The Influence of Social Media on Valentine’s Day

Great article showing the link between social media, relationships and how you can get (and stay) more connected with your loved one!

Bobby

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"This year on Valentine’s Day, people are taking full advantage of all that social media has to offer to build on their special relationships.

What does Valentine’s Day have to do with social media? What they have in common is relationships. Social media is about building relationships. Valentine’s Day is about paying attention to relationships and strengthening relationship bonds. There are several important aspects of social media relationships that apply to all relationships: listening (knowing what your clients are saying about you), empathizing (connecting with your clients and trying to understand why they feel the way that they do), being transparent (honesty builds trust and without trust, your business will not succeed), showing appreciation (express how much you value your clients), and being passionate (long-lasting and valuable relationships are filled with passion, dedication, and hard work).

People use social networks to connect with people with whom they have existing relationships. In the process, they also form new relationships. Social networks allow you to share media and to customize your look and feel online. People can form online groups that consist of people who all share common interests. Special occasions, such as Valentine’s Day, create a whirlwind of activity on social networks. People are looking for the perfect gift for that special person or for themselves.

Searching online for Valentine’s Day ideas produces a huge volume of new articles, social networking suggestions, commercial offerings, and live twitter feeds. Before social media was available, the standard flowers and chocolates were gratefully accepted. Now, social media is ensuring that everyone tries to get more creative and exciting gifts to show how much they care. In today’s difficult economy, people are trying to be generous without hurting themselves financially.

Here are some fun gifts and gift ideas for your sweetheart using social media:

• Create a personalized Facebook ad—You can create an ad that will only be seen by one user. You can make it as special as you want without any fear that you are sharing it with the whole world.
• Upload a karaoke cover of your song on YouTube—It will be considered very romantic if you sing a song for your sweetheart in a room full of people. In fact, in this case, you will be singing in front of the entire World Wide Web. Share your recording on social media channels so that it is perfectly clear who your sweetheart is.
• Schedule new @replies by the hour through HootSuite—Send a new reason for loving him or her every hour for 24 hours. You can set it all up in advance and HootSuite will automatically work its magic.
• Buy a generous Facebook gift (for charity)—Facebook’s online gift shop has an entire collection of gifts for charity. Whatever you spend will go to the charitable organization of your choice.
• Use the Sweethearts iPhone app to share personalized Sweethearts candies via Twitter—You can create, order and share Sweethearts with creative and special messages.

Of course, Valentine’s Day gifts are not the only things that are dominating the social media world. Ideas for celebrating Valentine’s Day cards, dates, surprises, proposals and other inventive ways to light a fire in a relationship or add something different and sweet to a friendship are all around us. In addition to gifts and ideas on how to celebrate, people are making plans to do something special within their budget.

Many popular sites, including Amazon and Oprah, have released lists of affordable gift ideas. Most websites offer a filter where items can be sorted by price. If you don’t want to guess what your sweetheart would like, Amazon also offers a wish list option where people can choose what they want, which avoids the recipient being disappointed as well as the giver not having to stress over whether he or she has bought the perfect gift.

For those people who find Valentine’s Day annoying, there are humorous gift online, such as fun things to do if you are single and broken-heart cookies. There is also a list online of the top worst Valentine’s Day gift ideas along with a list of the most unoriginal ideas and the worst Valentine’s Day dates.

With social media continuing to be a networking and economic giant, nobody will be left with a bad Valentine’s Day gift this year. Whether you love or hate the holiday, there is something that will please everyone. You should definitely take advantage of social media this Valentine’s Day, whether the result is a feeling of softness and sentimentality or amusement. In any case, a whole world full of possible gift ideas is open to you."

Source: www.bx.businessweek.com
Original article: www.compukol.com