A Critical Review Of Social Media Marketing

It is interesting how social media today is influencing the marketing role of many companies and how it’s playing a big role in their success. The more the company advertises on social media, the

Social media has become an influential ground for consumers to share their opinions about a company’s brand and products. In addition, it helps in having a strong brand that produces positive relations and distinguish the brand from competitors, is a critical component for effective marketing. According to Dahlén and Lange (2009) “the quality of the product is not the evident factor when it comes to purchasing a product, the deciding factor depends on how the brand is perceived” (Para. 1). This demonstrates the importance of incorporating social media as a tool to promote brands, allow for interactions, and customer satisfaction by engaging with customers more frequently for feedbacks or reviews. Thus create an opportunity for the company to show its devotion to their customers, and initiate good reputation, which can increase sales. In other words, social media has the ability to upsurge the awareness for businesses as well as the brand.

Research on the subject of using social media for advertising began with the review of several scholarly articles. The Journal of Marketing published an article named “From Social to Sale: The Effects of Firm-Generated Content in Social Media on Consumer Behavior” on January 1 of this year. The authors conducted a study on consumer behavior linked to social media and e-mail advertising. Their results are promising. A separate article was published in April on the use of social media in sales. This article, “The Use Of Social Media In Sales: Individual And Organizational Antecedents, And The Role Of Customer Engagement In Social Media”, tested a model

Using the multitude of resources the authors draw from, they study the results of a survey of several hundred companies using online marketing in order to determine the best practices for those advertising strategies. The authors ascertain that social media marketing is only as effective as the prevailing psychological factors in which social media works. These factors are inherent in human communication, not only on the internet, but in the real world as well. The authors state that there are communities of people using social media and that “these communities often thrive because the members primarily are drawn to one another. The importance of person-to-person affinity – and the ability to interact with these other humans – typically trumped the role of the sponsor’s goods or services or the presence of other features in the online communities.” (Moran 232) What the authors are saying is that social media is a new tool in order to bring similar consumers together and that if a company wants to be successful in social media marketing, they must concentrate on the human connection rather than their product or services.

This scholarly journal article was written by Denni Arli, a marketing professor at Griffith University, Australia. Dr. Arli is highly qualified and experienced in conducting studies using different methodologies like depth interviews, systematic reviews and surveys. The article examines how features of social media impact on consumer attitudes towards social media and how this affects people’s loyalty to brands. The researcher found out that entertainment has the biggest impact on the attitudes of the consumers towards social media activity of a brand. The findings of the study also suggest that the informativeness and usefulness of social media positively affect attitudes of the consumers. The author of the article demonstrated that the attitude

Social Media has changed the communication setting for all marketers. “Perhaps the greatest value of social media marketing is your ability to foster and engage with a community of people” (moz.com). An involved audience is one of the greatest resources a brand can have. There

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.

Hudson, Simon, Li Huang, Martin S. Roth, and Thomas J. Madden. "The influence of social media interactions on consumer–brand relationships: A three-country study of brand perceptions and marketing behaviors." International Journal of Research in Marketing 33.1 (2016): 27-41.

Social media has taken the marketing world by storm. Today, not only do companies have a dedicated Website,but organizations, representative of all industries and sizes, also have a blog, Twitter account, Facebook page and a Youtube channel (Wetpaint & Alimeter, 2009). In fact, social media is the number one activity on the web. Because of this, companies view social media as a critical component to its overall marketing strategy, especially since these tactics are cost-effective and produce results (Wetpaint & Alimeter Group, 2009).

Based on the behavior of people who are using various social media sites, studies show that they interact with one other in a trusting and communal way and this simply proves the strength of digital interaction and the power of connection. The main issue that the marketing people face is that consumers are no longer satisfied with traditional advertising as the main source of product information, hence social media serves as the solution to this dilemma as this has become a community wherein consumers share their own direct experiences with various brands,

The marketing industry is an elaborate network that links companies to their consumers, primarily through written communication. The main objective of marketing is to identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior, and utilize the data to influence consumers to purchase more goods. From a macroenviroment standpoint, the general conditions of a market are heavily dependent on global environmental factors. The most significant factor that influences the markets today is technological advancements. Since the release of Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, and Myspace in the early 2000s, the number of people using social media has increased to over sixty-five percent. The ever-growing dependency on social media platforms, has given marketers the tremendous opportunity to further market potential consumers. Social media marketing is a specific form of marketing that focuses on producing ad content that social media users will post on their own networks. This particular marketing technique is effective because ads and content are created, based on what personal information users post on social media. Firms and organizations that advertise their brands on social media are more likely to increase their customer base and annual revenue. By doing so, companies are able to increase exposure of their brand and widen previous hidden, customer bases. As a marketer, the fine line between right and wrong is often blurred. The amount and

Social Media is a forum that is heavily influenced by consumers and has become a very poplar way of doing business and expanding it and making people aware of your business. According to Oxford Dictionary social media is “Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.” (Oxford Dictionary, 2015)

In recent years, social media has become the best available option for brands to communicate with prospective consumers. In other words, social media is an opportunity for brands to transcend the traditional middleman (Neti, 2011). One of the many positives is that companies can build their own brand communities easily on the social media. There are some obvious benefits of brand communities which are facilitating information sharing, spread the history and the culture of brands, providing help to customers, and positively influencing brand loyalty (Laroche, Habibi and Richard, 2013).

The relation brand-consumer changed aspect. The brands have to watch henceforth what people say of them on these social media and to begin the dialogue with their consumers to make sure to keep a good "e-reputation" and to enter a relational optics with their customers. But they can also benefit from these digital social networks to try to create consumers' community on-line "ambassadors" around them, to federate them and to develop loyalty of them thanks to a communication and specific tools.

The term “Brand Loyalty” also called as “Customer Loyalty” has been in the business industry since a very long time as a model to be used in conducting business. But it wasn’t until the mid to late 1900’s that the term was actually given its due importance by making it a vital part of advertising and marketing. The concept of marketing evolved substantially from being focused on sales of a product to having Customer satisfaction to be its focal point. Studies further revealed that there was a positive correlation between customer satisfaction and Brand Loyalty.