How much different will our social media sites be just a year from now?
I love me a good old-fashioned competition. So naturally I
really enjoyed this week when I started to read and learn more about the
rivalry between Facebook and Google. 
Even after reading both arguments about who is going to come out on top in the end I am still very much on the fence, but I am starting to lean a bit toward the Facebook side of the fence. When trying to find support Google being the alpha male in a few years, I didn’t find much data to back it up. Most of the things I found were more or less talking down about Facebook, and how “being popular doesn’t necessarily translate into revenue.” However, when looking more into Facebook’s logic for why it may reign superior in the future I was able to find a lot more statistics that I believe support their position. The two sites I referenced interestingly enough gave me a lot of the same data, but Facebook was much more convincing in making me believe that they really could surpass Google in the upcoming years. Although the article on Facebook was able to present a lot of flashing stats about how much Facebook could potentially increase it’s revenue in the immediate future, I don’t know if I 100% buy into the fact that the dedicated users of Facebook will stay onboard to all of the potential changes the article mentions.
Beyond the Facebook vs. Google feud, I also found some very compelling information about why efforts in social media marketing might fall short. I found the article 7 Reasons Why Your Social Media Marketing Efforts Aren’t Working very interesting. Although I think the article really more or less just talked about why marketing efforts in general aren’t always successful, I found the article to be a great refresher on how to effectively use social media to market your brand. The biggest things to take away are: to have clear goals, realistic expectations, understanding of your audience, quality time spent blogging, and being consistent.
Overall I learned a lot about how social media can and is being used to make profits for companies. I found it very interesting that no matter how big or small the company there are still basic fundamentals that everyone must follow when trying to run a successful social media campaign. And as far as Google and Facebook are concerned, I am very interested to see what the future has in store for both companies as our social media and internet world are forever evolving and changing.
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