1
Discussion Board Forum 4
Shannon Merchent
School of Business, Liberty University
BUSI 330: Principles of Marketing
Professor Ron Ballard
June 26, 2020
2
Discussion Board Forum 4
Social media is defined as “online media where users submit comments, photos, and
videos – often accompanied by a feedback process to identify popular topics” (Kerin & Hartley,
2020, pp. 462). The research that I have conducted states that social media began back in the
1990s with the very first platforms Six Degrees and Friendster. Along with the emergence of
blogging and bulletin boards, these online forums paved the way for the social media revolution
(Jones, 2015). After Six Degrees and Friendster, MySpace emerged and was the first social
media site to reach 1 million monthly active users. It has become so popular for the fact that
people can share their experiences and check up on others relatively quickly. Family members
and friends from anywhere in the world can connect and stay informed about each other’s lives
and keep them updated in case of emergencies or celebrations.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube are four widely used social media platforms
in the world. Each of these platforms, in a business perspective, allow users to market their
products and brand through links, hashtags, pages, and videos. While all four of these platforms
allow users to post content, they are different in their own aspects. Facebook is used primarily to
keep up to date on family and friends while being able to join pages with others that share
common interests. Twitter is consisted of short “tweets” that allow users to make witty or serious
statements. A numerous amount of celebrities and business use Twitter to promote change,
market products, or even interact with other users. LinkedIn’s main purpose is for professional
networking and job searching. Users create business profiles to connect with other business
professionals and it allows them to search for jobs or recruiters to find them. Unlike other social
media websites, LinkedIn is strictly for professional business and not so much pleasure. Lastly,
YouTube is a platform dedicated to user’s uploading personalized videos to their channels. This
3
platform allows these people to have a visual voice instead of just a written one. Overall, these
four platforms are more different in the fact of how users post content and what kind, but they all
have the same goal by bringing everyone together.
A hashtag is a pound sign attached to a word or phrase that signifies the theme of
someone’s content (Boot Camp Digital, 2013). Hashtags are essentially hyperlinks that are used
to group similar content on to one page so that users can associate with others that have like
minded views. Hashtags are also used to help engage with your followers or other users on
various social media platforms, it gives the opportunity to build brands, show support for social
issues, add context to posts, and help target audiences find you (Olafson, 2020).
Businesses use hashtags to advance consumer awareness to products and services by
encouraging people to post their experiences, the products they bought, and their thoughts on the
products. These hashtags, like stated above, will provide others a specific place to see other
opinions on these companies and their products and help drive them to make purchases as well.
A business measures the effectiveness of their social media efforts by measuring those
that are linked to inputs or cost and those tied to outputs or revenues (Kerin & Hartley, 2020). To
find the performance measure that in linked to inputs or cost, the brand manager can use cost per
thousand (CPM), cost per click (CPC), and then cost per action (CPA). Cost per thousand is the
number of times the ad loads and a user may see it. Cost per click measures the pay rate for
advertising which means when a user clicks on an ad and it takes you to that page, the advertiser
pays whatever website that ad was on for the click. Finally, cost per action measures the cost of a
social media ad to the sales generated by the ad. Finding the performance linked to outputs or
revenues are measures by a number of different things like users/members, fans, share of voice,
page views, visitors, unique visitors, average page views per visitor, interaction rate, click-
4
through rate, and fan source (Kerin & Hartley, 2020). All these categories help brand managers
to estimate the sales revenue that has been generated.
Lastly, I believe that social media has become a form of gossiping in today’s world.
Anyone can see other’s successes, failures, etc., if someone shares, and then speak negatively
about them. Humans are jealous, conniving, and judging if they believe that others are not doing
what they should or because others are doing better than them. 1 Timothy 5:13 says, “Besides
that, they learn to be idlers, going from house to house, and not only idlers, but also gossips and
busybodies…” (English Standard Version). This verse explains that people learn to stay silent
and as they converse and interact with others, they learn to talk about them behind their backs
while staying silent in front of them. In my opinion, I believe as Christian men and women, we
can use social media to spread the Gospel, to spread the love of Jesus, and to educate people
about the love and sacrifice that Jesus did for us. It is also important to teach others that just
because someone else is not in the same place as you, does things you don’t agree with, or is in a
better place than you currently, does not mean you can judge them. Celebrate them in their
season of life and know that God has a plan for you, and you will achieve the greatness that God
has set for you. God is the only one that can judge us so, why not love one another and be
thankful for the things you have, not what you do not.
5
References
Boot Camp Digital. (2013). What is a Hashtag? [Video]. Retrieved 24 June 2020, from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4A_wdR0Ukc&feature=emb_title.
Jones, M. (2015). The Complete History of Social Media: A Timeline of the Invention of Online
Networking. History Cooperative. Retrieved 24 June 2020, from
https://historycooperative.org/the-history-of-social-media/.
Kerin, R., & Hartley, S. (2020). Marketing: The Core (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.
Olafson, K. (2020). How to Use Hashtags: A Quick and Simple Guide for Every Network.
Hootsuite Social Media Management. Retrieved 24 June 2020, from
https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-use-hashtags/.
