Social Media as a Marketing Tool

Social Media is fastly rising as a marketing tool and many business organizations are using it as a resource. According to Wikipedia, “Social Media is the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with each other. Social Media is mainly based on the Web 2.0 technologies and offers high user interactiveness. Social media is a form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks. Communication through social media is fast and offers high scope for user interaction. The social media sites can effectively be used for informal market research and researching the competitor performance. The Social media helps business in receiving comments from potential clients and customers.
Some of the leading social media sites includes Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc. These sites allows users to post articles or any other good content and share it through their network. They also other users to comment and vote for the postings, if they are interested.

Social media provides different channels for businesses to access potential customers, and it’s an interactive environment. The Social media can also be daunting if the customer is not familiar with the technology and how to use it. When using social media, business owners need to provide content from those who are familiar with the business. Even though the social media is more effective, it is time consuming and people need to learn to manage it without spending a lot of time on it.

Social Media can be used as a powerful advertising channel. Usually the marketers place ads where a large number of online crowds converge, in sites such as YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin etc. Social Media can also be used for the promotion of video, articles and other content which can be shared across the social media network. Social Media campaigns can also be enhanced by creating online communities or groups and promoting your product via them.

Social Media marketing helps in boosting your website traffic. It also helps in growing your brand or band building. Some of the major Social Media sites are listed below.

Digg
LinkedIn
Facebook
Mixx
YouTube
Del.icio.us
StumbleUpon
Meneame
Newsvine
Twitter
Flickr
Technorati
Reddit