The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
From the beginning, social media has had an important impact on all of us. Social media started out as a method for people to either connect or reconnect with each other. At this point, social media has become much more.
Business people use marketing to successfully grow their businesses and to get their word out in a tremendous way. The most effective marketing approach is one that uses social media and traditional marketing in tandem. Business owners have figured out that social media marketing (SMM) has a very positive effect on the success of business and it is a method that takes very little money to accomplish a solid end result.
Social media marketing plus traditional marketing
Marketers are using traditional forms of marketing (radio, television and print) as well as using the Internet to reach out to customers and potential customers and getting those customers and potential customers to reach out to them.
The number of people who regularly use various social media channels has grown dramatically and more and more people are getting more and more involved with social media to grow their businesses and to build relationships with other people all of the time. It is one of the easiest, least expensive, and most effective ways to gain exposure and to strengthen your business’s reputation.
Social media marketing and advertising
SMM is a group of operations and methods used to generate publicity through social media channels and Internet communities. Social media advertising is the planning and executing of advertising campaigns through those channels. The reason that the face of marketing is changing so drastically is that the marketers understand that they need to go wherever the clients are. The fact is that the clients are hanging out in the online social communities.
What investment must you make?
The idea that the investment that you need to make in order to make social media work has very little to do with actual money is very appealing to a lot of people. Of course, nothing valuable comes totally free. The investment that you need to make is time and effort. You need to consistently devote a specific amount of time each week to making your SMM campaign work for your business. Without that consistency, it won’t work for you. It is a matter of what you are willing to give up—time or money.
The social media revolution
The revolution was inevitable. With the pace at which technology was and is changing, it was just a matter of time (and not too much time) before people would start to get involved, get passionate and drive the success of the innovative and exciting tool that is social media. Also, the fact that it started out with people using it for personal reasons did not in any way dilute the strength that social media has for businesses now and in the future.
Conclusion
SMM is not about the hard sell. It is about building relationships with others who will eventually become your customers. It is all about people and solving their problems. The more relationships you can build with other people, the more they will begin to trust you, believe in your credibility, want to do business with you, and ultimately become loyal customers.
A large and important part of building those relationships is the generation of discussions. Remember that you are having discussions with the purpose of educating, not selling. The approach is much more subtle and will really take you a long way in building your relationships. As a business owner, you have an obligation to your business and to yourself to be a part of the social media revolution. If you aren’t a part of it, you won’t be able to enjoy the success that you and your business want and deserve.
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Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Social Media Marketing Mavens
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
Absolutely, there was a time when being present on social sites was a fad, but today brands are leveraging social media to have a continous dialogue with their consumers, it certainly has gone far ahead its initial purpose when it came into existence..
Posted by Hasnain Babrawala
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Joomla! Professional Users Group
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
Yes indeed it has made an impact. Social communities are where people are. Social media is also interactive. Traditional advertising has not had this kind of interactive ability and for a lot of advertisers it is daunting to them. Advertisers now need to be transparent and responsive to their audience because social media empowers people in a new way. The platforms to reach the audience have changed. We are living in the times of the biggest and fastest changes in the way people communicate and interact. It is either exciting or it scares the heck out of you. I'm in the excited camp, which one are you?
Posted by Joe Sonne
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: AOL Small Business
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
Most of us over 50 who have finally understood church, community, cultural events are still trying to understand Social Media. I guess it's a matter of time, priorities and focus.
Posted by alain milian
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: AOL Small Business
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
To Jess and Alains point using Social Media does take time to learn and how to best use it for your business. I guess for some industries it does not have a value but if you are dealing with consumers you need to be there in some way to keep your business relevent to them. Have you gotten anything out of being on Linkedin. Social media does help in the organic rankings on Serach Engines. Most websites are static, I have been a fellow retailer use a blog and gain more awareness for him and his site. Will that lead to those consumers buying right now or within the year.
Please remember this is not a magic bullet and is one part of a broader marketing plan.
Posted by Matt Rinkerman
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: AOL Small Business
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
It is more expensive to acquire customers through social media than by most other methods. In order to gain something out of social media you need to be engaged and dedicate time to it. In many cases, it could take one employee alone to be dedicated to social media alone and there is a cost around having a worker only focused on social media. It seems many times cheaper to have Google, Bing or Yahoo promote your business though pay per click.
Jess
Posted by Jess Lala
Jess,
Social Media Marketing is low cost if you properly develop a plan of action and stick with it.
Also, as an employer, rather than dedicate one employee to carry over your social media campaign, you can give incentives to all your employees to participate in your social media campaign and by this reduce the cost and increase the impact of the marketing campaign. There are tools today that are designed just for that. Take a look at http://flip.to as an example.
Regards,
Michael
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: AOL Small Business
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
Hi Jess, For me it has been very positive and not very costly. I split some of the work between my business partners and track results at our weekly meeting. Since I real do not know anything about your business I am not sure how Social Media may help compared to compared to really utilzing the local search options on internet directories.
What about using some of the info on your site to create a blog that could attract people from the legal industy.
Posted by Matt Rinkerman
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Social Media Marketing Mavens
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
In my world, "client care" has always been social.
My marketing career, including experiences working with P&G and RBC have impressed upon me the importance of Client Relationship Management (CRM), of speaking with your clients from "cradle to grave", developing a relationship with them over time, to delight them with each new product/service offer.
The essence of the "relationship" you build is very social. At the most basic level, it's people connecting with people. The internet has just made is so much more efficient. Sometimes, too efficient. Such that it seems routine.
And that's where I think the real opportunities are. Marketers who are creating a real connection with their clients, a meaningful connection – one that shows how the marketer wants to help solve a client's problem – are the ones that will outshine the others who make connecting, a routine procedure.
Posted by Daintry Springer
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: AOL Small Business
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
The value of getting the word out to my clients using social media has increased client awareness of the services I offer, products I use and resale as well as the results of the services (before/after) I provide. I am learning to navigate social media to get an understanding of what would benefit my business most and how to achieve or carry out the plan.
Posted by Sarah Oliver
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Social Media Marketing Mavens
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
It's interesting to read comments about the impact of 'social' media on our lives. For those who have studied and received college degrees in media and worked in media for years, 'media' has always been social. Media continues to evolve and the quest to motivate the audience to become more engaged with a particular media outlet continues. Today media outlets invite their audience to participate by contributing content and forming communities.
The 'social' media model serves two purposes for media outlets – one, a more engaged audience looks better to advertisers, and two – user generated content is "much less" expensive than hiring a staff to generate content. It's also much less accurate and reliable and more dependent on word of mouth. Marketers must determine channel credibility before proceeeding and that is not easily done.
Posted by Chris Glenn
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: AOL Small Business
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
I agree that social media is time consuming and sometimes intimidating to those of us that are new to this area of marketing. So, think a careful balance of traditional and social media marketing is the best route to go. Now my question is how do you I find the time to do both?
Posted by Yorlanda Fisher
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Non-Fiction Writers
Discussion: The Impact of Social Media on Advertising
Hello Carolyn, Social media can be so overwhelming. Do you just go to one or two? I see the benifits of twitter, but I think it's alot of noise. What am I doing wrong?
Mary
Posted by Mary Babic