Social media provides important benefits for both individuals and businesses. It allows users to stay connected with friends and family, share their lives, and find entertaining content. For businesses, social media enables direct contact with target audiences, helps increase popularity and traffic, and allows brands to create a lasting impression. The widespread use and accessibility of social media have made it an integral part of modern life.

1. Importance of Social Media in Today's World
Social media platforms provide tired individuals with customized feeds consisting of memes,
news, and short clips of videos as per the user's activity. It provides people with a much-
needed break from their busy schedules.
Benefits of Social Media for Businesses
1. Direct Contact With Target Audience
Thanks to social media platforms, you don't have to call or email people randomly to check if they
are interested in your brand or not. Search engine optimization and market with almost the whole
world on social media, it is now possible that your target audience is simply a click away from you.
Using hashtags, you can directly land your brand on your target audiences' page - giving yourself an
enormous reach.
2. Increasing Popularity With Ease
For people in the social media content and digital marketing , the ability to attract popularity is
what matters most. The social media platforms provide such a section of people with precisely what
they're looking for - increased exposure. Carrying out simple, engaging tasks such as answering
queries, posting times, and so on would ensure that you blow up on these sites after some time.
Even though it requires some time investment, the hefty returns are worth it at the end of the day.
3. Better Traffic
Since there is a wide diversity of active people on social media, the scope for diverse traffic is also
broadened. Optimizing social media per your needs can ensure that you receive visits and traffic
from various people. Since today people are on their phones most of the time, it is highly likely that
people would come across your brand or work. Proper usage of keywords and other SEO guidelines
would also ensure heavier and better traffic.
4. Create a Lasting Image
If you are looking to work so that your piece of content leaves an imprint on the viewer's brain, using
social media is the best way to go about it. Granted, people do look at their emails too. But how
often can we find people spending hours surfing through their emails? In contrast, people love
spending countless hours surfing through social media on their phones. Hence, if you can optimize
your work efficiently there, you will likely leave your mark.
Importance of Social Media In Our Lives
For most of us, social media is an important part of our lives. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
WhatsApp, choose your favorite. Also, there is no denying that our days are incomplete without
these sites. In the year gone by, the importance of social media was even more appreciated.

2. The year 2020 has been quite a different one and unlike any of the previous years in many aspects.
With countries going under lockdown for months; our needs, priorities, and lifestyle too had taken a
shift. The way we earn, spend, learn, and even socialize was unlike what we did before 2020. Since
we couldn’t move out of our homes for days or even months, internet and social media sites were
our only resort. It was during this time that we realized the real importance of social media and how
impactful it is on our lives.
What is Social Media?
To speak formally, as per the Cambridge Dictionary, social media is defined as “websites and
computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet
using a computer or mobile phone”. Now if you split the words social media, then, social which
comes from the Latin word means friend, and media refer to means of mass communication. Thus,
social media in simple terms can be referred to as an informal platform for mass communication.
Social Media Characteristics
The fact that we all are indulged on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. proves
how common and important social media is. It has become a part of our everyday life. Before
understanding the importance of social media in our lives, let us learn the aspects or characteristics
which make social media a unique, massively popular medium with widespread use. Let us see these
characteristics below.Easily accessible: The main aspect of social media which contributes to its
enormous success, is the ease of access it provides to its user. Anyone with a mobile device or a
computer along with an internet connection can easily become a user. Thus, with internet
connection being easily and inexpensively accessible to the Indian population, the popularity of
social media has grown manifold. Everyone is just a click away.
Create and share visuals and content: Users can create content using visuals, audio, or text. They can
start private forums, public discussions, audio pods, and even blogs. Therefore, we can find
content, visuals, and audio across genres and on any varied topic. Social media encourages creativity
and novelty.
Communication to a large group at the same time: Social media’s characteristic of being
instantaneous helps in its widespread use and extreme popularity. Within a couple of seconds, your
post reaches your complete circle of friends or group at the same time. In fact, what one shares, can
be further shared by others. This will help gain popularity or go viral. In recent times, there have
been many occasions wherein, posts have gone viral within minutes of their upload.
Everyone is an active participant:
On social media platforms, all the users are participants. Compare it with traditional media like
newspapers, wherein, information is simply imparted. Social media platforms work on a two-way
basis. You can share your experience, give your opinions, reviews, exchange information on a real-
time basis.
Flexible and dynamic:

