Social media and its usage for marketing and advertisements - Research Paper Example

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING In this information technology based era every business is trying to enhance its services and products over its competitors. In this case online support is considered to be a crucial factor of any advertising policy and arrangement. Additionally, companies and industries initiated promotion and publicity operations focused on people with the help of written sources and audio/video channels. However, this policy is expensive and its efficacy is hard to determine. On the other hand, it is generally not obvious that how broadcast marketing will play a major role in the latest information financial condition that allows for exceptionally cooperative and focused interactions. Thus, in this customer-oriented financial system, companies are trying to discover additional money-making methods to promote their business services and products-line, access existing clients, and make new users/clients across the business boundaries (Phillips, McFadden & Sullins, 2010). This paper presents a detailed analysis of social media with respect to its usage for marketing and advertisements. The basic purpose of this research is to show how social media can be used by the business organizations for marketing purpose. Business people sometimes talk about the Return on Investment (ROI) in Social Networking. In fact, it sounds great, but what does it mean to the business people? How does it actually help them grow their business? The simply answer to these questions is that businesses could be successful through Social Networking. However, normally, social networking is a process that helps organizations establish relationship and then continue and maintain them by means of customary practices such as telephone, e-mail and face-to-face meetings. In this scenario, the social networking highly facilitates organizations to build trust. A company could be on top in the world class companies, however until their potential customers identify that, it would be useless to the business. In this scenario, the social networking allows the people to become conversant with business, especially about the organization and their objectives and approaches from a “safe and sound” distance. In addition, the people with similar thoughts are drained to one another, and people establish relationship with people they want to. Thus, if a company builds identity on the social networking site, it will allow drawing people who share their viewpoints and want to work with you (Tubb, 2011). At the present, the social networking websites have become a family name. Despite the fact that, it is someone’s confidential or professional life, they are in fact wonderful process for communicating with friends, colleagues, and making new relationships online (Sedycias, 2009). Since, a social networking web site is a web site where people are able to develop an online profile; and they mention their interests in profile, as well as they can insert links to other profiles. Typically, the users of social networking sites are able to dispense personal information, encompassing photographs, blog entries and videos. MySpace is an example of social networks, which is very popular in the same way with individuals and with music groups, who are able to market their tour dates, and transfer their songs on their profile pages (Hawkins, 2009). A social networking site is a very helpful and functional way to keep in contact with a large number of people (friends, colleagues, relatives, etc). Since, if someone has some news which he/she needs or wishes to distribute to others, then he/she can insert it on his/her personal bulletin board and it will be transferred or distributed to the people to whom he wants to share. Thus, the social networking sites can play a significant function for meeting with new people, whether on a business or friendship (Hawkins, 2009). Phillips & Phillips (1998) define the social network as a set of organizations, businesses, individuals, or other social entities those are linked through a set of publicly meaningful associations, like that co-working, friendship, or else information exchange, as well as communications to effectively attain desired results through sharing resources, expertise and information. In addition, a social network usually offers member a huge number of prospects for discovering, setting up novel social or commerce contacts for teamwork, social support, exchanging social capital comprising economic resources, services and goods, discovering and application of information transfer, plus producing social wealth (Kotler & Armstrong, 2001; Phillips & Phillips, 1998). In this scenario, Liebowitz (2005) has stated that vritual communities’ like that social networks normally offer both (non-profit and profit services) and are able to develop and improve the major economic and social values. In addition, these digital settings augment the resourcefulness as well as facilitate citizens to build up interaction and set up socio-economic forces at elevated standards. For instance, the AOL (Amerce Online) network facilitates in carrying out locally related business, corporate and commerce information as well as augments the characteristics like that local publicity prospects intended for vertical markets (for example real estate, auto, health and employment ). However, with no profit services and economical advantages the social networks and virtual communities are hardly ever attractive. In additional, a lot of non-profit social networks and virtual communities are failing and turned out to be a portal to the city. Similarly with no non-profit services, the city can turn out to be too homogeneous since an outcome of following economic efficiency (Liebowitz, 2005). In addition, social networking websites facilitate users to communicate with people who exchange or distribute similar ideas or information. Although these websites were originally produced to assist social associations, dealers are recognizing the prospect of these sites to offer the mechanisms to encourage valuable services and products of business. In this scenario, a very popular social networking website in the U.S. is Facebook, which comprises more than 500 million worldwide users. Additionally, the social networking websites similar to Facebook, Flickr and MySpace have turned into a well-liked method to distribute and publicize web based material. Their huge fame has directed to viral marketing methodologies that try to offer useful content, services, effective products and thoughts through these social networking websites. Though, there exists less information openly accessible about viral marketing in the real world as well as not many studies and researches have demonstrated how valuable business data and information moves over an existing web based social network website. On the other hand, the web based