The Rise of Social Media

For my last blog post I would like to explore the effects of social media growth in our current technological age. Growing up in England I have always been surrounded by the latest technology, but going back 15 years life was a lot different than it is now. Back when I was growing up as a child access to the internet was much less accessible, most households shared computers and fancy smart phones with access to the internet were definitely not owned by most. However, this is not the case today and with rapid technological advancements most people now have personal use to the internet for the majority of their lives. Therefore with people spending more and more time on their phones and tablets, a huge challenge for brands is to connect to their consumers through social media and online advertising.

Social media marketing is a now used as a huge marketing tool, the vast majority of business now incorporate social media into their company with the hope of generating exposure. The rise of social media is no surprise this is highlighted by an industry report from 2011 showing the benefits of using social media stating it as a means of generating exposure for a company, improving sales and developing business partnerships ^[1]. However, many social media sites come with built in analytic tools which can be very beneficial to companies at it allows for them to track progress and success of advertisement campaigns through user-generated comments or hits on a particular page.

Therefore, it is important to use the correct platforms to advertise a brand or product. The most commonly used social media sites as a marketing tool are: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn ^[1]. These popular sites are most likely going to generate the most exposure to for a company so through this increased exposure companies can then focus on developing brand relationships with their customers.

However, popularity of a page is not going to make a company be successful on its own. For social media to be effectively used for marketing, companies should allow for user-generated comments (product reviews, online comments). This is particularly important as it allows for ‘earned media’ to be used when advertising a product so consumers can see a products reputation is peer reviewed and they are not being persuaded by biased advertising campaigns ^[2].

Through popular social media outlets such as Facebook contain consumer based brand pages that updated content frequently, these pages have links to increased brand awareness, popularity and can help influence brand popularity. Research has discovered that displaying correct layout of a brand page on social media has strong links to enhancing brand popularity, correct placement of a brand on social media fan pages along with vivid and interactive brand characteristics resulted in more likes and positive comments towards a brand and in turn has links to increasing brand popularity ^[3] as well as increased brand loyalty ^[4] from correct social media usage.

In conclusion, social media is a huge platform that allows companies to easily and connect with their customers daily. And in this day and age with much more accessibility to the internet social media is becoming a more and more prevalent outlet for companies to gain exposure for their product, this outlet is becoming one of the main marketing strategies companies are adopting and it doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. But with this being said the importance of correct use of social media highlighted in this blog should be documented by companies in order to increase resonance with their consumers.

References

^[1] Stelzner, M. A. (2011). Social media marketing industry report. Social Media Examiner, 41.

^[2] Stephen, A. T., & Galak, J. (2012). The effects of traditional and social earned media on sales: A study of a microlending marketplace. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(5), 624-639.

^[3] De Vries, L., Gensler, S., & Leeflang, P. S. (2012). Popularity of brand posts on brand fan pages: An investigation of the effects of social media marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2), 83-91.

^[4] Laroche, M., Habibi, M. R., & Richard, M. O. (2013). To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?. International Journal of Information Management, 33(1), 76-82.