How Marketing Wants Global Presence Through Social Media

By Author: Paulomi Dutta
Total Articles: 8
Comment this article

How marketing wants global presence through social media
The Internet has become a platform for exchanging and gathering information for millions of people around the world. Social media is now the current trend. It is a two-way form of online activity; people get connected with their friends, family, and acquaintances. It is the fastest growing media in the history of an event. The principle of networking is required in every space. Networking of people can happen through social media.
Social media is all about ‘social’. The use of social media has become huge and wider. Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and much more gives an opportunity to the people to share their personal and professional opinions, pictures, basically to share information about them. It has changed the way we connect to the people of the society.
Now, optimization of a website or social media is crucial. Website optimizations methods are divided into two- Search engine optimization and social media optimization. Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a strategic use and systematic approach of social media ...
... activities the goal of which is to assure an interactive web based that will attract more people to a certain website. The use of SMO is to make the information highly visible and easily circulated across the other social networking sites.
The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on the other hand, is a buzz and viral systematic process to be found online higher. It is a broader concept and SMO is a small part of it. As the marketplace is widening the importance of SEO has increased as well. The social media optimization is a support strategy of search engine optimization and the search engine optimization is a part of search engine marketing.
SEO and SMO both have many functions and advantages. In a way, both initiate a website mostly by pay-per-click. The key concept of SEO involves a definite technique of designing, coding an algorithm, writing in a manner that will help a website getting a higher traffic from the search engine. Websites having higher traffic will be visible to maximum numbers of people. The traffic is driven by search engines like Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo etc. The SEO thrive to drive high traffic need and look out to manage in certain ways. The quality of content is important among them as it enhances the product awareness.
In the past few decades, Social Media being an integral part of human life has paved a way for many things. Just like search engine optimization, social media optimization can also drive traffic to a website. SMO has proven to be a useful and powerful marketing tool. It is a new notion in the field of web marketing. Previously marketers created a website for their organization and used search engine optimization techniques to improve the quality of their sites and improve the chances of their sites being visible majorly in the search engines. The same are now days using social media optimization as a marketing strategy.
SMO is logically the very next step to improve the effectiveness of social media marketing. Social networking and social media marketing are becoming increasingly important for a steady growth in business. Social media marketing plays a pivotal role in optimization of a website. Marketers want to reach the maximum of audience. The notion of social media marketing has achieved global benefits for business. It simply helps to increase the knowledge about the proposed business, brand awareness, promoting products and services to the target audiences. The marketing strategy in social media is not to focus on the product rather keeping their eyes on the people, how they react and their reaction shows in their feedback. It is an ability to influence the crowd of people for their services. It is the new word of mouth as a part of traditional marketing. Social media largely affects customers purchase rate.
Social media marketing: benefits
• Great exposure
• Higher traffic rate
• Generate potential lead
• Interactive
• Deep market insight
• Cost effective
As more and more people are using social networking sites, they share information and experiences online refer to any brand or product or services. Cynical customers usually seek for other’s review and recommendation before making a purchase decision. Once they got the brand awareness from the social networking sites, they hop into search engines by using keywords to get the more details. The process is like a cycle; spread the brand awareness globally at a much cheaper cost and resulting in effective marketing. It genuinely generates potential leads.
Using social media optimization is to harness innovation in marketing. SMO gives more business. It has a great web presence for the current trend. SMO generates information and publicizes them through social networking sites. Frequent updating of content regarding the products and services is important. Site visitors will first refer to the website those are exciting and informative. Hence, social media optimization is actively taken up. Always the success of an organization depends on its potential customer. According to marketing strategy, direct connectivity with the customer is needed to know their interest and demand.
With the advancement in technology and social media getting more and more users, it has become very easy to communicate and share feelings in a friendly manner so organizations are trying to keep themselves updated on the social networking sites which give them a way to communicate directly. It is of utmost importance to stay in connected with the potential customers proactively. They can exchange feedbacks, queries and also chat about the organization or regarding services through the social networking sites directly. Optimizing social media for marketing amplifies customer acquisition. It has been researched that more than 85% of social media is being used by the visitors. It grossly influences the buying behaviour and buying decision.
In developing social media optimization, a deep consultation is highly required. Understanding of customer’s need and an objective is crucial for the betterment of the business. In social media optimization, strategy, planning, implementation, quality control and analyzing are needed for continuous improvement.
Under Social media optimization methods, two categories are there:
a) Social media content which includes: social news, sharing, user ratings, community functionalities like uploading images and video.
b) Promotional activities in social media: blogging, participating in group discussions, status updating in social networking profiles.
Social media optimization is in many ways considered as a viral marketing. Viral marketing is a form of word of mouth business strategy. It spread like a virus with the aid of the various internet and mobile channels. Optimized social media presence to increase brand awareness online is an absolute requirement in digital marketing. There are share buttons, social buttons, subscription options, social logins etc. in optimization technique.
Social Media optimization on some famous social networking sites-
• Facebook (average unique monthly visitors – 900 million): Being used by billions of organizations customizes their profile banner that contained all the information accurately. They create and optimize their Facebook business page so that people can directly interact and organizations can get feedback from the potential customers. The web PR keep updating the organization’s page by releasing articles and current information and announcement about upcoming brands, products, sales event and promos bringing traffic to the website. Also, this enhances the web presence and its volume. Once can also socialize or join in the group pages available.
• Twitter (average unique monthly visitors – 300 million): By creating a twitter profile with the desired name and accurate information about the organization and other details like a proper brief about the brand content to impart the potential customer a more specific regarding the support and services. After customizing of the profile, the web PR actively incorporate links of the organizations website into tweets which deliberately leads to growth in the traffic.
