Will social media marketing become a must rather than a bonus for businesses?

In the past few years, social media sites were generally still quiet new, which is why some businesses may have been careful or reluctant to see the opportunities. However, as more and more networks have appeared and evolved, businesses are now grasping the benefits of these sites and look to exploit the full marketing potential. In fact, research by Hubspot has shown that 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that marketing through social media was important for their businesses. Let’s briefly have a look then, at what some of these social networks are all about and more importantly, how they can be used as an integrated marketing communication strategy

Instagram

What is it?

Instagram allows users to take, and then edit photos, by applying a range of filters, shades and other interesting effects. Users can follow other users and comment or like on their photos. By generating hash tags under your photos, other users will be able to see your photo when searching that specific hash tag. This social network is mainly designed to be used on smartphones, (which is let’s face it where people spend most of their time anyway in this day & age).

Instagram as a marketing tool

Whether it’s a sports brand such as Adidas or a hotel, most businesses will find this platform to be highly attractive as a marketing platform. Let’s take Adidas, who often upload pictures with famous or well-known sports-people wearing Adidas products.

Users will see these photos on their homepage, and instantly a marketing message has been communicated to the end-consumer! Increased brand recognition is always at the center of business goals, and this is just a quick and brilliant way to get there. One word, Brilliant 

Pinterest

What is it?

Pinterest, the third largest social network, is an easy way to save and organize things discovered online. A Pinterest user will find a certain page, photo or quote on the internet, and can immediately ‘pin it’ (as a picture) to their pinboard,which ends up looking like a giant collage. Although it has some similarities with Instagram due to the ‘collage look’, the layout is completely different and can be effectively (unlike instagram) be used on the desktop version.

Pinterest as a marketing tool

Of course, if a user can pin ANYTHING from ANYWHERE to their wall, the marketing opportunities which arise are enormous! From a business point of view, businesses can pin strategically, in order to drive traffic to their website and, at the same time, monitor their percentage growth. They can also promote others and offer incentives such as free gifts for visiting their page (e-books and podcasts are a very popular tool). People LOVE free stuff, right?

Often, fashion websites, as well as others, may for instance use other users as a model to promote their products. This way, not only is their product communicated to all of the business’ followers but it also spreads to the model’s followers, creating a quick chain reaction. One word, Effective

Twitter

What is it?

Twitter, another online social network service, which enables users to send and read short 140-character messages called “tweets”. Following others is easy, and it is known as one of the fastest way to receive breaking news from all around the world. Of course, media can also be integrated into the tweets, and the viewing experience of multimedia is really amplified through the desktop version

Twitter as a marketing tool

Out of the three social networks addressed here, Twitter would seem to be the most time-consuming one, making it slightly less effective in a fast and ever changing marketing environment. By time consuming, I mean to say that it takes a lot of time to create a successful marketing communication strategy through Twitter. It certainly takes a lot of interaction and effort towards the target market and experts in the market to gain a certain reputation. In addition to this, in order to receive major attention, a business would need to promote their tweets, which, compared to the other networks, requires financial investment.

As can be seen above, it is very difficult to see who the tweet was promoted by, especially if a user is scrolling through pages and pages of tweets. This may then, lead to these promoted tweets being disregarded by many users as unwanted spam. At the end of the day, people will follow what they want to see on their homepage, and pay little attention to a product being promoted which may be of no interest to them. In one sentence: Marketing on Twitter may be short and fast, but it is definitely not simple and not the best.

In conclusion, let’s not forget though that although these three all have differences, they are after all social media networks, which share a lot of basic similarities, like staying in touch with family and friends, as well as following interesting pages. In terms of marketing communication strategies though, Instagram and Pinterest definitely seem the most appealing out of the three.

References:

DeMers J (2014) ‘The Top 10 Benefits Of Social Media Marketing’ , viewed: 14th September 2014 on: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/

DeMers J (2014) ‘The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends Dominating 2014′, viewed:14th September 2014 on: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/07/23/the-top-7-social-media-marketing-trends-dominating-2014/

Kusinitz S (2014) ’16 Stats That Prove Social Media Isn’t Just a Fad’ viewed: 14th September 2014 on: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-roi-stats

Leland K (2013) ‘New to Pinterest? 10 Ways To Add it To Your Marketing Strategy’, viewed: 14th September 2014 on: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226590

Pinterest (2014) ”About Pinterest” viewed: 13th September 2014 on:https://about.pinterest.com/en

Schiff J.L (2013) ’14 Ways to Use Twitter to Market Your Business’ viewed: 14th September 2014 on:http://www.cio.com/article/2380667/twitter/14-ways-to-use-twitter-to-market-your-business.html