Leveraging On Social Media, Mobile Phone and Internet Use as Business Strategies

The phrases "social media" and "media" were combined to create the term. Social interactions between members of a society, a group, or simply individuals are depicted. While media, as its name implies, refers to a platform or channel that promotes the creation and exchange of ideas (Razmerita, Kirchner & Nabeth, 2014). Even though social media has only been around for a few years, it is now widely used. In the year 2003, LinkedIn was first launched then MySpace followed and Facebook in 2004. Facebook was more widely accepted than other sites. YouTube would later be launched in 2005 then Twitter would follow them the rest such as Google+, blogging, instagram, podcasting, Pinterest, and Snapchat would follow. The above social media channels have gained over 1 billion subscribers in only 10 years of existence (Razmerita, Kirchner & Nabeth, 2014). From the name social media, its meaning can be explained as sites where people could socialize with new and old friends.

The mobile phone on the other hand has been a tool that has been commonly used in the 21st century to access websites and surf the internet (Pimmer, Gröhbiel, Gwandiwa & Friedli, 2015). The internet is the computer network which provides vast information using standardized protocols of communication. The mobile phone use has surpassed computer use in the modern organization settings as they are easier to operate and have advanced speeds in internet access. Further, they are portable and can access numerous social media applications at the click of the button.

The same way internet use was used to facilitate military operations, business organizations have begun to make use of internet to foster social network various functions (Pimmer, Gröhbiel, Gwandiwa & Friedli, 2015). Social media in the organization has been utilized to build relationships and interactions between individuals in the organization. Organizations however leverage on the sites and apply them to interact with new and existing customers for products and services they offer. This is a paradigm shift from the old school methods of customer interaction to better modern ways where many customers can be reached cheaply and easily at the click of the button. Loyalty is created where customers are interacted with on a personal level. The paper also seeks to unravel how social media, mobile phone use and internet have brought about the social media marketing and vast uses to spearhead the company’s business strategy.

Social media marketing

Tuten & Solomon, (2014) explained that social media marketers are using social media to raise the visibility of the company’s products and services to the public via the internet. Social media sites are important to build social and business networks to exchange knowledge and ideas. These sites are becoming the go-to places for consumers who want to learn more about the products of the business. This is as a result of the up-to-date status of these sites which offers consumers with current information about services, products, or upcoming events of the business. Also, information posted by the business in these social networks can be accessed by the general public since they can be accessed through search engines (Stelzner, 2014). This way when a person is looking for a solution to a problem, an organization appears as the answer. Social media marketing can trusted because the information is within peer groups by either a ‘Retweet’ or Facebook comment about a certain product or organization. It is important to note that this would not be possible without access to internet. Companies or business organizations access the internet via subscriptions to internet service providers of their respective localities (Tuten & Solomon, 2014). Mobile phones, internet and social media must interlink to realize social media marketing.

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

The major benefits derived from social media marketing are raising the company’s exposure and bringing in more traffic. Research indicates that 92% of social media efforts by the marketers have increased business exposure (Stelzner, 2014). Increasing traffic followed with 80% of the marketers indicating positive results from it. Presence in the social media has been embraced by all firms in today, particularly use of Facebook, twitter, instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, tumbler, and Pinterest. There were 1.4 billion Facebook active users as at March of 2015 and 280 million Twitter users.

However this said and done, there are four essentials to maintaining an effective social media and online presence. These are:

Contents

Social media’s backbone is content (Walker, 2014). Unless a company is able to post fresh and relevant information regularly, their social media and online platforms cannot attract traffic. Lack of fresh content by social media accounts renders them dead.

Engagement

The second essential of conducting a successful online or social media campaign is engaging the audience (Walker, 2014). Businesses or individuals that are perceived responsive and friendly engage with their audience well which translates to loyalty, sales, patronage, affiliation of brand, goodwill and brand ambassadors who will defend company’s name, service, product or brand.

Skills

There are skills which exist that the business should possess in order to run a vibrant presence online and on social media. These skills range from research, designs, graphics, analytics, monitoring, optimization, backend management etc. failure to understand where to deploy each or wrongly utilizing them, spells disaster for any organization aiming to establish online presence (Walker, 2014).

Consistency

This is learning how to win the online and social media presence, and implementing it day in, day out running of the business (Walker, 2014). In summary, it is doing the three elements above consistently. Lack of consistency spells failure by institutions or businesses that have the resources to be vibrant online, but their activities are slow.

The flowing are the main benefits of utilizing social media marketing for any organization:

Improved sales

A lot of time is taken to build relationships which can grow sales. However, marketers that create this time reap great results. For instance, half the numbers of marketers who have been capitalizing on social media presence for at least three years in a row have reported improved sales (Stelzner, 2014). Approximately more than half of the marketers that use 6 plus hours in social media per week reap the same results. Over 74% of the marketers spending 40 plus hours gain new business from their efforts (Walker, 2014).

