Social Media has been around for many years now and it never ceases to grab the attention of the netizens ranging from teenagers to adults. On-demand videos, online meetings, feeds, blogs, comments, likes, polls you name it, social media has come from occasional simple chat to a powerful tool that we never fail to use almost every day.
Although there are many things on the bright side that social media has to offer, the dark side strikes like slow poison. Its addictive nature has left everyone from young teens to adults gazing at it for hours. While teens tend to have too much exposure just for entertainment, adults fall in the pit-trap as well.
That being said, we don’t have to worry about the dark side that much if we know how to use it the right way so that we can be a bit productive and also get self-satisfaction avoiding over engagement as a result.
5. Stress Busting
This is the most common way of using social media, something that all of us have been doing for a long time. It is still effective these days but should be used in moderation. Do it too much and you’ll unknowingly do the exact opposite of what you wanted to do which is relieving stress.
There are moments when you face a really heavy workload in front of you. After several hours of working you may be really tired and your brain demands something else to refresh itself other than the regular thing that it has been busy with so far. That is when social media may turn out to be just the thing.
A funny episode from a cartoon will not only cheer up your mood but will also help you maintain focus on your actual task. There are many other similar ways such as reading real-life experiences, quotes, new ideas or creative stuff; chatting, and so on. As long as it is not too much spanning several hours and as long as your brain knows that there is a reward now and then it will tag along.
4. Finding Answers
Here is another effective way to use social media. The very base of social media is to answer questions you are interested in. And on that note, no matter which topic you choose to pose a question on, social media is always up with an answer, isn’t it? But there are always those two categories of questions we pose, one including the regular fashion, entertainment, and trends stuff and the other being educational stuff like academics, walkthroughs, tutorials, etc. Both are effective in their ways but the second class is more informative and productive.
Based on the second class of questions as discussed above, we may pose questions to experts on different sites like quora, StackOverflow, brain, etc to get them answered and gain some new knowledge in the process. There are a variety of other questions answered, mostly based on the how part which has been answered through blogs, articles, or videos.
If we even need a walkthrough to an entire process or need a series of tutorials to accomplish an on-demand task, social media will always be there to help.
3. Education
This is one of the on-demand ways to use social media. A lot of students and teachers alike have been benefitting from this for a long time. By following channels providing educational content you’re interested in, e-learning, solving puzzles and tricky problems that are posted now and then and so on, you can be assured that you’re learning something interesting frequently.
Whether you are a college student, a homemaker, a professional, or of any other kind social media has online resources available for everyone alike. If you are a student and wish to learn a few topics that you aren’t that good at then YouTube may turn out to be just the thing. If you are a business professional or an employee willing to pursue a different career or improve on the existing one with relevant skills, e-learning may be just what the doctor ordered. Even if you’re a homemaker willing to learn art, social media still has the tools and resources for you to get started.
2. Marketing Yourself
This is yet another way to make social media work for you. On YouTube, you market yourself by starting a YouTube channel providing video-based content that is specific or even generic audience may be interested in. Many professionals, employees on LinkedIn update the daily official activities that they are a part of and major turn arounds that they’ve been through. They do that in the form of text, photos, or even videos. Similarly, there are many other useful ways that many people may not be aware of that much. So be sure to do your research.
By building a profile eventually and meeting the target audience one can make a really good impact. So be sure to share your major achievements, honor, skills attained, participation in official events, and other recognizable things for a much larger audience to see. This is far more useful for freshers or even jobseekers generally as they’ll have something else to talk about in their resume besides regular academics and qualifications.
1. Creating Awareness
This is one of the top reasons to use social media. This has been put into play by many educational institutes, MNCs, Organizations, professionals, groups, and so on. Many competitions on a variety of topics, tests, challenges, webinars, conferences, discussions, and so on are notified of their happening to the intended audience on social media like Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. So, you may also tag along if you’re a part of an organization wanting more netizens to participate in a certain event.
Creating Awareness is a combination of most of the above ways discussed so far. Education and Marketing turn out to be its major backbones. The reason being that by answering questions and sharing our knowledge we create awareness, by making a larger audience aware of our activities and the ones upcoming we create awareness and market ourselves as a result. That way in most of the education and marketing perspectives the common generic term that comes into play is “creating awareness”.
To sum up, overall there are many ways we can make social media work for us and maybe even benefit others in the process. On the contrary, there are other ways to make it a never-ending maze that we just can not get out of. The trick is to be wise and to be aware of when to start and when to stop and to also be aware of not deviating from our actual goal in the process.
