Social Media Marketing: The New Wave of Advertising

By: Jonah Rosen

What is Marketing?

Often people argue about what is the most important aspect in business. Everyone has their

own opinion, and many times the answer is Accounting or the Executive Staff. Often people

forget about how important the Marketing Aspect of a company is. Marketing is defined as,

“the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service” (Merriam

dictionary). AS you can see, marketing is what drives and gets businesses moving in a positive

direction. Without marketing there would be no way of getting customers to buy your product

or service. Also, without marketing businesses would not be able to research and find

information about the people who buy their products in the form of marketing research.

Throughout this report I am going to explain how the invention of social media has changed

marketing by helping reach a bigger audience, get information to customers faster, and help

create meaningful campaigns.

Old Fashion Marketing:

Within the last ten years many aspects of society have changed, with the invention of new

technology and new products. With these new advances the way people in the marketing

industry do their work has changed drastically. Before the invention of social media and

internet marketing people in the marketing industry would have to post ads in the paper and

on the radio as you still see today, but these plans have to be concrete, because once their ads
are on the radio or in the paper there is no way of changing them. One of the biggest tools to

help marketers get feedback from customers and help shift the way they approach their ads is

to send out surveys. Now it sounds a lot like the way we do it today, but before social media

became a thing companies had to mail out surveys and hope to get responses. Where as today

customers can instantly rate a company’s performance and leave comments right on the spot.

The hardest thing for people who worked in marketing many years ago was helping facilitate

the spread good word of mouth to other potential clients about their business or product. You

cannot simply make people talk good about your business or have any power over what they

say. Marketers just had to hope that loyal customers would help promote and spread the good

word.

What is Social Media?

Over the last few years everyone, no matter their age is familiar with what social media is. Even

if they do not have their own account or go on social media, they are familiar with it and know

what social media does. Merriam Webster defines social media as, “websites and applications

that enable users to share and create content or to participate in social networking. There are

many uses of social media and everyone uses it in their own unique way. There are six main

social media sites and they include: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and

Pinterest. All these sites are different and

serve a different purpose. Some are used to

post pictures with friends or check up on

family. Some are used to help stay updated

and things happening in your professional life.

They all have one common thing, and that is the ability to communicate with others in a very

quick and easy manner. By communicating with people faster you can see how people feel

about a certain topic or post by someone very quick. This appealed to many business

professionals as they saw this as a way to advertise their products or services and receive real-

time feedback from there customers. Thus, they created which is now one of the most used

marketing practices today and that is social media marketing.

New Wave of Marketing:

As stated above, social media is taking over society and becoming a necessity for some people.

Marketers were some of the people who were most influenced by social media, as it created a

new avenue for them to connect with customers in a very quick and easy fashion. With social

media becoming so important and widely used, they have come up with a new marketing

practice called Social Media Marketing (SMM). Margaret Rouse defines Social Media Marketing

as, “a form of internet marketing that utilizes social networking sites as a marketing tool”

(SMM). When social media outlets like Instagram, twitter, and Facebook started to become

more popular companies knew creating social media campaigns would be an amazing way to

connect with customers and still be able to seem very personable.

How Social Media has become effective for Marketers:

Think about how many times a day you see people on there phones. Now think about the

amount of those people who are reading or scrolling through social media. According to

themanifest.com, “The average person will spend 5 years of his or her life on social media –

more time than they will spend eating, socializing, and grooming. As people continue to spend
more time on social media, that number will only increase” (Herhold). Some other statistics she

states in her findings include:

• Nearly everyone (86%) uses social media at least once

per day, and 72% use it multiple times per day.

• People use a combination of methods to access social

media, including mobile apps (67%), computer web

browsers (57%), mobile web browsers (41%), and

tablet apps (31%).

• Most people use Facebook (82%), YouTube (75%), and

Instagram (53%) at least once per week.

These statistics just go to show why marketers have focused all of there advertising and work to

make their appearance on social media very good. Above are the usage statistics based on the

amount of people that are on social media during the day and year. With over 80% of people

using social media at least once a day means that at least once a day a company is guaranteed

to make an appearance on someone’s feed and get them to view your advertising.

