many users or those which are relevant to your business. This helps your page be visible to a greater number of viewers. Never forget the caption of your photos or don’t take it lightly, describe your images and videos creatively, use hashtags or ask the viewers questions, and use the caption to keep viewers engaged. An inspirational quote or a pop culture reference helps you score extra points.
Stories Use Instagram stories effectively to display new additions to your product line or promote your business. Be creative, original, and crisp with Instagram stories.
Story highlights Maintain clearly defined important highlights as a part of your profile as they are the first to attract the audience’s attention. Make them seem interesting and use these to especially highlight any offers or competitions that your brand is holding.
Add relevant CTAs If you want the users to click on your website or the products and services that your brand offers, then you need to tweak your content in such a way that it drives the customers’ attention, and leads them to click on the link you want to.
The first thing that users will view in your account when they visit your profile is the bio. Keep the bio crisp and to the point, describing your business, but do so in a creative manner, one that shall intrigue users to further explore your account and your website. Add a link in your bio, it could be the link to your website or one that features your latest or most popular product. This makes your business easily accessible to the community. Use points to give information about yourself and use attractive emojis. You can also go in the extreme opposite direction and give a one-line introduction if you’re daring to be pretentious and if it works with the aesthetics of your product and/or services.
Make the logo of your company your profile photo instead of changing it with each new product to give your brand space to become known and recognized by users. Often seeing the same logo, again and again, may instil a feeling of familiarity amongst the users.
Use Geotagging
Geotagging is a feature on Instagram. With geotagging, you can tag the location of each of your images. You can also tag your work address or the address where your business is headquartered. This further makes it easy for the followers and the customers of your brand to know the location of your business. To use geotagging, you can simply press the “add location” button, and then you can type an address or select one from the selected Instagram list of addresses.
Tools Provided By Instagram To Monitor Outreach
Instagram Business Account Insights
Actions taken from the story: You can view the number of people who visits your profile through your stories by swiping up and checking insights. This helps you view the nature of content that attracts users, which would help you gain more insight into the factors that will help you gain more popularity. You can also promote the stories as your post so that a larger audience views your content.
Post insights: You can check the number of people that view your page, know how many among them already follow you, and the number of people you have reached through the explore page or the tags you have used. This will help optimize your business, brand, and Instagram account to produce content that is mass-approved and will help you increase sales.
People Visited your Page: Instagram also shows how many people have visited your profile in one week on your home page.
Benefits Of Using Instagram For Business
Your audience is already there: In June 2018, Instagram reached one billion monthly active users, up from 800 million in September 2017. Instagram has become one of the most popular social networks in the world. So, if you have a proper Instagram strategy then there is no limit to success for your business. This is the best platform where any quality service or product can go viral within a short period.
Build your brand reputation easily: No matter how big or small your business is, if you have confidence in your product or service, then you have the key to success. Instagram has allowed businesses to grow freely, with equal opportunities for every one of them. You just have to take advantage of the built-in features at the right time and you are well on your way to success. Interact with more and more people, try to post quality content regularly and make sure the images you are using are in HD. Instagram prefers quality more than quantity, so make sure your content is visually appealing.
Generate revenue directly from Instagram: A few years back there was a limited opportunity for businesses to get success on Instagram. But now, Instagram has allowed businesses to earn money directly from the platform itself. There is a new feature Instagram has launched that is the shoppable post where you can add tags to the products in your photos with links and that will include product description, price, and the “shop now” button or link. Your audience can directly buy the products from your online store.
Show your creativity on Instagram: Instagram is the best place where you can show your creativity and also how attractive your brand is. Show your enthusiasm while posting content, and make it as much appealing as possible. You can also organize some contests, giveaways, special offers, and many more. This will help you to attract more and more visitors to your profile and also to your online store.
Promote through influencers: Influencers are the people who have a big following on social media and other online platforms. When you start a venture and you want to market it to a large audience, influencers are the people who can help you out with this. Many influencers promote brands and products to take them on the growth path. They have an audience who follows them from the heart and is also loyal to them. So here, you have the opportunity to build the reputation of your brand.
Conclusion
Keeping in mind all these points will help increase outreach and drive sales of the products and services you offer. Instagram is a crucial marketing tool for startups. Using Instagram for business will help gain your brand publicity and a larger market to establish itself. Many businesses are solely based on Instagram at this age, and are reaping all the benefits that the platform has to offer. Using a platform that is this popular will add to the marketing of your startup.
Instagram is a popular social media platform that can serve as a valuable marketing tool for your business. You can create a business account on Instagram by first creating a personal account and converting it.
What are the benefits of Instagram for business?
