2010 WITHOUT Social Media?

Social Media today is used by everyone around the world, ranging from little children to old adults using it. This encourages firms to use social media to market or sell their products because they know almost everyone will at least glance at their brand or hear about them in some way or the other. I believe some brands can survive and thrive without social media as in the past, but it is a simple way to mass-promote your business and eventually increase sales, hence the reason it is being adopted by many business, including small firms. The advantages of using the social media outweight the disadvantages by alot. I believe in this technologically-inclined age, 2010 and beyond, social media will be a vital aspect of business life.

Many people claim social media is useless because people only use it to reconnect with old friends or for simple entertainment. However, they fail to realize social media does not just include facebook and twitter which are probably the largest social networks now. Social media, which is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques, also includes Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, podcasts, pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking, which are all becoming more popular with the evolution of time.

Social media allows firms to megaconnect for their targeted customers, most times, through these social media websites. For example, I am a member of a greek organization and we have a facebook group. Nearly all greek stores advertise on my facebook account because I, along with the millions of other greeks around, am most likely to buy greek apparel from them. Social media works for firms like this. Also, some brand names just get stuck in your head from continuously seeing them. For instance, DeVry Univerisity advertisements are always popping up on my facebook page so I always remember them. Also, you can become a fan of stores like Nike. When you become a fan of something it stays on your page until you delete it so you are always reminded about this store that you choose to be a fan of. These examples are simply from my facebook and shows how firms promote through social media. There are many other kinds of social media as I described before that promote in other ways as well to the users of that kind of madia. For example, firms that probably sell books will be more likely to use social blogs or weblogs to promote since book readers and writers are usually bloggers.

Firms that are using social media do face several problems but they can also overcome them with a little extra effort. As our professor mentioned, one of the problems with online social media is that you alwyas have to have something new to say. This is true in order to keep your audience interested and alert. However, this is not such a hard thing to do. May business owners are creative people. They had to be creative to set up business in the first place and to maintain a business, one has to be creative anyway. So I do not see it as a problem for a firm to always come up with new things to say. This may be a challenge as it is a bit time consuming as well but the extra effort is worth the challenge because your business will be more in the spotlight.

http://e-marketingforsensiblefolk.blogspot.com/2010/05/can-your-brand-thrive-without-online.html

Online social media may not be necessary for your brand success depending on the type of business you have. Some brands are already so established people are going to buy them even if they do not promote through online social media. Also, if the people in your target market, like older folks who do not really use the internet, are not likely to use online social media, it is not necessary to use this online social media to improve your brand and business. However, for most firms today, especially in this world of vastly increased competition, it is essential to stay in the public's eye continuosly to promote yourself effectively and gain a greater market share and thus profits. Thus, online social media is an indispensable tool for brand success for most firms in this 21st century era.