People throughout the world are connected and can interact with each other thanks to Social Media. Something as simple as "Liking" a brand on Facebook can spread virally and get alot of attention very quickly. This viral attention that grows very quickly is the reason why corporations turn to the aid of social media to help enhance their brands.
The Big Three social networks corporation use and should use
are; Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Facebook is the most popular social media network
corporations and requires a “page” to be made for the company. They can then
post information on sales, products and even videos and images. Twitter
requires other companies to follow the corporation in order to know what going
on. But the more followers and “retweets” a tweet gets, the more popular it is
and it will grow exponentially. Google+ is a mix between Facebook and Twitter
and is the most recent. Google+ allows companies to also promote their own
original website.
Other social networks include; Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest
and Tumblr
Social Media for the Enterprise - A Business Case
Why use Social Media in business?
Social Media has and will continue to aid businesses in enhancing their brands. The use of social media to engage with others near you or around the world continues to grow at an outstanding rate, so it would be wise for any business to implement this into their marketing scheme if they wish to be successful.
As a pure example, we will be looking at Samsung and how they have used all the different social medias to enhance their brand.
Facebook:
Samsung use Facebook to not only advertise their brands, but to also interact with its consumers. Samsung also revels special promotions and events through their Facebook page. This makes people want to like their page so they are up-to-date with the latest deals.
"Welcome to the Official Samsung Canada page where you can “like” us to engage with other Samsung fans and get the latest info on products, promotions, special events and more."
Twitter:
Samsung use twitter not to advertise their brand, but more as a way to raise awareness and popularity about the company itself. Unlike Facebook, it does not offer customer support but rather "tweets" that showcase special offers and tweets that are meant to be entertaining and fun. For example; Samsung had an image of very old laptop with a tweet that read "how much do yo think this laptop weighed." This tweet is not for marketing but simply for the purpose of fun and attracting more followers. This was done as part of what is called #throwbackthursday.
"Welcome to your official source for Samsung products and news!"
For example; Samsung had an image of very old laptop with a tweet that read "how much do yo think this laptop weighed." This tweet is not for marketing but simply for the purpose of fun and attracting more followers. This was done as part of what is called #throwbackthursday.
Google+
Samsungs's Facebook, Twitter and Youtube accounts are connected to Google+ and it contains the same information. Its also has links to their other various social media networks and also numbers for customer support and a direct link to their main website. Samsung uses Google+ just to be out on another social platform and to get more attention and popularity.
YouTube:
Samsung use YouTube as a way to advertise their brands in video form like commercials. They have videos that they post themselves which is free and they have videos that are advertisements and are place before the starting of other random videos- this costs money.Below is a commercial to advertise Samsung's new smart T.V. Although it is a commercial, it did not air on television but only on YouTube because it is free and it can go viral more easily.
The last three are only used for attention and awareness purposes:
Pinterest is a photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, interests, and hobbies. Users can browse other pinboards for images, "re-pin" images to their own pinboards, or "like" photos.
Pinterest homescreen
Companies will “pin” images and other media content (graphics or videos) of their brands. The media content will then be up for viewing to other members who are following them. Like twitter, this is an exponential way of advertising. Companies use pinterest as a way to not advertise their brand but more get awareness and attention that such a brand exists.
AARP Pinterest page
Instagram
Instagram is an online photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, apply digital filters to them, and share them on a variety of social networking services, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr. It has over 100 million active users.
Like pinterest, corporation will post picutes and/or videos of their brand to advertise it. Anyone call like the image or video and the more likes it gets the more attention it will get; more likes will result in the image/video to appear on the front page in the section cal "Popular."
Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging platform and social networking website. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog. Users can follow other users' blogs. Much of the website's features are accessed from the "dashboard" interface, where the option to post content and posts of followed blogs appear.As of November 30, 2013, Tumblr hosts over 152.2 million blogs
YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, view and share videos.It holds a wide variety of user-generated video content, including video clips, TV clips, and music videos, and amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, and educational videos.
Most of the content on YouTube has been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS, BBC and other organizations offer some of their material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program. Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload an unlimited number of videos.
