Author: Lucy

The strength of the market is becoming clearer for the first time since the company’s IPO.

Though Facebook received a lot of flack from the tech IPO market for damaging both it and social media marketing, this year, it is looking as though that same company may be responsible for breathing new life into the industry.

There are some stock watchers that are indicating that the fortune reversal of Facebook was beneficial.

A growing number are starting to see that the slump that was experienced by Facebook may have rejuvenated tech and revolutionized social media marketing. Many are starting to believe that if the company had simply waited until this year to go public, it would have had a much better outcome.

It looks as though the social media marketing and tech struggles are sliding into the past.

Facebook is now performing quite well and the strength in the tech market is helping to support any form of high profile technology stock. This strength is bringing a new world of opportunity to social media marketing, as well. According to a market researcher company founder, John Fitzgibbon, from IPOScoop, “What happened last year is ancient history,” and that “Facebook was a spectacular pop and flop. Market conditions were bad then.”

The company persisted and Facebook’s leaps forward in social media marketing allowed it to achieve a much healthier financial level that has only been supported by the improvements in the tech sector, said Fitzgibbon. He stated that “This market is stronger than people realize, with some promising IPOs,” and that “Apple’s stock drop is masking the true strength of (the tech-heavy) Nasdaq composite.”

With the successes now being maintained in social media marketing and stock growth, there have been some suggestions that there could be some other strong IPOs within the next year, from among consumer tech players, such as Dropbox, Box, Square, and Twitter. There were two business software companies – Marketo and Tableau Software – that went public on Friday, following this trend. It is believed that they will see better chances than Facebook did, when it went public in last year’s environment.

As a growing number of smaller companies use mobile technology, advertising trends are emerging.

Small businesses are, on an increasing basis, discovering the opportunities that are available to them over mobile and preferences regarding techniques such as geolocation, social media marketing, and others are beginning to emerge.

Recent research has shown that when it comes to smaller companies, social media marketing is preferred.

Not only is that the preference for the majority of small businesses, but they are also showing that they don’t have a strong liking for geolocation and other location based advertising. In fact, in a recent survey, 97 percent of participating small business owners said that they were already using various types of social media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, and Instagram for marketing purposes.

On the other hand, far fewer said that they were using geolocation based campaigns and promotions.

In fact, among the respondents to the survey, only 17 percent said that they were using geolocation strategies – for example, Foursquare – for the promotion of their business, brand, and/or products.

Even though they don’t seem to be attaching themselves to geolocation technology, they are embracing mobile – both smartphones and tablets – with a vengeance. They are consistently coming up with strategies that are friendly to these devices, such as text message marketing, optimized websites, QR codes, and others.

According to the Joel Hughes, the senior vice president of strategy and corporate development at the company that conducted the survey, Constant Contact “It’s encouraging that a majority of small businesses recognize that their customers are relying more than ever on their mobile devices to find information, look for deals and even to make purchases.”

At the same time, Hughes also pointed out that while small businesses are embracing mobile commerce and marketing, they are still learning the ropes. Therefore, he doesn’t find it that surprising that they are sticking to areas such as social media and email, where they have already experienced success, and are not yet leaping on board with geolocation, which is not nearly as familiar to them and which is untested for their companies.