12 important benefits of Social media

With the large scale use of smart phones and gadgets, the number of people using social media also increased in number. Even with the increased usage of social media sites, many people still believe social media sites are a waste of time and resources. This article provides you with some of the benefits of social media in order to make it clear that if used properly you may gain more benefits from social media in your personal life as well as in your business or profession.

#1.Networking with others.

There is no need to explain about the networking aspect of social media. Even children of the school going age know the importance of social media as a tool for networking. It may seem to be of little importance to anyone but if you compare how you used to communicate with others before the emergence of social media, say like twenty years back, you may realise its true value.

#2.Finding and meeting new friends.

The emergence of social media makes it easier for anyone sitting at any corner of the globe to make friendship with anyone around the globe. Probably, it makes it more exciting when you get the chance to renew few old friends with whom you might have lost contact for a long time.

#3.Video chatting with friends and business partners.

Nowadays most of the social media sites come up with video chatting facilities. This made it possible for anyone having a social media account gets connected with his or her friends or business partners through video chatting. If you consider the fact that video chatting makes it possible for anyone to make free calls to anywhere in the world, it is truly a benefit for you especially if you need to make business calls that otherwise might have lead to huge telephone bills.

#4.For recruiting new employees

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln, are being used as a source for hiring potential employees. Nowadays it is very common that the recruiters checking your social media profile if they want to hire you for a job. The role of your social media profile as a portfolio for your skills and talent is of utmost importance. The better looking profile you have in social media, there is more chance for you to get hired. Remember you social media profile is acting like your online resume.

#5.Useful for job hunting.

Social media sites like LinkedIn are a great resource for those who are hunting for a job. It also provides an opportunity to enhance your current career prospects as well as any business you are running. The networking options available in Linkedln make it a truly valuable tool for enhancing anyone’s career prospects.

#6.Source of information and news.

If you use social media in a proper manner, it can be used as a source of information by reading the shared contents on various topics. Of course, it can be a source for updating latest news. From my personal experience, I can say that my Facebook profile gives me the wonderful opportunity to gather and update any important information about my parent country(India) even if I live in London. Remember this was really difficult some twenty years back.

#7.Arranging an event.

As we are now connected with most of our school and college friends through different social media sites, it becomes easier for us to organize an event by inviting people through social media. Suppose if you would like to arrange a get together of all your university friends, you can now do nearly half part of the co-ordinating job by the click of the mouse and sending few message and replies. No more costly phone calls or long journeys to meet someone for arranging such an event. A big thanks to social media.

#8.Promote your product and service.

Social media sites are one of the main and most essential part of today’s business whether it is a small business or a big corporate. It helps anyone to promote their products and services online. It is a common trend that a lot of people worldwide are trying to establish small businesses using social media sites like Facebook as a platform. You can click on the link given below to view a post describing how to do business using Facebook.

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#9.Social media as a tool for an election campaign.

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, can be used an effective tool for an election campaign. If you analyse the recent election campaigns in India, you may realize how important is social media as a tool for election campaigning. Reports suggest that when Mr.Narendra Modi sworn in as prime minister of India, he had almost 16 million Facebook “likes.” Recent statistics shows that he is currently one of the most followed leaders in Twitter (5.9 million followers) after Barack Obama and Pope Francis. These records show ample evidence that social media can be even become an influencing factor on deciding the political situation of any country.

Image source: Screen shots from Twitter and Facebook

#10.Social media for fund-raising.

Fund-raising using social media for various causes is also a modern trend. This possibility of social media can be utilized for various charity organizations for collecting funds for their successful functioning. Raising funds during an emergency situation like an accident or illness to someone is also a useful benefit.

#11.Reduce the cost of advertisement.

Traditional advertisement methods are costlier for anyone to afford. The cost of an advertisement is really a big problem especially when someone is running a small scale business. The introduction of social media advertisements made it possible for entrepreneurs to have low budget advertisements on platforms like Facebook.

#12. Social media can boost traffic to your website

If you are running a website for business purpose, you definitely need more and more traffic to your site. The proper usage of social media will provide you with more traffic and hence better business prospects for you.

If you have more points in mind regarding the benefits of social media, please share it as a comment so that I can be able to update this post with more ideas.

Image Source:Pixabay

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