3. Since users are active participants; the contents and tools are continuously updated and improved.
Newer demands are generated and changes are a continuous part of the system. From the app’s
point of view, the users have requested a timely update. This fixes the bugs and improves the
system.
Cost-effective:
Not to forget that social media engagement is light on your pocket. The user needs to bear only the
internet expense to enter the social media world. Also, retaining on these platforms does not
require any cost. Also, you need not spend lots of money to advertise or communicate. In fact, it’s
highly cost-effective compared to other modes of advertisement or communication channels.
The common type of Social Media sites
Below are the few most popular types of social media sites:
Social networking sites: These are the most popular social media sites. As the name suggests,
these sites help in networking people and are widely used. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the
most commonly used social networking sites.
Media sharing sites: These sites are focused more on visuals; sharing photos and videos. Examples
of these sites are Instagram and YouTube.
Social blogging sites: Blogging has been in trend for quite some time now. Creating and
distributing content and making aware of the same has been a popular activity on the internet.
Medium and Tumblr are common examples of blogging websites.
Discussion sites: Discussion networks are very informative platforms. You can post a question or
answer any, also you to understand the trends and sentiment surrounding the topic. Reddit and
Quora are two popular discussion sites.
Social Media Statistics
The importance of social media can easily be understood if we know how impactful social media is in
terms of its usage. Social media has a growing popularity worldwide which can be seen from the
data below. When we talk about social media, it is usually irrespective of geographical boundaries.
Studies suggest, one of the most popular online activities that people undertake, is social media
usage. Let us take a look at the following statistical data published by J. Clement, a research expert
covering the internet and e-commerce. The statistics are based on the number of social media users
worldwide and also a number of social media users in India) as of January 2020.
In India, with easy access to the internet in recent times, the Indian population has been quite loyal
to social media platforms. With just over 326.1 million users in 2018, the country is expected to
reach up to 447.9 million users by 2023. India in fact, has the highest number of Facebook users
worldwide which is close to 300 million as of Jan 2020. Also, WhatsApp and TikTok mobile
downloads were highest in India in 2020

4. As the country inclined more and more towards social media, the Indian Government took the
Digital India initiative to tap on this opportunity. Not too far behind is India’s digital advertising
industry, which is worth over 160 billion INR and is estimated to reach 560 billion INR by 2023.
Importance of Social Media
With almost half of the world’s population using social media, the importance of social media is
undoubted. Individuals and businesses both are grateful for this effective, inexpensive, and fast
mode of mass communication. In the year 2020, its importance has been even more cemented.
From people in smaller towns to the metro cities and from start-up and small-scale businesses to the
big giant everyone needs social media. Without wasting more time let us now move to the
importance of social media in our lives.
For individuals:
Man is a social animal. We all like to be surrounded by our loved ones and get connected to as many
of our known ones as possible. Below is the importance of social media for individuals.
To stay connected with friends and family: The utmost importance of social media is that it
helps in staying in touch with our loved ones. You get to know what are your friends or family doing.
Even without meeting up too often, social media helps in creating and sustaining that emotional
bond.
To share your life: Social media is a great place to share your life events. You can share your
photos, videos, stories on the platform. Your virtual avatar is nowadays perceived to be the real you.
Since, sharing about your achievements, your happiness, sorrow, makes you feel that you have
people who are ready to listen to you. This makes you feel less lonely.
To stay updated with current news and events: Most of us use social media to stay up to date
about current events and news. Social media also helps us in giving some insights on current topics.
In fact, breaking news these days are spread vigorously through Twitter and WhatsApp. Also, any
new developments in your interest areas like science and technology, food, lifestyle, fashion, etc.
are learned through this medium.
To share opinion or feedback: These days, if you would want to buy something, you generally
look for customer reviews or feedback. Product or service reviews are easily available on social
media to make informed decisions. Social media is a great place to learn about others’ opinions as
well as share your own. Your feedback, good or bad can be shared easily through social media. A lot
of businesses now have a designated social media team. This team responds to customer queries
and grievances that are channeled via a social media platform.
To find new people or friends: With more and more people joining social media, it allows you to
make new friends, meet new people from any corner of the world.
To find entertaining content: The web space is filled with content from various genres. Social
media sites are the most commonplace to get these contents based on your interest. It helps you in
finding content that is entertaining and gives you a break from your daily activities.