The Use of Social Media in Marketing

Social media has become part of the everyday life for most people, in part due to the ease with which it facilitates communication, allowing people to connect with others who have similar interests, and share information. With the use of social media platforms, which acts as a home base for an online community, people are able to share activities, post opinions, and update status in minutes. In addition, social media tools enable users to upload and share media, blog about an issue, and use software downloads (apps) that link them to a wide range of goods and services available. The pace at which social media is growing shows no chance of slowing anytime soon either, with over half of adults connected to one or more social media sites.

With the numbers of people using social media, marketers are quickly coming to understand how it can be an important and effective tool to create a positive influence and relationships with consumers, customers, and other businesses. Consumers will use social media to learn about new goods and services, conduct research, and share information in order to make a choice. Sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are among those that consumers commonly rely on to learn about new goods and services. Blogs and social networking sites are useful to conduct research and study a topic in depth, which can carry a lot of weight in making a purchasing decision. By studying these consumers and the modes of social media they use, businesses are able to gather data. Marketers can then use this data to develop social media marketing campaigns.

Effective social media marketing requires having goals and developing a strategy in order to achieve them. The creation of a social media marketing plan is important because it documents in writing the firm’s goals and strategies, budget and returns, and a method for monitoring, measuring and managing the effort. A well written plan will be clear and concise, covers all the points and anticipates any questions. Clear goals help to steer the social media marketing campaign in the right direction, and the ability to have flexible goals allows firms to change as circumstances do. Once goals are established, marketers are better able to develop strategies that will assist in linking the target audience with the goal of the initiative. Strategies include deciding which platform and tools to use, who will participate in the conversation on behalf of the company, and how to let customers participate in the conversation.