Business Side Of Social Media

Not long before one year, I considered social media as a platform to post pictures, articles or simply socialize with friends. But when I try to understand it’s power to harness the social capital and interest of users, I realize how effective it can be for business marketers. Social platforms have become marketing giants now.  They are incredible digital marketing resources for businesses looking to promote their brands online. Let me summarize why social media should be considered as one of the digital marketing channel for businesses:

Targeted Campaign: Facebook, for instance, has large user base of more than 2 billion active users today and campaign can be targeted as per demographic and interest of potential customers.

Product Awareness: Whether the product is B2B or B2C or meant for mass segment or a niche segment, social media is more effective for any product to reach out to a specific segment. Even companies such as Maersk Line, one of the biggest shipping company, generated brand awareness using social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Engage Communities: When marketers want to build sustained relationships with customers and have them engaged for long term to create communities instead of creating one time campaign to launch a product, social media is very effective.

Listen to Communities: Social media is the best channel to have two way interactive dialogues with your customers to listen to their feedbacks and issues.

Show Human Side: For technical companies such as Cisco or shipping company such as Maersk, it was difficult to show the fun and human side of its involvement in the community. Digital campaign through social media was innovative step in marketing to reflect the interesting side of company to its potential customers.

Organic Growth: Social media is the right channel when marketers want organic growth through customer generated content instead of buying media which is a synthetic way of generating content.

Disrupt Market: Campaign can go viral if product has potential to disrupt the existing market. Marketers have to identify the right digital tools to spread the buzz and Social media can increase the “share of voice” online. Twitter is a great tool. Hashtags help boost posts, and if a user with a lot of followers retweets, your content can go viral.

Self Branding: If marketers want customers to be the brand ambassador of the product, social media is the best channel to involve them. Campaign can go viral and customers will be at the forefront to do the branding by sharing photos and videos with your product on say Instagram.

Reach to Early Adopters: You tube and LinkedIn are effective social media tools to reach out to ‘uber users’ - innovators and early adopters, as technical community keep an eye on these platforms for the latest offerings.

Studies have shown that by engaging with your customers on social, you’re more likely to increase brand loyalty and customer retention so it’s time to consider it as a prominent digital marketing channel.