Some of the Benefits of Using Instagram for Business are:-
You can learn about your customers
Presentation of products and services is easier
Customer engagement can be maximised this way
Instagram helps in building solid customer relationships
It helps in driving website traffic
Reaching new audiences is easier
You can go for prominent influencers and make them brand ambassadors
What are the advantages of using Instagram?
The Advantages of Instagram are:-
It is a popular media
It has a wide scope for everyone
Instagram offers spaces for each content creator
Marketing opportunities galore on Instagram
Instagram optimising, and marketing on Instagram is cost-effective
Instagram prioritises security
Instagram helps both celebrities and fans
Instagram has numerous tools to make effective marketing possible
Building engagement is easy
How to use Instagram for business?
If you want to use Instagram for business, then first you need to ensure that you have a proper profile, with a decent profile picture as your business logo. If you don’t initially have a business account on Instagram, you need to make your existing account into an Instagram business account. Some more things that you need to follow to successfully start using Instagram for your business are:
You need to chalk out a foolproof business strategy
You should optimise your profile to the fullest
You should keep in mind to share good quality content
You should focus both on attracting new audiences and engaging the old audiences
How to create an Instagram company page or a company business account on Instagram?
If you are looking to create a company business account on Instagram, there here are a simple set of steps that you can follow:
Visit your Instagram profile and click on the top-right corner
Now, click on Settings
Then, tap on Account
Now, chose Switch to Professional Account
Next, tap on the Continue option
Now, choose the right category for your business, and click on Done
The practice of using Social Media tools to resolve customer questions or concerns is known as social media customer service. Social customer support is extremely effective because it allows customers to reach out to your team on platforms that they already use. In terms of customer service, the utilization of social media is critical.
The mutual benefits of ease of brand accessibility via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media platforms allow for easy customer contact and engaging social activity, as well as brand building and broad contact across numerous platforms.
The success of a brand depends on its ability to build relationships with customers through social media and how these channels are maintained. Sales, as well as Brand loyalty and Connection, can be influenced positively by social media. Even though social media was created primarily for personal use and to preserve personal contacts. It has evolved into a beneficial tool for building a community around brands as a result of its growth and popularity.
Before the internet, the fastest and most effective way for customers to seek assistance from businesses was to make a phone call. Telephone calls had already surpassed the postal service as the quickest channel for customer service. After all, it’s called snail mail for a reason. Then came email, and the internet became the new destination for quick customer service. Social media interactions changed the game after we became used to email. With social media, you can connect with anyone in real-time, up to the second. That’s the new era of customer service innovation!
Social media customer service takes advantage of established social media platforms’ immediate feedback systems. Furthermore, social media is a familiar place that customers use for a variety of other purposes, including connections with brands they enjoy.
Social media customer care is a technique of offering customer help via social media platforms that is well-organized. It’s a vital and continuously expanding contact channel that complements call-based customer care in the overall customer service ecosystem.
It includes assistance before, during, and after the transaction. Addressing complaints, providing advice, answering inquiries, and issuing refunds are all part of the job.
Before you integrate social channels into your existing customer care operations, you’ll need a comprehensive social customer service strategy. A comprehensive social media strategy for customer service should include the following six key components:
Establish Brand Monitoring
The first step is to implement an active Brand MonitoringSystem on the social media platforms that your customers will use to contact you. You can do this easily with social media tools.
Analyse Comments
Determine what types of comments receive the most attention. Therefore, you won’t respond to only favorable feedback while ignoring negative feedback. The way you handle a negative review might sometimes help you gain new consumers.
However, because social media isn’t a dedicated customer service channel, you’ll receive many more comments than your customer service personnel can handle. To deal with this, make a priority list so that your team can focus on the most pressing and vital concerns.
Analyse the Comments you receive
No to Late Replies
Create a mechanism for quickly answering inquiries. With the speed of the internet, a late response might be as awful as no response at all. Your goal should be to respond to client questions as soon as possible. This needs a well-organized system with dedicated social customer service representatives.
Customer Care Channel
Consider establishing a specialized customer service channel. You can have a dedicated Customer Care Channel within the social media platforms in addition to having dedicated social customer support personnel. Customers who require assistance should be directed to your support profile via your social media sites.
This will make it easier to track unique client requests and give a platform for customers to analyze previous requests that are similar to their own. Most importantly, having a distinct support channel will help you separate your social media content marketing and customer service operations.
Manage Your Team
Have the best internal practices for responses. Customer support isn’t just about solving customer issues. It’s a key tool in building your brand image. To achieve this, you need best internal practices that ensure your support team delights customers beyond solving their problems.
Analyse Continuously
Identify how you’ll track and report on your progress. It’s critical to track and report on your social customer service operations if you want to know how well you’re doing. Client satisfaction surveys can also be used to assess the quality of your customer service.