Increased exposure

From a survey done by the researchers, marketers that spent over 6 hours per week indicated that their social media presence and efforts raised their business exposure levels (Stelzner, 2014). Also, approximately all marketers who employ social media marketing in a period of more than a year or more reported that it creates exposure for their businesses or organizations.

Business partnerships grew

The more time the marketers spend in social media network, the higher growths of business partnerships are gained (Walker, 2014). Approximately half the marketers who have spent at least a year in social media marketing reported that they had gained new partnerships. More than half the number that spent 6 hours plus per week in social media created new partnerships for the business. Many marketers who were selling to other organizations and business were more than likely to reap this benefit than the ones selling to consumers.

Generated leads

66% of the marketers generate leads benefits when they spend approximately 6 hours plus in a week doing social media marketing (Stelzner, 2014). Over half of the marketers with at least a year of experience in social media generate leads through social media platforms.

Marketing expenses cut down

Approximately half the number of marketers that spend nearly 6 hours plus on social media determinations saw marketing expenses slashed down. At least 57% of the organization’s business comprising of 10 or less employees unanimously agreed that there was reduced marketing expenses where social media was used, while there were only 40% of business organizations with over 1000 employees who agreed (Stelzner, 2014).

Search ranking is improved

There are improved ranks in search engines where the business’ marketers have been utilizing social media platforms for a year or more, with nearly 58% plus of the marketers reporting an increase (Stelzner, 2014). Those utilizing at least 6 hours or more in a week on social media reported an improvements in rankings of search engines.

Increased traffic

Marketers were able to note that there were increased traffics where the business invested at least 6 hours plus on social media marketing (Stelzner, 2014). Also, those who had use social media platforms for a year or more reported that there were substantial improvements in results compared to those with little experience online.

Market insight is provided

Those with a year or more experience, there were 69% plus who thought social media granted the business market insight (Stelzner, 2014). Those spending more than 6 hours a week had 74% likelihood to acquire market insight.

Developed loyal customers

Marketers utilizing B2C were more likely to capture a bigger loyal fan base through the social media than marketers using B2B. For those who had been utilizing social media for a year plus, 69% of them found social media good tool to create a loyal fan base (Stelzner, 2014). Time invested by marketers was also pivotal. Of the marketers who spent at least 6 hours plus in week, approximately 78% realized the benefits as compared to 56% of them who spent 5 hours or less per week.

Major social media networks and their connections to businesses

Facebook

There are statistics that indicate how people are connecting via Facebook with small businesses:

There exists nearly 2 billion connections or more between people and local businesses

On an average week, 645 million views and 13 million comments are made on local businesses’ Facebook pages (Valdez, Guterbock, Thompson, et.al 2014)

Nearly 70% users of Facebook monthly in the United States and Canada have connections to local businesses (Carrillat, d’Astous & Morissette Grégoire, 2014).

Facebook makes up one of the largest social network. It was initially meant for Harvard students. This site allows its users to create profiles, share pictures or videos, send messages and maintain touch with friends. The network has been translated into over 37 languages. Its use is reliant on the internet which can be accessed via the local internet service providers of the respective place the user is situated. There are certain features which distinguishes Facebook with other social media networks. They include:

Market place: this allows its members to read post and respond to certain classified advertisements

Groups: they are created by a group administrator with a sole purpose of uniting people with similar interests to interact with each other for a common good. Many businesses are capitalizing on groups to discuss new products and their launching.

Pages: they are created by the members to promote a specific topic of public importance (Carrillat, d’Astous & Morissette Grégoire, 2014). Companies utilize pages today to facilitate their online presence by having those pages named after their businesses.

Event: this one allows its members to advertise an event, do guests invitations and follow up to know the attendants (Valdez, Guterbock, Thompson, et.al 2014)

. Many businesses use this to invite the public to launching of new products, brands or new designs.

Technology to track online presence: this allows the members to view users who are available on line for chat (Carrillat, d’Astous & Morissette Grégoire, 2014).

Facebook has played a big role in organizations and their branding campaigns (Carrillat, d’Astous & Morissette Grégoire, 2014). Facebook in 2011 launched a new marketer’s portal and creative agencies to assist them conduct brand promotions through Facebook. Today, nearly all organizations have Facebook accounts under their name; most of them being used for social and business purposes.

It is known that word of mouth is the most effective marketing strategy available, more so to organizations that rely heavily on word of mouth. However Facebook assists such organizations amplify their strategy of word of mouth in areas of where their customers spend most time online and on mobile phones.

