The strategic use of Social Media is one of the most convenient ways of sharing information and interacting with the rest of internet users around the world. As compared to the traditional means of communication where letters and telegrams were sent to the post office and phones were used by people who had to wait and redial a couple of times in case of a busy line, the modern means of communication through the World Wide Web now makes it a lot easier for people (or brands / businesses) to communicate with each other.
Internet marketing with social media as one of its components is an effective way of increasing your brand awareness.
What is social media?
Social media is generally defined as an online or a mobile platform that stimulate communication and interaction between 2 or more persons, with the privilege of sharing information. Social media is a vehicle for communication – person to person and most recently, business to consumers and vice versa.
It is also usually associated with social networking, which is not always the case. Social networking is actually considered as a branch of social media. To further compare, social networking in essence deals with building a connection of people who share a common interest. Social networking just like social media involves both online and real-life connections.
Why is social media important for online businesses?
Because of the convenience in communication and sharing of ideas brought about by social media, its relevance to online businesses has been unmatched, both online and offline. The number of people making use of social media today is so significant that developing and implementing an Internet marketing campaign requires a social media component to securely reach an intended target market. Social media can be likened to a popular shopping mall where people congregate and “hang out” in. If you want people to see you and your brand, you have to be there too. Effective online marketing campaigns with high social bearing include online support services, content publishing, and other information dissemination and promotional campaigns that are communicated to groups of people online.
At present, even offline campaigns become more powerful and more intesified if a social media component is incorporated with it. In terms of participation, social media fosters fewer limitations because people can talk and share ideas from anywhere at anytime with less reluctance.
In addition, statistics say that today, people generally prefer information from the internet than from the traditional means of advertising such as radio, TV, and print. It’s become apparent that people who want to know something about a particular product or service, most likely will turn to the Internet for information or reviews. Doesn’t it make sense for your brand to be present when people search for it?
How do you increase brand awareness?
All, if not most, types of niches can be found in different online communities. Social media has found a way to find people who share the same interest and organize themselves into various groups or communities. Naturally, if you want to increase brand awareness, it is imperative that you find your target market online, expose your brand to them and connect with them.
Finding and connecting with your target market should be strategic and efficient because different platforms have their own way of engagement. How you engage with your Facebook fans is different from how you engage with your followers in Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest etc.
Technically, the trick to increasing brand awareness with social media comes in two forms: Paid Advertising and Organic Exposure. Paid advertising, from the term iteself, is brand exposure that is acquired from paying a certain fee on a social media platform or on a search engine like Google. Spending on paid advertising allows for your brand to define the market segement it will be exposed to. Depending on the scheme that your brand is taking, you can either pay per thousand impressions (the number of times your ad will appear to users) or pay per click (you just pay everytime a user clicks on your ad).
Brand awareness through organic exposure is more cost efficient but requires more effort. Here, you are banking on existing fans or followers to recommend or share your information to their online network. This is where having relevant or interesting content comes in play. The more people find your content relevant the more likely there are going to share your content to their friends. This is a more powerful form of brand awareness as sharing content can be interpreted as part of the digital word-of-mouth or digital approval. Some social media platforms like Facebook make recommendations more easily seen through there newsfeeds where even merely liking certain content can already be seen by the profile owner’s network of friends.
There are other branches of Internet marketing where brand awareness can effectively be increased. Search Engine Marketing is another avenue that can be taken. We’ll talk more about this in the next articles.
If you want to know how you can efficiently and effectively reach your market, get in touch with us here.
Get Hooked 360, Digital Marketing Agency Philippines.