Social media has opened up a new range of possibilities for brands and marketers all over the world. Social media refers to a collection of websites and applications on the internet that facilitate interactions, communication and the distribution of content created by users on a large scale (Cooper, 2016). In general, social networking sites, blogs, content sharing websites, commerce communities and business networking websites are all categories of social media (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). The most common form of social media is social networking sites, which can be classified as internet based services that allow users to create profiles, connect with other users and view content created by themselves and their list of connections (Ellison, 2007). In addition to traditional marketing techniques, companies can use online social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to sell products and services, spread brand awareness and most importantly, interact and engage with consumers. There has been an increasing interest in studying consumer engagement among marketers and practitioners. Many brands and firms recognize the importance of engaging with consumers and the long-term benefits such as close and profitable relationships that arise from it. According to Lujja and Özata (2017), engaging with consumers via social networking sites results in brand satisfaction, trust, commitment and loyalty. Understanding the benefits of engagement has lead to many researchers
Some key determinants of a successful social media promotional campaign is measuring brand reach or viewers, and the level of engagement interacting with the promotional message. Level of influence can inspire followers to take some kind of action such as engaging with your message or making a purchase. Measurables such as tracking social media traffic to a company’s website or even time spent on a specific page, viewing of various products and other such actions can also provide valuable data. These are all relevant from a marketing perspective in evaluating increased brand awareness or appeal of interest to the promotional campaign.
The use of social media marketing has become a standard way in which organizations advertise their products or services. Social media marketing allows consumers to have immediate access to other consumers reviews or to post a review about a product or service. There is engagement between the company and the consumer (Evans, Dave 2010). Social Media emerged in the late 1980’s when websites such as Prodigy, Compuserve and America Online. Prodigy was first of it’s kind and was known as a ”consumer online service”. Half of the page is devoted to advertising. Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Hi5, Bebo and Orkut are all social media platforms that are utilized as platforms today.
The marketing industry is an elaborate network that links companies to their consumers, primarily through written communication. The main objective of marketing is to identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior, and utilize the data to influence consumers to purchase more goods. From a macroenviroment standpoint, the general conditions of a market are heavily dependent on global environmental factors. The most significant factor that influences the markets today is technological advancements. Since the release of Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter, and Myspace in the early 2000s, the number of people using social media has increased to over sixty-five percent. The ever-growing dependency on social media platforms, has given marketers the tremendous opportunity to further market potential consumers. Social media marketing is a specific form of marketing that focuses on producing ad content that social media users will post on their own networks. This particular marketing technique is effective because ads and content are created, based on what personal information users post on social media. Firms and organizations that advertise their brands on social media are more likely to increase their customer base and annual revenue. By doing so, companies are able to increase exposure of their brand and widen previous hidden, customer bases. As a marketer, the fine line between right and wrong is often blurred. The amount and
Social media is not new. Facebook has been around since 2004, YouTube since 2005, and Twitter in 2006. What is new is how social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are affecting the way businesses market their products and services. Never before in our history have consumers been able to communicate so effortlessly with each other and with the businesses they frequent. Never before have businesses been able to interact and react to customer feedback so quickly and efficiently. However, just because businesses have the ability to use social media for their marketing and advertising efforts, does not necessarily mean they should. This paper intends to
Social media has taken off like a rocket throughout the years. The annoying sound of a modem connecting has turned into a soundless transaction. The wait time to connect is instant, opening a global world of interactions for people. You can now connect with anyone, anywhere at anytime at least once a day. Social media defined by Goyal is “Any platform,which provides the facility of sharing ideas, exchanging information and sending messages over an electronic medium, is considered as social media.” (Goyal,222). This is to include online magazines, Facebook, Twitter, Newspapers,Email, Blogs, YouTube and many more. Advertisers have taken notice to these platforms, utilizing social media to promote their brands, develop trust with the consumer,save money and target audiences faster than ever before.
The technology has made moving effects on the traditional marketing activities. Marketing of social media presents an online service, apps that engage in a building of relations among people by providing platforms where people of similar interests share activities, posting content, real-life, or links.
More people are using social media and organizations can use these websites to advertise and increase brand awareness to attract more customers (logofatu, 2014).
Social media is today widely integrated into dynamic computing and servicer architecture. In fact, social media can do so much more today than some years ago. With Twitter or Facebook it is possible to use networking and information sharing techniques to build high quality links and increase PR of a target site. In fact, social media marketing integration is so ingrained into the 21st century system it has become part of the entire cultural process in fact, as some authors state, it is part of the market creation process. Social media is a relatively new term that includes web and mobile based technologies that allow communication to be more of an interactive dialog between individuals, communities, and organizations. It is a way that technology is used to enhance communications and enable different sorts of cultures and groups to interact.
