Social Network Marketing
Social Network Marketing benefits businesses and individuals by providing an additional channel for customer support, a means to gain customer and competitive insight, and a method of managing their reputation online.
The most popular platforms include Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. They allow the business to measure and monitor the effects they have on their customers.
- Likes, wall posts, and fan size on the Facebook page of an organization
- Tweets & blog posts to announce new releases
- Rating and ranking videos, as performed by YouTube
Among the goals for which social media can be used are:
- Customer service, e.g. direct response to customer complaints
- Broadcasting updates, announcements, news, e.g. additional PR resource
- Promotions and Advertising
Facebook may be used for customer service and broadcasting updates while Twitter may be used for promotions. YouTube could give the behind the scenes look at a business or music band. The success factor may depend upon the goals: a certain number of new customers as a result of a promotion may be one goal; another may be responding to all customer complaints within a specified window of time in a customer service situation.
Social media is an enormous advertising platform. The ability to target individuals based upon specific interests shared on social media is invaluable. For example, if an individual watches a YouTube video about jogging, a shoe company can serve an ad, or a coffee company can target ads to individuals who post on social media sites that they are tired. Social media has allowed advertisers to refine ad nets extremely narrowly and cost effectively.