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Following the years of the dot-com boom the web re-branded itself from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0.
O’Reilly (2004) promoted the latter as the “web as a platform”, where version 1.0 was more technical with static websites not yet providing interactive content, in contrast to version 2.0 that emphasises user-generated content.
This user-generated content is described by Chaffey & Chadwick (2012) as encouraging customer communication, this can be done through social media marketing by using lots of different tools such as commenting, liking, blogging and sharing photos, videos and links. Social media marketing has, and continues to become one of the most important parts of a brand’s digital marketing strategy. Every brand, especially beauty brands are eager to understand their consumers, to interact and engage, to find out their like and dislikes.
Social media users have risen by 176 million in the last year (Brandwatch, 2015) and it’s due to this rapid rise that has given social media a reputation for being a passing phase that is unlikely to be profitable. This could not be further from the case, there are now 2.3 billion active social media users, with each user having an average of 5 accounts, 91% of brands now use two or more social media channels (Brandwatch, 2015).
So if that’s not enough to convince you to focus on your brands social media marketing here are some benefits you could get from doing so:
1.Sharing Content – Porter and Golan (2006) argue that to capture the attention of consumers, brands must catch the attention by creating content that captures human emotions. Beauty brand Dove did this emotive advertising with Dove’s Real Beauty campaign which has posted powerful videos and images, based on a research project, with the aim of making women feel good about themselves. Have a watch below and see what you think…
https://youtu.be/XpaOjMXyJGk
The video has been watched over 66 million times and shared with millions of users globally. The video was posted on the brands Facebook page which is linked to their US YouTube channel. Sharing content allows brands to reach users who may not have ‘liked’ a brand page, increasing the audience reach, as ease and quickly. This helps to advertise the brand is a more subtle way, (Ryan, 2012) emphasises that users are aware of authenticity and although marketing the product is important, it’s about brand awareness, conveying the brand personality and image without blatant brand promotion.
2.Instant Feedback – Social media gives your brand instant access to both positive and negative feedback, which provides you with valuable insights on your consumers. Sharing a new beauty product on social media allows you to watch the ‘likes’ (and the newly incorporated ‘dislike’ button) and read the comments from which you’ll instantly learn what your customers think of it. You can then use this key information to stay ahead of your competitors, the speed at which you receive this feedback can therefore improving your market intelligence. This kind of information will allow you to make strategic business decisions in order to stay ahead of your competition, allowing you to alter the product or change the way the product is being marketed.
3.Website Traffic – One of the best benefits of social media for business is using it to increase your website traffic. Not only does social media help you direct people to your website, but the more social media shares you receive, the higher your search ranking will be. Crawley (2014) argues that organic search traffic is the most important source of traffic to a website, it means that users are searching for you with intent and this is noted by the likes of Google. If you want to read more on climbing the SEO rankings read my other Tania|Talks|Tech blog here.
If you’re interested in understanding more about social media marketing click the link below to a Ted Talks playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNATE6W3-RazWkL55_kFQF561KyiFBNol
References
Brandwatch (2015) Social Media Statistics. [Online] <http://bit.ly/1RxTOH3> [accessed 6 May 2016]
Chaffey, D. & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2012) Digital marketing: strategy, implementation and practice, 5th edn, Pearson Education: Harlow
Crowley, M. (2014,) “Optimize Keywords to Improve SEO”,Journal of Financial Planning,vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 17
O’Reilly, T., Sinclair, G. and McNamara, D.S. (2004) iStart: A Web-Based Reading Strategy Intervention That Improves Students’s Science Comprehension. In CELDA. pp. 173-180
Porter, L., and G. J. Golan. “From Subservient Chickens to Brawny Men: A Comparison of Viral Advertising to Television Advertising.”Journal of Interactive Advertising 6, 2 (2006): p30–38.
Ryan, D. (2012) Understanding Digital Marketing. 3rd ed, London: Kogan Page