Myquestions

1. The changing business environment

With most businesses venturing into the internet realm there has been a great pressure for most businesses to start to engage in internet marketing, with the success with this type of marketing the businesses have decided to embrace new forms of marketing.

Social media has become a very good source of cheap marketing for  most businesses, marketing has moved a away from most traditional media to online and this has helped this boom, the following applications shall be mentioned in this presentation, Twitter, Facebook, digg, Technorati, stumbleupon. Social media is very useful because of its viral nature so the marketing method employed by social media is viral marketing.

Businesses no longer have to spend millions on marketing that is not measurable like billboard advertising and get into advertising that  is more personal

1.1 Why market through social media?

•    Measurable – social media is part of online media which is one of the most measurable forms of direct marketing that is available to date.
•    Sustainable – Social media marketing is also sustainable as it does not take up too much of the companies recourses
•    Control – Companies can have control on the image of the brands and customers also can have control over the brand.
•    Public Relations – Social media can act as a companies channel for public relations, companies can hear mentions about their brand and see what people think about the brand.

1.2 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Brand Awareness – customers will be aware of all that is happened regarding your company and
Building of Customer relationships – this will give your company public face that people can interact with.
Brand activation – this can also help start of a old company or re-brand a new company.
Cost – he costs are far much less and the results are a lot more measurable that other traditional forms of media
Viral – Most social media applications are very viral, this is the fact that people can keep resending the information to friends who in turn send it to more people who might become potential customers.

2. More interactive communication channels

Social media marketing has flourished as a result of more interactive communication channels; we can look at it from a number of select social media applications that can be used for social media marketing.

2.1 Applications for marketing and their uses:

Facebook
Facebook is the most popular social media application that is around, with over 300 million users it is a very good place to start marketing your business, it supports advertising which can be segmented according to a endless list of demographics like age, gender, sex, location, and even interests. Creation of Facebook groups can also help a company keep in touch with its customers.

Twitter
Twitter is a communication tool that businesses can use to give consumers awareness and to also monitor their brand online.  Out of all the social media applications twitter is arguably the hardest to understand.

An application like Tweet deck allows you to manage  multiple accounts and viewing of the traffic and statistics that you can get from your tweets

StumbleUpon
You can use this to get people to go to your site based on their interests, they can also vote for it with regards to how much they like the site they stumble to. Stumbleupon recommends sites to its users based on their interests and allows them to send their friends certain websites that they like.

Digg

Digg is also another very interactive communication tool for your users, this website empowers its users to vote for content that they see being posted on it, with this they can promote articles therefore boosting traffic to these articles from the site. The theory is that the most popular submissions get the most traffic.

Youtube
Creating interesting videos of products ands and services that will in turn become viral, also the creation of channels and playlists that can be accessed in a certain sequence to control how the user sees the brand. Also you tubes embed function allowing people to post the video on any website on the www,  and if the video has been tagged properly it will make you go back to the site and find out what the brand is about. Here is a example where social media marketing was used to promote the brand awareness of DC Shoes.

3. Consumer Demands and needs

Social media is also very good at addressing consumer demands and needs

It does this in the following ways:

•    The large benefit of social media is that it gives a lot of consumers the satisfaction of interaction of the brand

•    They can also play a role as brand ambassadors they can recommend your business to friends much easier.

•    They can help change the brand by giving the company useful input on what they like and dislike.

•    Social media plays a big part in customer service. Customers need immediate answers to their problems and social media can provide that for them
•    Customers no longer demand speed but satisfaction with their service, in regards to the effectiveness of the communication channel.

Shortfalls of social media

•    Most platforms have a us market, so a lot of the users are not searching for what we are offering
•    It is still a growing trend in South Africa, as most people do not understand the applications for example twitter

•    A lot of South Africans are still struggling to get affordable internet access

•    Most businesses do not see the value of advertising online.

4. Conclusion

World moves more into the digital realm this has resulted in social media indefinitely changing the way businesses market their services, it is going to be much more popular due the fact that it is much more measurable, interactive and its viral nature.