Facebook and Social Media - The Next Marketing Prospect

Long-established Ways of Communication

Traditionally, marketing communications have been done through print, broadcast and such long-established media with disruptive advertising, where commercials appear in between the content of interest for the customer.

Traditional media does provide a large reach to a marketer with its programming of mass appeal. However, the wastage is just as high, given that a sizable part of the audience would belong to a different segment than the one which is to be targeted by the marketer.

Enter Social Media and the Internet

The revolution stirred by the internet as a medium took place due to the fact that it is highly personalized and presents more content on-demand than any available medium. Social sites proliferated far and wide in their usage for some simple reasons:
The power to produce and distribute content is equally there for every user, regardless of him/her being a customer or a marketer. In the former forms of media, that power rested with the editorial personnel of the channel or the promoter, but seldom with the user.

The medium is completely personalized, and a user can form or join groups and further generate content according to what he/she likes. Opinions are free and fair. That is one reason why social media is of extreme concern to marketers, since buying decisions are no more motivated as often by advertisements. The standard word-of-mouth marketing method has grown leaps and bounds on social networks.

Facebook – At the Center of Social Media

With five hundred million (and growing) unique users worldwide, Facebook is the number one social networking site regarding activity and subscriptions. What began as a garage initiative by Mark Zuckerberg has now turned out to be the most important phenomenon on the internet.

A user interface that enables fast communication and the capacity to produce fan pages and groups at the click of a mouse button are what make Facebook extremely popular. Another important reason for its immense popularity is the big variety of social applications that have been developed and offered within the Facebook environment.

These applications can permit users and friends to undertake shared activities like playing games that run endlessly, sharing pictures, video clips, and web links, and many more.
How will this assist a marketer?

Traditionally, media plans were drawn to include television channels, publications, and any media which can grab most eyeballs and successfully reach a particular intended audience. The science of segmentation and targeting has become only more precise in the case of social media.

Facebook provides all kinds of ways to communicate with the audience, which exposes a completely different world of potential to have a productive dialogue with potential customers. Some of these methods used popularly by marketers are:

Advertising: The first opportunity, which is the most obvious one, is promoting on Facebook. The difference, on the other hand, is the fact that you can create your own advertisement in a matter of minutes as well as stipulate the main points of your target group in terms of demographics and types of discussions where you want your advertisement to be seen.

Fan Pages: Facebook permits every brand, as well as individual users, to produce fan pages for their favorite celebrities and their own homegrown businesses. Big brands have also created their official pages on Facebook that have a massive, direct fan following around the world. The fan page demonstrates immense utility to convey first hand information about the brand and also to collect instantaneous and frank feedback from your customers.

Branded applications: Among the most effective ways to engage a user toward your brand is by producing an application; this could be a game or even a contest, with your branding coming across subtly through it.

What makes Facebook even more thrilling is the way it enables you to target your communication sharply just to the customer segment you wish to appeal to. It also gives you analytics and page insights that provide good feedback and measurement about the activity done.
The possibilities provided by Facebook can be creatively explored and used sensibly for bringing about maximum advantages to any brand.

However, while performing all this, you will need to pay attention to the fact that customers have an equal say and possess the ability to reply instantly to any of your actions with a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Availing the service of a social media advisor to determine a social media strategy may be required so that your hard work is not going to be in vain.

Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.mk

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