The Benefits of Social Media
- Social Media tends to have more of an impact amongst those who have become quite numb to traditional advertising. They choose to engage with your advertising when it is done in the Social Media landscape while they are merely exposed to it in the traditional media environment.
- Social Media's potential to go viral is one of its greatest benefits - if users like the content they will share it with their own communities.
- Social Media allows you to create an online community for your brand and its supporters.
- Social Media can tie in nicely with any of your other online marketing tactics - a holistic eMarketing strategy is always the best strategy.
- Social Media allows you to engage with an online community and allows you to connect your brand to the appropriate audience.
- Social Media has created a forum for brand evangelists. Companies should embrace as well as monitor this as users with negative opinions of your brand have access to the same forum.
- The various platforms allow you to access a community with similar interests to your own - networking without borders.
- The numerous interactions allow you to garner feedback from your communities.
- Feedback from Social Media sites helps drive both future business as well as marketing strategies.
- The range of media enables you to learn more about your audience's likes, dislikes, behaviour etc. Never before has this much information been available to marketers - market research just got a whole lot cheaper.
- Niche targeting just got a whole lot easier!
As with all consumer generated media there are huge risks as well as opportunities. Social Media facilitates a two-way conversation between customer and company. This necessitates that the company shifts approach from "deploy and watch" to one of constant involvement with the audience.
Coming Soon: Part 2. Social Networking - You can never have too many friends
Not only do social networking sites allow you to interact with the members of your own virtual rolodex but they allow you to extend beyond your personal network, into your secondary and tertiary contacts - in other words, your friends-of-friends. This introduction to social networking will not only equip you with everything you need to get started but a breakdown of the top five social networking sites as well.
Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 |Other Articles in the How To... Social Media Series :
- Part 1: Social Media - The down low
- Part 2: Social Networking - You can never have too many friends
- Part 3: Social Bookmarking and Aggregating - Avoiding overload
- Part 4: Content Sharing - So hot right now
- Part 5: Blogging - Starting a blog baby, starting a blog
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What Our Clients Say
I attended the WebPR conference in JHB in March. Just a quick note to all of you at Quirk with HUGE congratulations – this was one of the first conferences I have attended where I was riveted for the entire day and took away a lot of new knowledge. What you are doing for the industry is highly commendable and it’s a pity more PR professionals are not harnessing the power of the web. I’m a web freak and as such we had already started implementing more online driven exposure with a number of clients but the tools I took away from the discussions will allow us to push this medium a great deal more.
Thanks again and keep up the good work! - Melissa A, Black Khaki
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