Every minute on the internet 100 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube, 277k people are log in to Facebook, 100,000 neet tweets are sent and 3,600 pictures are shared on instagram. Mark Zuckerberg forever changed the world when he launched thefacebook.com ing Febraury of 2004. Mark’s original goal was to connect college kids. But ten years later approximately two billion people are using some form of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, YouTube, Vine and Tumblr are just a few of the social media sites. The Webster’s dictionary defines social media as forms of electronic communication, through websites for social networking or microblogging, through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, videos and other content. Social media is a continuous evolving beast. Social media developers spend countless amount of hours thinking of new ways to improve their sites. No one can deny the importance of social media.
As a way to benefit from the overwhelming popularity of the social media companies began using it as a way to track, monitor and even recruit business. Social Media Marketing does just that, it is the process of gaining attention, website, or even foot traffic to through social media sites. It is a form of word of mouth but amplified. Through social media a person can share information about an about an event, product, service, brand or company. Through social media companies can interact directly with consumers. Social media marketing differs from traditional marketing because it provides a different type of promotion. In enables interaction and helps to building the relationship between the company and its consumers. According to Forbes.com Ninety-four percent of all businesses with a marketing department used social media as part of their marketing platform. Almost 60% of marketers are devoting the equivalent of a full work day to social media marketing development and maintenance. In the 20-29 age demographic 43% of them spend more than 10 hours a week on social media sites. Of all businesses that have a dedicated social media platform as part of their marketing strategy 85% of those reported an increase in their market exposure. And over the last three years 58% if businesses that have used social media marketing has reported an increase in sales. Needless to say, It is extremely important that a company or a brand be present on social media.
The different types of social media allow companies to interact with consumers in differnways. With Twitter companies can promote their products in short messages which appear on followers’ home pages. Those messages can link back to the product’s website, Facebook profile, photos, videos, etc. Facebook accounts and pages are far more detail than Twitter accounts. There is virtually no limit to how a product can be promotes. A company can provide videos, photos, and longer descriptions, and testimonials. It also allow other followers to post comments on the product pages for others to see. A companies Facebook and twitter pages can link back to one another. Google+ is very similar to Facebook but has the added bonus of being able to integrate with the monster that is Google. From its search engine and Google maps to the Google personalized search. Google+ has the power to use locations based marketing and promotion. The free photo and video sharing program, Instagram, enables user to take a photo or video and share with other Instagram users. Like Twitter and Facebook, Instagram can be linked between the social media sites. As of September 2013, Instagram had 150 million monthly active users. YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can