The information you gather and the conclusions you reach can help you focus your efforts on areas that require more attention. Based on the volume of consumer inquiries, you may discover that you require more workers at certain times than at others.
These steps can help you get the most out of your Social Media Customer Service. But let’s talk about the best practices that you should keep in mind.
Best Practises
Act Immediately
If you quickly reply and resolve client complaints without diverting them to other channels. Your organization will acquire 3–20 percent more customer spending per interaction.
Be Honest
Just because your response time should be quick doesn’t mean you’ll be able to resolve all consumer issues quickly. Instead of making misleading promises, be honest with clients about how long it will take to handle their issues—even if that means accepting that you don’t know.
Where to Answer
Specific concerns must be settled in secret depending on the information involved. Determine whether to resolve complaints in public or private. If the process of resolving an issue will involve personal information, you can easily identify that this problem will require private resolution.
As a result, your team should always keep track of such situations and urge clients to give the relevant personal information by direct message or email.
Do not Ignore Queries
Respond to all feedback, questions, and comments received via social media. If you don’t respond to any of your consumers’ concerns, you may never have another opportunity. Furthermore, such individuals may submit negative evaluations, making your organization appear untrustworthy to potential new customers.
On social media, you must reply to any criticism, questions, and comments. Keep an eye on all of your mentions, check your direct messages (DMs), read your reviews, and keep track of any places where people are mentioning you.
Use Names
Use a person’s first name if feasible, and avoid being too scripted. It indicates that you are interested in learning who the client is, even if it just takes a few seconds to discover the client’s name.
Respond Calmly
Customers who have questions may be dissatisfied and frustrated. Keeping comments light and upbeat helps to steer conversations toward a satisfying conclusion rather than greater aggravation.
Remember that you’re not simply dealing with your customers’ cognitive problems; you’re also dealing with their emotional states. However, the tone of your responses is determined by the tone of your clients’ inquiries.
If a consumer speaks in a casual, amusing tone, respond in the same manner. If the customer’s tone is formal, your best bet is to respond in the same manner.
Customers and businesses can benefit greatly from social media. Using it for customer service is just one of the many ways to assist any company or brand’s growth. Higher turnover results from effective strategies and careful management. Aside from taking advantage of the competitive advantage provided by social media customer service. Smart businesses are constantly monitoring and adopting new social media trends.
Advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and chatbots will fundamentally alter how businesses handle support inquiries. The use of social media in customer service can have a significant impact on the success of your brand’s loyalty and advocacy. Using social media for customer service can take your digital community to the next level with the right preparation and listening tool.
FAQs
Is social media good for customer service?
As the customers use social media to interact with friends and even with brands. Social Media is an excellent place for customer service. It should be used by brands for not only marketing but building a community.
What are the benefits of Social Media Customer Service?
Using social media customer service gives your customers easy access to your brand. As you respond to someone’s query in a positive solution that they need. It builds a positive brand image. Also, it is an opportunity for your brand to work on what customers need and update your product to what they want.
How to handle Customer Service on Social Media?
The response should be quick
The response should be transparent and should not deviate from customers.
Assess what problems are asked more and respond to them first.
Try to respond to every query and be personal to show customers that they matter.
We live at a time when social media plays an important role in your business. From engaging your customers to marketing your products, everything is done on social media because a large portion of the audience of any business is found here. There is hardly anyone left in this world who is not on social media, So brands often use this to their advantage.
Buffer is a ‘Social Media Tool‘, that is designed to boost engagement and grow your audience, with the help of publishing, engagement enhancement, and an analytics platform. Apart from scheduling your posts for publishing, it also analyses the reach and performance of the same. Buffer allows you to convey your story, create reports, engage with your potential customers and helps you get insights to grow your audience.
However, not every social media page has similar requirements. It is a unique platform and there aren’t many alternatives to Buffer. In this article, we will talk about some alternatives to Buffer and its features. So, without any further ado, let’s get started.
Hootsuite is one of the perfect platforms to schedule, manage and post content on social media efficiently. It allows you to schedule more than one post and stories all at the same time, on any set time, ridding you of waiting for the exact moment to post. Moreover, handling social media isn’t all about scheduling and posting content and stories but so much more. Finding good content is one of the most important tasks that Social Media managers and handlers have to keep in mind. This is another domain that Hootsuite excels in and helps you curate content, to get the best engagement out of your audience.
Features Offered by Hootsuite
Social media post scheduling offers to schedule posts and stories on your social account and relieves you of the compulsion of being online every time you need to post content.
The curation of reliable and engaging content is one of the most important aspects of social media management, and Hootsuite offers pre-approved content to post.
Strategic tagging, searching, and usage of social media resources contribute no less to social media management.
