Social Media Promotional Activities - Research Paper Example

Social Media Marketing Marketing activities are designed and tailored to reflect the target audience of the business or a nonprofit organization so as to facilitate a desirable relationship between the customers and the business thus promote profitability. The use of social media as a key marketing campaign tool has proved to be a successful tool to reach the target audiences at the shortest time possible and the least cost. However, designing effective social media promotional strategy that is effective of achieving clear brand awareness has been a challenge to many marketing managers. The paper focuses on the social media promotional strategies necessary for an organization to create effective relationships with its customers. Social Media Promotional activities Survival in the business today calls for a strong social media presence with a clear promotional strategy. It is also important to note that without a clear strategy, individuals from different departments within an organization share and tweet at will using the organization official page and handle. This is likely to promote different perception among the consumers due to unorganized marketing communication system thus organization stand to miss a chance to engage not only the current customers but also the prospective customers. An effective social media promotional strategy therefore ensures that an organization is focused on what it’s trying to achieve, what it should be doing, how well it should be done and measuring its effectiveness on return on investment (ROI) (Smedescu, 23). Branding is effective component of social media promotional activities since it ensures an organization message is consistent throughout all social media channels. Branding includes name, imagery and color scheme and should be applied at the same level throughout all the social media platforms such as facebook, twitter, Google among others. According to Shadkam and James (8), social media marketing personnel must ensure that their comments, statuses and updates speak with a unified voice. In this regard, the organization promoting its products and services through a social network must identify who represent its voice. However, some brand guidelines may be challenged especially when the company representative needs to make a conversation that leads to sharing of content. It is okay to be less formal when you want to achieve these objectives since the target consumers prevails upon the language of communication. It is also important to note that effective brand communication is achieved when it is communicated in a language best understood by the target consumers. Research has shown that organization’s social media pages or handles that use photos and images in their campaign activities benefit more than social sites without. This is because when customers see photos and images it increases their level of trust to the organization which transforms into good relations and increased sales. As stated by Schlinke and Stephanie (87), while headshots may be seen as a small thing, they are important in creating faster opportunity to engage and relate with the target audience virtually. Customers are also likely to question the credibility and authenticity of promotional messages when they lack photos and may perceive the poster as a novice user. For instance an organization can use its traditional corporate image on its page while a casual bet yet a professional image should be used for a facebook, twitter or other social network pages. Brand ambassadors play an important role in promoting company’s products. Through the social media network, social media marketing can advertise and promote their products and services through the brand ambassadors. Schlinke and Stephanie (86), defines brand ambassadors as current loyal fans and customers who help a company in spreading information about your products and services through their social networks. Using social media ambassadors to promote a product can be achieved through their identification, harnessing and rewarding them for spreading information about your brand through a social media network. According to Schaffer (5), more than 92% of people buying goods and services through social networks trust referrals and recommendations from family and friends more than any other form of promotion. Social media promotion is best achieved through engaging customers in conversation thus is about the convergence of information through effective communication. As Ryan and Calvin (168) states, what individuals share or talk about with the users of the media is important. Content is important since it enables marketers to engage in conversation with customers thus creating social media promotional content that is resourceful, sharable and impacts positively in creating an effective relationship in the long run. The most common Social media content include photos, blog posts and videos. It is however important to broaden the content used in your campaign and incorporates infographics, presentations, memes as well as discussions and conversations on other platforms such as LinkedIn. Social media creates a platform for a company to educate and inform its audience. As stated by Schaffer (5), social media is different from other web presence since it provides a platform for individuals with related interests to interact. They also argued that it provides a two way information system unlike most promotional activities such as advertisements in the newspapers, bill boards, websites and other traditional media. An effective promotional activity through the social media can therefore be achieved by engaging the social media community. This can be achieved by taking time to think about the target audience, creating the right content and selecting an appropriate platform and starting conversation with the community. According to Ryan and Calvin (169), it is always important to introduce new promotional strategies to engage customers since you are not talking to promote discounts or new products but instead you are talking with them. It is therefore important to ensure promotional campaigns through social media incorporate the social aspect of the social media platform and combines its viral functionality. This is likely to trigger an engagement from customers, funs and followers in an exciting new way. Implementation of new campaigns should be done on a regular basis and should be specific and focused on calendar, promotional, or seasonal events. After developing the right content and selecting the right audience for your content, it is important to focus on delivery strategy as a campaign tool. According to Schlinke and Stephanie (88), social media content delivery should mainly focus on quality rather than quantity. It is therefore important to be consistent and dependable with content delivery in order to nurture and grow a community within social media. In this respect, marketers should create content that is interesting to their followers and together with their own content in order to capture their attention. As Shadkam and James (9), states, if your content is wholesomely about yourself, nobody would give it a second thought. Sharing a meaningful content especially when selling products to consumers I of great importance in promotion and advertising your products. A company selling products directly to the customers can develop an effective promotion strategy by sharing more photos with the developed community as well as sharing resourceful information and stories about your brand in order to nudge people into realizing that they need your product (Smedescu, 27). After successfully developing and delivering a promotional strategy, marketers must be prepared to handle crisis and trouble in order to ensure consistency and sustainability of a particular social media campaign. Social media provides the fastest ways of spreading information thus social media marketing personnel must be prepared to handle crisis if it arises. For instance, an attempt to take over control of a company’s social media channels by fanatics with a different agenda. Schaffer (5) suggests complete integration of social media marketing into an organization’s crisis management planning. It is however important to act proactively by building a social media community and ambassadors of good will with followers of an organization’s brand thus reinforcing trust and creating more brand advocates. Conclusions Social media is an important tool that can be utilized to promote/advertise products and services by an organization through connecting with clients and prospects and creating effective relationship with them. Like any other promotional activity, social media advertising can be well utilized when planned carefully. It is always important to educate, inform and keep a community of brand ambassadors engaged through the use of social media tools. Creating a brand and developing effective content of a social media marketing campaign are very crucial for success of social media campaign. Since social media promotional activities do not promote only discounts or new products but engages a community of customers, it is therefore important to ensure promotional campaigns through social media incorporate the social aspect of the social media platform and combines its viral functionality. Last but not list, it is important to prepare and implement an integrated crisis management plan to manage crisis that may arise from fanatics trying to takeover an organization’s social media platform for a different agenda. Works Cited Ryan, Damian, and Calvin Jones. Understanding Digital Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Engaging the Digital Generation. London: Kogan Page, 2009. Schaffer, Neal. "Social Media Strategy." Sales & Service Excellence 13.11 (2013): 4-5. Schlinke, Jennette, and Stephanie Crain. "Social Media from an Integrated Marketing and Compliance Perspective." Journal of Financial Service Professionals 67.2 (2013): 85-92. Shadkam, Mahdi, and James OHara. "Social Commerce Dimensions: The Potential Leverage for Marketers." Journal of Internet Banking & Commerce 18.1 (2013): 1-14 Smedescu, Dan Alexandru. "Social Media Marketing Tools." Romanian Journal Of Marketing 4 (2013): 23-29. Read More