How Social Media has Impacted Marketing

Social media is a rather new form in which we market our products.  One could even argue that it is one of the most effective ways we do so as well.  Although it is relatively new, it is also one of the fastest growing ways in which we market in history.  Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and the like are examples of social media sites that practice advertising on their pages.  In this post I will talk about how social media advertisements started and how it applies to marketing today.

http://justmedia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/social-media1.png

Huge social media sites today did not always have advertisements in their early stages.  However, in order to employ the number of people required to run an operation large enough to sustain such a site, it is necessary to have quick ways to make money.  Advertisements are set up on sites so that companies can pay for different magnitudes to which their ads reach.  When businesses first began advertising on social media sites, it was a gamble on their part.  People were skeptical about it, and thought that it would take away from the experience of the sites.  But ,any advertisements have proven to be very successful.  Aside from ads you see in the margins of your facebook page the most successful type of ads are videos/commercials.  It is easy to say the YouTube is the home to most of these advertisements and can be easily found.  

Here is a video of one of the most watched commercials online of the year, and with its attached hash tag; #FriendsAreWaiting, which has generated a large number of responses to the commercial.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eubWYPhcEEo&t=21   

YouTube gets paid for every commercial that it runs before their youtube videos, and millions of these videos are being played everyday.  There is also now technology being developed where search engines such as google are able to memorize what it is you are looking for and suggest similar or related products.  This is a whole new level of marketing as now companies are able to see trends and know what the consumer is going to like.  Then companies will adjust their marketing strategies accordingly.  Pricing is especially important for social media sites because it is going to be the first thing, aside from the product, that the customer is going to look at.  

When I am scrolling on Facebook, very often I will come across for an item I had viewed on an online store.  This is an example of the same technology discussed previously.  But it is not only Facebook that is partaking in this, it is almost every popular social media website out there. 

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The picture above discusses one of the reasons why advertising via social media, and specifically Facebook, can be beneficial.  Most companies these days have their own, if not several Facebook pages, because it is a direct way to keep in contact with your customers and be able to advertise to them in a much more efficient way.  

Social media is one of the most accessible and quickly growing forms of advertising and it is what is going to be adopted for generations to come.  Use of social media is a great tool to stay in touch with customers on an individual basis and is also a great way to collect data and information about what exactly customers want,  but what certain customers tend to purchase or relatable products.  

   

Here is a quick video that gives a detailed explanation of how advertising on Facebook can benefit a business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzIkKOlaAxU