Goal of Social Media is to turn your Customers into a volunteer Marketing Army.

Social Media is all about the collaboration and the sharing of the content, ideas and information. The content about your business which you wish to show consumers, convert them from consumers to customers.

Social media is the place where you give some value to your customers, and interact with them, nurture them and allow them spread your word.

Social media is behind the explosion of content available on the internet, as various channels allowed anyone to with an internet connection to be able to create and share content easily and for free.

Social media has many participants and is also very dynamic.

Simply put in this way social media are media from written (Blog) to visual (Pictures) to audio to audio visual (YouTube) that are designed to be shared.  Sharing means easy to comment on, easy to send and there are no high costs associated with viewing the media. And, because of the connected nature of the internet, it means that sharing, commenting and viewing can all be tracked and measured.

Social media is

·         Instantly changeable.

·         Unlimited real time commentary.

·         Instant popularity gauge.

·         Archives accessible.

·         All Medias can be mixed.

·         Individual publishers.

·         It is infinite.

·         Sharing and Participation encouraged.

·         And there is a Freedom.

“‘What are we supposed to talk on blogs on Facebook and twitter?’  Is one of the most asked question at the inception of a social media strategy”

Customer support/service- not marketing or PR tends to be the first department to enjoy some measure of well-organized social media integration in organizations that take the time to listen before they speak in the social space.

Consider the thousands of marketing messages bombarding consumers daily across every channel imaginable: magazines, billboards, TV, radio, the Web. What is the value of yet another marketing message popping up in someone’s Twitter stream or Facebook page? Zero. Now consider the value of having a question answered or problem solved by a company representative through the same channel used by a consumer to ask the question or request assistance? The value of such a response, of such a service, is incalculable.

There are so many channels when it comes to for Social media:

·         Facebook is all about whom we know like friends, family, colleagues etc

·         You tube: Largest video portal for online viewing with 48 hours of videos uploaded every minute and tens of million view daily.

·         Twitter: Is the largest far reached site for micro blogging with the features of hash tags and could direct the traffic towards your website or your blog or- you tube channel.

·         Instagram: where we upload pictures and tag them with relevant words.

·         Wikipedia: Knowledge sharing.

Social media is today used to empower your brand. Customers feel valued when they get an interaction with the business and helps them being answered.

Social media channels can be categorised as:

• Bookmarking and aggregation: Social Curation and sharing of content.
• Content Creating: Using social channels to create and share content.
• Social network: Social channels that are built using social profiles.
•  Location: a subset of social networks that are based on location.

Tracking Social media campaigns:

•  Facebook insights
• Youtube Insights
• Twitter Analytics
• Click tracking with Url shorteners.

Social media marketing: rules of engagement:

• ·         Marketing to content creators.
• ·         Marketing to content consumers.
• ·         Marketing to content shares.
• ·         Advertise on social media platforms.

Benefits of Social media to marketers:

·         Social media gives brands the opportunity to interact with customers through targeted communications which customers can choose to engage with on their terms.

·         Potential to go viral.

·         Allows to create an online community for your brand and its supporters.

·         Social media can tie in with your online marketing tactics.

·         Allows you to engage with an online community and allows you to connect your brand to appropriate audience.

Further more in my next Blog.