World Social Media Day:
Shifting How We Share, One Post At A Time

On #WorldSocialMediaDay, we recognize the overwhelming impact that social media has had on the way we connect and communicate with others, most significantly through digital and social media marketing.

What began as a medium by which we connected with others, social media has grown into something of a juggernaut—allowing the posting and sharing of information beyond status updates, from educational posts on world events to breaking news—even fake information.

An extremely useful tool in the marketing and creative industries, it’s become a quick way that we as a creative agency use to share intentional, thought-provoking, and interactive creative content. To reach an audience, it’s all about a more personal approach.

The Evolution of Social Media

As of January 2022, according to Sprout Social, there were 3.96 billion total social media users across all platforms. Currently, the world’s population falls around 7.8 billion.

It’s transformed the way we consume information and communicate with others.

Nowadays, it’s retweets and reposts that get you remembered, and success is measured in likes, impressions, and shares. But before it became the massive driving force it is today, it was created to do one thing: connect.

Launched in 1997, Six Degrees was one of the first traditional social media platforms. Users could access a simple list of profiles of people on the platform.

Friendster, LinkedIn, Myspace, and Facebook all launched in the early 2000s. With these platforms, you could curate a unique personal profile, sharing your music, photos, and life updates with others. YouTube launched in 2005. Twitter followed the next year, introducing the idea of a limited character count. Then came Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok—photo- and video-based platforms that have all seen incredible success—the latter seeing the most.

Social for Brands and Businesses

As platforms came, grew, evolved, and went—users gained more control. Platforms became personal—granting users the ability to fine-tune the content they viewed, as well as more ways to interact with it. This, in addition to a slew of added features, created the perfect soil in which to grow a brand or business.

Cue the rise of social media marketing.

Paid advertising and reach capabilities were added. According to Sprout Social, Social media recently overtook paid search as an advertising channel, growing 25% YoY and exceeding $137 billion.

Business and follower engagement tools were added. Then e-commerce features. And the list goes on.

Social media has become so powerful that it has to be regulated by law—to protect user privacy, prevent online discrimination and bullying, and ensure responsible data use.

Because you can share content that reaches millions, it’s become a fixture of marketing, with unique sets of rules and strategies for each platform. It provides a way to bring traditional marketing and creative collateral directly to target audiences, not only enabling brands to tell their stories on a frequently used platform, but also to compel audiences immediately towards action.

With the right strategy, you can cultivate your brand presence through producing true-to-brand content, sharing engaging and interactive videos, and placing paid ads to ultimately drive conversions.

Social Media Marketing in Action

A successful example (an oldie, but a goodie): The Always “#LikeAGirl” campaign.

In 2014, feminine hygiene brand Always launched the #LikeAGirl campaign to flip a phrase that’s traditionally been used as an insult, on its head. They created a YouTube video showing people of all ages and genders discussing what “like a girl” means to them.

Always also used paid Facebook and Twitter posts, influencer outreach, and created the #LikeAGirl hashtag, asking women to share on social all the incredible things they do “like a girl.” They even aired a 60-second ad during the 2015 Super Bowl.

The results:

• The original YouTube video garnered over 90 million views, and was shared over 1 million times

And in the first three months of the campaign:

• There were over 1,100 earned-media placements and over 4.4 billion media impressions.
• The brand’s Twitter following tripled and YouTube channel subscribers skyrocketed by 4339%.
• 177,000 #LikeAGirl tweets were made, including many made by celebrities.
• Always also claimed that among their target audience, purchase intent grew more than 50%.
• In a December 2014 study, almost 70% of women and 60% of men claimed that “the video changed my perception of the phrase ‘like a girl'”.

This campaign asked its audience to share personal stories—ultimately encouraging and uplifting others and benefiting their brand—all through the power of social media.

Staying true to its values and slogan, “rewrite the rules,” Always gave its audience the power to do just that. They harnessed the power of connectivity.

This World Social Media Day, we remember and explore how far these platforms have come. They’ve given us new ways to communicate, innovate, create, and collaborate. This, ultimately, has allowed us to tell the stories of our brands and ourselves—the kind of stories that get us remembered.