As seen in product marketing, successful marketing requires organizations to think outside of the box and find new ways to communicate to their consumers. The majority of consumers utilize social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube; organizations must exploit their marketing techniques on these sites in order to maximize their advertising range (Adis, Ing, Osman, Razli, Pang, Sondoh, & Majid, 2015). Not to mention, social media marketing has become more popular because of its cost-effectiveness and efficiency in reaching and engaging with consumers (Castronovo & Huang, 2012). For this reason, social networking is becoming a necessity, according to St. Clergy (2012),
According to Sashi (2012) customer engagement is a topic that has had an emerging interest during the last years, based on the development of Internet and the new tools that have emerged with it – Web 2.0 (Sashi, 2012). Due to the increasingly networking society customers can easily interact with other customers and this non-transactional customer behavior has become more important for companies when developing their strategies (Verhoef et al., 2010). Hollebeek et al. (2014) and van Doorn et al. (2010) mention how important the understanding of online brand engagement is in the social media platforms as well as recognizing the opportunities for brand to extract value from their followers. Van Doorn (2010) supports also, that it is important for companies to fully understand the impact of customer brand engagement since the digital world involves a broad audience with immediacy breadth.
Based on the behavior of people who are using various social media sites, studies show that they interact with one other in a trusting and communal way and this simply proves the strength of digital interaction and the power of connection. The main issue that the marketing people face is that consumers are no longer satisfied with traditional advertising as the main source of product information, hence social media serves as the solution to this dilemma as this has become a community wherein consumers share their own direct experiences with various brands,
Media plays a significant role in everybody’s life in modern day society, it consumes vast amounts of our time, entertains us, and even shapes our identity. Being such a powerful tool it could do a vast amount of good to help our world, but on the other hand it could cause extreme damage if mismanaged. What makes media so influential is that it captivates so much of our time making it possible to alter our views without us even knowing. Americans average an astounding 700 minutes per day viewing different forms of media from watching television to scrolling on social media. Women have been unfairly portrayed from the media by being focused on their body rather than their intelligence and character as a human being. From movies to news reports women seem to be given roles or discussed, because of their body image seemingly only to provide entertainment for young men, which just happens to be the primary audience most networks try to reach. By only giving roles to “beautiful women” that all look very similar we take away opportunities from others and create an unobtainable body standard that can be psychologically damaging to women and men. In the future if we promote media literacy and start creating more realistic media outlets that create equality for women it could make our world a much better place.
The Internet allows for the widespread dissemination of information and ideologies amongst individuals and their communities (Subrahmanyam, Reich, Waechter, & Espinoza, 2008). On the Internet, divergent groups whose values differ from mainstream society can congregate and form like-minded digital communities. Technology and culture reflexively influence and perpetuate each other. One technological area heavily influenced by existing and changing cultural norms are social networking sites (SNS). Social networking sites, especially larger ones like Facebook and Twitter, reflect societal values through their upholding of rules and regulations for content and usage (Subrahmanyam et al., 2008). For instance, sites may ban hate speech, pornography, or defamation in a manner similar to laws and common practices in the non-digital world (“Facebook Terms of Service,” 2016; “Twitter Terms of Service,” 2016). But what happens when a deviant community grows large enough to warrant its own social media platform? To what extent should media conglomerates like Apple and Google act as gatekeepers who determine access to these communities? This is currently occurring with a new controversial social networking site called “Gab” whose attempts to launch an application in the App Store with Apple and Play Store with Google have failed (“Google Faces Lawsuit,” 2017; Hayden, 2017; Morris, 2017). This paper aims to examine how consumers view Apple and Google’s rejection of the application. Do
The rates of sexually transmitted Infections (STIs) are rising among youth in the US especially in Philadelphia (have high level of poverty and public health system is fragmented) where the rate of STIs is five times higher than the youth in the rest of the US to be diagnosed with STIs. The target population in this campaign is adolescent and youth (ages 13-24) of Philadelphia, which overall represent 25% of newly diagnosed HIV cases and almost all of them are sexually transmitted whereas no subgroups were mentioned in the campaign. So, this campaign is started in 2012 to raise the awareness among the youth regarding their knowledge and testing behaviors for Sexually Transmitted diseases (STDs) such as chlamydia, HIV, gonorrhea, and
In recent years, social media has become the best available option for brands to communicate with prospective consumers. In other words, social media is an opportunity for brands to transcend the traditional middleman (Neti, 2011). One of the many positives is that companies can build their own brand communities easily on the social media. There are some obvious benefits of brand communities which are facilitating information sharing, spread the history and the culture of brands, providing help to customers, and positively influencing brand loyalty (Laroche, Habibi and Richard, 2013).