Social Media Marketing

For many the perception of social networks is that they are primarily an outlet for gossip and also something that the younger generation is addicted to, but there is a way to use social media in order to help build both business and non-profit agencies. Social media can be an effective marketing strategy (Chung & Austria, 2010) which can help in volunteer management, financial contributions and mass communication as well as lucrative business.

According to a recent article in Success (Deneen, 2011), Facebook is up to 600 million subscribers, this puts Facebook alone at epic size that could, in terms of numbers alone, be considered a nation. With MySpace, blogs and other forms of social networking and media sites being used frequently by many, it is safe to say that the growing culture around the world is the social e-culture. In other words, there is a social revolution taking place in computing (Smith, 2009). Smith states further in his commentary that the amount of people using social media has grown significantly between 2006 and 2009. In some cases, interaction increased by 77-percent over a three year period.

In order to understand the terms being discussed, it is necessary to discuss the difference between social networking and social media. Social networking consists of sites which are used for everyday activities; people use social networking to stay in touch with their friends and family. Social networking is a utility used for connecting with others and includes sites such as Facebook profile pages, personal Twitter accounts and such. Social media, on the other hand is an outlet for broadcasting/publishing online and is a strategy (Chung & Austria, 2010, p. 581). Social media includes many of the same outlets that social networking does, yet the outlets are strategized for marketing rather than for personal contact.

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References

Chung, C., & Austria, K. (2010). Social media gratification and attitude toward social media marketing on online shopping value. Proceedings of the Northeast Business & Economics Association, 581-586. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database. (56100920).

Deneen, S. (2011, May). The Facebook Age. Success, 46-53.

Smith, T. (2009, July). The social media revolution. International Journal of Market Research, 51(4), 559-561. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database. (42536207)