by Adrian Gulliver
A couple of short decades ago, business advertisements would include little more than a physical address and a phone number. As the internet rose to prominence we would often see the addition of a website, simple at first then increasingly complicated as the developing technology improved. In the recent era, these are further aided by the common inclusion of various social media links, with almost all modern businesses chasing this avenue as a means of public visibility.
So what is it that led to the wide range of proliferation which we see today, and why have these avenues proven so worthy of pursuit?
The first part of this equation appears to stem from the increased simplicity which comes from the state of modern design. Web design in the early days of the internet was more of a luxury than a commodity. Understanding the necessary coding was simply not possible for most outsiders, while the relative rarity of proper web developers meant that hiring a qualified professional was often a costly pursuit.
Over time, as the internet moved from curiosity to unavoidability, the level of interaction and the quality of available tools saw immense growth. From the early days of expensive developers and tools analogous to the helpful but limited websites like Geocities came propagation and much lower barriers to entry.
Together, these developments not only opened the doors to smaller businesses but also created a situation where even surrounding meta-industries such as social media and review websites could supersede the capabilities of their traditional media counterparts. This allowed websites and services such as Casumo, an online casino, to generate attention from other websites in the form of bonus and free spins visibility, and similar advantages were offered for other businesses via social media.
This social media as we know it today is ubiquitous. Even the technologically naïve both know about and happily engage in the sphere, and this engagement has necessitated ease of access and content creation. This is the second part of what allowed social media to become the largely indispensable part of a business that it is today.
Almost everybody uses social media – and regularly too, which means a wide audience, and one which is easier to engage with than with any traditional form of socially collaborative method.
Updating new deals for your audience could now be done quickly and for free over something like Facebook. Compare this to the prior slow and costly methods of advertisement like print, radio and television, and the advantages become obvious. This extends to the modern visual mediums too, with the likes of Instagram offering enormous opportunities for any business with a heavy visual component.
Finally, this comes with the improvements possible to customer support and interaction. Helpful FAQs and humorous messages and memes, even when not strictly related to the business at hand, give existing and potential future customers a reason to subscribe. For those with a minimal level of savviness, this means improved payoff for comparatively little effort.
While social media of today is not, at least in the strict sense, a necessity, in a real and competitive sense it very much is. With each generation only growing continually involved in online engagement, this part of business is more important than ever, though, luckily for businesses, it is also easier than in any point in the past.
