Category: Social Media Marketing

 

Social media marketing offers many new opportunities for businesses

Social media plays an important role in the lives of millions of people around the world. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter have shown that consumers are very interested in keeping in touch with their friends and family online, while also sharing their interests with others and promoting companies they like. Social media offers many opportunities to the marketing sector, especially in terms of mobile marketing. A new report from NM Incite, a social media and market research firm, highlights the opportunities that social media marketing represents.

Report highlights the growth of social media platforms

The report, titled “Social Media Report 2012,” details the ways social media can be used as a communications tool for advertisers. The report highlights the growth of several social media platforms, noting that Facebook remains the most popular platform among consumers and businesses. Blogger and Twitter continue to be rising stars in the social media space, with marketers eyeing Twitter for its potential in social media marketing. Pintrest, a relatively new content sharing website, has seen the most aggressive growth this year, in terms of users.

Consumers showing more interest in mobile devices than in PCs

According to the report, more consumers are making use of their mobile devices to stay connected to social media platforms. The report shows that the amount of time consumers spend on these sites with their mobile device has gone up 21% this year. More consumers are showing favor for their smart phones and tablets than they are for their PCs, presenting an opportunity for advertisers to establish a constant connection with people no matter where they go. Businesses are also responding to this by making themselves more available to social media sites, encouraging consumers to share these sites to their friends and families.

Social media marketing presents its own challenges

The report notes that social media marketing presents several challenges, despite its beneficial prospects. Mobile consumers have shown that they are interested in visits that are marketed to them, but only 14% of these people actually purchased products that they looked up through social media marketing campaigns. Moreover, constant connection with consumers opens businesses up to more scrutiny, increasing the need for comprehensive customer service on a 24-hour cycle.

The last year has made it especially clear that mobile is not a fad but a revolution in marketing

With the rapidly increasing penetration of smartphones and tablet computers, mobile has changed the way that people conduct their daily lives.

It starts with their alarms in the morning to the maintenance of their work and school schedules, topic research, communications – verbal, text, email, social networking, etc. – and even their shopping. Companies and brands of all sizes have not failed to recognize this important trend, and are now seeking ways to embrace this technology so that they can take advantage of the tremendous opportunities that it has to offer.

Google has been a central organization in the efforts to go mobile (GoMo) for many companies.

It is continually presenting an increasing wealth of information and resources so that companies of all sizes can understand what they need to do to become a part of the mobile web, and begin spending their advertising dollars there. This is, after all, how the search engine giant makes a significant amount of its income. Therefore, the better informed and equipped the business world can be in going mobile and marketing there, the more everyone will benefit over the long term.

There are, according to Google, five primary questions that every business should ask itself.

This questions were whittled down from the broader concepts that make up the mobile marketing world and are the heart of any strategy or campaign that can be successfully run using that channel. They are the following:

• How will the value proposition be changed by mobile? This includes how the mobile customer will be served by the company, the way in which local consumers can be targeted, and the challenge relating to price transparency.

• How will the company’s digital consumer resources be changed by mobile? For example, the mobile optimization of the website, or the development of an app.

• Is the company actually embracing mobile technology in a way that is meaningful and accountable, both to operations and the consumer?

• How should mobile marketing be adopted by the company? This includes multi-channel marketing, a mobile search strategy, and using this technology for building the brand.

• How can the tablet consumer be specifically addressed? This includes the specific needs of tablet users and how they are different from smartphone owners, and the implementation of tablet commerce strategies.