Insightful reporting helps you analyze the impact that your social media campaigns cause, and where more work needs to be done.
You also get to monitor your ROI(Return on Investment) on self and paid social media, and get customer feedback through keywords, hashtags, and location.
Pricing of Hootsuite
Professional Plan
Team Plan
Business Plan
Costs INR 1915 per month, annually for 10 social profiles and single user
Costs INR 7540 per month, annually for 20 social profiles and 3 users
Costs INR 45000 per month, annually for 35 social profiles and 5 users
Offers everything included in the free plan with automated post scheduling
Offers everything included in professional plan with message assignments and custom analytics
Offers everything included in team plan with flexible workflow and an hour of one-on-one onboarding
Insights into your campaign performance and an ad limit of INR 6000 per month for better posts
Extractable reports with ad limit of about INR 30000
Get 5 social media certifications with 24/7 support
ContentStudio
ContentStudio Website
ContentStudio is a social media management platform where one can discover and create content of any niche for their audience. ContentStudio has taken the responsibility of creating the brand of your business and making people aware of it through social media. Over 70000 marketers have trusted ContentStudio and have given them the responsibility to help their brands in content marketing and managing their social media channels.
Features Offered by ContentStudio
ContentStudio helps you in discovering trendy content on social media.
It offers to create, schedule and manage the content on the social media platforms of the business.
It also offers features to manage and track paid advertisements on social media channels.
Spy on your competition by gathering social data and comparing them.
ContentStudio lets you monitor your content and how much engagement your content is receiving from your target audience.
Pricing of ContentStudio
Pro
Small
Medium
Large
Cost $49 per month for solo marketers.
Costs $99 for small businesses and agencies.
Costs $199 per month for medium businesses and agencies.
Costs $299 per month for large businesses and agencies.
Offers 1 blog posting per platform
Offers 5 blog posting
Offers 10 blogs posting
Offers 20 blog posting
Allows 10 automation campaign
Offer unlimited automation campaign
Offers unlimited automation campaign
Offers unlimited automation campaign
MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar Website
MeetEdgar is one of the most talked-about and user-friendly social media management tools, and for good reason. Social media management may not sound like it consumes a lot of time, but at times, it does. MeetEdgar is the perfect tool to resolve this issue by automating tasks such as putting up stories and posts on your handle with great ease. It offers suggestions and strategies on how and when the best time to post a story is, and how you can have the most engagement out of your posts.
Features Offered by MeetEdgar
MeetEdgar not only offers suggestions for strategies, but it also suggests captions and ‘quote-worthy’ texts post on your social handle.
MeetEdgar furnishes you with a browser chrome extension for creating a pre-written social media post whenever you find a relevant article on the web.
You get to create colour-coded categories for social media posts which you can schedule at regular intervals.
Save your every new content and post, such as videos, single and multi-image posts, and stories.
MeetEdgar also offers A/B testing social messages, weekly reports on performance, and an exclusive link shortener.
Pricing for MeetEdgar
Edgar Lite for Freelancers and Side Hustlers
Edgar for Entrepreneurs and Small Enterprises
Costs $29.99 per month and lets you manage 3 social accounts
Costs $49.99 per month and lets you manage 25 social accounts
You get to schedule unlimited posts but only 10 recurring time slots per week
You get to schedule unlimited posts and 1000 automatically recurring time slots per week
Offers only 4 content categories
Offers unlimited customizable content categories
Automation of all social accounts with unlimited content library
Automation of all social accounts with unlimited content library
SocialOomph
SocialOomph Website
Built for both individual handlers and social media teams, SocialOomph is an advanced post-scheduling tool, with features way more than what the name suggests. The social media platforms that SocialOomph encompasses include Discord, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter among many others, while also offering blog services on Shopify, Tumblr, and WordPress. Never let your social media run on empty with post queues, where the posts can be automatically created using webhooks.
Features Offered by SocialOomph
Specific post scheduling with a set time, date and timezone along with bulk uploading from any device.
SocialOomph allows you to create posts which erase themselves after a set period of time, or after a particular date and time.
Post and publish only your authentic content created and sourced by you, without any additions or changes.
Flexible and affordable pricing plans for different customers to cater to different needs.
Tag your posts with your team for easy recognition by team members and better collaboration.
