Social Media from a Marketing stand point
Today, Facebook officially announced that they have passed 500 million users. That means that there’s only around 5 1/2 billion people left in the world who don’t use Facebook. In a blog post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg “I could have never imagined all of the ways people would use Facebook when we were getting started 6 years ago. I want to thank you for being part of making Facebook what it is today and for spreading it around the world.”. This means that if you want a quick way to get a product out to 500 million people, Facebook is your best choice. Because of this news, I decided to make this post about Social Media Networking sites
Facebook is in no way the first popular social media site, that award belongs to MySpace. The very first modern social media site was Six Degrees. Six Degrees was launched in 1997 and was the first modern social network. It allowed users to create a profile and to become friends with other users. While the site is no longer functional, at one time it was actually quite popular and had around a million members at its peak. In 2000 it was purchased for $125 million and in 2001 it was shut down. Social Media is the newest and most powerful online business and marketing tool available on the internet. You can create pages for your company for free, publish events to get the word out, put up advertisements anywhere on the site, and even target your consumers easier than ever before, especially with Facebook advertising which gives the ability to easily target the people that are interested in certain products based on their facebook page information, as well as their pages that they “like” on Facebook.
Today social media sites are bigger than just social networking sites, there’s a site for virtually ever niche that you could think of. Sites like Photobucket give you the ability to host pictures, and sites like YouTube allow you to host videos and your own channel for people to view if you wish. The newest thing that I have seen has been on Facebook, a lot of my friends have started using this site called Formspring.. The site is used for people to post anonymous questions and comments about a person, and then the person answers if they wish. It doesn’t seem that exciting to me but apparently it’s catching on.
Today there are such a variety of social media sites it’s almost impossible to keep up. Friendster, Hi5, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, Revver, and Digg are all good examples of some of the most popular. They all do different things in different ways, from professional social networking to quick updates about what’s on your mind. There’s something for everybody.
What is exciting about these sites is the opportunity they lend to businesses and marketers in their fields. I’m going to talk about how it is good for any business, and then talk about how it is good for marketers.
In general for a business, sites like Facebook allow them to get immediate exposure to millions of users. You can pay some money and get your own page for people to look at as a Facebook Business, as well as making a fan page for free where you can run events from and also send out promotional links for different things. Marketing of course ties in here, you can use Facebook advertising to figure out your CTR( Click Through Rate) which is a way to measure the number of users who clicked on an advertisement on a website.
They also allow you to measure other statistics which are used in online marketing with websites, such as Cost Per Mille, Cost per Impression, Pay per Click, Cost per Action, Pay per Click, and View-through rate. All of those words have definitions linked inside of them so I can save some time and space writing this blog, so if you’re interested go ahead and click on them to learn their meaning.
Social media has changed the position of a businesses capability to be an international business. Businesses that may have previously only dealt with a small portion of the country can get themselves out there on the internet for the whole world to see, whether it’s on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google advertising, Search Engine Optimization, or whatever tool they may be using. Now they could be shipping across the nation and even internationally.
In today’s economy, being fluent in social media sites is a spectacular edition to any resume. If you are able to make a successful online campaign through social media sites you can probably manage one in any channel of advertising. Viral marketing is a strong part of online advertising and in social media sites. YouTube probably has the largest crowd of Viral Marketing. The current most popular viral marketing campaign is (not coincidentally) the same marketing campaign that is having the most mainstream media success…Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. They accomplished this by doing a string of YouTube videos addressed directly to specific people, and allowing people to remix their video in ways of their own. Here’s one of the Old Spice created video’s, the last one in the series, and below that is one that some video blogger made as a remix for his own personal use.
I love this video, to be honest.
I could continue on forever about the different ways to get your name out there on the internet, but to celebrate Facebook’s accomplishment today, i’ll end it with them.
Facebook has one of the easiest to use advertising tools in the social marketing industry. You can specifically target any demographic that you wish with easy to follow instructions as well as measuring tools to keep track of how you have to pay for the advertisement. The prices are low considering the exposure you’re receiving, and you can pull the advertisement at anytime. Google’s Adwords program is another good one to look at if you’re new to the internet advertising scene and looking to get started.
Well friends that’s all for today. Until next time I hope everyone has a great day, and i’ll see you tomorrow!
