The strength of Social Media is in the efforts put into delivering the GTG mission to the public in a Social manor. Social Networking now is mainstream marketing.
The World of Marketing Has Changed
Since October 2008, when the bottom fell out of the business world, the trust people had with anyone in any business evaporated with the economy. Social Media had already been highlighted in the preceding Presidential campaigns as an effective means of socializing a message to the masses. This monumental change in the world of business moved Social Media, or the way businesses marketed their efforts, up a few knocks in how consumers go about finding out who they can trust in the business world.
The internet also was changing during this time. As a result of the mistrust large businesses caused with buying up page rankings and prominent ad placements on web-sites the once almighty SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns used by the old traditional Marketing/PR firms to gain prominence on all the search engines was driving consumers from trusting any business placed on the first page of the search page. Consumers developed the same mistrust in the search engine hierarchy making being paced on the first page of Google mean nothing.
Consumers and businesses alike were pushed to going out to the World Wide Web to find real people who could tell them where the real deals, good products, reliable services and other Real people were on the internet.
This movement by consumers towards finding information online themselves put strength into the social networking mega groups, Facebook and LinkedIn. Consumers would go to these groups to find the answers to their questions. However, even the large mega social groups were not trusted to give a non-bias opinion.
Thus, the creation of Community Bases Social Networking Groups was started. The country clubs of the internet. These groups, some private and some public, harbored experts and consumers interested in specific interests.
All of these developments pushed Social Media methods of communicating to the masses to forefront of marketing. Even the un-trusted, mega large businesses bowed to the fact that Social Media was doing a better job of damage control for them than the mainstream media and advertising campaigns.
Today, if a business does not have a marketing strategy based on a firm foundation of Social Media they are more or less left out on the fringe of consumer awareness.
What is Social Media?
Technically-
Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers
Bottomline: Social Media is a form of marketing through social networking using social networking tools and platforms.
How is Social Media used?
Social Media, or the use of social media practices, is done by an individual or group of individuals for a brand, product or service. Social Media can also be used for non-profits as well as personal interest or political awareness.
Social Media practices are administrated through a number of internet desktop and mobile (smart) phone applications.
Why Social Media?
Bring the awareness of a product or service to market through word of mouth and the casual conversation style of product awareness content is now the mainstream method of marketing. Social Media changes the one-way street of shouting to the consumers to buy something to opening the traffic to being a two-way street where businesses get to know their consumers and the consumers get to know the business owners…the people in charge…the person who makes THE decision.
The use of social media is likened to…
A consumer walks into a store and sees a sign advertising Fresh Baked Bread hanging above a stack of neatly wrapped loafs of bread. This is how old traditional marketing was done.
Another consumer at another store walks into a store and is greeted by the Baker of the store wearing his apron. He is handing a slice of freshly baked bread to everyone asking them to tell him what they think about the bread. Then during the conversation he mentions the bread in the stack is just out of the oven and asks everyone to pick up a loaf before leaving. This is how Social Media is done in an offline manor. The same method is how social media has to be performed online.
This is why businesses should use Social Media.
As you go through your busy day it is easy to see the businesses and individuals who are using Social Media and those who do not. A guess could be made on which business will succeed and which will fail. What would be your guess?
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