Marketing

Social networking sites have become a powerful communication tool, they are inviting and intriguing and many companies are using them for marketing to increase their business profile (NYTimes, 2008).
Companies will often establish a list of contacts for themselves on social networking sites. These companies will then send out notes, these notes could be in the form of a status update, private/public message or a simple company update. These notes will contain information about upcoming events, products or promotions. There is a strategy behind this method of marketing, the companies will not send out too many notes nor will they make them too long otherwise cliental are likely not to read the notes, they may often become frustrated with the amount of notes and often delete the business as a contact.

Social networking has made viral marketing and word of mouth marketing much easier than it ever has been before. Businesses do not try to make money directly from the social networking sites themselves but they harness the marketing potential and use them to Market their own products. This differs from traditional search engine marketing as with this the company would have to optimise their website to include targeted key words and phrases so that the search engine would pick these up and direct traffic to their site. Social networking sites provide an efficient platform, for which the company can use to spread their marketing message.

An example of this can be seen when looking at computer retailer Dell. Dell offered exclusive discounts to its Twitter followers, and in December 2010 the company announced they had produced $1 million in revenue over a one and a half year period. People who followed Dell on Twitter received messages when discounted products were available [SMO, 2009].

The marketing strategy adopted by business when using social networking sites works well as they can market to an already targeted audience. People would not follow the company on SNS if they weren’t interested in the businesses objectives or products. This method of marketing is hugely advantageous as it can work as an additional extra to the normal everyday operations of the business and not as a new or the only way of marketing for the company. SNS marketing is not seen as a guaranteed working strategy for business and will probably work better for an already established brand as they are more likely to gain enough online interest to make the strategy effective in the first place. It would probably not for example be a marketing strategy adopted by a business specialising in a niche market or a small non –established business.