Social Media Marketing becomes a buzz and is actually one of the most popular concepts of our period. Ranging from small business to giant corporations; everybody wants to be a part of it and exploit the benefits that it will provide.
Infact, at the first instance, Social Media seems to open all the doors for marketing activities with the direct interaction platform that it will provide for users of the social media and marketers. Many of the marketers might have the notion that if they will produce fun applications for social media platforms, display banners or create groups, they can easily increase their ROI.
In reality, Social Media is very sensitive and delicate just like a living organism. Actually the whole of social media users can be easily broken or made happy, can be easily engaging or running away from any marketing efforts. The balance between the marketing initiatives and the trust that any brand build between its user base will be the answer for successful Social Media campaigns.
Before setting up any Social Media Campaign the brands must set their goals and analyze if their goals can be achieved through Social Media Marketing Tools and different Social Media Platforms. Social Media is an eco-system where the brands can increase their exposure and brand awareness, interact and communicate with their user base and check the trends and behaviors of their client base. Social Media is very organic and promptly reacts to any wanted or unwanted actions. So any strategy must be carefully designed and the outcomes must be in a very predictable range.
This leaving organism is a source of precious information only if it can be fed by right ingredients.
There are a lot of tools to market brands via Social Media Platforms.
1. Displaying banners
2. Creating fan groups or pages
3. Video ads
4. Applications for increasing brand awareness
5. Direct Response ( blogging, commenting, posting links etc)
6. Social SEO
7. Virtual gifts and goods
8. Micro blogging on multi platforms
9. Retweets
10. Friends or Followers .
The flip side of the coin also signs another delicate point about Social Media. The CEO’s and investors of Social Media are trying to find a sustainable and viable method to monetize the services they are providing. Unfortunately just like Social Media Marketing Strategies, Social Media is also at its infancy. There is yet no rule set which can clear the way to establish a monetization system. This will lead to many ups and downs, trials and errors which will probably give rise to many public complaints about social media platforms in the near future. The privacy issues will play major role in the users’ perception of social media.
Thus not only choosing the right social marketing tool but also choosing the right Social Media Platform plays significant role in the social media marketing efforts . Plus following up the policy changes associated with those platforms constitutes top priority for a long term success of any social media campaign.
There is no day left without seeing any article about how Facebook or Twitter is going to shape up their monetization plans. There are lots of rumors and theories about those monetization actions. Marketers must be aware of the fact that our generation is the first generation to shape up the nature of social media and live through all the pains and joys of this transition period.
