Essay --

Social Media marketing is modern marketing communication tool that helps marketers to engage with customers, prospects and other stakeholders of the business online. These are relatively low-cost communication channels that help firms to personalize theirs brands among the target audience. Primarily social media marketing assists companies to spread their intended messages mainly with the use of words, videos and photos. Some of the widely used social media channels are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and Myspace. One of the major objectives of social media marketing is to communicate product and service offerings to those who interested in and also to make them visible to new target markets. Importantly social media channels create brand personalities, strong presence and relationships within the selected audiences. Social media provides firms with the opportunity of creating repeat and loyal customer base. The flowing can be identified as some key differences between social and traditional media tactics. Building relationships through adverts It is evident that there’s less or no interaction with target audiences with the use of traditional media tactics. They will only help firms to present their product or service. Whereas with use of social media, companies will be able to truly interact with customers and will help to build sustainable relationships through active and real communication. Operates within the boundaries of internet Traditional media tactics go beyond internet to try to reach people in off-line. Even today there are significant amount of customers who are yet connect online due to a number of reasons. By concentrating only on social media tactics, a company would not be able to communicate ... ... as 1) to determine whether the campaign adds value to the brand 2) to determine any necessary changes to make to the campaign 3) to obtain customer feedback 4) follow up leads. The effectiveness of a social marketing program will mainly depend on the following factors, 1) Align with the set objectives of the campaign (Targeted and focused) 2) Effects on brand awareness and reach (Number of people follows on Twitter; number of Facebook likes, number of downloads etc.) 3) Lead generation (people who shown interest via Twitter, returning visitors etc.) 4) Sales/ conversion rate (online purchases, favorable comments, referrals, number of people registered) 5) Level of interaction/ dedication of the marketing team (regular updates, comments, tweets) 6) Value additions within the campaign (games, mobile apps) – encourage people to actively participate in the campaign.