Social media marketing has become eminent in the past ten years. It has helped organizations market their product and create awareness among social media users. Our company is looking forward to creating a new social media site to market the organization’s products and services. As the marketing manager in the company, I will present the new social media to the board of directors to make the final decision. The new social media site that I have suggested is called ConnectSphere. The platform is designed to be a holistic social media platform that allows users to share information. The main aim of this social media site is to create a space for individuals and businesses to engage in meaningful conversation and share ideas. ConnectSphere will allow organizations to develop creative ads for advertising their products. Therefore, this paper will discuss strategies for building the new site to be a successful social network site (SNS).
Strategies for Building Successful Social Network Sites (SNS)
several ways and strategies could be used to build the new site and ensure it becomes a successful social network site.
User-centric design
The first strategy is making ConnectSphere a user-centric site. The site should prioritize on the needs of the customers and users above anything else. Designing the platform to become a user-centric design with positive user experience developers will ensure intuitive navigation (Nizzolino & Canals, 2021). The site will be a straightforward interface that allows users to explore all features available. It will have features that allow users to share, download, view, and post content. This will improve the site’s connection and following.
Personalization of the site
ConnectSphere will also provide a personalized user experience. It will allow users to create customizable profiles. Users will create profiles according to their preferences. The users will control the profile. This will give users the autonomy to accept the following or choose who to follow. It will also have personalized feeds and tailored recommendations. The site will be providing feedback to individual users’ profiles. It will also recommend content to users based on the type of content the user frequently views.
Privacy and content control
ConnectSphere will be controlling the accessibility of private users’ information. It will have robust privacy settings allowing users to control their data. The platform will also control the type of violence posted (Nizzolino & Canals, 2021). Abusive, racist, and dirty content will not be allowed on ConnectSphere.
Authentic content creation
The platform will encourage the development and posting of authentic creative content. For instance, it will have storytelling tools that allow users to share experiences and moments. ConnectSphere will also encourage users to create original content. It will incentivize creating and sharing original content like articles or organization ads.
Analyzing potential Primary Competitor
The main primary competitor for ConnectSphere will be Instagram. Instagram is one of the major traditional social media platforms created in 2010. Like ConnectSphere, Instagram allows users to share videos and photo content using customized profiles. The platform has a huge number of followers. 2023 Instagram had more than 127 million users (Dixon, 2023). This allowed organizations to share and market their products. Instagram boasts a large following due to the following aspects.
Early adoption
The platform was launched in 2010. Since 2010, Instagram has seen its following increase dramatically (Longobardi et al., 2020). Therefore, being one of the earliest platforms, Instagram has a higher number of followers than ConnectSphere.
Engagement features
Instagram has an interactive feature that allows users to capture and share their content. It provides users with the option of sharing their videos and pictures (Tafesse & Wood, 2021). The users can either publicize or make the content private. This increases users’ experience on the platform, thus increasing the number of users.
Influencer culture
Instagram has embraced influencer partnerships (Tafesse & Wood, 2021). The influencers are mainly public figures in today’s society. These influencers have huge followings on Instagram, thus increasing the number of active users.
User-generated hashtags and challenges
Instagram relates to users’ marketing by allowing them to use hashtags (#) challenges (Dorsch, 2020). For instance, users and influencers can put the symbol # before their major theme to ensure followers know what they are discussing. This creates a sense of community and allows users to interact with one another through content challenges.
Marketing Strategies for “ConnectSphere”
ConnectSphere has to follow Instagram’s footsteps in order to increase its following base. The site can employ the following strategies to increase its base;
Influencer Marketing
The ConnectSphere social media can partner with influencers who are aligned with the organization’s values and objectives. Leveraging on influencers will help the platform increase its follower base. As noted earlier in the paper, influencers have a huge following. Therefore, partnering with them would bring more followers to the ConnectSphere site (Nizzolino & Canals, 2021). ConnectSphere can also take advantage of the influencer’s authenticity to introduce the platform to their followers. Influencers vans share insights about the new site with their followers.
Content Campaigns
ConnectSphere can also launch a “Share Your Story” feature. It should encourage users to share their experiences and content. The shared content should be original to increase the authenticity and reliability of the new platform (Appel et al., 2020). ConnectSphere should also control the content posted by the followers to increase users’ trust and promote ethical considerations. The content campaigns should be reliable, true, and clean. The platform should restrict users from advertising false information or posting unreliable information. This will promote the authenticity of the content on the site, thus increasing the number of users.
Conclusion
ConnectSphere will be the new social media platform proposed to the board of directors. The platform will be used to campaign and market diverse products and services. It will have a user-centric design, personalization features, privacy and content control, and authentic content creation strategies to ensure it becomes a successful social network site. ConnectSphere will face stiff competition from Instagram. Instagram enjoys a huge number of followers due to its user-centric features. Therefore, ConnectSphere should embrace marketing strategies such as content campaigns and influencer partnerships to increase its reliability and follower base.
Reference
Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2020). The future of social media in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(1), 79–95.
Dixon, S. J. (2023). Most followers on Instagram 2023. Statista. https://www.statista.com/statistics/421169/most-followers-instagram/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20there%20were%20over%20114%20million%20Instagram
Dorsch, I. (2020). Hashtags on Instagram: Self-created or Mediated by Best Practices and Tools? https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/64080
Longobardi, C., Settanni, M., Fabris, M. A., & Marengo, D. (2020). Follow or be followed: Exploring the links between Instagram popularity, social media addiction, cyber victimization, and subjective happiness in Italian adolescents. Children and Youth Services Review, 113, 104955. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104955
Nizzolino, S., & Canals, A. (2021). Social network sites as community-building tools in educational networking. In E-Collaboration Technologies and Strategies for Competitive Advantage Amid Challenging Times (pp. 76-143). IGI Global.
Tafesse, W., & Wood, B. P. (2021). Followers’ engagement with Instagram influencers: The role of influencers’ content and engagement strategy. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 58(1), 102303. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102303
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