The latest wave in online marketing is social media marketing. With the introduction of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace over the last few years, along with growing success in websites such as Digg and Reddit, it’s not wonder that social media marketing has taken such an uptake.
Social media marketing is basically using social media platforms (such as those mentioned above) to generate traffic for a website. Often huge amounts of traffic.
One of the largest benefits of social media marketing is that fact that it’s free. No service that is worth using charges to be used. Reddit, Digg and Facebook are all totally free, and can generate astronomical amounts of traffic. It’s well known that having a front-page article on Digg (which is very attainable) is enough to bring most servers down due to large amounts of traffic. But is it effective? Well, like most things, it depends.
Before attempting social media marketing you need to think carefully about whether your product is right. The most successful social media campaigns are for products that the general public know and can relate to. Not many business-to-business campaigns do too well — this is largely due to the fact that social media is used by people predominately in their spare time, so they won’t be working when they’re socialising on the web. This is one of the key facts that businesses tend not to consider when launching a social media campaign.
Brand awareness is something brilliant that can come from social media marketing. Having your brand shown to millions of people through social media, where they’re actively looking and reading what it is you have to say, is priceless. Companies have made millions off the back of Twitter and Facebook, purely for having a good brand that people can relate to.
In summary, yes social media marketing is effective, so long as it’s right for you.