Social Media is gaining popularity very fast and is influential in many ways. Social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs are rapidly replacing the role of traditional media such as newspapers, radio, TV and magazines.
SME’s now have a chance to market their product to a huge number of prospective customers with low cost, less time
and ease of use via social media networks, something which would be costly and time taking for SME’s using traditional media.
Among the social media networks, Facebook has the kind of power, which is unparalleled. It has become an important part of our lives. For a common man who doesn’t know anything about the online industry, Facebook is a platform where he can get in touch with his friends and family, share pictures and videos and share information on the topics he is interested in. Today, a vast majority of active internet users have a profile on Facebook with more than half of Facebook’s active users visiting the web site daily. With an active user base of over 600 million users, this is a very lucrative advertisement space.
In traditional marketing, communication was mostly through ads and press releases. Today, a click on the search button for your favorite brand on Facebook provides lots of conversations for the brand, which may have positive or negative comments about the brand.
Some say, brands that are not using this new medium of marketing may find themselves compared to an ostrich, with their heads buried in the sand.
The most important rule of marketing is to bring the brand to the target audience and beyond, which reflects the business model. Facebook is the best platform to make the public aware about a brand or services. It has visitors, whom the brand has to attract with their techniques and strategies.
A good example is IKEA, a leading furniture manufacturer. The company has brick and mortar presence. In their social networking on Facebook, they used the existing feature of tagging the photo to start a viral campaign. They created a Facebook profile of the store manager, Gordon Gustavsson, and uploaded 12 pictures of the showroom, showing the furniture, in a time frame of 2 weeks. The person who tagged the name on a product first, won it. The demand rapidly grew for more pictures and people were inviting their friends also, thus marketing IKEA products to others themselves. The only thing IKEA lost was a couple of furniture items; in return they gained thousands of users marketing their product to more thousands of users.
