Challenges and strategies in social media

The evolving habits of internet users have become more and more unpredictable that selling online is quite a challenge compared to some five or eight years back.

The first day that blogging was introduced, everybody was already blogging the next day and everyone was following everyone. Blogging became part of the warchest for promotion and lead generation. Then came Facebook and Twitter ending the heydays of blogging. While I cannot entirely agree that blogging has already become a relic of a bygone age, but it's fair to admit that its popularity has slowed down considerably because people nowadays prefer their information to come in small bites. Thus, micro-blogging like Facebook and Twitter are getting all the likes from users these days because of such features. 

But Facebook is more than just a micro-blogging platform. Facebook brings a more personal twist to exchanging and sharing information. When Facebook got its public debut, users were enamored easily. We got excited to find our long lost friends there and even added "friends" we don't know. Plus Facebook provides a covert chance to lurk around for some clues whether or not our old fling is still alive or in a complicated relationship.

In other words, our noses were hooked on Facebook in many ways that even sending a warm note to a friend who just turned a year older seemed to be an everyday thing for us.

Facebook is still the best social media platform to date and will still continue to dominate and play an important part of the everyday experience for most people who are connected in the next couple of years. But, Facebook is not as engrossing and wholesome as it used to. It is now littered with rantings of broken-heartedness, for flaunting, for rumor-mongering and hoaxsters. For sending spam and virus and all sorts of unwanted feeds. It can be annoying too when you're scrambling to beat a deadline then your friends all of a sudden shoots a message in the guise of "care for a break?" only to waste your time.

Of course, we can't expect everyone to behave on Facebook like we want them to or impose our own standards to its users. It's a community. And in a community, you get to see and interact with all sorts of people who can be a source of annoyance or disgust. That being the case, what's the point to using Facebook as a campaign tool in the face of its bad and senseless side?

To be continued.

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