Social Media Marketing – An Overview
Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc., These are all examples
of social media, and I bet as soon as you hear these words, you can add at
least another three sites to the list off the top of your head. But what is
social media?
Social media essentially is a category of online media where
people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online.
Most social media services encourage discussion, feedback, voting, comments,
and sharing of information from all interested parties.
It's more of a two-way conversation, rather than a one-way
broadcast like traditional media. Another unique aspect of social media is the
idea of staying connected or linked to other sites, resources, and people.
According to Ron Jones' - "Social media essentially is
a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing,
networking, and bookmarking online."
There is a wide variety of social media, ranging from social
sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr through social networks such as
LinkedIn and Facebook.
In my opinion, social media has shot to the forefront of
people's attention because it's fun. Thanks to social media, it's easy to share
your ideas, photos, videos, likes and dislikes, with the world at large - and
find out what they think of them. You can find friends, business contacts and
become part of a community or a bunch of different communities.
Social media
gives you what TV never could - a chance to be engaged and engage others.
Because of this, social media is of particular interest to
businesses. Currently, businesses of all sizes are experimenting with social
media marketing, grappling with the question of how to get in on what appears
to be an especially viral way to get their message (and their products) out
there.
Insight of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a recent addition to
organizations’ integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing
communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their
targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements
of the promotional mix; advertising, personal selling, public relations,
publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion. Increasingly also viral
marketing campaigns are grouped to integrated marketing communications.
In the traditional marketing communications model, the
content, frequency, timing, and medium of communications by the organization is
in collaboration with an external agent, i.e. advertising agencies, marketing
research firms, and public relations firms. However, the growth of social media
has impacted the way organizations communicate. With the emergence of Web 2.0,
the internet provides a set of tools that allow people to build social and
business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online.
Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to
create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with
their social networks. A corporate message spreads from user to user and
presumably resonates because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to
the brand or company itself.
Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible
to anyone with internet access. Increased communication for organizations
fosters brand awareness and better customer service. Additionally, social media
serves as a relatively inexpensive platform for organizations to implement
marketing campaigns. With emergence of services like Twitter, the barrier to
entry in social media is greatly reduced.
Social media marketing is also known as SMO - Social Media
Optimization, benefits organizations and individuals by providing an additional
channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight,
recruitment and retention of new customers/business partners, and a method of
managing their reputation online. Key factors that ensure its success are its
relevance to the customer, the value it provides them with and the strength of
the foundation on which it is built.
Finally it is a strong foundation to serves as a stand or
platform in which the organization can centralize its information and direct
customers on its recent developments via other social media channels, such as
article and press release publications, etc.
Kinds and benefits of Social Media
Many social media sites come in the form of a blog, micro
blog, podcast, video cast, forum, wiki, or some kind of content community. To
help you understand social media better, let's break them down into basic forms
or groups.
Social news:
Sites like Digg, Sphinn, Newsvine, and BallHype let you read about news topics
and then vote and/or comment on the articles. Articles with more votes get
promoted to a more prominent position.
Social sharing:
Sites like Flickr, Snapfish, YouTube, and Jumpcut let you create, upload, and
share videos or photos with others.
Social networks:
Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter allow you to find and link
to other people. Once linked or connected, you can keep up to date with that
person's contact info, interests, posts, etc. Many people are connecting to
friends and business associates with whom they had fallen out of touch. It's
bringing the world together like nothing else has.
Social bookmarking:
Sites like Delicious, Faves, StumbleUpon, BlogMarks and Diigo allow you to find
and bookmark sites and information of interest. You can save your bookmarks
online and access them from anywhere or share them with others.
This is just a sampling of social media sites. More are
added daily. Breaking them down into these categories or groups will help you
understand their focus and to consider which avenue is right for your approach
to social media marketing.
Key Benefits:
Let's look at the general scope of social media universe.
- Five of the top 10 fastest-growing Web brands are user-generated content sites?
- Sixty-seven percent of businesses say that the best source for advice on products and services are their consumers?
- Forty-five percent of adult Internet users have created content online?
- There are about 1.2 million blog posts per day?
So do you think it would benefit you to tap into this
ever-growing universe of social media? Absolutely! Many companies are trying to
figure out how to get involved. They're shifting money from traditional
marketing budgets to social media marketing because it:
- Helps manage company's or brand's reputation.
- Builds brand awareness and helps improve how people view your brand.
- Gets you closer to your customers. Learn about their needs then respond. Discuss converse, debate.
- Offers creative and effective ways to learn insights not previously available.
- Features new and inexpensive ways to support your clients.
- Is typically less expensive than traditional advertising.
- Offers various ways to measure and track performance.
Listed above are some of the key benefits to use the social
media is the best channel to promoting the products or services through
internet.
Source: scribd.com and searchenginewatch.com
