<div>Technology has revolutionised people's way of thinking, decision making and even life style. Today, one of the most significant part of everyone's life is Social Networking. Facts state that Facebook alone has over 1.5 billion users out of roughly total 7.2 billion population of Earth. Platform such as Twitter are now impacting on results of elections. Hash-tags now decide the result of elections, not campaigns any more. Over the last couple of years, Social media has become a buzz word in Internet Marketing. The success of the new generation of social media platforms, mainly Facebook and Twitter, changed the way we socialize, interact and shop. It has also brought new channels to digital marketing, which has gone beyond the Internet and reaching people in the off-line world using digital means.<br><br>It has become future of marketing and is gradually gaining more ground in the on-line and offline World. Social media is integrating into corporate culture and driving collaboration between silos (marketing, sales, and customer service). Client/agency relationships are evolving and much emphasis is on driving business value. Social media is now channelling relationship management, driving awareness and engagement, and has become a sales and customer service tool. New platforms are being launched and becoming relevant. Small businesses need to be quicker now, to experiment and embrace new platforms to make an impact. PR practitioners now seeking more creative ways to reach journalists and reporters seeking sources for stories “on the fly.” PR pros must work social media into their strategy for media outreach and also for pushing out content. In turn, content creation also continues to become a bigger part of PR, due to social media.<br><br>I think everyone now admits that social media has to be an essential part of their marketing strategy and real focus for ROI. People are now looking for more personalized news, offerings based on their social profiles and activities and this is one area, which I think will expand, given the kind of technological advances we are seeing. However, I think the real X-factor of growth is in the visual social media platforms. We have seen the explosion of Instagram and Pinterest from selfie pictures and we are seeing the same explosion with short burst videos. Content may still be the king, but visual is now the queen – for brands creating or enhancing a social media presence, there is need of more visuals than ever before to go alongside written content and more unique and aesthetically capturing reader’s focus. After all, the second most popular search engine after Google isn’t Bing or Yahoo – it’s YouTube. For small businesses, online video is an effective marketing tool because it doesn’t break the bank – videos can be shot on the cheap and promoted on YouTube for peanuts compared to other traditional or digital media channels.<br><br>Inclusion of images in social media posts is becoming essential. With stats showing that tweets including a visual have increased engagement plus Facebook’s feature to allow use of images as comments replying to posts coupled with 3 rising visual social media platforms – Instagram’s success, Snapchat’s valuation and Pinterest’s popularity – all signs underlying the importance of visuals. In 2013 and 2014, Social media has literally overshadowed social networking platforms.<br><br>Gone are those days when uploading photos could get the real attention. Now, it is the fight between photos and videos, and as the study of facts tells, videos are always preferred over photos. Including videos is becoming a necessity in digital marketing. Facebook’s recent move of “call-to-action” feature is being used by professional as well as armature social media marketers to redirect Facebook users to their like their websites, YouTube channel and much more. The feature allows the marketers to put a “call-to-action” button at the end of the video which can contain link to any platform or action. This feature has been used massively and had a great impact over the digital marketing in past years.<br><br>Now people can use Vine which enables its user to display their videos on twitter, even to those who might not have a Vine profile. Such features are changing the methods of digital marketing and empowering social media beyond measures. Government agencies which had a reputation for being “behind the times” when it comes to technology are now embracing and using social media and digital communications to enhance customer service. These days, citizens can communicate with government contact centres through a variety of channels including, mobile, web and social media. For example, citizens can tweet FEMA about power issues during a natural disaster, or the CDC during disease outbreaks, or WhatsApp about railway enquiry. Social media is shaping government customer service and agencies are utilizing technology to connect with different generations on many different platforms. As a result of all this, the touch of technology in social media and marketing has revolutionized the world, and people now have an entirely different outlook about things. The cyber world has come closer to the real world than ever, and soon there will be no distance between the two. Most fascinating fact is that, social media is harbinger of new world, and the future depends upon it.<br><br><em>The author is CEO and Co-founder, Frankly.me</em></div>
