What are the most notable features users love on social media apps and websites? Billions of people around the globe are using social media everyday to communicate with each other on their smart mobile phones, laptop and tablets. These people are viewing, sharing, retweeting and publishing their own content. They are also following others, trolling, blocking and creating fake accounts with biased news. In this article we shall be looking at some of the common features on popular social media apps that we love and give examples of where they are to be found on some of the top platforms. In the second part of the article we will be looking at features for the business user of social media.
Common Features Found In Social Media Channels
What are the most common features associated with social media? Social media has in effect changed our lifestyle online. We start accounts online by signing up this means giving our name and email address with a password as a minimum. Other details are sometimes optional these are post code or zip cod and birthday. On signing up a request box whether you wish to be sent marketing emails about products and services may be presented to you. A feature of social media platform is the ability to sign up via Facebook or Google. At this stage the user is on a page where terms of service and privacy policy, including cookie policy links are included. All of these feature are very powerful and are worthy are the can be investigated in detail by this will not be done here.
Once logged in it is all about engagement by us and other users. Once we put up content we like to see reactions to our efforts online. Here are our top 20 features used on the various social media platforms and an explanation of what they are. So if you have ever wondered what the meaning of hash tags are here is your chance to find out what this is in our glossary of terms.
Read how do social media impact interpersonal communication
Glossary Or Features Found Whilst Using Social Media
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A Profile
Your personal branding or persona. A profile is a brief summary and sometimes pictures or videos of who you or your organisation are displayed under your user name.
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Search
A major feature in online platforms is the ability to search for people, groups and trends. The search box is the place to perform this act
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Status
A user can present various moods in how they are at one time this can be active, online, away or offline
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Direct Messages
These are sometime called DMs they are messages sent to you directing in your social media account by account you follow or have subscribed to
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Notifications
The symbol of the bell is used for the notification on social media channels which occur in real time. A number is usually hovering over the symbol when you have an alert or message update of significance. The value of the number lets you know how many you have and when you click on this you are taken to these messages.
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Followers
These are people that want to see your content on their personal timeline. The can do this by following your account to see any content you post or share
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Subscribers
These are users as above but for Youtube. The user would subscribe to a channel for content updates.
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Posts
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Likes
The most basics of user engagement on a social media account is for a user to like content you have posted on your account. The opposite of likes is dislikes and this can be found on the platform YouTube
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Views
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Comments
Uses leave comment on content for example you may add a public comment to a Youtube video which may or may not receive a reply by other users and or liked or disliked
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Reviews
Invaluable good reviews by your client are sort after. A very important feature for business are five star reviews on the rating system out of five by genuine users of your product or service on platforms like Google, Yelp, Amazon, Trustpilot or Trip Advisor
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Hash Tags
# tag a label for content it is used on micro blogging services like Twitter. In other words it is a dynamic user generated method to help others find messages with specific themes or content.
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Timeline
The timeline of a social media account is a list of the users content in time order on their home page. The content of text, images or video is generated by the users followers or services that he of she has subscribed to.
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History
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Retweets
This is a feature used on the platform Twitter were by a user shares content with their followers
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Shares
This is a feature at the heart of many social media platforms and it is about letting a users followers see content that they believe is of interest to them.
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Content
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Groups
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Trending
Read social media - advantages and disadvantages
Features For The Business User Of Social Media
Social media channel |
Concept Sector Subject |
Description |
History, date launched |
Audience type or relationship to you |
Audience |
Open to |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Features the audiences (age, gender, social, business, news worthy) |
||||||
|
Business, recruitment, B2B sales |
Business and professional networking |
May 2003 |
Work colleges, |
14 years up |
 |
|
Friends, family, gossip, fun, events, going out, fashion, groups, community, games and polls |
General, photos, video, blogs and apps |
Feb 2004 |
friends |
2000 million |
13 years up |
|
News, sports, livestream |
General, Micro blogging, rss |
July 2006 |
65 million |
 |  |
|
Entertainment, fashion, food, celebrity, influencers, actors, sport stars |
Photo and video sharing |
owed by FB |
Friends from school |
300 million |
13 years up |
Youtube |
Entertainment, Sport, film channels |
Video sharing |
Owed by Alphabet (google) |
 |  |  |
|
News and fun |
text, Group chat voice and video calls end to end encryption voice messages document |
owed by FB |
 |  |  |
Business features
premium service for insight for business and candidates grow and network
https://www.linkedin.com/premium/products/
https://business.linkedin.com/talent-solutions/talent-insights
https://www.linkedin.com/campaignmanager/new-advertiser
Different languages over 20 LinkedIn business accounts can be integrated into HubSpot as can Instagram and YouTube
insight business
https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-measurement-and-analytics…
https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/7-useful-insights-Twitter-analytic…
hashtag with a notification, alerts and trends
https://www.facebook.com/westafricacooks/insights
Facebook live
integrated into other apps like chat, gaming, offers, weather, traffic reports, fundraisers, news feeds, messenger, find friends, crisis response, local and maps
Facebook are pioneers at this feature which is based on IP addresses of the user
Engagement and reach
Adverts
Youtube and Instagram are big influencing channels because of their visual nature. Before Instagram twitter was the channel that the influencers would use the most, but as processing technology constantly improves together with data plans being upgraded for mobile phones, social media platforms based on sharing videos and photos really took off.
Instagram business accounts can be integrated into HubSpot as can Instagram and YouTube
Youtube
https://studio.youtube.com/
Insight Reach, engagement, audience and revenue
YouTube paid service allows you to purchase or rent individual items of content made available by third parties.
YouTube business accounts can be integrated into HubSpot
https://www.whatsapp.com/business/
WhatsApp are location based channels for the youth market on the go
Lots of people use the WhatsApp group feature for their friends and family, it’s a means by which they can communicate easily. WhatsApp is a messaging app designed for the mobile phone that has an instant messaging feature which allows fast and immediate communication. Over the years, WhatsApp has grown from being a casual means of staying in touch between family and friends into a business platform. WhatsApp Business app and the WhatsApp Business API are now used to allow businesses to create a better business profile
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