Social Media Marketing: Tools and Techniques

Introduction

Marketing is a well structured methodological science, but there is no thumb rule to succeed. Regular upgradation in its pedagogy is required to confront changing consumer’s expectations. Every marketing strategy has its life cycle and should be abandoned/ renewed or supplemented at times to guarantee better results. Advertisements on traditional media like Television, Magazines or newspaper are witnessing a huge competition from digital sources. Internet is slowly engulfing traditional media with most of the shows available online at a time and place most comfortable to the customers. In the modern era where customers have limited time slot for entertainment it is a challenge for the marketers to hit them at right time and right place.

Utilizing internet particularly the social networking website for marketing is termed as social media marketing. It comprises of designing a well-structured content that consumers can share with each other to help company broaden their customer base and increase their brand visibility. As per a data published by social Media Examiner (Stelzner Michael, 2015) approximately 92% o of marketers who participated in the study agreed that social media efforts have generated more exposure to their business and they have found it useful. Advertisement on social media is also a WIN-WIN approach for the marketers. For a blog posted on google or for a YouTube advertisement or for a tweet, marketers need not to make heavy reimbursements to the publishers or distributers but can gain a million view overnight. Continuous upgradation or twisting of messages on social media also requires less of effort and cost. The advertisement cost is nominal and the cost incurred per viewer is nil.

Social media comes in many forms. Blogs, microblogs, social networks, media sharing sites, social book making, forum and analysis sites are few of them. Facebook is one of the most popular social networking sites in the present scenario. As per Times of India newspaper report (Shalina Pillai, 2015), India has the largest number of active social network members in the world. It has also been estimated that an active member spends more than 50 minutes in a day scrolling through various social networking sites. Researchers have also indicated that a consumer who follows a brand on social networking sites are mostly a loyal buyer of that brand. The only rocket science that a company needs to learn is to design proper content that can ignite and engage its viewer. Not single strategy is or can be applicable on all the different forms of social media platforms.

Mankind is a social being and, sharing information on their experiences is an important part of its social interactions. Since the inception of business, people ask each other for advices before making any purchase decisions. Recommendation and good word by the original buyer has always been the most authentic information on which a customer can rely. Similarly sharing decision making processes with family and friends is an indispensible part of a consumer shopping behavior. This chapter focuses on different forms of social media and strategies to excel in them. A brief introduction about various strategies dealt in the chapter is as follows.