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ABSTRACT: Social media has changed the name of the game for businesses when it comes to marketing their products and services. These new online platforms provide an avenue for a more personal interaction among companies, prospects and existing customers which is no longer one-directional but rather an open forum with immediate responses. With its accessibility and affordability, even small businesses can now execute marketing initiatives that has a wider reach and larger impact especially in branding. In this paper, the author explores six independent factors of social media marketing which results in business growth. Each factor is carefully discussed and analyzed in order to determine how it brings about a positive impact to the business.
KEYWORDS: Social media, low cost marketing, business growth, reach, branding, sales.
1 INTRODUCTION
Every business relies on marketing to establish customer relationship, promote brand recall and improve sales. The advent of social media has drastically changed the business landscape and evened out the level playing field. Social media marketing has become the trend providing marketing opportunities for big and small companies alike. While it previously required much effort and capital to create and implement marketing strategies, this new online platform has broken boundaries to provide a more efficient yet cheaper form of engaging the customers. The middleman has also been eliminated in the equation allowing businesses to directly interact with customers regardless of physical limitations. "Riders were used to connecting with the customer service department, now the communications department has a lot more interaction [1]." As a powerful tool in commerce, nearly every business is exploring the wonders that social media has brought in. Since the continued advancement of technology would most likely result in the increase of the popularity and impact of social media, businesses are finding ways to effectively utilize it to their advantage.
1.1 DEFINITION OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
As a new media platform, social media is defined as "online resources that people use to share content: video, photos, images, text, ideas, insight, humor, opinion, gossip, news [2]." To put it simply, it consists of various online technologies that enable the creation and distribution of content [3]. On the other hand, social media marketing involves marketing initiatives carried out through online community platforms. It is defined...