A Time to Live A time to Speak

Monday, August 09, 2010

Social Media Marketing

A communication tool that allows one of the largest laptop manufacturers t

o get new business worth $ 3 million and helps someone to become the President of one of the most powerful nations in the world cannot be ignored.

Social Media Networking has given mute brands, a voice that is allowing them to connect, communicate and engage their target audience. It has also provided the consumers with a new and more personal way of attaining cognitive information and insight

about a brand, which proclaims to be a manifestation of the individual.

With emergence of Social Media Networking, the power may have shifted completely from the Brand owners to the Brand users. But if the brands are willing to accept this new tool

, they can bring that much needed personal and human touch to their offerings.

This will also allow the Brand owners to keep the consumers hooked to their products for a longer tenure than they were previously doing. An intelligent and a smart brand will acknowledge that the days of Brand Loyalty are over and only those brands that make the effort of being amongst their users shall survive the evolution that is Social Media Networking.

Understanding and thereafter integrating the tools of Social Media Networking into a marketing plan is today becoming as important as advertising was about two decades ago. Quoting from the Dentsu Handbook of Social Networking, “Social Media helps in lead generation, brand recollection, increase number of transaction and create awareness. Which brand would not want that.”

With 500 million users hooked to one platform, that just became 550 million by the time this line was completed, the scope of reaching out to consumers is infinite. Today Facebook profile of an individual gets more attention than the individual her/himself. In such a scenario, a Brand that does not have a Facebook page will surely struggle for recognition.

And like any Social Media expert will tell you, Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg. Today with Twitter, Orkut, Linkedin, MySpace, Digg and what not, the total number of consumers that one can reach through these platforms far exceeds any other media.

Today, an application on Facebook allows the users to experience the Brand from the comfort of their home. It allows them to engage with the product like never before. A virtual tour of an Ikea store on Facebook in an area far from a physical Ikea store can make the consumer choose one brand over another.

With such a powerful tool at their disposal, the brand managers now understand the scope of using Social Media Marketing. It is also helping in generating the most powerful sales driver, the word of mouth promotion. A cool fan page or application can drive far greater sales than any advertising campaign could have ever done.

Like Carol Kruse, Vice President Global Interactive Marketing, Coco Cola puts it, “we have a lot of online and community driven loyalty programs and we understand what exponential Brand Equity we can generate with these tools.”