Social Media in Marketing Strategy

The use of social media marketing has become a standard way in which organizations advertise their products or services. Social media marketing allows consumers to have immediate access to other consumers reviews or to post a review about a product or service. There is engagement between the company and the consumer (Evans, Dave 2010). Social Media emerged in the late 1980’s when websites such as Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. Prodigy was first of it’s kind and was known as a ”consumer online service”. Half of the page is devoted to advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Hi5, Bebo and Orkut are all social media platforms that are utilized as platforms today.

Social media is different from more traditional marketing tactics as it offers a free platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. This allows for the increase communication for organizations to foster brand awareness and often, and

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.

Social media has grown into one of the most useful digital marketing tools for business owners and corporations and is designed to feed us information at a fast-moving speed. There are many advantages to this development as well as disadvantages. Information is easily obtainable, instant and causes credibility issues. It is important to know and understand all the benefits and disadvantages before using social media because it can alter how a person may use it.

Social media is not new. Facebook has been around since 2004, YouTube since 2005, and Twitter in 2006. What is new is how social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are affecting the way businesses market their products and services. Never before in our history have consumers been able to communicate so effortlessly with each other and with the businesses they frequent. Never before have businesses been able to interact and react to customer feedback so quickly and efficiently. However, just because businesses have the ability to use social media for their marketing and advertising efforts, does not necessarily mean they should. This paper intends to

| First, marketers must realize that they often do not control the content on social media sites. Second, the ability to share experiences quickly and with such large number of people amplifies the impact of word of mouth in a way that can eventually affect a company's bottom line. Third, social media allow marketers to listen. It is no longer one way communication. Marketers now can actually have conversation with customers and get feedbacks. Fourth, social media also provide more sophisticated methods of measuring how marketers meet and interact with consumers than

The way that individuals and businesses communicate and interact has radically changed. With the development of technology and the internet, people can connect almost instantaneously and with very little effort. Social media has come to play a huge part in the way that the world communicates with each other. In fact, a recent report shows that in a single month people spend over 25 hours on social networks (“The Digital Consumer”). With consumers committing that much time to social media sites, social networking has become an important aspect of everyday life for individuals—and businesses. Like most marketing activities, social media marketing poses some risk. However, it is advantageous for businesses to exploit this opportunity, and develop an effective and ethical marketing strategy that includes using social media as a marketing tool.

When any consumer likes a Facebook page, monitors a brand via Twitter or relates with a brand's existence on various social media networks like YouTube, Google+ or Twitter, a connection forms between the brand and the customer (Hennig-Thurau, et al., 2010). 19% of customers buy "often," and twenty nine percent of the customers buy “sometimes” due to their bonding with the brand. “There is a definite correlation between a customer liking a brand online and consumer's possibility to buy that brand," according to Social Vibe CMO John Capano. "People often follow brands on social media sites not because they find them adorable but because they want to acquire something," pointed Lieb. All Likes may not be equal (Libai, et al., 2010).

2014 reflects a drastic change in the direction of social media. Now, more than ever, consumers are wary of businesses and advertisements. As a result, the trust falls to a third party – a brand or person who is not affiliated with the company receiving the promotion. What does that mean for your business? Businesses are encouraged to become their consumers’ friends, chatting about a product or something related, in a manner that is non-threatening, and even enjoyable. The most effective way for a business, no matter the size, to accomplish this is through being present on most or all social media platforms.

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

In today’s business world, social media is being discussed on a daily basis. This phenomenon has taken over the marketing and advertising industries and has changed the way they handle their efforts to attract customers. There is a big misunderstanding that social media are only popular networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, social media are “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).” The rise of these online communities has given companies an opportunity to engage in conversations with their customers. This in

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.

In an environment where there is a significat growth in the usage of the Social media, like facebook, twitter, what's app and so on. All these sources of social media involve the presence of the Word of mouth. Word of mouth plays an important role in marketing for a brand whether it is a good or a service.Word of mouth offers a way to obtain a significant competitive advantatge to a brand.