Rising Social Media Marketing: TRENDS 2016
Posted by Edu4sure team
Today the world is all within the social media world. The popularity of it can be understood by the research which shows that people spend 22 percent of their time on social networking sites. The seeds of the social media were sown years before with the starting off with simple platforms such as sixdegrees.com. And it is helpful in international marketing. Companies are considering them in their marketing strategy.
Unlike instant messaging clients such as ICQ and AOL’s AIM, sixdegrees.com was the first online business that was created for real people, using their real names. But soon its users lose interest and, the site did not last long enough.
Today social media technologies have taken many different forms, such as blogs, business networks, enterprise social networks, forums, microblogs, photo sharing, products/services review, social bookmarking, social gaming, social networks, video sharing and virtual worlds.
What Is Social Media?
"Social media can be broadly defined as to 'the much relatively inexpensive and widely accessible electronic tools that enable anyone to publish and access information, collaborate on a common effort, or build relationships'".
There are mainly three types of social media communication, which constitutes as the major components of the social media as well. They are:
- Publishing content
- Connecting
- Sharing
Publishing Content
Content is the key to any digital strategy. You can write anything about anything, which you want, but the content which you are writing should be Stackable, Shareable, and Sharp. This means that firstly your content should be crispy and enjoyable, so that the reader gets some interest while reading it, instead of getting bored after reading your content.
Second thing is that your content should be worthy of sharing. It should have that much power and meaningfulness that, the reader gets the feeling of sharing it further after reading it. Thirdly, the content should be sharp enough to strike the mind of the readers.
Connecting
Social media gives you the access of connecting or networking with everyone from everywhere. Sitting at your place you can connect with your closed ones, sitting miles away from you, all thanks to social media.
Sharing
The last and the most important type is Sharing. It’s actually is very important for you that when a user reads your content he/she should share it with their circle so that it reaches a larger audience.
For this, you need to find out where your audience hangs out and produce content which your audience will love and SHARE! “Likes” and “follows” are not what matters, what happens after the like and the follow matters the most!
- Sharing will lead to increase in traffic, and that increase in traffic will ultimately lead to sales.
- It will provide you with analytics to understand better.
- This will increase your brand awareness as well.
Why Is Social Media More Relevant Than Ever Before?
Macro Perspective Of Digital Media
Globally, there are over 2.2 billion people who make use of the internet. And the great news is that this population is increasing day by day. All thanks to the development of smartphones, tablets, and various other devices. With the growing use of these devices, the use of social media is also growing day by day. India is also witnessing the growing trends of social media usage. The social media world has stretched its roots here also. Today India has around 125 million users, and the new population is being added on a daily basis.
On an average, the time spent on using social media is also increasing. In the year 2011, the data shows that the time spent by an average user was 36 billion minutes, and the figures jumped to 48 billion minutes in the year 2012. The below graphs, which shows the growing trends of social media in India, also proves that the scope and relevance of social media in India is also increasing.
Putting all the BRIC countries together and comparing them what we got is that India is the fastest growing online marketing country with 41% increase. While the other countries i.e. Brazil, Russia, China has growth rate ranging from 5% to 20%, which is very less as compared to India. There are several advantages of internet marketing.
Social Media for Business
Case Studies
- Red bull mega success story
- Adidas success story
- Mc Donald’s failure story
Red Bull Stratos Success Story
Everyone today knows about the big brand named Red Bull; it’s among the top brands of energy drinks worldwide. And remember the famous tagline Red Bull gives you wings!
But years ago they were not that they are today, they were as small as any normal startup company is. But some of their strategies lead them to their success point, at which they are standing today.
A business move that translated into estimated sales often millions of dollars. The move was to taking the help of the social media world.
- More than 8 million people watched the YouTube live stream of Felix Baumgartner, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier.
- On its facebook pages, it experienced a 108% increase fan base growth.
- Red Bull grew its community of twitter followers by 300% and is now the #2 beverage brand, overtaking Coca-Cola.
Adidas Success Story
It would not be fair that if we talking about success stories and not taking the name of Adidas. Yes, Adidas comes among the few names of those brands which have their own impact on this world, which has left some major imprints of their success story for us to learn from.
- Activities like Cricket Trivia and Fantasy Cricket has given Adidas, the position where it stands today.
- It sneaks previews and premiering of the new campaign TVC’s released first on Facebook before TV.
- In less than a year, its facebook page grew up to more than 1.1 million members and still growing at a feverish pace.
According to the AC Nielsen report
- Adidas was one of the most talked about brands on the social media.
- Even ahead of the official sponsors of the ICC World Cup including competitors such as Nike!
McDonald’s Failure @Social Media Experiment
It’s not that Digital Marketing will always mend a broken business, no it cannot! The same bad luck or bad execution strategy, whatever you may say, happened in the case of McDonalds. Just by having a digital strategy won’t take away your customer complaints; if anything, it will only amplify your complaints.
McDonalds launched a Twitter campaign using the hashtag: #McDStories, asking its users to post nostalgic stories about their experiences on Happy Meals. And the results were just indefinable…..
Actually, before taking the help of Social Media platforms, you should be well aware of the fact that it can sometimes get you into more losses than any extra profits. Social Media campaigns always contain a measure of risk, so you need to anticipate the reactions from your customers and need to prepare contingency plans.
Why Is Social Media Important For Businesses?
- It finds you customers and builds clientele
- It gives businesses the ability to find out what people are saying about them (and others) in their industries.
- It builds your brands
- It provides a test audience(vs. focus groups)
- Solidifies your reputation as a valuable and knowledgeable resource.
With the changing times, the trends of marketing are also changing and social media has a major role to play in this. Social media is a permission based marketing. Social media is a collaborative, first, you become a member, ask questions, give answers, add value to the community and again ask and answer questions. The additional quality that Social Media has is that there are no boundaries of time and space.
From The Surveys
According to the surveys when people are asked that
- Do you feel that Social Media has a vital role to play in your industry?, 90% of them said YES and a mere 10 % said NO.
- When was it asked that Is your company currently using social media? , 76% of them said YES, but still, 24% were not using Social Media!?
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