Social media sites are still the rising star in the world of Internet marketing. This part of web is still growing and more and more competitors are entering the social game. Today, there are thousands of social sites – some of them are huge, some are smaller and focused, third are just stepping in… and they attract great attention, which is growing every single day. Facebook – the biggest social network was valued at $15 billion in 2007. Amazingly (for me), the company has managed to create $50 billion more value and today (2011) it is worth around $84 billion! This price is based on private purchases of company’s shares. Recently , a Saudi guy infused $300 million in Twitter, buying only 3% of the company. This values the network at $10 billion… You can calculate it yourself, if you don’t believe it!
Big money are involved in social sites, but why? Twitter was found in 2006, by three guys, who made nothing more than a micro blogging platform, nothing that special! Facebook was created by several students with no money, just out of nothing and it’s still a PHP application, which would be not that hard to code, for any self respecting programmer! Why it is worth $84 billion today? The answer is simple – popularity! The users of the networks are their real assets and they are hundreds of millions! It’s enough that only a small part of these people see your business on your “fan page” or ad, like your product and decide to buy it! Then your business grows enormously, because a small part of say 500 million is still a nice part. And such a scenario is completely possible. Not only you can reach every social user, but also you can choose which of them would be your target and market your product far more effectively. Imagine that you sell hair growth lotion, there will be a complete loss for you pay for your ad and it is shown to teenagers, or other people not having hair loss. This is what will happen, if you use some conventional ways for advertising. But using social media, you can target, precisely! You can advertise only for men between 40-50 years old, living in your town, not married, liking females! This would probably highly improve the success of your campaigns…
This is why social media is so important today! They has changed marketing forever, and every company should evolve and adjust according to the new rules of the game. And this is only the beginning!
How To Use Social Media For Marketing Purposes
Here is a simple video, which is part of the Conference on Entrepreneurship, held in Stanford Graduate School Of Business, in 2010. You can learn the basics of social media marketing here, and use it to improve your marketing strategy and play according to the new rules. You will see some practical advice about how yo use the big social networks for improving your popularity, from some business owners, managers and entrepreneurs. They share some of their strategies here and back them up with examples.
