A new way of networking and marketing emerged with the advent of social media. Today, not just individuals but every company/business/startups/NGO irrespective of their size have social media presence on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube etc.
How businesses use social media?
- Promote their product/brand
- Learn about their customer
- Address customer complaints
- Network with current or potential customers
- Use it as an internal portal where employee share fun moments of office with their colleagues
Why businesses use it?
Access to social media
As per statistic, on an average a social media user spends about 50 min daily on Facebook, and spends more than 1.30 hr if other social media platforms are also taken into account. And with the smartphone and internet boom, this access to social media has become even more easier.
User data
Social media platforms take the basic profile data such as name, email, birthday, location, job from the user. Users share everything they have in mind, their likes, dislike, favorite food, movie, actors, brands. Social media has the list of your friends, they know what websites you are browsing and for which product, what pages you like, what groups you engage in. All the businesses want their advertisements to reach their target customers and not wasting their advertisement budget on non target markets. Social media leverages all the data they have to provide businesses the perfect tool to reach their target audience.
User attention
Everyday Unknowingly we are exposed to hundreds of advertisements through various media, but only a few of them are able to grab our attention. To win this race for user attention, advertiser has to use the best medium to reach out to us. It is said that we pay full attention while using social media which businesses can leverage to create brand awareness.
Low cost advertising
As compared to traditional advertising media such as Tv commercial, print media, big hoardings, social media advertisement is cheap and effective.
Word of Mouth
Word of mouth is a free tool by which businesses can acquire new customers and social media is the best platform for this. Whenever an user shares or likes any post about the company, it in turn reaches out to his/her friends.
Creating user engagement
Businesses try to engage customers with the brand by conducting competitions, informing them about new offers, discounts, new products/services/features.