social networking capabilities have currently turned into a well-liked manner to exchange and distribute business data. In this scenario, the registered and regular users of social networking websites like Flicker, MySpace, and Facebook form systems/networks of their colleagues. Additionally, people over here distribute, discover, and distribute website data at a huge level. Thus, due to large popularity of these websites corporations utilize them for their business marketing. In addition, they are also used for viral marketing of website content, business products, and supporting operations for instance, several movie studios store and offer promos for their videos on MySpace website (Cha, Mislove, & Gummadi, 2009; Lemel, 2010). Moreover, an imperative and unique characteristic of web based social networks is the prospect for valuable data and information distribution down the social associations, that is information broadcast amongst associates in social networks, an individual expects with the passage of time. It is extensively supposed that this type of user-to-user interactions, as well known as “rumor” interactions, is able to increase website material, thoughts, or data extensively and swiftly all through the social network. In this scenario, various researches have suggested viral marketing operations to use the rumor consequence. Additionally, during the year 2007, organizations spent $1.2 billion on publicity through web based social networks globally, and this volume is forecasted to go thrice by the end of 2011. However, to date, there exists less data and information openly accessible over viral marketing in the real-world and too little research work has been done to indentify how data and information is distributed on web based social networks (Cha, Mislove, & Gummadi, 2009; Lemel, 2010). Furthermore, companies are spending a lot of investment on social media networking websites at a quicker pace like any other type of web based marketing strategy. Few researches through Forrester Research revealed that investment on social network based arrangements will augment from $455 million during the year 2008 to $3.1 billion during the 2014 (which shows a 335% exceptional increase). In addition, just about 25 % of small-scale companies researched by Adology Research stated that they would like to invest much on social network based framework during the year 2011. Moreover, the awareness and adoption of social networking paradigm by the companies reveals the increasing value of the utilization of these social networking capabilities (Lacho & Marinello, 2010). As discussed above, the majority of business organizations are at the present extensively making use of the internet to reach global markets. In this scenario, they create a page on Facebook, twitter or any other similar web site (also known as the social network web site). Basically, a social network website (Such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn etc.) allows its users to make a profile using the services and tools provided by the web site, In this way they provide their personal information and interests uphold a list of friends and relatives and express their preferences for items like music, movies or books. On the other hand, the Web-based structure of social networks makes it ideal for use in a variety of forms that can take advantage of the users' social and personal data. At the moment, these social networking sites have a great impact on the social life of many people, even more than millions of people that make use of these web sites directly. An organization can create a page on any social network site such as Facebook. Hence, when a customer of that organization will access that page he will tell other customers. In this way an organization can achieve popularity among a large number of people. In addition, the majority of organizations use the data available on these social networks to build new business strategies. They use this data to identify what customers like and dislike. In addition, the Web-based nature of social networks allows the business organizations to make use of this modern tool in different forms that can take benefit of the users' personal and social data. In fact, these social networking websites have a great effect on the social life of a lot of people, even more than millions of people that make use of these web sites directly (Golbeck; Conti, Hasani and Crispo). Keeping the numerous benefits of social networks in mind, Sony Corporation took a great advantage of this wonderful technology, which has proven to be successful and effective for its business marketing. According to information given on (Facebook), “the creation of this Facebook page was aimed at allowing the consumers to engage with the product. Additionally, this advertising campaign attracted more than 173,000 Facebook users that straight away linked to the Sony VAIO Page since September 24, 2010, approximately doubling the objective of catching 90,000 users, also until 2011, above 380,000 people had connected to the Page” (Facebook, 2012). Figure 1Example of Social Media based Adverting, Image Source: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Sony_Vaio_CaseStudy.pdf The majority of business organizations these days make use of the internet to quickly reach global markets. In the same way, ScotRail Corporation took advantage of this modern tool to distribute their information to the worldwide public. In this scenario, they created a page on Facebook as well as Twitter (it will be discussed below). In addition, ScotRail Corporation decided to take a great advantage of this wonderful technology, which proven to be effective in case of its business marketing: Figure 2Use of Social network by ScotRail References Cha, M., Mislove, A., & Gummadi, K. P. (2009). A measurement-driven analysis of information propagation in the flickr social network. WWW '09 Proceedings of the 18th international conference on World wide web (pp. 721-730). ACM New York, USA. Conti, M., Hasani, A. & Crispo, B., 2011. Virtual private social networks. In CODASPY '11 Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Data and application security and privacy. New York, 2011. ACM. Facebook. Sony VAIO: Advertising Case Study. 2012. 10 May 2013 . Golbeck, J., 2009. Trust and nuanced profile similarity in online social networks. ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB), Volume 3 Issue 4, p.12. Hawkins, K., (2009). What is a Social Networking Site? 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A social network analysis of business logistics and transportation. International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Volume 28 Issue 5, pp.328-48. Tubb, R. (2011, June 13). Effectively using Social Networking to Build your IT support Business. Retrieved May 04, 2013, from http://www.mspbusinessmanagement.com/blog/effectively-using-social-networking-build-your-it-support-business-part-1 Read More