How Social Media Played a vital Role In The Evolution Of Marketing

The most interesting and fascinating things that have ever happened is Social Media, which changed everything.

After Web 2.0 in Silicon Valley, Facebook was introduced in 2006 and then in 2007 Twitter came in. With these two an evolution came and things starting to change completely. People can get connected at remote locations, talked to each other, share their daily life updates and with this, marketing companies saw an opportunity, opportunity to reach millions of people around the world. If we say, social media is like a storm which has taken the world and made an impact, this will totally justify this statement.

If we talk about Facebook, which is currently the world largest, widest and strongest social media who alone has 2.20 billion active monthly users for Q1 2018, which has increased 13 percent over a year (Source Facebook). Instagram active monthly users are 500 million for September 2017 ( Source Statista ) and Twitter has 336 million active users ( Source Statista ).

From the above stats, we can clearly see how things are changes, marketing companies, new startups are using a social media platform to grow and for that, they are building new strategies to reach their targeted customers and audiences.

So today we are going to discuss:

• The evolution of social media
• Importance of Social Media

The Evolution Of Social Media

When a business enters the market, creating a website is the most essential part which develops its unique identity over the world wide web. Then comes its expansion part which is done through offline marketing and online marketing. Online marketing, we say creating important links on web i.e. Web 2.0 which will gain trust in a search engine like google. Now comes the Social media which plays a vital role in expanding your business and targeting your desired customers. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and snapchat are essential for maintaining competition and those who are not having social accounts or social presence, they are missing the risk of various opportunities.

If we see marketing strategies a decade ago, they were depended on offline medium, building trust factor was not easy, less visualisation of brands in terms of graphics, were more dependent on newspapers, advertisers etc.. Now if we see the current market of 2018, companies know the first and the most important thing to do is to reach their customers by various platforms which include building a websites, contacting web development company, digital marketing company and building a brand identity which will be unique and stand out from the queue. Social Media is the perfect platform for website development and when social media plus website power is combined a cutting-edge competition is given in the market.

According to Statista:

“ The United States was ranked first with 72.3 million monthly active users. As of the fourth quarter of 2017, Twitter had 330 million global MAU. The most-followed Twitter accounts include celebrities such as Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, and former U.S. president Barack Obama. ”

So with this data and kind of people, you can well imagine the power of Social media platform and how this has evolved over the years.

Importance of Social Media For Growing Business

• Reaching your Targeted Audience

The first rule of marketing is to reach your targeted customers and with a platform like social media, it becomes much easier and scalable. You can easily keep in touch with your friends of friends, family, make new customers without going anywhere without any difficulties. Interacting with customers becomes easy, taking feedback of your product and giving them support is hassle-free. To engage with people anywhere in this world is the most powerful thing. Keeping this thing in mind you can make strategies that meet your requirement.

Companies like Vodafone, a cellular company in India, Uses Facebook page to get the customer feedback, take complaints and resolve them as soon as possible. This gives them the extra advantage of building trust.  Similarly, big brands know if you are giving the best support, they are more likely to gain trust and then word of mouth spreads easily.

• User-Friendly UI and Response Time

Social media platforms are designed in a way that from a 16-year-old teenager to old grandma can use them without any trouble or issues. Complexity is avoided and UI is kept simple so that it can be used by anyone. In today’s world, everyone knows how to create an email ID, use it for creating a Facebook Account and then creating their 1st post on Social Media. These are the very basic steps that everyone knows.

Social media gives a chance to customers to reach to the point that they want, access to different things, express what they like and share their feelings. If someone had an amazing experience while flying or using a clothing brand, he will definitely share this on social media.

Food brands have seen a major growth with this opportunity and reviews helped them track customer feedback, resolve the issues with their food and made changes in them so that next time the customer satisfaction is increased not decreased. People often tag hotels, restaurant whenever they go there and let other people know how they felt.

• Its Free

No matter where you go in this world, we people find free things amazing and platform like social media is the cherry on the cake. Companies spend only on branding, advertising and marketing, rest entering into the desired zone is free. You just need different strategies to implement on different stages.

Companies have grown with much more pace as compared to the offline market. Launching of new products, announcement, promoting new content has become easier and how much they spent on it - Zero.

There are paid advertisements on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat but if you are making sales on a larger platform that becomes negligible and optional.

• Effective Marketing

The number of followers on LinkedIn, Instagram and Youtube decides your success rate. More number of followers means more chances of getting closer to your targeted strategy and implementation. Using social media to advertise products by keeping in all the digital marketing strategies, giving proper information about your product helps you in achieving your goal and staying ahead in the market.

Mobile Companies uses effective digital marketing strategies on Social Media and gets their phone booked even before it is available for offline sales. Even govt uses social media to do campaigns, notify the public about recent development made, election progress and much more.

Social Media is being used for the different purpose by different people.

• Healthy Competition

The real challenge comes when everyone knows the power of social media, brands are competing with each other, at that time the most important thing is to trust your social media strategies and looking for another option to grow.

You have to stay ahead of other companies in your respective niche while providing the best products, facilities and full support.

• Knowing that different Social Media Platform has different Strategies

Finding customers through different techniques like using keywords which are best suited for your business, using hashtags on Instagram to get more reach and followers. Creating tempting and interesting post of your product, you can easily divert your customers to your account or page where they will find out more about your business.

• Finding the correct team

As there is all type of users on social media, there are chances that you can find a team on platforms like LinkedIn to hire a perfect team for your company. Bloggers use this strategy to get connected with each other Facebook, WhatsApp group where they share strategies to make money online, hire content writers and fellow bloggers, Professionals gather on LinkedIn to hire freshers, experienced people in respective fields.

By contacting them, seeing their profile you can get to know many things about them and then select the perfect candidate for your team.

• Getting Social and making Online Presence 

Once you have made your online presence it becomes more easier to reach your customers. Film Stars, Singers, Famous Bands, Musicians, Actors, MNC’s , you name it and you will find them on social media, getting engaged with their followers and simultaneously making new ones. They know how important it is to get socially active. They have seen a significant growth in their career after getting social. It gives them an advantage and people come to them by seeing their activities, following them, building trust with them.

Many influencers have seen an increase in the number of followers they are having now, after getting on social platforms. Youtube and Facebook is the perfect example where you can find many influencers who are teaching about life, sharing their life experiences, mistakes that they have made and people are learning from them, living a happy life tackling life situations. All of this is done through social media.

• Branding and Communication made easy

Once your branding work is completed then its next step is to market yourself and your product. What can be better than social media, reaching n number of users and establishing your brand name for free. Social Media makes it easier to communicate with your customer, engaging them and solving their queries directly and that too when you have newly launched a product or a new startup. Your Image as a brand becomes stronger and stronger.

Customers can communicate with you without any restrictions, they feel safe to ask queries and you get extra bonus points for that as they are easily approachable to resolve their doubts and build trust. After this, it becomes easier to sell your product.

Now you know how important is getting social and being active on different social media Platforms. Social Media has definitely changed people’s mindset and how they see things. Having an online presence is a must to build your brand, market yourself and rise above other competitors.