It is undeniable that social media has taken the world by storm. You would see that almost everyone is glued to their computer or mobile device, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Tumblr, engrossed with social media. That’s why many marketers saw opportunity in turning this into a great marketing platform, hence social media marketing was born.
Following its many successes, more marketers are turning to this marketing strategy. In Brisbane alone, made4media.tv says social media marketing has become such a big thing.
How Social Media Marketing Works
Social media marketing is known for boosting website traffic and brand recognition by utilising popular social media networks. Most experts find this as one of the most effective marketing strategies.
The Impact of Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing has many benefits that you may want to partake in.
It can:
- increase brand loyalty
- help you establish authority
- boost conversions
- reduce your total marketing spend
- help boost your SEO and rank better in search engine result pages.
Different Categories of Social Media
To fully utilise this marketing strategy, you must first understand the different types of social media.
- Social Networks: You can create your own profile in these networks and use its many different features that allow you to connect and share with people in many different ways. Facebook is probably the most popular social network site as of today.
- Social News: Social news sites allow users to post third party links related to news or other items, which users can vote on. The one with the most votes gets to be displayed publicly. Reddit and Digg are good examples of this.
- Microblogging: As the name suggests, these are sites that allow users to share updates by submitting short posts, usually limited to a specific word count. A good example of this is Twitter.
- Media sharing websites: Users can share different types of media, such as videos and images on these media sharing sites. Most of these sites also allow users to interact with other users by allowing social features, such as commenting on the uploaded media. The most well-known media sharing website has got to be YouTube.
- Bookmarking websites: Bookmarking websites allow users to “tag” or bookmark many different web pages for future reference. These sites also have a feature to save and organise multiple links. StumbleUpon is a very popular bookmarking site.
- Forums and blog comments: Users can post and respond to community messages with online forums. A blog comment, on the other hand, is quite similar but more focused. The comments only pertain to the specific topic contained in the blog post.
A marketer who knows how to make use of these social media platforms definitely has a big edge. The success of your brand or business may depend on how well you utilise social media.