How Marketers Develop Content:

As stated earlier one of the most important aspects of social media is that it allows marketers

to develop content and share it with their customers in a quick and effective manner. Also, it

gives marketers to publish new content almost daily. Marketing experts have come up with five

quick and easy steps to help create and maintain and good social media platform. They include:
1. Establish an audience
• Figure out demographic, so you can specifically target your potential customers
• Gather information using analytics to show how people react to accounts
2. Create content specific to company or product
• Draws audience and customers in
• Allows customers to easily search company or product
3. Begin testing networks
• Allows people to see which social media outlet yields the biggest response
• Putting out information on all different platforms
• Put more attention on accounts that have biggest response
4. Create a calendar of posts
• Allows people to prepare for specific event coming up
• Turn an idea into something that is more concrete
• Helps anticipate future performance of social media accounts
5. Check up on your performance
• Make sure page is working properly
• Analyze statistics to help future posts
How Marketers Measure Social Media Performance:

What good is it use social media without a way to measure your performance? What if I were

to tell you analytics professionals have created ways to help marketers analyze their content.

Marketing expert Nathan Mendenhall describes five key metrics used to help marketers

understand how their content is doing, and how their content is being viewed by potential

customers. His five key metrics include:

• Community Growth

o The growth of followers from month to month

• Impressions/Reach

o The amount of time your post shows up on someone’s timeline

• Engagements

o The amount of people that view your content and leave a like or a comment

• Website Visits

o The amount of people that go the extra step

and learn more about your product/service

• Conversions

o When someone buys product/service off of

your website, given the information from social

media account

(https://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/5-key-social-media-metrics-measure)
Good Social Media Campaign:

In September of 2017 there was a drastic hurricane that ran through Houston Texas. Causing

lots of damages and leaving many injured, there were lots of questions about how Texas would

be able to come up with enough funds to pay for all the damages. It was then, that Houston

Texans star defensive end Jason Watt started a social media campaign where he asked for

donations to help with damages. He promised to match every donation and after that, the

donations took off. Stars from all different sports, entertainers, and fortune 500 company

owners also joined in and donated millions of dollars. Within a week the Texans football star

was able to raise 27 Million dollars for his city and helped so many, that simply could not help

themselves. By using social media Watt was able to reach a big audience of people and spread

the word about how urgent the matter

was and was able to show with people

exactly were there money was going and

who it was going to benefit. This campaign

made people realize the power social

media has. By sending out one simple plea

for help, people are able to come together

and support a cause bigger than

themselves and their small communities.

Bad Social Media Campaign:

Throughout this whole piece all that was talked about was how social media has helped

marketers expand their network through good content and impactful campaigns, but that is not

always the case. Some companies have used social media to market their product to the wrong

audience. As seen in recent news the vape company JUUL is currently under heat for using what

some call are illegal marketing techniques. They are described as illegal because JUUL used

social media to target there

harmful vape products to

minors and people under the

age of 25. JUUL was aware

that the main market for

there product was minors and

people under the age of 25,

so they used their social

media accounts to gain access

to people of those ages and

promote their product. The

biggest controversy comes from them promoting their products as FDA safe, and that is not the

case. These products have not been FDA approved and them directly saying they are in

unethical. Many children are sick, and more cases of illnesses are starting to come out. Since

then their CEO has resigned and stepped down effective immediately.
Next Steps:

Social media has changed so much within marketing in the last ten years and it is only going to

continue to change as time goes on. In order to keep people up to date with the latest social

media we must start educating people on how to use it correctly, and the benefits that having

good social media can do for a company. More and more companies are using social media and

it is starting to become mandatory that employees have some sort of knowledge and

experience with social media. The main users of social media are under the age of 35, but with

most of our workforce above the age of 35 we must teach the older generation about how to

use social media and what exactly social media is. Finally, we must be finding a way to develop

social media into more than what it is now. Technology is continuing to change, and we must

find a way to make sure social media progresses just as technology does to keep up with how

productive social media and technology have made our society today.
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Scribendi Inc. (n.d.). The New Age of Marketing: Social Media and Business. Retrieved

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Mendenhall, N. (2017, June 4). 5 Key Social Media Metrics to Measure. Retrieved from

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/5-key-social-media-metrics-measure.