Williams-Morgan

This book explores social media, one of the greatest innovations of our time, chronicling its development from the early beginnings in the 1990s to the current time when there are over two hundred social networking platforms. It highlights the disruptive character of social media and its commonalities with other disruptive technologies. The effects of social media have been felt by the advertising industry, the traditional media, and the music industry even as journalists, educators, and businesses take advantage of the mass audience that this innovation delivers.

It highlights the avalanche of social media platforms available to users and identifies the most popular among them. The most popular platforms are Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp. It provides a roadmap for the development of an appropriate social media policy and a winning strategy for navigating the digital era. It points to the fact that at both the personal and business levels, social media delivers the critical mass for building brand awareness and brand profile.

There is proof that the adoption of these tools has also succeeded in reducing marketing and promotional costs, facilitating efficiency and effectiveness in communication, and driving collaboration and innovation. These trends predict an increase in the number of social networking platforms and a broadening of the scope of these platforms. There is also an indication that as Internet access expands across the globe, a higher percentage of the global population will go online using their mobile devices and for social networking. Mobile social media allows the user to produce, distribute, and consume media using the same device,

broadens the potential for media content development, and facilitates faster distribution.

These developments emphasize the need for individuals and businesses to take the steps necessary to develop an appropriate social media policy and a winning social media strategy. Developing a thoughtful, purposeful, and strategically sound social media agenda has become important for life and business. A failure in this regard could mean being left out of the social media ecosystem, an environment rich with opportunities to develop and thrive!