Social media sites have become a powerful force in shaping public opinion on virtually every aspect of commerce. Because they amplify word-of-mouth marketing, they are becoming increasingly important in consumer‘s purchasing decisions. To keep up, businesses must learn to leverage these sites. Here, social networks are described along with ways in which your business can participate in the conversation and influence your message.
What is Social Media?
Social media is online communication of people who typically share a common interest or activity. They provide a variety of ways for users to interact with each other – blogs, e-mail, instant messaging, and newsfeeds which contain information that is valuable to those in your network. They are powerful in their ability to facilitate communication. Examples of social networking sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
In general, when users join a social networking site they create a profile of themselves. The profile de-scribes their interests and activities. Once the profile is set up, users connect with friends or followers (other users) who have similar interests by searching the network, or inviting others to join. Most services require that both users confirm that they are friends before they become linked into each other’s network. Once linked in, it is simple to communicate to your group and update them on your activities of interest. Because users tend to self-organize by affinity, life stage, and psychographics, these networks offer a unique opportunity for highly targeted marketing.
How Social Media Affects Purchase Decisions
Users share opinions and make recommendations on social networking sites. It has been repeatedly shown that consumers seek other’s opinions when considering the purchase of products and services. In fact, 78% of global consumers say they trust and believe other people‘s recommendations for products and services more than any other medium. Among social network users, others‘ opinions are also seen as more objective than companies‘ own marketing messages. Consumers use online sources including social networks to find those opinions. Members of social networks serve two roles: they both supply and consume content. The creators of content are typically highly engaged consumers and, as a result, influential. If the proper influencers are reached with a message that they perceive as valuable, it can become viral. This is tremendously powerful to marketers, as users don‘t feel that the information is being pushed at them, but referred to them by a trusted friend in a trusted network.
Social Networking Usage
Social Networking can be a component of numerous business initiatives, including:
- Amplifying word-of-mouth marketing
- Market research
- New client acquisition
- Idea generation & new product development
- Co-innovation
- Customer service
- Public relations
- Employee communications
- Reputation management
The Benefits of Social Media Marketing
The benefits to marketing via social networks are nu-merous and largely gained at a very low cost. Through social media marketing, your company can:
- Increase product and brand awareness
- Increase web traffic
- Improve SEO
- Increase customer loyalty
- Increase success of new product launches
- Highly target communication
Increase Product & Brand Awareness
Marketing on social networking sites will increase awareness of your business by increasing the online presence of your company‘s products and brand. A recent Social Media Survey revealed that 48% of SEO Marketers proactively place content on popular social networking sites to drive traffic and create brand awareness. When your company forms a group or organizes a promotion on a social networking site, the members are reminded of your brand and website with every interaction. Since the customers are deciding what groups they want to join and what information they want to receive, this information is usually positively received.
Increase Web Traffic
Communications, recommendations, and other postings on social networking sites often contain web links. When your company is mentioned and a link is in-cluded, these postings drive traffic to your site, increasing brand and product awareness. Due to the makeup of social media, these links are naturally targeted to potential customers that are interested in your products and services.
Improve SEO
As mentioned previously, when your company is dis-cussed online, the content is most often accompanied by web links. The more links to your content, the higher your ranking in search engine results, resulting in more people reading your content. Consequently, social media marketing campaigns should be an integral part of any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy. Search engines weigh the value of each link in context, and as they relate to your website. As a result, links from social networking sites have more value, because they appear completely natural to the search engines – users are sharing content perceived as valuable and then link-ing back to that content. Not only are these links more valuable than paid links, but also they are significantly less expensive. Additionally, sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others enable the sharing, tagging and bookmarking of news, articles, postings, and other infor-mation. When a piece of information is marked by any of these services, it will be visited by others and will show up in searches. The more your brand‘s content is marked, the higher it is ranked by search engines.
Increase Customer Loyalty
When done correctly, promoting your business by building a social media network can greatly enhance your customer loyalty. Your company can add value to their brand by supplying useful content that is both personal and valuable, which will ultimately enhance your reputation while building trust and credibility at the same time.
Increase Success of New Product Launches
Social media will provide a unique opportunity to survey your relevant community on their wants and needs. The community can guide and participate in the product development process. Giving them a voice in the process can increase loyalty and guarantee success when a new prod-uct, promotion or store is launched.
Highly Target Communication
Users of social media sites profile themselves upon joining a network. These profiles can be very detailed, and their purpose is to help the user connect with others who share similar interests and activities. The profiles contain detailed information on their education, areas of technical expertise, publications, memberships in other groups, geographic location, and job position (among other information). For your company, this information is invaluable as it can be used to develop highly targeted marketing messages.