Marketing and Social Media: Where? Why? and How?

When we ask what Social Media is, you will automatically assume that this article is discussing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social media platforms. We will, of course, however, we initially need to comprehend what is Social Media. It is significant to understand its various types and how each website has its own specified purposes. If we inspect closely, the word social in Social Media comes from socialising. In other words, these social media platforms provide people all around the world with easy-to-use websites where they can socialise, have fun, or gain information.

Social interaction could take place in many forms, such as the written forms in articles, ideas, a piece of news or information, or a visual one, like an image or a video. Not recently, but noticeably enough, social media websites are widely used in advertising and marketing, and that is where the expression Social Media Marketing came from.

Social media platforms were initially made to make our lives a lot easier, and our needs in the 21st century are evolving and changing rapidly from day to day. As a result, various social media platforms were and still are being created to meet our newly-born needs. So when it comes to marketing, choosing the social media is as important as any other aspect of your business. 

Where?                                               

1- Blog

The blog is the oldest Social Media platform known to history! It is where every individual could communicate with people through writing their ideas, thoughts, and articles. Of course, and are the most well-known blogs out there.

However, it is noteworthy to mention how social media marketing has made its way through paying famous blog owners to advertise their products, especially if the blog’s topic is relevant to the products being advertised, and mostly this is the case. For example, if there is a blog about cooking and recipes, it could make sense to see a pop-up advert of a chicken machine or a sportswear one in a blog about health and fitness.

2- Social Networking

These are the social platforms that their purpose is to allow people to communicate and interact with one another easily, like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. There are also Instagram, to communicate through pictures, small captions and hashtags; YouTube, to communicate through videos; and SoundCloud, through music and songs. All these social media websites have similarities and differences, but the differences are rather more critical than one might think when it comes to Social Media Marketing.

If a company wants to advertise for, Facebook is perfect, however, if the marketing campaign is targeted to business owners for example or job seeker, LinkedIn will be the more logical choice.

3- Social Shopping

Shopping never ends and that is why there are now websites that make it easier for us to buy goods. They are specialized in selling and buying real estate, unwanted used items, and/or cars for example, like OLX. But even and the likes came to the surface when too many Facebook pages and groups are used by business owners to show their products to the masses.

Recently, a remarkable number of stay-home mothers started their own business online just by purchasing goods online, launch social media marketing campaigns to sell them, and send the products to the buyers through cargo companies. It is easier now to look –up the price of anything on the store’s Facebook page than to go there and check for yourself.

4- Social NEWS

Twitter allows you to write a 140-character post, and amazingly, this is quite enough to announce an important piece of news, sometimes an important political one.

Other platforms were created so users can share NEWS with one another, like Digg, and Reddit, but this did not kick Facebook, Twitter, or other social media platforms from the equation of communicating news. In a matter of fact, almost every NEWS channel has a YouTube one to attract more viewers and compete with their online competitors.

5- Social Wikis

These are huge online encyclopedias but their content is created by the users themselves, and of course, the most famous one is Wikipedia. Some blogs also act as wikis and they pick a topic and start collecting data about it every now and then till it becomes saturated with any information that you might need about that topic.

Why? And How?

When it comes to marketing, it is important to know how to use these websites because each one differs from the other. In other words, the content companies want to post will differ depending on the website it is going to be launched on and on the audience the company is targeting. Also, it is important to consider individual and regional differences. Some countries have more Facebook users than others that have more Twitter users. And even these statistics have variations within the same country.

Facebook asks ‘What’s in your mind?’, Twitter asks ‘What’s happening?’ and Instagram allows you to post only images. And each individual will prefer one more than the other, or even not use these and go for a fourth platform to express their thoughts or learn more about something. In a nutshell, each website has its own purposes, and social media marketers study these statistics, mostly collected through Google Analytics, to choose the most suitable platform for their company’s product.

Mohamed Ibrahim 

Digital marketing consultant - Kickstartinteactive