Pricing for SocialOomph
Personal Suite
Advanced Suite
Professional Suite
Business Suite
Free of cost and offers to operate one social profile
Costs $15 per month with 10% discount on yearly payment with individual and team domains
Costs $25 per month with 10% discount on yearly payment with individual and team domains
Costs $55 per month with 10% discount on yearly payment with individual and team domains
Offers basic posting features with unlimited scheduled posts
Offers for 1 team, 1 social profile and 1 blog
Offers for 1 team, 10 social profiles and 5 blogs
Offers for 1 team, 20 social profiles and 10 blogs
Has a limit of 3 posts per hour and no additional profiles can be used
Offers 1 queue with 60 posts per hour per social profile
Offers 5 queues with 60 posts per hour per social profile
Offers 10 queues with 60 posts per hour per social profile
Offers free support
Cannot add additional teams and social profiles
Cannot add additional teams and social profiles
Can add additional teams at the cost of $5 per month per team
SocialPilot
SocialPilot Website
SocialPilot makes social media marketing look like a child’s play with robust publishing, insights, analytics, and collaboration. SocialPilot lets you add all your accounts and post updates without worrying about limits, to enhance your social media engagement and activity. With the help of data-driven insights, SocialPilot helps you come up with strategic decisions and reply to all the potential customers and regular audiences on multiple social media pages and recognize yourself as a trusted brand by using different branding strategies.
Features Offered by SocialPilot
Connect over 50 social profiles and post content on a daily basis, from a single scheduling tool.
Analyze your social media campaigns with insightful reporting and monitor your social media growth and performance with a simple PDF report.
With the help of Social Inbox, communicate with all your audience via comments, chats and messages.
SocialPilot lets you not only manage your social media accounts but also your teams for better work management and review.
Posting relevant content is the most important aspect when managing social media account. SocialPilot helps you curate and engage content, for better audience interaction and reach.
Pricing for SocialPilot
Professional Plan
Studio Plan
Agency Plan
Costs $29.75 per month with annual billing
Costs $63.75 per month with annual billing
Costs $127.50 per month with annual billing
Manage and operate 7 different social media accounts and get analytics and reports
Manage and operate 25 different social media accounts and get analytics and reports
Manage and operate 50 different social media accounts and get analytics and reports
Get 2 Facebook ad accounts with bulk scheduling
Get 5 Facebook ad accounts with bulk scheduling
Get 10 Facebook ad accounts with bulk scheduling
Offers content curation and discovery with 3 team member support
Offers content curation and discovery with 5 team member support
Offers content curation and discovery with 10 team member support
No client management or concierge setup
Offers unlimited client management but no concierge setup
Offers both client management and concierge setup
In addition to the above-mentioned plans, SocialPilot also offers a White Label Setup with custom plans, for which you will need to contact the developers of SocialPilot.
Loomly
Loomly Website
With a humongous customer base of over 67,00 clients, Loomly is one of the best social media management applications that helps clients face intense competition from influencers and build a reliable brand. With the best post ideas and suggestions, your very own content library, optimization tips, and ad mock-ups, Loomly helps you develop and deliver engaging content while also managing your team and making sure all the members are on the same page. Moreover, with automated publishing and advanced analytics, you get to focus on where your campaigns need improvement as well as the strong suites of your campaigns.
Features Offered by Loomly
Manage both, organic posts and ads with a single platform. Moreover, get notified anytime someone on your team interacts with your posts.
Never run out of ideas with Loomly when it offers fresh ideas based on trends, RSS feeds, updated events and important dates to suggest relevant content.
Store, organize and put your assets including photos and videos to good use in your posts through Loomly.
From ideas of posts to their subject, optimization and ad preview, Loomly guides you step by step to deliver the best content.
Along with auto-generated posts and ad previews, Loomly also helps your team collaborate with each other to approve workflows and version logs.
Pricing for Loomly
Base Plan
Standard Plan
Advanced Plan
Premium Plan
Costs $25 per month and allows 2 users and 10 social accounts
Costs $57 per month and allows 6 users and 20 social accounts
Costs $119 per month and allows 16 users and 35 social accounts
Costs $249 per month and allows 50 users and 10 social accounts
Offers an ad budget cap of $500 and with unlimited content, core features and hashtag suggestions
Offers an ad budget cap of $1000 and with unlimited content, core features and hashtag suggestions
Offers an ad budget cap of $2000 and with unlimited content, core features and hashtag suggestions
Offers an ad budget cap of $5000 and with unlimited content, core features and hashtag suggestions
Does not offers advanced analytics, content exports, custom roles or branding
Offers advanced analytics and content export but no custom roles or branding
Offers IM Integrations and custom roles but not branding
Has everything to offer including custom roles, branding, content export and advanced analytics
Loomly also offers an Enterprise plan for macro enterprises and businesses, that offers all features of the premium plan and more. To inquire about the plan, customers need to contact the developers at Loomly.
Conclusion
Social Media is a medium to communicate with your audience. In fact, through social media, you can grow the number of your audience for your business. Now, social media management is extremely important as it attracts the online community and of course, it also includes the brand awareness of the business, social media management is a must in this age for any kind of business. Although Buffer is said to be the best in this department, these alternatives are good options to try as well.
