The human race is the most civilised in the world and this civilization is as a result of the continuously evolving communication system developed by humans over the years. In the early years, pigeons were used to convey messages from one end to another. Later, with the advent of the printing press, men upgraded to letter writing; a slightly advanced means of communication. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first telephone device, making communication easier and faster than ever. But prior to the late 1980s, no one knew these eras would be nothing compared to the era of the internet. The late 1990s and early 21st century witnessed a drastic advancement in communication, thanks to the invention of smartphones which birthed a sophisticated means of communication; the social media.
Being an essential of human existence, every era of development in communication comes with its own job opportunities. In other words, many people have been deriving their means of livelihood from every means of communication the world has known from the ancient times till date. In the era of the pigeon post, the pigeon keepers were the ones cashing in. During the peak of letter writing, those who were literate, post office workers, mailmen and transport workers were the ones making financial gains. The invention of the telephone, fax machine and telegraph created more earning opportunities for people. The bottom line here is that with every modification to the human communication system comes one source of income or another for certain people; those who take the opportunity to capitalise on it.
Social media are digital platforms used mainly for the creation, distribution and reception of information through the internet. These media play a huge role as far as human communication goes in our world today. As a matter of fact, due to the leveraging on social media by certain people, the number of world billionaires have spiked greatly in recent times than ever. Wikipedia records the average number of billionaires in the world at the beginning of the 21st century to be 470 but in the year 2020, this has quadrupled and the average number of billionaires in the world today stands at 2095. No doubt, this surge in wealth is largely influenced by the advent of social media. What makes it more interesting is that, unlike other communication systems that tend to favour a selected few like the inventors, operators, pigeon keepers, literate people and so on, leveraging on social media is an opportunity for all and sundry!
Therefore, this article attempts to look at the ways social media can be leveraged for financial breakthrough. However, before that, an in-depth discussion on what constitutes social media, the different kinds that exist, their distinctive features and the content types each offers shall be provided.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A SOCIAL MEDIA?
As earlier established, any digital platform used mainly for the creation, distribution and reception of information through the internet is a form of social media. As a technology powered by the internet, social media platforms are accessed through mobile phones, tablets and personal computers. This implies that almost anyone with either of these devices can engage social media as it suits their purposes. Thus, this brings about the question of the various social media platforms and their distinguishing features.
There are various types of social media platforms with unique features that distinguish them from one another. They are listed below.
1. THE SOCIAL NETWORKING TYPE: Perhaps the commonest type of social media, this includes the likes of Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord and a host of others. These social media are mainly for person-to-person interaction with textual content and instant messaging feature.
2. THE IMAGE SHARING TYPE: As the name readily suggests, social media platforms that fall under this category are majorly for the purpose of sharing images and other appealing visual content such as memes and GIFs to amuse their users. Prominent platforms of such are Instagram, Snapchat and Imgur.
3. VIDEO SHARING TYPE: Social media platforms in this category offer visual and auditory content to their users for engagement. Falling under this category are platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Likee. Other video-based platforms are social networking apps like Skype and Zoom.
4. THE COMMUNITY BLOGGING TYPE: Social media blogging platforms are the kinds that offer multimedia content for users to express themselves freely and connect with their audience. Platforms such as Medium and Tumblr are very popular community blogs.
There are also a number of cryptocurrency-based community blogs such as Read.cash, Hive, Noise.cash, Publish0x, Minds, etc where users get paid for creating content and engagement other users' content.
5. DISCUSSION-ORIENTED TYPE: Closely related to the social networking types are platforms like Quora, Reddit, Nairaland, etc.
But unlike the social networking media, the discussion-oriented media are built for the sole purpose of discussing the various views of users regarding certain issues and questions raised. The difference between these platforms and the likes of Facebook and Twitter is the absence of direct messaging.
Now that the different social media kinds have been discussed, ways by which one can leverage these social media platforms for financial gains shall be explained in the next part of this post which shall be posted in a few hours.
Kindly stay tuned!
