ONE CHANNEL, MANY FUNCTIONS IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Virtually, any process your organization or business attempts to do anytime, maybe promotion , market research project, human resources initiative, customer care service, investor relations , all these mentioned above deserves the amplification and the help of the social media.

When talking about business, social media serves as a channel for several different functions and these functions are listed below

• Customer services

• Customer engagement and brand equity building

• Promotion and customer relation

Social also belongs in the marketing mix. These days, we message any promotion or product launch on Facebook, twitter, blog. Depending on the promotion , you might also amplify the message on the other niche or other social media such as : youtube, groupon, foursquare,pininterest, and others.

Any business that aim to have a very strong personal connection to its audience must provide a robust presence in social media. There it must commit in the listed four things:

• A customer oriented nature that comprises of responsiveness, personality, authenticity. The aim is to respond to customer comments, questions and accept their complaints immediately, just as you would do in your inbound customer service e-mail and their call center. Doing the vasts majority of posting in your community, blogging top their own large circle of influence, referring to friends, offering some actions that are helpful in term consumer feedback and testimonials, and so on.

• Planning of the contents: just as a publisher that is periodic would do. When you are active opn social media, you need to have a posting schedule for the social media you choose, being active on the following social media keeps your page fresh and your brand front and center in the activity feeds of your fans or followers. Content plans encompass what you will talk about in your social spaces, as well as multichannel promotions and events to which you will invite your community.

• Promotion of your social space. If you build it, they wont come but if you wont them to come, you must invest thought, time, and some money in promotion.

• A retention plan to keep community members coming back. The biggest boon of the social media revolution, it is massively and geometrically growing scale, is also its Achilles heel. The sheer number of people, messages, and fans pages makes for massive overload. It makes it sure that most fans will only have a fleeting meeting with you online, then move on to other things. For most of your organization, facebook and the other social media are a customer interaction opportunity, not a place to troll for prospective customers or hype them with a sales pitch. For that reason, you will want to use social media top get to know your existing customers better, praise them, thank them and reward them for their patronage , and give them a very tangible window into the interiors working and nature and culture of your business. Make them feel recognized , appreciated, and party of something important , a business or brand that stands for something.