Author: ranjuthomask

Social Media- The Business Factor

What social media has done to the lives of people can be compared as what the transportation added to our comfort back in the days. It became easy to travel, a source of revenue and later the same split into multiple branches and added more comfort to people. We don’t see people stepping outside from that comfort zone nowadays. It’s reliable and it’s essential. I consider the same is happening here in the online networking zones. The social media has reached at a very critical point where people can’t stop using it all of a sudden. By the introduction of smart phones and high speed internet, we now seldom speak to the person in front of us. Yes, they are chatting with their friends, knowing about all the happenings around the world, but will it be any kind of replacement to one on one interaction? I believe there should be a barrier for everything. We should set it. Else it’s addiction and unfortunately there are so many addicts. So if so many people are actively in social media, why are all of the sites free of cost? I can stay in touch with all of my friends and I just need to have an internet connection, so what’s the cost? Definitely there’s a cost. It’s always good to remember that nothing good comes for free. And here, it’s our personal informations that we give away to gain free access to the world. Harm or not, we’re not private anymore.
The early stages of networking included Hi5, Myspace, Flickr, the infamous Orkut, then comes the Facebook, twitter, G+, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Instagram. The development of technology added so many features to every new coming social site. Some went with the changes, some reluctant to the changes and as a result the user count reduced. In the early ages all the social sites, exploited a very less of their available resources, the user database. All of them were developed in the interest of finding and communicating with old friends, maintaining a relation with long lost colleagues. But as the user database increased the maintenance became pretty difficult. Investments always wanted a return and at that point the owners started looking into the wider aspects of networking. They took the real world networking into the cyberspace. It was a win-win for both the users and the producers. In the very fast changing internet world, many social networking sites settled in the remote corners of internet. But others who stood in all the storm and quakes, they made the better out of it.
Social media marketing is simply the concept of enabling a product to reach the right person. It’s a simple task for a database handler. But the gruesome effort is creating the database. Earlier when Google triggered the notion their search indexes can be optimized, it went to establish a new kind of marketing strategy, make your website a good one in the eyes of google spider and get the search results to the top. A new profession came to the world and as the technology widen, the competition reached its highest ever. Companies spent millions on target keywords, AdWords, optimization tools etc. They made steady progress in acquiring business but still they couldn’t reach the exact costumer they needed and the ability to create a database for easy advertising. Enter social media.
Social media has given a human face to the brands. Clearly, and more precisely, the brands are much more concerned about building their reputation over the social media. It’s a hub of events, discussions, enjoyment, everything. Where else can brands reach people of such different demography and initialize their business strategies. But looking from the view point of a customer, it’s hard for brands in the sense the transparency of media, especially Facebook. If a customer is not satisfied with any kind of attitude of a brand, he can openly post in the Facebook timeline of their page. All others who are following that page will be able to notice it. From a one on one phone call customer service to a transparent and wide reaching complaint box. Customers love it and brands are careful. As I said the human face of brands is experienced when a person comments back to the query you’ve posted. Whether it’s Facebook or twitter or G+, you know you’re handled by a live person not an automated voice. So what social media provided for the customer is a good service area and a human touch. What is in it for the brands?
When a person follows or likes the brand page, that’s a business in my opinion. The reason I believing is, the brand got a person who is interested in their product. He can now receive every update they provide, every sale they start. The need of spending million in air-time is reduced. That’s the start of profit. Psychologically every big brand will automatically have millions of followers in every social media. They gain the maximum through these platforms. Less air time advertising, more emphasis in social media, real time results, conversion rate can be calculated, actual responses. It has wide opened the business and advertising realm. Now, how can it help the growth of small business? This is where the social media ca be utilized. If you’ve a product, you can sell it through these sites. Let me explain the literary meaning of it. If you have something to market, do it in the right way through social media and you can get the target. No wonder google is so desperate to make G+ an active website.
The introduction of Facebook marketing has revolutionized the pattern of targeting the desired audience. When it was introduced, the advertising field found it as an attempt to make money out of them. But interesting point is some who got the idea of Facebook marketing, didn’t hesitate a minute to invest in it. Results were staggering. Facebook provides an option to target a particular crowd, I mean very particular, which is the buying group for a brand. You can select the location, age group, job description, everything. What you have provided in your Facebook account will be used as a category to distinguish you, to crowd you. Let me tell you an example. A new text book containing sample questions for SAT exams is released. The company promoting it will be targeting the age groups precisely who is in their way to take the exam. It’s simple. It’s worth spending money on.
When a website is created now it’s a common notion to put all the social media plugins to it. It’s a way of telling people, we got this product across social media, so follow it to get more updates. But this indirectly helps the websites. Social media should be regularly updated with new contents. While doing this everyone redirects the content into their main website. That’s a way of increasing your page strength. It’s the easiest way of optimizing. It’s building the strongest backlinks. So just be aware of the fact that the poor content in the social media platforms can affect your main backbone website. Be clear. Stay clear.
Implementing the technology doesn’t give us result. Implementing the technology in the right way for your business gives you result. Spending enormous amount of money on the product without the quality will result in so much negative feedback. See here the point to be noted is once you’ve settled in as a business and you have a product, give a boost through social media. If the product is incomplete, the more attention should be given to it. You can never be successful in marketing it because the platforms being transparent, the company should be responsible for an answer. So think before you spent money and time on marketing the product, rather than the product itself.
It’s true we are an addicted generation. It’s true we spent more time on internet than we should be, but when so much money and time is spent in making the internet more wonderful place, we will forget the consequences. We’re marketing our values. What you search will be reached to you one way or the other, without your knowledge or understanding. That’s the power of the internet marketing.