It is now obvious that the internet is becoming a more forceful avenue for marketing , and not many companies are ignoring it. In fact , there are businesses which have only thrived because of the platform of the internet. It does not really matter the size of your business for you to use the internet as a forum for your advertising. The good thing is that the internet has made it possible for many companies not to restrict their marketing campaigns to their regions of incorporation. One particular growing tool of internet marketing is the use of the social media platform. Social media marketing entails the use of instruments such as the social networking sites and internet forums to promote the business. You do not need to inject huge capital to benefit from the social media marketing. It is all a matter of you getting to be serious ‘with being social in business’. That actually means that you will need to ensure that you are focusing on social networking sites like the facebook, twitter, flixter , linkedin and such others. It means that you will be focusing on the networking on the sites for business as a way of marketing. This medium of marketing has a number of benefits. The following are some of the main benefits of using social media marketing: Low cost Unlike other marketing channels , social media marketing will not call for you to spend a lot of money on marketing. It may just be as easy as having an account on the facebook , and inviting friends that you will be updating to on what is new in your business. That will not necessarily require investment , and it will be more effective. Engagement of the customers This is a medium of reaching out to a customer and engaging them in a convincing manner so that they will be persuaded enough to buy your product. Imagine a system where friends are endorcing a product in a social networking site! It will simply be a way of getting immediate feedback from the consumers. Gives the product credibilty The most important part of it is that your product will be likely to be well advertised through a channel that will be equivalent to the ‘word of mouth’ marketing. You will be likely to give your product some credibility. Information spreads faster With the social media marketing , you will be assured that whatever thing you come out with in the market will easily get to the target audience and you will be likely to have immediate feedback. With that , you will be more likely to counter a negative feedback on the product before it may be too late to damage it in the social arena. Because of the above benefits and many others, a lot of companies are finding the need to have links to their social networking sites on their websites. Social media marketing will surely be the next major marketing avenue in the coming years.
Posts tagged ‘social-networking’
Headline seem like it’s over the top? Maybe a little but a report has been released making the claim that Twitter costs the British economy 1.38 billion pounds on an annual basis. That’s a boat load of pounds! (We miss you Carol. Please say something outrageous soon, please!). Regular readers will know how I tend to be a skeptic first on any surveys / research / reports that claim anything because let’s face it, most things are hard to quantify and even harder to draw definitive conclusions from. This one, which was reported in the Telegraph , set off the ‘Research Report Red Light’ quickly but it sounded just silly enough to look into further. The report says More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each. One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet. I have to admit that when I saw the headline I immediately assumed (Never assume because it does something to us, right? Go to the 4:40 mark on this one for a classic laugh ) that this was about employees and time wasting. While that is a component of it the loss or theft of proprietary company information is a genuine threat. I never think about it because it seems as ridiculous and classless as you can get but there are folks that would do such things. Why I am so surprised is kind of silly in and of itself but I digress. Now the survey was funded by an IT company that likely helps companies combat this kind of thing so there may be ulterior motives (really?!). Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate. I think the real laughable part of this kind of study is trying to put actual monetary values to the lost time and data. That is not something that is a reliable measure. What is important though is the fact that it does happen and that companies everywhere need to be more on top of the social media activities of the employees. It looks like those surveyed, however, don’t work for companies that are paying attention. Three quarters of the office workers surveyed said their employer had not given them any specific guidelines on how to use Twitter, but 84 per cent believed it should be up to them what they post online. So how much time to you waste spend online at the office that may not be directly related to your work? C’mon, tell the truth. We won’t let anyone know unless they stop by on their ‘free time’ and see your comments. We here at marketing Pilgrim consider that as the best use of your work time we could imagine!