FAQs
What is Buffer?
Buffer is one of the most used social media schedulers. Buffer helps in driving traffic to your social media.
Indians are leading worldwide roles in some of the world’s largest businesses, from Google’s Sundar Pichai to Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen to IBM’s Arvind Krishna. India boasts the world’s biggest expatriate and a massive source of IT expertise that serves some of the world’s most prestigious corporations.
People over social media went gaga on 29th November 2021, as one more hero joined this list. When former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey abruptly stepped down on Monday, he handed the reins to Parag Agrawal, a software engineer who has worked closely with Dorsey in establishing the company’s future.
Dorsey’s faith in Agrawal as CEO is “bone-deep,” the departing CEO said in an email to staff on Monday. “Given how completely he understands the firm and its requirements, he’s been my choice for some time,” Dorsey stated. Know more about this gentleman, in this article.
Parag Agrawal – Biography
Name
Parag Agrawal
Year of Birth
1981
Age
37 Year Old
Nationality
Indian, American
Education
B.Tech. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay
Parag Agarwal was born in India in the year 1976. He graduated with honours from the Atomic Energy Central School (AECS). He then subsequently travelled to Mumbai to pursue his bachelor’s degree in engineering at the India Institute of Technology (IIT).
Recently IIT Bombay also recognized and valued its alumni for their contributions to the world of technology. He moved on to Stanford University to earn his Ph.D. degree after graduating from college. While at Stanford, Parag Agarwal interned at various technology giants like Microsoft, Yahoo, and AT&T Labs and gained good hands-on industry experience.
Parag Agrawal’s Family
Vinita Agrawal is Parag Agrawal’s wife. They have a daughter named Anamika Agrawal.
Parag Agrawal – Career
Parag Agrawal began working at Twitter in 2011 after working as a student for firms such as Microsoft, AT&T, and Yahoo. Initially, Parag Agarwal focused on advertising-related goods. He afterwards moved on to Artificial Intelligence. On March 8th, 2018, Parag Agarwal was named as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Twitter.
His early work as CTO focused on using artificial intelligence to improve the relevancy of tweets in the Twitter timeline. Parag Agarwal has been named the next CEO of Twitter, just ten years after joining the company.
Parag Agrawal – Salary and Net Worth
Parag’s net worth is estimated to be $3 million. He will be worth millions of dollars in no time thanks to the significant rise in his basic income and bonuses. Parag will get $1 million yearly remunerations and $12.5 million in stock compensation as CEO of Twitter, according to the company.
Parag Agrawal – Journey with Twitter
In an email to Twitter employees, Agrawal stated that the firm had less than 1,000 employees when he started. He wrote, “I’ve walked in your shoes, I’ve seen the ups and downs, difficulties and barriers, successes and blunders.”
As Twitter tries to shake off a reputation for being sluggish to develop, he’s focused on machine learning and other technological breakthroughs that have allowed it to bring out new features and products more swiftly.
The board of Twitter, according to sources, had been seeking a full-time CEO for the social media business for the past year. Jack Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 and served as its CEO until 2008 when he was fired. After former CEO Dick Costolo left in 2015, he returned to the firm as an executive.
Parag published a statement expressing his thanks.
“Thank you very much, Jack. I’m both honoured and humbled by this. And I appreciate your continuous mentoring and friendship ” – Parag Agrawal
Agrawal reflected on his experience at the firm, saying:
“Right now, the world is watching us much more than before. Let’s demonstrate Twitter’s full potential to the rest of the world “.
Parag Agrawal – The CEO of Twitter
At a time when Twitter is actively seeking new ways to expand its user base, Agarwal’s appointment comes at a fortunate moment for him. By the end of 2023, the company expects to have 315 million DAUs (Daily Active Users) and expect to have more than doubled its annual revenue. He takes over as CEO at a time when the corporation has been criticized by investors for failing to create a new monetisable product in years, prompting the announcement of the 2023 plan.
Parag Agrawal – Unknown Facts
Here are some amazing facts about Parag Agrawal:
He is a machine learning expert who has played a key role in Twitter’s adoption of the technology.
According to his thesis adviser, Parag was born in Mumbai and has a strong knowledge of mathematics as well as experience working with massive datasets.
According to a New York Times story citing Silicon Valley insiders, Parag is “quiet, courteous, profoundly technical, and passionate about an internet where power and control are given back to people,” exactly like Jack Dorsey.
At the 2001 International Physics Olympiad in Turkey, Agrawal received a gold medal.
Parag is an adventurer who loves to do skiing and hiking. Along with that, he is fond of trying new dishes and eating a variety of food.