YouTube homepage
Statistics:
- 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
- Over 4 billion videos are viewed a day
- Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each month
- Over 3 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube
- More video is uploaded to YouTube in one month than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years
- YouTube is localized in 39 countries and across 54 languages
- In 2011, YouTube had more than 1 trillion views
- In 2011 there were almost 140 views for every person on Earth
Benefits of online video advertising
High percentages of audience are known to interact with videos, browse through the ads, click the video control buttons and more.
CTR (Click Through Rates) are always higher for videos than the text, banner, and image ads.
Viewers watch the video ads. Video ads pave two thirds of the way. Specific demographic and the consumer based category can be targeted through video ads.
Provides great benefit to advertisers as executions can be easily slotted online, saving time and money otherwise spent on creating a whole new execution.
Using YouTube for brand awareness
Many advertisers often use YouTube for advertising their brands to create awareness.This is to promote the brand in the same way that is seen on television.
This old spice commerical has over 47.3 millions views.It basically simple entertainment, straight to the point that attracts the user to the brand and hence leads to successful brand building. Its not as much as advertising the brand but more like saying that brand and/or the product exists and to raise awareness about it.
Using YouTube for advertising products
Many brands use YouTube to promote retail stores such as Adidas and Nike.In this case the videos produced can be in general or specifically targeted or for short-term promotions. Companies here take direct approach that makes videos informative plus educational while focusing on brand; it is directed towards an audience who are already interested and know of the brand/product.
Google+ is the last of the "Big Three" but it is also the newest and most recent.It is also an important tool for businesses looking to increase their presence in the world of social media marketing. Google+ has features that enable businesses to utilize its brand in the ways Twitter and Facebook do;product marketing, news release, the building of a “follower” base, etc, but it also has several 'tools' the others don't. Google+’s “Promote” option allows you to customize your promotional content by creating different groupings of followers that you can then market differently to. The “Measure” feature allows businesses an interactive measurement of how their Google+ page is being used. Google+ also offers a tutorial for businesses which gives advice on how best to use its features; it is the only social media that gives a tutorial on how to do that. It is as if it was made for businesses and corporations.
Twitteris an onlinesocial networkingandmicro
bloggingservice that
enables users to send and read "tweets", which are text messages
limited to 140characters. Registered users can read and post
tweets, but unregistered users can only read them. Users access Twitter through
the website interface,SMS, or even mobile deviceapp.
Twitter
was created in March 2006 byJack Dorsey,Evan Williams,Biz StoneandNoah Glassand by July 2006, the site was
launched. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, with500 million
registered usersin
2012, who posted 340 million tweets per day. The service also handled 1.6billionsearch
queriesper day.
Twitter is now one of the ten most-visited websites, and has been described as
"the SMS of theInternet.
Companies
use twitter as a way to quickly advertise their brands by posting a tweet about
it and allowing their followers to see. One of those followers may see that and
‘retweet’ it resulting his/her followers to see it too. It is an exponential
growth.
Another
strategy companies use to get the word out is by ‘asking for tweets.’ What is
meant by this is companies will have a tweet about ‘if this gets 100 retweets’
someone will win a car.
There are three primary social media outlets that businesses
use; Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. This post will go in-depth about Facebook
and how corporations use it to their advantage.
Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and
his friends. It now has over 1.15 billon users making it the ideal advertising
platform for business.
The primary method that businesses use to exploit Facebook’s
marketing possibilities is by creating a “page” for their business; which other Facebook users can follow. Businesses can then use their page to market their products, offer deals, and build their brand.
Attracting Likes:
Businesses may see better results – even
when advertising a product or service – by first sending visitors to a fan page
where they have to like the page to see the offer. After that, they can click
out to the web page to make a purchase.By doing your advertising in these three steps, you can combine brand making with sales.
However, a lot of businesses’ main reason for being of
Facebook is just to get a fan base and not to make online sales.Facebook is primarily used to raise brand awareness.
In that case, ads
directly to the website might no be the best choice. Instead you want people
to like your Facebook fan page where you can talk to them, run contests,
arrange polls or other activities your customers want to engage in.
The goal is to
have active fans that spread the word about you to their friends, which in the
end can be profitable for any business.
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