Social Media Marketing: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Posted on April 20, 2011 by MQT Article Team

Businesses have adapted their means of communication and ways of doing to accommodate social media interaction. It is used as a tool to get in touch with consumers via the internet; knowing that the internet is a powerful and definitive electronic venue for public gathering. Social media is seen as a means to maintain a sound relationship with existing customers while simultaneously reaching potential customers.

So what makes Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn suitable for businesses? Simply the fact that business entities can reach customers on a global stage! Businesses adapted themselves to the need of different communities and different countries. Their major asset is that they adapted themselves to language differences, so that in the end, through social media, subscribers from all over the world can be reached from behind a computer system. This is a great advancement in globalization of the economy since social media now allows brands to advertise in various different languages; thus reaching customers worldwide.

Another considerable asset offered by social media is the ability to segment customers according to their sex, age, interest, location among others. Businesses find in this vast information bank a real opportunity to reach each and every individual segment of the population. When exploiting the information provided, companies can adapt their products and services to the needs of every single segment.

While Facebook is more oriented mainly to friendly social gathering, other social media like LinkedIn and Twitter are more business oriented. Facebook offers the possibility of developing FanPages to harbor brands and companies. The features offered on FanPages largely differ from the features of individuals Facebook pages since the former is oriented towards business activities only. However, LinkedIn and Twitter target essentially business professionals and their customers; providing a common platform for conversion of monologue into dialogues. To prove that it is becoming an important part of business processes, figures indicate that LinkedIn harbor over 70 millions registered users, has expanded into approximately 200 countries and is configured to display English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish languages.

When comparing email marketing with Social Media marketing, it is noted that marketing on social networking sites like Twitter drives more conversion rate. Instead of broadcasting emails to a hundred thousands of internet users who are not even aware of the company, it is wiser and better to tweet the hundred thousands Twitter followers of the company, who may turn to be buyers, consumers.

Twitter offers a free powerful search function which name is “Tweep search”. The particularity of “Tweep search” is that it offers the possibility to search and find bio-data according to certain keywords. A search keyword may be for example the products a company is selling. Friend requests can be sent to the content of the search results; thus exposing products to a specific portion of the community who might be interested.

Certainly, social media has the power to propel a business into achieving better sales through constant socialization.

Rick Piazza is on EzineArticles.Com as Expert Author Rick Piazza Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, WordPress, Social Media. You can also connect with Rick Piazza on LinkedIn

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