Social Media Marketing is a product of numerous social networks, online communities, blogs, social news sites and other social media channels utilized for marketing, sales, advertising, public relations, branding and customer service. It is essentially a category of online media where people are interacting by talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking (saving websites or pages they like) online.
Most social networking services encourage discussion, feedback, voting, comments, and/or sharing of information from all interested parties. The growth of social media has impacted the way buy followers instagram organizations communicate with their customers. Traditional media is a one-way broadcast; where as social media offers a conversation or interaction of some sort. With the emergence of Web 2.0, social marketing provides a set of tools which allow people to build social and business connections, network, share information and collaborate on projects online.
Although social marketing is a relatively new form of branding and marketing, the desired outcome for businesses remains the same: increase return on investment and generate more revenue. Similar to traditional media, social marketing has its unique advantages:
Advantages in Social Media Marketing:
1. Increase Brand Exposure
People are watching less television and reading fewer books and magazines while the internet is gaining more popularity and users. Soon the internet will be the main source of information and entertainment. Businesses are using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to advertise their brand, product or services, in a cost effective manner.
2. Low Cost
Traditional media can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, and usually includes television commercials, radio advertisements, newspaper flyers, magazine ads and promotional activities such as events and contests. Social advertising is a fraction of the cost of traditional media advertising and offers measurable results.
3. Measurable Results
A company is not able to learn precisely how many people have watched their commercial, or actually read their magazine advertisement. Obtaining measurable results with traditional media is difficult and time consuming. Social media and internet marketing offers a plethora of tracking tools to determine how many people viewed a particular ad or website, and how long that person stayed on the webpage. The majority of these tracking tools are free, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, etc. and are available to all businesses.
4. Customer Retention
This type of marketing offers businesses the ability to engage with the target audience to better understand their needs, wants and desires. Once this has been accomplished businesses can cater to the target audience and market benefits to increase sales and services. Social media allows businesses to build positive client relationships through networking and convenient customer interaction. This form of online marketing becomes more effective due to the personal factor, as consumers are more likely to believe and trust the recommendations, information, reviews, and personal experiences given by co-consumers rather than by clever advertisements or television commercials.
Successful campaigns create content which attracts attention, generate positive online conversations, and encourages users to share it with their social networks and on their social profiles. The message should spread from user to user and increases in credibility because it is coming from a trusted source, rather than the company itself.
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