Social Media
Marketing is a form of marketing using the social media platforms and websites
to promote the products or services. Many social media platforms have integral
data analytic tools for tracking of company’s progress, success, and engagement
of advertising campaigns. The companies address various stakeholders including
existing and potential customers, employees, bloggers, journalists and the
public through social media marketing.
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| Social Media Marketing tools are helpful for Marketing activities. (Photo by Gerd Altmann) |
Social Media
Marketing Strategies
1. Implementation of social media marketing
campaign.
2. Management and
control of social media marketing.
3. Setting the scope of
marketing.
4. Establishment of
desired social media “culture and tone".
For effective use of social media, companies should learn to allow
customers and internet users to post user-generated contents such as online
comments and product reviews etc. Today, almost all the companies, as well as
not-for-profit organizations and government organizations, are engaging in
social media marketing for promoting their products, services or programs.
Social Media
Marketing Tools
Twitter
Most of the companies are using ‘Twitter’ to promote their
products and services in the form of short messages known as ‘tweets’
having a limit of 140 characters that appear on followers' Home
timelines. The tweets can contain text, photos, videos, animated gif pictures,
Emoji, or links to the product's website and other social media profiles. The
companies use Twitter for customer support services available
for 24/7 and answer promptly to improve brand loyalty and
appreciation.
Facebook
The companies with more details about products and services than
Twitter accounts commonly use Facebook pages. Facebook pages allow the
companies to provide photos, videos, longer descriptions and testimonials of
products and services and facilitate the followers to comment on product pages
for others to see. Facebook can link back to product's Twitter page as well as
send out event reminders. In the mid of 2015, 93% of
business marketers were using Facebook to promote their brands.
Google+
Google+ provides pages and some relevant features of Facebook
integrated with the Google search engine, Google AdWords, and Google Maps.
Google+ also providing targeted advertising methods, navigation services, and
other forms of location-based
marketing and promotion with the development of Google Personalized
Search. Google+ is also profitable for Social Media Marketing.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a professional business-related networking site which
allows the firms to provide their professional business profiles to the network
and meet the other people. By using widgets on LinkedIn, the members can
promote their social networking activities. LinkedIn provides an opportunity
for the members to generate sales leads and business partners and allow
business owners to promote their products or services and interact with their
customers. The leading companies prefer to use LinkedIn for the recruitment
cases as well as sharing of information among the business partners.
WhatsApp
WhatsApp could be a helpful social media tool for building and
transmittal messages and calls quickly and dependably anyplace within the
world. WhatsApp currently supports a secured sending and receiving a spread of
media including text, photos, videos, documents, location, yet as voice calls
with end-to-end secret writing and no person will listen or scan them as well
as WhatsApp itself. Marketers to send personalized promotional messages to the
customers are using WhatsApp and a series of bulk messages to their targeted
customers using broadcast option. Due to the cost-effective promotional tool,
companies have started using WhatsApp for quick messages.
Yelp
Yelp, similar to Yellow Pages, contains a comprehensive online
index of business profiles, operating in seven different countries including
the United States and Canada. Yelp allows the business account holder to
create, share and edit their business profiles, post information about their
business locations, contact information, pictures, and service information.
This website also facilitates the business persons and general members to post
their reviews about businesses, use messaging, and talk features.
Instagram
The marketers consider Instagram as a potential platform to
promote their brands to the public, especially the younger target group. As
Apple and Android system support Instagram, so it is easily accessible by
smartphone users. When it promotes the brands or businesses, Instagram's main
goal is to help firms to reach their target audiences through attractive images
in a rich and visual environment. Instagram also provides a platform for the
users and the company to communicate publicly and directly. The marketers use
Instagram as a powerful platform to reach their potential customers and
prospects through sharing pictures and brief messages. According to a
study, 71% of world's largest brands are now using Instagram as a
marketing channel.
YouTube
YouTube is another popular platform for advertisement to suit the
target audience. YouTube brings the advertisers and presents ads with videos
relevant to the content. It also provides the promotional opportunities such as
sponsoring a video is also possible on YouTube. YouTube promotes the products
and services of companies and enables the publishers to earn money through its
YouTube Partner Program.
Blogs
Blogs facilitate the business or company to provide a long
description about their products and services including testimonials and link
to other social media networks and blog pages. Companies that know the need for
information, innovation and user-friendliness employ blogs to make their
products and services more popular, unique and ultimately reach out to
consumers. To improve the business-consumer relationship, businesses have to be
aware of four key assets that consumers maintain: information, involvement,
community, and control.
