Essay ‘Social Media as Improvement of Business Marketing’
Robin de Veer / 2535783 / IMM / 23th of May, 2014
Nowadays, more and more businesses are active on the social web. This new step in marketing cannot be ignored and brings along new opportunities. Dong-Hun (2010) states that social media is an “open media for interactive communication led by normal people.” The success is that anybody is able to produce content and share it on social networks. Web 2.0 is generated and controlled by its users, and is based on openness, sharing and participation (Dong-Hun, 2010). The ‘digital word-of-mouth’ conversations are attractive for business purposes mainly because of its huge reachability and as cost-effective promotion tool. Both small companies and giant businesses profit from such advantages and therefore rely heavily on social media when it comes to marketing. But why is social media so attractive as marketing communications medium in the business industry? This essay discusses three fields in which social media can be an improvement for the business environment.
First of all, using social media gives companies the opportunity to reach its consumers better, but vice versa consumers also reach companies better. The kind of marketing used by businesses is called ‘viral marketing’ (Miller and Lammas, 2010). Viral marketing is a marketing approach trying to promote a product or a brand by means of existing social networks in such a way that it can be compared with a viral epidemic. This epidemic can spread very fast and to a more diverse range of people. Target groups such as teenagers can for example be reached more easily through viral marketing than through traditional types of media. Social media has provided consumers with thei...
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...ers to get a better insight into their own company.
To conclude, social media really is an improvement in the business environment, because both communication between buyer and seller, and between consumers can be intensified and executed more effectively, and because analyses on social media is a useful tool to continuously improve the company on several fields. Both small and large businesses profit from social media, because they can easily reach a huge amount of people (almost) without any costs. Social media is not seen as an alternative or simple marketing channel anymore, but belongs to the mass media now. Besides that, it is ‘the way’ to benefit from relationship building with consumers. With social media as new, successful instrument in the business environment, we are going from local Word of Mouth to a new era of global World of Mouth (Dong-Hun, 2010).
One of the most important things to point out the impact of social networks in the business field is e-commerce. In older times companies project their advertisements either on the television or in newspapers or billboards. It was just an one way communication, which did not yield attractive returns from the consumers. But now companies use social media platforms as a two-way communication medium. For instance, we can see in documentary movie “Generation Like”. Companies are now turning the Facebook ‘Likes’ into the good money. ‘Likes’ button on the Facebook has a great importance. More the likes you have more the value you gain. When one like something online, a product, a brand or a celebrity it becomes part of the identity that they broadcast to the world in free. Companies are getting free advertisers in the form of their consumers (Generation Like). Social media profile information is really valuable to the advertisers for the promotion of their product. This help the companies in market research. Some companies tend to outsource their social media asset management to their advertising partners. By acting social networks as stepping stones, social media marketing can gain a lot of benefits including relationship building, brand building, publicity, promotions and so on. So, it can be concluded that social media marketing proposes several opportunities for entrepreneurs, small businesses, midsize companies and huge
The purpose of this report is to provide preliminary information to the audience about the way that the business exploit social media as a marketing tool for communication’s effectiveness, the related issues, challenges and suggestion for future entrepreneurially oriented improvements. Giving notice that the report considers the viability of the business in broad management and marketing terms only; it does not provide a comprehensive financial analysis of the proposed social media’s investment.
Before social media, people accessed the internet mainly to check their e-mails; they were physically social by meeting other people personally to communicate. Businesses were focused on using traditional mediums, such as TV, print, etc. to advertise their product and services. Nowadays, people have become virtually social; social media have made it easy for more meetings to be conducted through social networking rather than just meeting face-to-face. More and more businesses are investing a considerable amount of time and money to understand the use of social media and how it can benefit them.
Social media is an effective media of communication between the consumers and companies. The companies are using social media for improving consumer engagement and brand lift. This essay gives a brief overview of social media platforms and how effective they have been. It shows that the whole marketing concept has undergone radical transformation due to the social media interaction. The essay ends in conclusion depicting what marketers need to take care in order to have successful social media campaign.
The rapid growth of the social media networking makes life different. According to the real time internet live statistics, the internet users in the world are now more than 3,338,000,000 and keep rising every day (Internet Live Stats, 2016). Social media like Facebook, Sina microblog (Weibo), Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are defined as the online communities which allow users to create and share their own content (Bolton et al., 2013). The faster and easier information exchange brings a new trend of marketing communication established and makes traditional peer to peer word of mouth spreading go online. Social media provides a platform for consumer to engage in electronic word-of-mouth. It can be either positive or negative statement on the product brand or service which made by potential, actual or experience users on the internet (Themba & Mulala, 2013). Facebook is one of the fast developing social media. It brings up a new trend of social media marketing. Facebook influenced customer behavior and suggested to be one of the most critical metrics of social media usage (Schultz, Schwepker & Good, 2012).
Businesses have quickly learned that the use of social media as a valuable selling tool. Many of these marketing departments have set up these social media networks to exchange ideas in areas of marketing to appeal to the internet audience. This use of social media serves two purposes; to engage in conversation with the consumer and to get their message out. The fundamental goal is to reach a wide audience to generate more business. The popularity of these social network sites such as Facebook is due largely to their viral nature; self-promoting. The users of these social networking sites, the consumer, spread the word for the merchant (Burdge, 2011).
Social media was considered as a temporary trend. Something that “the kids” were using that businesses could not profit from. As time passes by, they were proved wrong. There are over 3 billion internet users and over 2 billion of them are active on different social media sites. Popular social media platforms have turn into a marketing place for various products. Offering the business an important data about their customer’s needs and wants. According to Copp (2016), there are 10 benefits of social media for business. First one is that it gains valuable customer insights. Through daily active engagement and social listening, a business can be capable of collecting important customer data and use the information to make smarter business
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Globalization along with internet have made information far more accessible via the desktops or computers, mobiles, tablets and et al and thus a business owner in order to succeed in the market needs to get in tune with the current trends of social media where the image of a company does not only rely on the word of mouth but also on the influence of social media and other customers’ feedback on it.
The writer finds social media is important in her current organization, Modern Business Concepts, Incorporated (MBC). With small business organizations such as hers, social media is important in spreading information on who the company is and what they do. Also as a business-to-business sales and marketing company, spreading the word is important in gaining customers and potential employees. Ucok (2014) uses research and experiments to prove how social media is essential to marketing. These platforms were essential in Ucok’s research, resulting in higher response with marketing campaigns proving “the importance of social media in marketing strategy and communication” (Ucock, 2014, p. 95).
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Today 's generation is all about social media. It is the new way to have instant connection to thousands all over the world. Today 's company are now doing less traditional television, radio, and print advertisement and more promotion via Twitter, Facebook and/or Instagram. Companies are invested in getting famous people to post pictures or tweet about their products, knowing that, one person can connect with millions with just one post. Over half of the world has access to social media, making them great consumers. Social media benefit marketing by giving the companies the opportunity to learn their audience/consumers, having access to instant feedback and bring awareness to here product.
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