What is Social Media Marketing?
Introduction
Social media marketing is the practice of building social media networks which helpindividuals to communicate with others. Its business organizations to grow their company’s brand, increase sales. Its help in growth of the company. People have greatly increased their use of social media in the last few years for collaborating with others. Increasing the network on social media, brand promotions. Expanding businesses with different strategies to attract the people (Venkatraman, 2017). Individuals can create information. Its share information among others using social media network platforms virtually. Noone might imagine a single day without accessing social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, twitter, etc., and other different platforms.
The social media monitoring platforms can be classified into three categories as primitive, medieval, golden era. The primitive era allowed the users to read the news articles posted on the site and provide feedback for that. Users first found a bulletin board system that allowed them to log in and later access the site for performing various activities randomly. Introduces chat rooms, ability to upload and downloading of the software. Later this service ended with CompuServe which allowed users to use email services, interchanging of messages with each other’s etc. Its later it allowed the users to share the files with one another.
Rise of Modern Communication Platforms
The Medieval era started with allowing users to join in chat conversations. Its the chat servers used to transfer the messages between the users. Many applications are provided with the golden era like snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, twitter, YouTube. LinkedIn, Wikipedia etc. Which helps the users to communicate with others easily using these applications. Users started Wikipedia in 2001, allowing them access to subjects like geography, mathematics, biography, history, technology, and many more. A college student started Facebook in 2004 as the networking application for colleges. Later it became available for the public in 2006, which helped to connect billions of people from various regions. Later it became a large social media platform for marketing purposes in 2012, for sharing advertisements over mobile phones.
Users could create professional profiles on LinkedIn, introduced in 2003, which is another social media platform. It has become a very professional platform for providing jobs for the job seekers. Its finding skilled people for the new positions in the company. Two people, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey, founded Twitter in 2006. It is the second largest social media networking application that allows users to share their thoughts, opinions, and brand their products and businesses. Later WhatsApp started in 2009, which became as a popular application that is used to communicate freely with others using smartphones.
Its it was introduced by Facebook. YouTube started in 2005, which became a popular application in a very short period that helps the users to post the video content. Share them and create channels and develop different contents. Snapchat was launched in 2012, which attracted youngsters and teenagers by sharing photos as snaps in daily life. Like this the social media platform helps the users with different applications.
Advantages of Social Media Marketing
Social media provides many benefits to the users which helps them to enhance their knowledge as well as strategies of the market. Social media marketing is nothing but using social media networks. Its platforms to expand business and promote products, services online. There are different social media sites in which they work with different features and applications involved. There are many benefits related to cost, better customer service, interactions among others, targeted customer marketing, brand promotion. Gaining knowledge about the strategies of marketing, attracting the customers to search for the products etc., by social media marketing. Compared to the others, social media marketing is quite cost efficient and easy to use as some of the services are free of cost and some services are free to use for business purposes also. Mostly, various sites of social media are free to access, share profiles, and create content.
A proper knowledge over social media networking and platforms might help the organizations as well as individual users to run a successful business with minimal budget. As people spend more time on the internet using mobiles engaging in different social media platforms it will be very easy to spread the company’s product advertisements through posting the products. Its services details in online platforms. Social media will provide different features to the marketers like they may have some targeted customers for example. If a person is interested in shopping and mostly involved in searching different models and products the marketer will be able to bring more.
Customer-Centric Marketing
Its more products regarding to the user searching interests. This may help both the user to get their wish products. Its the marketer may gain more strategic ideas for improving their business also satisfying the customer’s needs. Better customer service is also very important in social media marketing as the customer expects goof service and products with fast delivery. Marketers should provide assurance to the customer about the services and quality of the products also if they provide any customer service toll free number it might be beneficial to build trust for the customers. If everything is done correctly for the customers that will be helpful in building trust in the company’s brand from the customers.
Successful branding of products and services in the market might help the organization to gain profits in their business and increase sales. The company built its trust in the customers by posting real and verified information related to products online. Social media might be helpful to those who are looking to expand their business and collaborating with other companies. When a customer is satisfied with the services of the company then they will provide a good feedback to the company which might build the trust of the brand. Its when these satisfied customers share their feedback with others, the organizations gains success over their business and brand will be promoted in which it might help in increasing of sales (Arsath, 2018). The organization should have an idea of the upcoming new trends of the market to making the products and services of the company toreach the customer’s range and thoughts.
Challenges Involved in Social Media Marketing
As the social media marketing helps the organizations and individuals in different ways it also had some challenges or risks while using the social media like handling various platforms, reaching out to many people, attracting the customers, negatively feedback. Legal issues, no facility of e-commerce etc. No matter whether the positive comments and feedback helps the organizations to rise but one negative feedback or comment will try to ruin the organization’s growth. Negative feedback may come from customers and employees of the organization.
The solution to this is to have a good environment in the office with the employees having proper workplace without any disruptions and the customers’ feedback is also very important, which helps to correct the mistakes. Social media marketing can have a challenge in reaching out to some rural areas where there is no internet still. There may be a raise of any legal issues by posting some improper content on social media. There are several legal laws for social media and advertising. So, every organization should follow these legal laws before posting any information on social media.
If a single person is handling a social media account on multiple platforms it might be difficult and risky work. Managing the customers and generating new content everyday may cause difficulty. Having a proper idea on which platform the customers are active, generating leads and sales greater than other platforms might be helpful to be active in that platform. Its produce a greater number of products and services (Behera & Balaji, 2019).
Effective Online Marketing
If the work is done by a team or group of people, then it might be easy to organize and gain a greater number of profits and leads. Additionally, if the organization fails to reach out to a greater number of audience or customers, it might be difficult to reach the expected business. Furthermore, attracting the audience with proper content. Its information is very important in gaining an effective number of orders from the customers and enlarging the business. Lastly, advertising and promotions are very useful in such cases to reach a greater number of audiences.
Attracting the leads on online marketing is very important which helps in having a greater number of leads. In addition, people are attracted to the things which they find more attractive first and posting relevant and interesting content or information might be helpful to the marketer. Additionally, outdated branding strategies may cause a big challenge for the marketers. Furthermore, the solution to this problem is to follow the new market trends and latest versions.
Additionally, having a look into current news and taking suggestions from other industry professionals might be helpful to overcome this challenge. Its having an eye on the competitors’ new inventions and changes might be also helpful to have a successful business. So, analyzing the business growth from day to day might be a time taking process. But leaving it apart is not safe as it may cause loss in the business. Even though it is a time taking process, it will be very useful in tracking the business and helps to get more leads and success in the business.
References
Arsath, M. A. (2018). Social Media Marketing: Advantages and Disadvantages. Shanlax International Journal of Management, 6(1), 152-158.
Behera, S., & Balaji, P. (2019). Social Media Marketing: Opportunities And Challenges. International Journal of Management, Technology And Engineering, 9(4), 5637-5648.
Venkatraman, S. (2017). Social Media Marketing. Global Journal of Business Disciplines, 1(2), 89-101.
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