Social media marketing

Social media marketing is a relatively new addition to the integrated marketing communications systems of many public and private organizations. Integrated marketing communications is an organizational communications practice meant to connect companies and other organizations with their target market or audience. Integrated marketing communication is promotional and handles several elements: sales promotions, direct marketing, advertising, publicity, brand awareness, and more. Social media marketing programs focus their actions on creating media content that attracts and encourages readers to share it with their social networks, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and others.

Social media is a term for different sites that may offer space for a wide variety of social actions. For example, while Twitter is a social network designed for users to share short messages or updates with others, Instagram is an image-sharing site that allows users to share photos and videos, and Facebook allows users to create a personal profile and connect with others to share posts, images, and videos.

Background

The world of social media offers user-friendly platforms to anyone with internet access. It is attractive to a great diversity of public and private organizations because of the possibility of engagement with thousands of users due to its wide user coverage. It is also relatively inexpensive and easy to coordinate. An organizational message often spreads through a social network from person to person. It resonates with its viewers because it is shared by trusted sources, rather than arriving directly from an institution or corporation. This marketing strategy, then, is disseminated by word-of-mouth, and social networking sites encourage users to interact and build relationships with each other.

Social media allows organizations to narrow their approach for higher effectiveness, to increase brand awareness, develop user communities, build relationships with community members, and improve customer service. Furthermore, social media serves as a platform for organizations to implement marketing campaigns at different levels of complexity.

The main goal of social media marketing is to attract the attention of users through social media sites. For example, Facebook is an online social network that allows users to share photos, updates, news, and to show support of something their online friend shares by “liking” it. Users can join online events and interest groups. An organization may establish a presence on Facebook and encourage users to “like” its page. In this manner, fans of the organization may receive and share information pertinent to the organization. Social media feeds content into social networks, such as promotions, news, general interest stories, music, and more. In addition, social media can help create links that support a company’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. This is an important marketing step because many organizations and individuals perform searches at social media sites in order to find social media content.

With platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, anyone can find and connect with others individuals or organizations who share similar interests, activities, or beliefs, which in turn creates communities. Social media marketing understands that these communities can shape users’ opinions and actions. By neglecting to engage with these communities, public and private organizations could miss out on significant opportunities to shape their public image and messages.

Overview

The 2000s and 2010s witnessed the emergence of social media and the decline of traditional mass media. Network television viewership and mass print circulation—magazines and newspapers—began declining steadily. According to experts, network television viewership declined about 50 percent in the decade following 2002, and this trend continued after 2012. The "big four" networks—CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC—all saw significant ratings declines between 2006 and 2016. Social media, however, reported significant gains; its usage among adults in the United States increased by about 800 percent in that time. in 2023, 68 percent of American adults were using at least one social media site, according to the Pew Research Center.

The fast transition from mass to social media fueled great changes in the impact and shaping of marketing messages and in media influence. Online marketing analytics systems allow organizations to view and assess, in real time, the impact of their social media messages. It also allows organizations to personalize and narrow messages for specific demographic segments in ways that mass media cannot. The approach is significantly more effective because it allows the profiling and segmentation of the target market and is much more cost-efficient. This has fueled the development of increasingly efficient programming technologies, which can be scaled for niche—or narrow—audiences or for an audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands. For example, information can be adjusted for eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds who like indie rock music nationwide, or for eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds who attend indie rock music concerts in Tacoma, Washington. By analyzing specific groups’ social profile and consuming behavior, marketers can tailor messages for higher impact and effectiveness. Social media analytics also provide information that may be used for polling and message dissemination by public institutions. The fastest-growing population of social media users comprises forty-five- to fifty-four-year-olds. Government institutions might find this useful, for example, in order to disseminate pertinent policy information to this specific population.

The growth of social media has created a more level playing field in which businesses of all sizes have the opportunity to launch marketing campaigns that encompass large populations. However, because the platforms are increasingly complex, mostly only bigger businesses can afford to hire technology experts that optimize their messages. Additionally, social media marketing tools are developing so rapidly it can be difficult for nonexperts to keep up with the latest tools and strategies available.

Today, mobile platforms, tablets, social media, and the possibility of real-time message analyses have produced a new business landscape. People have become accustomed to accessing information at any time and from a multiplicity of electronic devices. Other cutting-edge technologies such as cloud-based programs are also at the forefront of marketing innovations. Technology experts find that a growing quantity of internet traffic worldwide comes from tablets and mobile phones. For example, in the United States in 2023, 20 percent of respondents aged eighteen to twenty-nine use only their mobile devices. In 2023, the Pew Research Center reported that 15 percent of adults in the United States did not have a broadband service at home because they owned smartphones, meaning that they used their phone as their primary source of online access at home.

Before the advent of the internet and its increased accessibility, companies relied heavily on people spreading information about their brand through word-of-mouth communication, which typically occurred in person or by phone. The internet, and particularly social media websites, has allowed companies to take advantage of electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Consumers typically seek out others' opinions about products or services to gain a more objective review, and many people share their views about products and services on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. As users tend to see these sites as trusted online communities, they will likely be more apt to consider such opinions, which can be spread even more rapidly than in the past and will remain visible on the web. As this form of advertising grew, so too did the ability for individuals—also known as influencers—to form careers based on social media advertising. Influencers specialize in creating trends and advertising products via social media sites.

Social media has democratized how businesses communicate with their customers and the way users influence the decisions of others. It continues to transform the way organizations interact with their clients and develop best practices and compliance management policies.

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