Prior to Social Media one of the earliest types of advertising was through word of mouth followed by engraving or drawing images on a cave wall, those images told a story, and promoted ideas.   Early printing in the 15th (1401 to 1500) and 16th (1501 to 1600) centuries created a mark in advertising and companies were able to reach a wider audience. In the 18th (1701 to 1800) and 19th (1801 to 1900) centuries advertising was expanded to newspapers.   One of the first advertising agencies was set-up in Philadelphia in 1842 by Volney Palmer, the agency acted as a broker for newspaper space and later on they became a full service by offering ad-placement services and a full production that organized advertising by a target market and population.   In the 20th (1901 to 2000) century the radio was born and was part of a new era on advertising it offered a complete new way of reaching potential audiences. Followed by television which introduced a new type of advertising that was more visual than the previous advertising methods, by the end of the 20th century the internet was introduced to the masses and it became a valuable communication tool for businesses to advertise in a complete different way.   According to Visually technology and the use of Social Media and Internet has accelerated the pace in which people are able to connect, be engaged and be informed. Below is a list of the time frame it took for various modes of communication to reach 50 million users. Telephone: 75 years Radio: 38 years Television : 13 years Internet: 4 years Facebook: 3.5 years IPOD: 3 years Angry Birds Space app: 35 days   Many organizations still depend on word of mouth as the main form of communication mostly used in marketing and advertising initiatives. These companies are considered to be in the stone ages as compared to organizations that are using Social Media in a big way. A good example of a company that is using Social Media very well is FIFA.   FIFA was taken by surprise in the last World Cup in Brazil when 1 billion people attended FIFA’s Global Stadium, according to the current Deputy Head of FIFA Digital. Senior Manager – Social Media & Video, Alex Stone they began evaluating the data collected from the 2014 World Cup in 2015.   Based on the 2014… Read more »

If your brand is not on Instagram, it should be. Instagram is beautifully simplistic and the most personal of the mobile platforms. It’s full of potential with people eager to connect with a brand on a more intimate and tangible level. Creating content for Instagram can be a challenge, it’s true. The importance of visual imagery is key to tell a brand’s story, any brand. Regardless of the industry, any company can create campaigns to utilize this platform to reach their targeted audience, sharing alluring imagery and creative captions. There are many companies getting it right, using this platform to share their story, their background, and their vision.

While no one can actually predict the future, we can use past knowledge and current trends to guess what might happen. Social Media is no different. In a podcast with the Social Media Examiner, Rohit Bhargava discusses his book, Non Obvious. He considers “a trend to be an observation about the accelerating present. That means there are signs of something already happening that will become more important”.1 A great example to review is Spectacles by Snap Inc. This new gadget considers past, current and futuristic trends. Snap uses a medium that all people are familiar with wearing (sunglasses) to capture quick videos for social sharing. Snapchat (its former name) already recognized that capturing video upright is more intuitive because people hold mobile phones that way. Snapchat was a trendsetter when it made upright videos acceptable.2 Spectacles operate via Bluetooth and load video content to your mobile device. Their creation of circular video (which captures both vertical and horizontal orientations simultaneously) is very innovative. When the viewer plays the video on a mobile device they can rotate it in any direction and it will display accordingly. Videos for entertainment and information are here to stay and they will inevitably carry us forward. Whether we’re watching live camera feeds around the world, funny YouTube videos or Tasty how-to food clips, we’re validating this trend for the future.