What do you mean by Social Media?

 Social Media

• It refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

• In general terms or in other words, it is a collective term for websites and applications that focus on communication.

What is Social Media Marketing?

• It is also known as E-marketing or digital marketing.
• In this marketing, we use social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. on which users build social networks and share information to build a company’s brand awareness, increase sales, and drive more and more website traffic.
• SMMA [social media marketing agency] is the agency that provides services related to social media or we can call it a Social Media Manager.

Why Is Social Media Marketing (SMM) So Powerful?

• Connection 
• Interaction 
• Customer data 

What do you mean by owned media or earned media?

• Owned media is that which you create or control - For example, your website or facebook page- but earned media is material others have produced about you, such as product reviews and social mentions.
• Earned media is coverage or promotion of your brand through organic means.
• Owned media is like any content published to channel or operated by the brand itself. 

Types of Social Media Platforms:

FACEBOOK

• Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American technology giant Meta Platforms. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the Facebook directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to only Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities and, since 2006, anyone over 13 years old. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed 2.96 billion monthly active users,and ranked third worldwide among the most visited websites. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.

• Facebook can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivity, such as personal computers, tablets and smartphones. After registering, users can create a profile revealing information about themselves. They can post text, photos and multimedia which are shared with any other users who have agreed to be their "friend" or, with different privacy settings, publicly. Users can also communicate directly with each other with Messenger, join common-interest groups, and receive notifications on the activities of their Facebook friends and the pages they follow.

• The subject of numerous controversies, Facebook has often been criticized over issues such as user privacy (as with the Cambridge Analytica data scandal), political manipulation (as with the 2016 U.S. elections) and mass surveillance. Facebook has also been subject to criticism over psychological effects such as addiction and low self-esteem, and various controversies over content such as fake news, conspiracy theories, copyright infringement, and hate speech. Commentators have accused Facebook of willingly facilitating the spread of such content, as well as exaggerating its number of users to appeal to advertisers

Instagram

• Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location — via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with pre approved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed.
• Instagram was originally distinguished by allowing content to be framed only in a square (1:1) aspect ratio of 640 pixels to match the display width of the iPhone at the time. In 2015, this restriction was eased with an increase to 1080 pixels. It also added messaging features, the ability to include multiple images or videos in a single post, and a Stories feature similar to its main competitor Snapchat—which allowed users to post their content to a sequential feed, with each post accessible to others for 24 hours. As of January 2019, Stories is used by 500 million people daily.

Twitter

• Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company X Corp., the successor of Twitter, Inc. Twitter users outside the United States are legally served by the Ireland-based Twitter International Unlimited Company, which makes these users subject to Irish and European Union data protection laws.
• On Twitter, users post texts, images and videos known as "tweets".Registered users can tweet, like, "retweet" tweets, and direct message (DM) other registered users. Users interact with Twitter through browser or mobile frontend software, or programmatically via its application programming interfaces (APIs).
• Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 and launched in July of that year. Its former parent company, Twitter, Inc. was based in San Francisco, California and had more than 25 offices around the world.By 2012, more than 100 million users tweeted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day.In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has been described as "the SMS of the Internet". By the start of 2019, Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.In practice, the vast majority of tweets are tweeted by a minority of users. In 2020, it was estimated that approximately 48 million accounts (15% of all accounts) were fake.
• On October 27, 2022, business magnate Elon Musk acquired Twitter for US$44 billion, gaining control of the platform. Since the acquisition, the platform has been criticized for facilitating an increase in content containing hate speech as Musk has emphasized more free speech.On December 20, 2022, Musk announced he would step down as CEO once a replacement had been found. Linda Yaccarino, the former head of ad sales for NBCUniversal, succeeded Musk as CEO on June 5, 2023.

Snapchat

• Snapchat is an American multimedia instant messaging app and service developed by Snap Inc., originally Snapchat Inc. One of the principal features of Snapchat is that pictures and messages are usually only available for a short time before they become inaccessible to their recipients. The app has evolved from originally focusing on person-to-person photo sharing to presently featuring users' "Stories" of 24 hours of chronological content, along with "Discover", letting brands show ad-supported short-form content. It also allows users to store photos in a password-protected area called "my eyes only". It has also reportedly incorporated limited use of end-to-end encryption, with plans to broaden its use in the future.
• Snapchat was created by Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown, former students at Stanford University. It is known for representing a mobile-first direction for social media, and places significant emphasis on users interacting with virtual stickers and augmented reality objects. In July 2021, Snapchat had 293 million daily active users, a 23% growth over a year. On average more than four billion Snaps are sent each day.Snapchat is popular among the younger generations, particularly those below the age of 16, leading to many privacy concerns for parents.

YouTube

• YouTube is an American online video-sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States. Accessible worldwide it was launched on February 14,2005, STEVE KARIM. It is owned by Google and is the second most visited website after Google Search. YouTube has more than 2.5 Billion monthly users, who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day. As of may 2019 , videos were being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute. In October 2006, YouTube was bought by google  for $1.65 billion. Google's ownership of YouTube expanded from generating revenue from advertisements alone to offering paid content such as movies and exclusive content produced by YouTube. It also offers YouTube Premium, a paid subscription option for watching content without ads.