When I was younger, my aspirations were the same as the majority of boys in my age group, I wanted to become a professional footballer. A pretty far-fetched dream but one that I had my heart and eyes set on. Luckily for me, I was a young boy blessed with blistering speed, excelling at 100m & 200m races. Although this wasn’t my preferred sport I used it to my advantage, helping me edge closer to that dream.

The dream was one step closer when I was scouted by Fulham and put into their developmental squad. Although I enjoyed my time there it was short lived. I found out the hard way that I’m just not tall enough to compete at a professional level.

With my great dream was in tatters, it was time for me to come back down to earth and set myself a more realistic goal.

I was still passionate about football and I probably always will be. This led me to becoming a real fanatic, spending hours a day reading football articles and blogs. As every day passed, it became second nature to me, from following numerous media outlets and footballer’s personal accounts to writing blogs on the weekend games. It’s here I discovered that the world of digital marketing (or more specifically social media) was just as interesting! So, with that in mind, I embarked on doing an apprenticeship in digital marketing to be more knowledgeable about this powerful tool.

What interests me the most about social media, is the way you can target your demographic in your own preferred philosophy. You can be informal like Paddy Power and their hilarious tweets and still make a statement to your followers or, on the other hand, you can be very formal and still have a large audience behind you. The versatility of social media is so wide and reaches so many industries it's becoming vital for all business.

In this day and age, it is near enough of an obligation to have some sort of social media presence. What makes social media such a key component for businesses, is that not only can social media posts be used to drive targeted traffic, it can be used to build a rapport with relevant journalists, non-competing businesses and potential customers, this can all be done in one tweet!

In addition to this, it creates an open and honest platform between you and your clients. You can receive feedback from customers and respond to problems immediately, it provides you with an insight to where you need to improve and what people like about your business.

Technology has evolved to the point where social media has now become an integral part for the modern society. Social media has impacted several industries such as sports, travel, fashion and is making solid progress with the property industry. Technology has already played a huge role in transforming sports with exclusive clips from premier league now available on twitter, eliminating the need to scan the internet for the latest scores. Providing live updates is a huge plus for those who can’t watch the event as they will never miss out on any of the action. Exciting times ahead and this is only the start for social media and sports with further deals and packages to come in future.

The property industry has had to do a lot of catching up with technology and seems to be closing the gap on the other industries. This upward curve has been spurred on by the younger generation who are all internet orientated. With the internet playing a key role in our everyday lives, it has now become the expected requirement from property companies to have some sort of social media presence.The need to incorporate technology into your plans has never been greater with the target demographic changing and millennials now becoming the centre of attention.

With a lot of the buying power in the property industry still firmly placed with the older generations, you may ask yourself why target social media if it’s full of younger people? The belief that the over 65’s struggle with social and new tech just isn't the case as 56% of over 65’s now use Facebook. They have enthusiastically embraced it to keep up with old acquaintances and their younger family members. With this being the case, the onus is on property companies to be more aware of our contemporary society and the current upwards trajectory of social media, a change in eras has never been more apparent.

Property still has a way to go with turning social media into a valuable weapon, but this could be down to a lack of learning resources or a change in target demographic. Some property managers have held reservations about changing which is understandable as they have had previous success in using their own formula. However, as social media continues to expand, public perceptions and demographic change and many property managers are now starting to take notice of social media.

Don’t be left behind because of previous successes, technology has changed things, so jump on the bandwagon and take the next step to see profitable results. The use of social media has become more apparent to all industries and is now a tool that cannot be left out of business plans. This is why i believe social media is the perfect component for businesses, and as technology continues to advance, I believe we have not seen the best of social media yet.