Even though Parag lives in the US, he celebrates all the major Indian festivals like Holi and Diwali.
Bollywood’s famous singer Shreya Ghoshal is reportedly known to be Parag’s classmate.
Parag is an avid cricket lover and loves to watch cricket matches in the stadium.
As per unknown sources, Parag secured a 77thrank in his IIT JEE exams.
The promotion of Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s former Chief Technological Officer, underscores the importance of immigrants in the world’s leading technology organisations. He joins Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Adobe Inc.’s Shantanu Narayen, International Business Machines Corp.’s Arvind Krishna, and Alphabet Inc.’s Sundar Pichai as the highest-profile executives of Indian-origin in the United States.
Agrawal has kept a quiet profile thus far, concentrating his knowledge in product development and market research. Before becoming CTO, he was recognised as Twitter’s first notable engineer for his contributions to audience growth and revenue. Now that he’s the CEO, he’ll have to navigate a friendlier path with India if he wants to achieve his ambitions of growing Twitter’s reach.
FAQs
Who is the wife of Parag Agrawal?
Parag is married to Vineeta Agrawal.
What is the age of Parag Agrawal?
Parag Agrawal was born on 21 May 1984. He is 38 years old.
What is the net worth of Parag Agrawal?
The net worth of Parag Agrawal is $3 million.
When was Parag Agrawal appointed as the CEO of Twitter?
Parag Agrawal was appointed as the CEO of Twitter in November 2021.
Social media isn’t what it used to be, especially since we’ve become more aware of the privacy concerns of utilizing big sites. Whatsapp and Facebook, two of the most popular social networking apps, have regularly been in the news due to privacy concerns.
In the Cambridge Analytica incident, Facebook leaked data of roughly 87,000 users. Another 6.8 million users’ data was lost in September 2018 when a third-party app acquired access to using images. In response to this, the #DeleteFacebook movement, which had been developing steadily, exploded.
WhatsApp recently notified its users that it would be changing its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Users were given a deadline to either accept or stop using the app. Millions of people were thrown into a frenzy, with many jumping ships in search of an alternate platform. The true impact of WhatsApp’s T&C amendments on individuals has most certainly been exaggerated. Indeed, WhatsApp just requests permission to share data collected by the app with the rest of the Facebook family of apps. More crucially, no messages, groups, or call records include in this data.
However, How can you replace these services and stay in touch with friends and family in a world dominated by social media, particularly Facebook which now owns major social media sites like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram?
There are, thankfully many open-source, privacy-focused solutions available. While exploring them, alternatives were seen that were fit for use, interesting, and easy to assure friends and family to join.
By far, the most difficult social networking application to replace is Facebook. There isn’t a great substitute for this social media platform, but there are a few choices.
MeWe is yet another privacy-focused social networking platform. The site takes pride in the fact that it is free of adverts and does not manipulate user feeds. Users, on the other hand, have complete control over what they see. While it functions similarly to Facebook, it is a more secure option. MeWe functions similarly to Facebook, albeit in a more confined community, despite the fact that it is not open source. MeWe is accessible via a mobile application. It has a solid privacy policy, but it isn’t very popular.
Mastodon
Mastodon is by far the most popular of the federated social media platforms. It’s also completely free, simple to use, and concerned about user privacy and security. Mastodon resembles Twittermore than any other social media platform.
But it has a significantly larger word count and excellent control over who may read your postings (public, followers only, or unlisted). If you’re posting about sensitive topics, you can add content warnings to photographs or posts so that only people who choose to click the notice will see what you’re talking about. In addition, they refer to their posts as “toots” rather than “tweets” or “statuses.”
You also have a variety of options when it comes to joining Mastodon. Because, unlike Facebook or Twitter, you join an instance rather than a central website. Some are public, while others are private, some cater to specific interests or beliefs, and some people host their own. You can follow users on any instance, regardless of which one you join, so you don’t miss posts from your favorite individuals even if you switch instances.
It offers a facility that allows you to seek up your Twitter connections and follow them on Mastodon. It aids in the development of a following when joining a new site. Mastodon has proven to be a fantastic tool for interacting with friends and family, as well as networking and making new acquaintances, similar to Twitter.
Diaspora
Diaspora is founded on three core values: decentralization, freedom, and privacy. Instead of storing everyone’s data on a single server owned by a large corporation. Diaspora’s founders built a social network that disseminates this information and is owned by no one. Each user has the option of creating and hosting their own server, dubbed a ‘pod,’ or joining one of their friends and communicating within this ‘diaspora’.
Pinterest
Pinterestis particularly popular among consumers who exchange images of their home improvement, homemade objects, cooking recipes, and other interests. And gloating about a new garment isn’t exactly a sin, is it? As a result, Pinterest is more focused on “things” than Instagram, which is more focused on users.
