Don’t miss the bus: Unlock the potential of social media marketing

Maximum outreach in the minimum amount of time.

Today, any business that hopes businesses around the world cannot ignore the importance of having an online marketing campaign.

Online Marketing is becoming more important as organisations around the world strive to develop products and services that appeal to their customers and aim to differentiate their offering from the competition in the marketplace. Hence, in the extremely competitive world, social media marketing is the new ‘IN’ thing and it is definitely here to stay.

Social media tools are no secret today. Websites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, which have millions of visitors every day, are considered to be an important hub for online marketing. Sponsoring your business using these sites is a very attractive business proposition these days because they offer a huge amount of traffic every day.

Having a campaign run on social media will have your message sent out to the maximum number of people than one introduced on any other medium. Online marketing definitely has maximum reach in the minimum time span. According to statistics it took 38 years to reach 50 million users on radio and 13 years through TV, but social media sites added more than 200 million users in less than a year!

Also, social media is fast, easy and FREE for you to create and share content directly with your consumers while marketing the same thing through conventional methods would cost you thousands, or more. Social media marketing not only helps you connect directly with your customers but also assists you in getting instant feedback. It is a two way medium unlike print and electronic promotions. It’s more engaging and result oriented as well. Having an online presence has become a necessity in today’s business world.

Hence, it will be a huge drawback for any business to ignore the significance of social media marketing in such a competitive market. Social media marketing will allow you to discover new prospects and also give you an insight on what your customers prefer which will allow you to act and produce products accordingly. This will make it easier for any business to enhance its products and services and also plan the marketing campaigns more effectively and accordingly to the pleasure of consumers.

Realising the importance of social media, many mobile companies have started introducing features giving instant access to social sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. So much so that an international mobile brand has introduced its latest mobile sets with a separate Facebook button. This shows why social media is being taken as a necessity and not a trend by the businesses across the globe. One needs to have an online connection 24/7.

Social media has revolutionised every aspect of daily life. If you don’t have an online marketing strategy and presence, your business might be very easily taken over or you might be left behind by your competitors.

Social media is generally easy and free to use but to make a lasting impact on the user one must be proficient in social media marketing and be able to build successful online marketing campaigns and further enhance business prospects. There is no doubt that social media marketing is an important tool that, when properly used, is a highly beneficial and promising enterprise. If you miss this bus, chances are you are not getting another opportunity.

The writer is a social media manager at Prymus Technologies and blogs at http://socialyzd.wordpress.com

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2011.