• LinkedIn (average unique monthly visitors – 250 million): With the rising power of social networking sites, professional sites like LinkedIn has made a great presence in the corporate and business world. There are millions of professional users who are very much active in LinkedIn. A vibrant and strong profile provides a greater chance of networking professionally. A complete profile of work experience, interest, education, skills will be influential and appealing. Making the profile publicly visible helps in building more networks. There are many applications which initiate the connectivity and new connections are always valuable for business. It is considered to be the best social networking site to market business-to-business services and products for its special features. It offers not only business but also distributors, agents or clients.
• Pinterest (average unique monthly visitors – 250 million): It is said that Pinterest drives higher traffic for business. To drive greater sales, it is important to be followed in a massive. Anyone having a Pinterest profile can easily get connected to other networking sites as well. Being a visual social network, it is crucial to highlight some great visual content as a marketing strategy.
• Google Plus+ (average unique monthly visitors – 120 million): It is just another microblogging site that allows posting videos, links, images and content more like Facebook. It has introduced group followers of users’ interest like business group, work colleague or customers. It has also created a unique concept of ‘Hangout’ which makes interaction easier and quicker. Google+ integrates more such various tools that make sharing and monitoring content across all the google services easily. Google+ communities allow creating groups of both personal and professional interest. Creating communities help in raising brand awareness, establish great relationship and trust with the customers. Google+ events are excellent tools for a higher level of interactivity. Events are easy to share and promote and anyone using Gmail can easily add an invited event.
• Tumblr (average unique monthly visitors – 110 million): It a very famous and acknowledged social media site where users can effortlessly post anything from text, photos, audios, videos to quotes and links from any channel mobile or PC. In addition, the user can customize their post from color, themes, fonts etc. Business can create eye-catching and unique pages in Tumblr compare to other social media pages, which attracts potential users especially from the creative arena.
• Instagram (average unique monthly visitors – 100 million): It is another social media portal which is highly visual. It is perfect for small business and start-ups. It gets huge followers quickly when shared with other social networking sites. Visual effects have great influence over the people. It builds an emotional connection. For small businesses, it can work as a tool of marketing by sharing stories through pictures and videos and maximizing search engine optimization by using specific keywords. It comprises of many tools for redesigning the pages and images. For example, a photographer by creating a profile sharing pictures of his or her work and connecting it to other social networking accounts can fetch him good contacts and business. Connecting Instagram with the Facebook page is ideal. It is more like promoting and advertising your skills.
• Flickr (average unique monthly visitors – 80 million): This tool has comparatively fewer users/visitors than Facebook or Twitter, but it is a very powerful tool to engage customers. It can be considered as a marketing tool where business can engross its followers in a story telling mode. Every brand, every business has a history and Flickr can help them to tell their stories visually. Business can collate compelling photos to create a story which represent the history of the organization and connects to the root.
In addition to social media application on the web there are several messenger applications where businesses can directly interact with users. New messenger applications like Line, WeChat and Viber especially have a good amount of users where business connect with them.
Furthermore, to these above famous social media tools, there are a lot of new upcoming social apps which can take mobile and web world by storm, especially in social media marketing space. These new social media apps are:
1. Unmetric: It is a platform where users generate ideas by sharing their campaigns and connect with customers directly whether their idea resonates the consumers. This portal is basically an analytics tool in social media with competitive intelligence platform which analyzes user’s marketing approach and compares that with other competitors in the market.
2. Kenshoo Social: This is another social media marketing and competitive analysis application where the user can develop and manage social media campaigns. These campaigns in Kenshoo are well targeted to audiences and helps businesses to review the budget, data as well as derive best matrices and algorithms for the campaign.
3. Bubbly: This is a voice-based social media network where users can record audios, customize it and share on the portal. This tool mostly attracts telecom operators.
4. Meetey: This is a great social media app for local business where this location based application lets user share their happy moments with nearby locals. This tool engages and connects with people especially for local business and events.
Considering the current trends in social media, the role of social media in future is getting stronger day by day. Organizations these days don’t evidently depend on this media platform, however, to increase awareness and generating insights about the brands, social media plays a vital role in that. Organizations are introducing more social media campaigns for functional departments like legal, Research and Development, Supply Chain etc. which are less customer facing. These campaigns develop strong brand reputations in social world by being transparent and providing insight about business. Also, organizations’ started marketing their upcoming or emerging platforms at social media apps and try to influence users that the upcoming platforms will match their demand. We see these types of campaigns in upcoming movie marketing, emerging electronics and automobile platforms. Due to increased complexity in marketing other department functions in social media platforms, new programs are getting baseline which targets return of investment (ROI) from social media. This platform would be above user’s likes and comments and includes futuristic customer service center, internal communication portals, and social media marketing programs.
While social media is getting upgraded, it is essential for customers and organization to spot the golden opportunities to generate revenue by coordinating social media channels efficiently. In addition, it is very important that brands should coordinate between social media and traditional media channels, by empowering employees how to engage effectively with consumers across different channels. Social media is evolving as a gauge, where an organization can become socially adaptable and theirs brands become successful. All they need to do is use social media to simplify open dialog with consumers, influence users and engage proactively, connect beyond products and services, try to get an insight of customer needs, collaborate accordingly and develop relationships. This process will initiate Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integration with Social Media.
However, there are few challenges ahead of Social Media Optimization and one of the major challenges is to identify and reach out target audiences on social media. Organizations have to target social media users based on different patterns and interest. Also, social media should be able to provide a stable platform where business objectives and goals are met; which is missing in current social media apps. Organizations should also cope up and increase their resources that have skills in engaging users in social media. Budget allocation and its availability are another challenge for social media as many brands don’t consider social media as important traditional media channels. Going by the current trends and growth in user accessibility to social media, it won’t take much time to overcome these challenges.