What is Social Media Marketing?
Social networking is the fastest growing internet activity and has even exceeded that of email usage. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are some of the most frequently accessed websites in the world with Facebook alone accounting for 50% of the UK's entire mobile internet traffic. Social Media Marketing (SMM) capitalises on these networks to promote products and services more effectively.
How the networks work for you
Members of these networks can:
- become fans of products and services
- join related groups
- "like" products / services / companies / website content
- share opinions with their friend networks
- invite friends to become fans / join groups
Social networking sites are a fantastic way for people to find and keep in touch with friends, share experiences, and discuss what interests them. Some networks, such as Facebook, enable members to receive activity updates of their friends and friends of friends. Blogging enables subscribers to your blog to receive regular updates of your activities. With creative and interesting marketing campaigns, video advertisements of your products can spread through the internet exponentially via video sharing networks such as YouTube.
This can be a great way to increase visibility of your company and its offerings, increase sales, and expand your customer base exponentially. These networks can help you accumulate lists of consumers which can be used to directly market future products or services.
Social networking sites
The following are a non-exhaustive list of social networking sites: