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Social Media

💡 We apply this in: social media marketing →
social media or social networks

What is social media?

Social media refers to internet-based technology platforms that facilitate the exchange of information, ideas and thoughts through virtual communities. They offer users a means of instant communication of messages and content.

Social media content typically includes personal information, documents and multimedia content such as photos or videos. Users access platforms through internet-connected smart devices or via web applications.

Social media user numbers

Social media is currently the most widely used medium for communication and interaction among both individuals and businesses. In 2021, 4.2 billion active users were recorded — representing more than 50% of the global population, and with significant further growth still to come as many developing societies do not yet have access to the necessary technology.

  1. Facebook has 2,740 million active users
  2. YouTube has more than 2,291 million active users
  3. Instagram, part of Facebook's company, has 1,221 million active users
  4. LinkedIn has 728 million active users
  5. Twitter: 353 million active users

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is defined as the process of promoting and communicating a company's message to potential customers through the main social media platforms. Within social media marketing, two distinct areas can be identified: corporate social media management and social media advertising.

Corporate social media management

This consists of creating, publishing and promoting content and images on the main social media channels. The objective is to reach the company's target audience and build trust (engagement) through the publication of attractive infographic content.

Social media advertising

This involves placing paid advertisements on social media to drive traffic to an external destination, such as a website or an e-commerce store. We recommend hiring the services of a specialist social media agency for your business.

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More on this topic

One shift has changed what social media accounts are for, and most businesses have not adjusted to it: people now search inside the platforms. Not scroll — search. They type a place, a product or a question into the search bar of a social network the same way they would into Google, and increasingly AI assistants pull from those same public posts when they answer.

That turns a profile into something it was not designed to be: a searchable index of text. And it moves the value away from the thing everyone worries about, which is the next post, towards the things nobody edits:

  • The bio and the profile name. If it says only your brand name, you are findable by people who already know you and by nobody else. What you do and where you do it belong there.
  • The words on and around your videos. Titles, captions and the text spoken on screen are read. A clip labelled with an inside joke is invisible.
  • Pinned content. It is the one post you can guarantee a first-time visitor sees, and it is usually months out of date.

There is a second consequence worth checking today. For most small businesses, a social profile ranks in Google for the brand name, sometimes above the company's own website. So the profile is not just a marketing channel — it is a page of your search results, written by you, that you probably have not read in a year.

None of this replaces posting. It just means the fixed parts of an account earn their keep every day, while a post earns its keep once.

Related: hashtag, brand and social media management.

Updated on 14 August 2026

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