Week 2 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

Social media is a fairly new platform for advertisement. Personally, in my young lifetime I have seen the increase in the use of social media. Naturally, as more people began to use social media there became a greater opportunity for companies to market their company to more people. In chapter 1 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing  it is stated that social media marketing was the "hottest skill that got people hired in 2013". Think about how much social media has grown since 2013, obviously marketing through social media also must be increasing. 

There are two main types of social media marketing, one which involves marketing to individual buyers (B2C) and one which markets to businesses (B2B). As there are differences in these types of marketing it is important to understand how to market to each depending on what you will be marketing. An example of a difference, is the extra information needed in a purchase by a business as it is using the company's money not one's individual money. Another important understanding in social media marketing is the need for engagement. Thus, it is important to know how to get peoples attention through advertisement. In fact, the chapter relates engagement through social media to public relations or PR as it needs to be constantly monitored to be sure that the ad relates to people and is not hurting the company's perception.

The name of the game is appealing to the audience. The more a social media account posts, the more potential there is to get clicks. Plus, the people who click on the advertisement if they like what they see, might decide to share their findings with others and get even more clicks. The different platforms where a company might market themselves are called channels. Some channels include Facebook, Twitter, or linked In for business people. In 2016, for appealing to customers, Facebook and Youtube were the most successful channels for marketing through social media. That being said, different social media platforms are continuing to grow. For example, Snapchat, Instagram, and Youtube have all noticeably increased their advertisements in recent years. As a result, anyone who is thinking about working in social media marketing needs to be continuously adaptive to the media environment. 

https://www.wordstream.com/social-media-marketing

Here is a picture of different social media accounts and who uses them as well their marketing strategies. This could be used to guess which platforms will be successful in the future.