Social Media, the hype and facination. How long will it last?
Overall I have found that in every blog post I have written, the idea of using social media as a way to market has been a recurring semantic field. Combining technology with communication is an idea that has been around for a long time. This concept has evolved throughout the years, to email, text messaging and now facebook and other forms of social media. Primarily used as a tool to communicate, many marketers are using web 2.0 as a ways to communicate on a global scale. Social media sites are one of the fastest growing profitable businesses to date, is it possible that marketers could facilitate web 3.0 or 4.0 in a similar way?
Marketing and New Media:
For many years now it has seemed that the best way of creating a buzz about a product or brand is to have an innovative advert on television. This costs hundreds and thousands of pounds. However advertisers can target their advertisements to a programme’s demographics.
Rowan (2002) suggests that switching to digital means the consumer is a lot more interactive. I agree, the digital age in which we live combines mass consumerism with mass communication; people get what they want, when they want it. By doing so this creates places online in which marketers can target their audiences.
The introduction of social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and Myspace has created a new channel to market. Marketers thrived at the chance to create online advertising via social media, which is relatively low cost and could be highly profitable. Many small and local businesses could potentially generate a lot of awareness via social media. The methods of using Facebook and Twitter to advertise need not cost money either. Simply by setting up a page for a business and posting messages, getting followers; all this is advertising a business.
Feedback from customers is now more often and readily available rather than sending a letter that takes months to process in the HR department of a firm, many people can discuss their likes and dislikes using the public sphere of social media sites.
Word of Mouth:
Social media itself creates a word of mouth scenario on many occasions, particularly what is currently in the press, especially voice political concerns. Twitter gives people a chance to micro-blog (Jansen et al. 2009). This makes it very easy for people to express their opinions about matters of the moment via essentially what is an online word of mouth. The optimum way of using social media for brands would be to create a buzz about their brand or products and make it go viral.
Social media via Mobile.
On average, mobile users are more active in social networking than non-mobile users.
Minutes spent on social networking per day accessed by mobile device or desktop | ||
Social Network | Mobile Internet | PC Internet |
Facebook | 45.2 | 32.4 |
Bebo (AOL) | 39.6 | 22 |
MySpace | 8.2 | 7.5 |
Twitter | 19.6 | 7.2 |
Source: GSMA/ComScore, January 2010 | via: mobiThinking | |
Engagement in social media via mobile has increased during the last few years; this is because of the advances in technology and smartphone. Balasubramnan (2002) suggests that there are great opportunities when it comes to using mobile, regional demographics can be targeted globally, where perhaps before they were not possible to reach. This opens new doors for marketing professionals, the more people that a company can target the more potential there is for sales, profit and growth.
Who uses it?
Thousands of companies have jumped on the social media ‘band wagon’ as a way to promote their businesses. The advantage of social media is that there is no discrimination; any company can use it. One organisation that is a successful user of social Media is Dell. Internet, as with many online organisations is a part of Dell’s infrastructure. Dell has fully embraced the participatory phase of Social Media Marketing by being actively involved as a listening company an example of a company who has great skill in marketing to consumers both on and offline. On the other hand Coca-cola created a ‘fans-first’ approach to social communities, deciding consumer involvement was the most important aspect of their social media sites, creating an extra service and higher level of customer care.
Youtube is another example of how companies can use social media effectively, to promote new products or ideas to consumers. This can be a market research effort along with creating awareness for the brand itself. Many television adverts (often extended) feature on Youtube. An example of a successful company doing this is Cadbury, their innovative adverts have created a buzz and were well received by the public. The word of mouth created from a good television advert can now be accessed fully by consumers digitally, so now a consumer never has to miss out on things that could only previously be seen between commercials. In addition to this companies can successfully use Youtube to create a cost effective teaser campaign to initiate interest in a product, months before its release (Crawford & Benedetto, 2008).
Combining social media with search engine optimisation. Youtube and blogging can be a way to create more traffic for a company website if the website is keyword friendly small businesses can use this effectively as a cost effective way of creating awareness, large companies also do it well. IBM is a great illustration of a company who embraces social media in an effort to be tech-savvy and in-tune with their clientele by using blogs and twitter to keep updated with new ventures and successions of the company.
Is social media here to stay?
Some scholars believe that social media is a fad that will decrease in popularity with time, some believe that it is here to stay forever, only to be improved. From a marketing perspective social media has great benefits for targeting the consumer and creating an extension to the originally purposed marketing mix (Brassington and Pettit, 2006). If harnessed correctly, social media combined with other marketing efforts could have a positive impact on brand reputation, enforcing brand values, providing interaction and could potentially increase volume of sales. The future for marketers could be the option of using web 3.0 and 4.0 as a way to generate awareness for a campaign or product, the reality is there, that the internet could take over the television all together (Baker, 2004).
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Balasubramanian, S., Paterson, R.A., Javenpaa, S.L., 2002.
Exploring the Implications Of M-Commerce For Markets And Marketing. Journal Of The Academy Of Marketing Science, 30 (4), 348-61.
Brassington, F. & Pettitt, S. 2006. Principles of marketing. 4th edition. Harlow. Pitman Publishing imprint.
Crawford, M & A. Di Benedetto. 2008. New Products Management. 9th Edition.UK. Irwin: Mcgrawhill.
Jansen, B. J., Zhang, M., Sobel, K., and Chowdury, A., 2009. Twitter Power: Tweets as Electronic Word of Mouth. Journal of the Americn Society for Information Science and Technology, 60 (11), 2169-2188.
Rowan, W., 2002. Digital Marketing: using new technologies to get closer to your customers. London: Kogan Page
Stephen Backer, 0ctober 2004. Available from:
Accessed on 24.04.11
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