Moreover, unlike Instagram, Pinterest allows you to share your material without the need for repeated social engagement. Pinterest, on the other hand, is not influenced by the corporate world. For example, an AR-powered option like “Try on” benefits both shoppers and e-stores.
PixelFed
PixelFed is another newcomer that is federated and as user-friendly as Instagram. You join through an instance and you can choose how you want to publish your photos and who can follow you, just like Mastodon. You may use Instagram on your PC or through your favorite mobile web browser, unlike Instagram, which is best seen through its own app.
PixelFed has a small user base, owing to the fact that it is still in development. However, inviting friends to join is simple, as it only takes a few clicks and they are in without having to download anything.
Snapchat
Snapchathas a simple user interface and a lot of features. The AI-powered Lenses are probably the app’s most amusing feature. You can alter your appearance to make yourself appear older or younger and do a lot more fun with unlimited filters on this platform.
After all, Facebook replicated several of Snapchat’s features and put them on Instagram to discourage users from leaving. There’s something for everyone, from Stories to disappearing texts, face filters, and more. So, if you want to use the actual Instagram, I strongly suggest using Snapchat. The good news is that Snapchat has lately revamped its efforts and introduced new tools such as Find Instagram Feed alternatives.
To summarise, Snapchat is not simply another social media app; it is one that, in a few years, may foreshadow the future of social media, especially, short video stories. If you want to experiment with new features, Snapchat is your got-to-go place.
Signal
Signal, which was first released in 2014, promises to use cutting-edge security and end-to-end encryption to ensure that your messages are never shared or accessed by anybody other than you and your intended recipients. Message history is likewise maintained on your smartphone, and only on your device. Furthermore, because the encryption software they use is open-source, it is susceptible to increased public scrutiny, forcing those in charge of the app to act quickly to address any security vulnerabilities.
Telegram
Your calls and messages are safeguarded with end-to-end encryption once the ‘Secret’ chat option is enabled, and Telegramcan no longer access the data. The talks you conduct in ‘Secret’ chats are only getting safe on the smartphones of the participants, rather than Telegram servers, as they are with Signal. Telegram, on the other hand, takes it a step further. It can only be used on that device. The chats used to be relinquished if a user log in to their account from a different device. If someone tries to capture a screenshot of your messages, you will be notified.
Wire
Wire is a secure messaging app with end-to-end encryption that is shielded by European data retention laws. It provides free personal accounts as well as paid business plans that include additional support and features. Wire boasts clear voice and video communications.
Wire supports both 1:1 and group screen sharing. It also allows you to share multimedia files and filter audio. You can log in to your account from up to eight synced devices, which are available for all major platforms. Within chats, you can format text with bold and italics, as well as create lists. You’ll also be able to optimize file sizes for easy sharing, as well as set timers to delete messages for extra privacy.
Tumblr
Tumblr is one of the oldest social media networks on the Internet, yet it lacks the popularity of Instagram or Facebook. It’s often mistaken for a microblogging site, but it’s much more. Photographs, GIFs, movies, and other sorts of media can now be shared. You may also search Tumblr using hashtags, and you can create a community with support for private chats. Tumblr is a specialized social networking site that, when used properly, may provide many users with a creative outlet.
The quantity of followers is crucial on practically every other social media platform. People like to brag about how many followers they have on social media. Tumblr, once again, is unique. It’s uncommon to come across a Tumblr blog that shows the number of followers it has. Tumblr users are more concerned with their interactions with other users, and the desire to form deeper bonds. As a result, you’ll need to adjust your attitude about participation in this situation.
Social media is a useful tool, no doubt about that. But the one caveat with most social media apps is that they track you, sell your data and make money from the user content. Well, that’s why there are new social media apps coming up each day that offers users a better privacy experience and make use of blockchain technology.
FAQs
What happened in the Cambridge Analytica incident?
In the Cambridge Analytica incident, Facebook leaked data of roughly 87,000 users.
How is Mastodon different from Twitter & Facebook?
Unlike Facebook or Twitter, in Mastodon, you join an instance rather than a central website. Some are public, while others are private.
What can we do using AI-powered Lenses in Snapchat?
The AI-powered Lenses are probably the app’s most amusing feature. You can alter your appearance to make yourself appear older or younger and do a lot more fun with unlimited filters on this platform.
Which are privacy-focused social media platforms?
Some Privacy-focused social media platforms are MeWe, Tumblr, Snapchat, Signal, Telegram, etc.
How do privacy-focused messengers work?
The app has end-to-end encryption which protects your data from outside interference, including from the app developers themselves.
