What is social media?
“Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.” (Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media)
Social Media including blogs, microblogs(twitters), social network sites (facebook), podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, etc. The growing population that are using these social media to exchange their personal or interpersonal thoughts and ideas had made social media a power in our society that cannot be ignore. Moreover, the technologies had applied to mobile device, making the velocity higher. In other words, the speed of changing information has increased.
Social Media applied in business
Companies had long discovered the power of social media and used these media to reach out to their customers. Companies use social media to increase brand awareness and promote the new product. Besides from simply put an advertisement on social media, company could also create an official website or facebook page of the new launch product, hire some people to write their experience of using the product, these review can attract people that are interested in the product, and generate an discussion about the product. This is a typical, but not the only, model of using social media. Companies can tie different kinds of social media together, customers can see the traditional TV ads and find more information about the product on the facebook or youtube pages
Why using Social Media?
Low Cost
Before social media, the best way of let your customers to know your product is through traditional ads on TV or newspaper, which is very expensive and hard to track your customers. Social media created an equal opportunity for every company, as long as you have internet access. Even small company with limited budget can go online and set up a webpage, and start to do the promotion on it.
User Generate Content
Customers used to be “consumers of the content”, which means we used to receive the massage from companies passively. Social media has change the model to a “user generate content”, customers now create the content by themselves, it is the customers who made the product more desirable and famous among people.
Words of Mouth
“Do you know there is a new restaurant in town?”
Words of mouth as long been a powerful way of advertisement, people like to hear other’s reviews after they tried new things, no matter it is good or bad.
“Social media have brought the power of word-of-mouth to a large audience. That means your opinion can have great influence.” (Randi M. Solhaug. “Worthwhile Words-of-Mouth on Social Media”. 2012, October 9th. http://sciencenordic.com/worthwhile-word-mouth-social-media)
Companies are looking for more visitors and followers on their pages, and it is easier and more efficient to let the customers bring more customers by themselves. Moreover, since the social media is now the tool for spreading out the word, the speed became faster then ever before.
Social Media had changed massively in recent years. It create another way for companies to promote their product, to build their brand name, and to reach to more customers. The video below tells a lot of statistic data about social media in 2013, which could help us understand how powerful social media is, and how we all related to it.
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