Overview
In the digital age, social media is used by nearly 60% of the global population, or roughly 4.8 billion people (The University of Maine, n.d.). This is a lucrative opportunity for businesses to involve themselves in creating and developing an online presence that has the ability to exponentially increase their sales and engagement. Having an online presence that consumers can engage with and/or creating media that those consumers can also relate to has the limitless potential to elevate a business from success in the traditional sense to greater success in the meta sense. "Meta" is a term that gets thrown around often, and more specifically it relates to Meta, Inc. (whose affiliates include Facebook and Instagram, for example), but businesses that are embracing social media as a means to reach a wider audience understand that it isn't just about the products they are selling. In fact, consumer engagement, or "influencing" in another sense, has become an asset of its own to e-commerce businesses.
Some businesses use two-way communication to engage with their consumers. In other words, when content is created and uploaded to the public, the public often responds in the form of comments or private inquiries in some cases. Some businesses have learned that attempting to make their social media platforms more engaging to consumers requires the ability to seem more human or person-like, rather than entity-minded. Other businesses reserve two-way communication for answering comments or questions, or communicating delays (Charest et al., 2016).
Businesses, and even individuals with products and services to sell, have learned that there are digital marketing tools they can use to grow and develop their businesses online. Benchmarking is the traditional term for this, but trend-watching has become a prevalent tool for businesses involved in the social media sphere. Trend-watching allows businesses to figure out the kinds of content that work best with their target audiences, but on the other hand some businesses and individuals have learned that failing to understand their audiences and/or curating content that misses the mark can have swift detrimental impacts to their business models. Something as simple as typos or outdated information can turn consumers off to your content quickly, making it difficult for them to trust the message being directed at them. More complicated matters like insensitive jokes, failing to "read the room" in times of crises, and even attempting to capitalize on crises that consumers feel strongly about can cause consumers to feel that a business is disingenuous in its business practices. When used properly and with care, "digital technologies become drivers of product, organizational, marketing innovations, on the basis of which interaction with clients is restored" (Savytska et al., 2023, p. 127).
Many businesses online today are turning to influencers if they haven't already to help spread the word about their products, values, mission(s), and so on. Certain influencers have a broad reach across various target audiences that businesses are eager to tap into, and partnering with influencers has shown to be successful in many cases. That being said, sometimes influencers can negatively impact businesses they partner with because their words or actions do not align with the vision or goals of the businesses they're promoting. In those instances, businesses are often swift to drop deals with influencers to preserve their image and integrity with consumers who have become angered or upset.