Organizations can leverage on social media through taking advantage of other social media channels available and more so those that are current and trending. Today, most businesses due vast availability of the internet and smartphone technologies are utilizing YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and snap-chat to advance their social media marketing campaigns. All these media offer the organization a chance to gather the market reaction to their products. Captivating video ads at YouTube go a long way to attract subscribers to a company’s YouTube channel for more information. A trendy boutique shop may leverage on twitter and Instagram presence by posting their trendy wears alongside their prices and pictures (Bronner & de Hoog, 2014). With time people start following the business through those platforms to purchase and keep up with the incoming fashions. This is very affordable and has wide coverage as it reaches all customers in the country provided they have internet access or a mobile phone and a social media platform.

Impact of social media on organizations

In today’s world, the internet is the fastest method to attract customer attention and in a wider coverage, this being the reason why organizations are connecting their consumers through social media (Walker, 2014). Social media singlehandedly builds the brands image through capturing the attention of consumers. There are ways through which businesses have been educated on how to use social media platforms as stepping stones to creating awareness of brand or the campaign mission to customers.

Word of mouth

Social media sites issue a perfect ground to gain from the word of mouth and to make sure it is spread. Many are connected through the internet in developed countries thus social media is advanced in these places. When a certain brand is “liked” in Facebook it can virally spread very quickly throughout social media platforms available (Walker, 2014). It has been researched that consumers are more comfortable with opinions emanating from their peers than advertisements that are paid by businesses. Videos also act as review points or references for products and services via YouTube, which often is shared to other social media platforms. These reviews serve as customer bases for buying decisions. Consequently this makes organizations issue products to popular users of YouTube to review them for their subscribers. Some create own YouTube channels that are branded with videos of their products.

Communicating with customers

Social media can be used to communicate with dis-satisfied customers of the organizations in a more direct manner hence taking full advantage of these media platforms and promise change or an improvement of the product on offer (Walker, 2014). Many organizations have gone a head in this sector to seek opinion of customers about upcoming events related to their brands more so consumer based business organizations.

Considerations and influence

The major influence that social media has had on organizations is on marketing and engagement of business with target markets. As the use of social media platforms to engage and share with the market continues to improve, it would be necessary for any organization to come up with a sustainable social media strategy and implement it in order to take advantage of the dynamic environment successfully.

Another major influence of social media is the emergence of “trending topics” (Walker, 2014). A trend refers to a topic driven by a hash tag and is popular immediately at a specific time. These trends assist the organization to understand the things that are acceptable and those that are not at a particular time in the business environment.

Social media analytics

They are commonly referred to as social bakers. They are mainly companies that offer the management of social media services and analytics of deep data for the many brands that carryout marketing on Facebook, Google+, twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, VK and instagram (Walker, 2014). They give the organization the chance to monitor and optimize on the social media campaigns effectiveness, benchmark with the competitors and the standards of the industry, and finally keep track of the right social media (KPIs) in order to move ahead in their marketing efficiency and success. The sites offer data about the quickest growing social media presence i.e. brands, celebrity, entertainment.

Social media marketing

This is a modern phenomenon which has begun with the emergence of the internet and social media dictating online communication. Generally, it is a form of internet marketing which implements the vast available social media platforms. It primarily involves activities that pertain sharing of videos, content or images the purposes of marketing (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). Social media marketing platforms are usually centered on creating contents which attract the viewer’s attention and encourages him to share it via his social media, resulting to (EWOM)-electronic word of mouth.

Some of the marketing techniques implemented by social media marketing are COBRAS, EWOM, and targeting (Ashley & Tuten, 2015). All these techniques are used to advertise successfully online. Social media platforms like twitter and Facebook provide advertisers with information regarding their likes and dislikes regarding certain products resulting to creating a target audience for the company. Consumer online brand related activities denoted as (COBRAs), is also vital for the advertisers in their promotion mission. A picture upload of a product via Facebook is an example of COBRA (Valdez, Guterbock, Thompson, et.al 2014)

Conclusion

Organizations will benefit a lot from the use of social media. As discussed in the paper, social media would not be possible without the internet and mobile phones especially in modern organizations where mobile phone use has surpassed computer use. Organizations will reap much profit by implementing social media marketing. This is a new way to create awareness of the company’s product to the public via different social media platforms in existence such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Linkedin. Managers or marketers have a variety of social media platforms to select from in order to take advantage of the vast importance of social media in organizations. Proper utilization of social media by organizations will increase sales and exposure of the company. The manager will have to apply his skills and leverage on the best social media techniques in order to realize success.

References

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Valdez, R. S., Guterbock, T. M., Thompson, M. J., Reilly, J. D., Menefee, H. K., Bennici, M. S., ... & Rexrode, D. L. (2014). Beyond traditional advertisements: leveraging Facebook’s social structures for research recruitment. Journal of medical Internet research, 16(10), e243.

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