D2

How individuals use social media	How businesses use social media
Connect with friends & family	Connect with new / current customers
Setup events	Same
Use different media	Same
Upload pictures and videos	Same
Gather information	Same
Like & Share posts	Same
Looking for jobs	Advertising jobs
Share opinions	Same
Polls on particular topics	Same
Media is not user specific	Same
Random posts	Planned posts
Get an income from adverts	Pay for adverts
You manage your account	Departments manage it for you
Not posting all the time	Posting a lot to be noticed

Connecting

Individuals will mainly use social media to keep connected with friends and family, share posts between each other, explore content, make new friends, create posts. However businesses will use social media platforms to get their content / products out there for users to click on / view / share etc. Practically producing free advertisement. 

Setting up events

P3

Case study of businesses use social media

http://linkhumans.com/case-study/microsoft

Microsoft is a company which utilises the power of using social media to promote their business and products. They have an official account on most of the mainstream social media site such as; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Vine, and YouTube.

There are many benefits of using social media as a business. This is one of the reasons why businesses will use the many built-in features of social media websites and because it doesn't cost anything to set up an account on these social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc) and they can instantly start to attract an audience. 

Microsoft is very big when it comes to using social media and every social media account they have has over a million followers / likes.

Twitter

On Twitter Microsoft have 41 different verified accounts, each one has a different purpose for instance. 

A few of Microsoft's verified accounts.

Since Microsoft is so big it's better for them to have more accounts so they can deal with more specific problems / posts are more relevant to account. Doing this makes it easier for users to get responses from the verified accounts since the amount of tweets would be spread about instead of all being directed at one account for the social department to go through and process / respond.

Fast Company reports on Microsoft's unique program to hire and support employees with autism. https://t.co/lTpzL7dIl9

— Microsoft (@Microsoft) 13 September 2016

Microsoft's main accounts posts are more related to the company and what they're doing rather than their products, services, support, etc. Their multiple Twitter accounts are very good for marketing since they know that the people that follow them would be interested in the products they have to advertise. 

Facebook

On Facebook Microsoft has 9.2 million likes on its page, so on Facebook they do have a large quantity of people being able to see every post Microsoft makes on its Facebook page. Their content varies a lot though, for instance they would post something such as being able to buy things that Starbucks offer on their app from your windows 10 phone then they'd post something about a new game coming out on one of their consoles.

So unlike their Twitter where they have multiple accounts for different categories of Microsoft (Games, Support, News, Office, etc) the posts they upload won't always be related to each other since Microsoft is such a big company and have many different departments, this is why they have so many different accounts on Twitter.

Because of this they make sure that their posts reach the relevant audience, but they have to make sure they make a post for each of the different audiences to benefit the users that follow their media accounts.

A lot of the posts are targeted around the human part of the company rather than talking about too much tech related stuff.

Instagram

Every day we host workshops at our Microsoft Store locations, but it’s not every day that @RealMadrid player @marcelotwelve stops by to teach one. Marcelo recently visited our flagship store in New York City, where he led a youth soccer group in a coding class. Thanks, Marcelo!

A photo posted by Microsoft (@microsoft) on Aug 11, 2016 at 12:24pm PDT

Microsoft uses Instagram like how they use Facebook meaning that the posts are more related to their followers rather than the company. They're known to share other people's success stories, the stories vary from different cultures, genders, locations, ages, and ethnicity.

A handful of people related posts

A lot of their posts tell the stories of people they've come across or people that work for them and have done good. When you go through their Instagram you're more likely to see posts about people rather than products etc. Then to accompany the post they'd explain why they've chosen that person to include in their long list of posts.

Yollo the cat was getting fat. Yollo’s owner, Dave Evans, suspected his cat was sneaking food from neighbors, but had no way to prove it. He wanted to keep Yollo healthy, so he teamed up with Matt Quinn to create G-Paws, a GPS fitness tracker for pets. G-Paws is a small, wearable device that hooks onto pets collars and runs on the Microsoft Cloud. During the day it tracks movements and encourages owners to engage in friendly competitions in the social “petwork.” So far 20,000 pets have logged more than one million miles of adventure. Learn more about G-Paws by clicking the link in our bio.

A photo posted by Microsoft (@microsoft) on Sep 19, 2016 at 5:34pm PDT

Compared to their other social media accounts they only have 655k followers, so their Instagram is a lot smaller compared to their Twitter, Facebook,and LinkedIn. However their YouTube has the least amount of followers / subscribers at 401k. Because Microsoft's Instagram isn't used to advertise many of their products it isn't as big as the other accounts. However it is good for reaching a wider audience because of the content of the posts.

YouTube

Microsoft's YouTube only has a mere 401,858, so their YouTube follower base isn't as big as it is on other social media sites, however they do have multiple Microsoft accounts like they do on Twitter.

Most of their new videos aren't as popular with as some of their content from other social media accounts. Like most of their new videos won't get over 20k views, only their more interesting main videos get a lot of views. Their main videos are normally ones which are showcasing new technology or videos which have a more popular topic like their Superbowl videos which have 6.3 mil & 4.2 mil views each.

Where has social media benefited companies?

Social media has helped Microsoft advertise a lot of their community / charity events, getting new products out there, etc. A good example would be when Microsoft will advertise a new product on one of their social media accounts, since they have so many follow / subscribers / likers the product is instantly out their for millions of people to see their advertisement. 

Without them being able to advertise like this it could cost them millions to get adverts put onto other websites or television, so putting them on social media is a big benefit for businesses and that's why so many do it as well as the fact that it's on the internet for everyone to see.

Red Bull have been using Twitter since November 2008, so they've had an account for a long time and over that time they've acquired 2.14 million followers and sent out 83.5 thousand tweets.

Meaning that their tweets are visible for a lot of people to see allowing Red Bull to easily advertise products / events etc and get a lot of free advertisement from it. Mostly all of their tweets have their slogan in them as a hashtag (#GivesYouWings) allowing anyone to search for that hashtag and find many tweets not only just from Red Bull but also from other users. Spreading Red Bull's slogan all over Twitter without Red Bull having to Tweet anything, each Tweet linking back to Red Bull, so if a user were to search that hashtag it'd lead them straight to Red Bull's Twitter account,

Nike is also a big company that has used social media to benefit their company. By frequently advertising their products on social mediums. For example their Twitter boasts a hefty 6.65 million followers.  Allowing them to get their products out their as soon as possible. Also on their Facebook page there's a button which you can click and it'll send you directly to Nike's online shop.