Defining Social Media ● The Social media phenomenon encompases the use internet based platforms like blogs, Facebook, Twitter

Linkedin,Pinterest and Youtube to share information with a group of listeners.

● To start, Wikipedia, the social media go-to reference created by the public in the form of thousands of contributors, defines Social media as “media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.”

● Social-media tools can give companies direct access to customers and an opportunity to learn about their behaviour, interests and desires.

● Social Media presents a very vast economic potential. At the advent of the social media boom the activity was primarly viewed as as one way promotional channel. However now the trend has moved towards understanding hot to capitalize on social media’s opportunity to listen and make it directly impact the bottom line.

Evolution of Social media

Social Media Usage Trends 2015 ● One quarter of the world’s population uses social media. This means that 1,730,000,000 people are posting, pinning,

tweeting, vining and instagramming.

● Every 60 seconds 4.7 million posts are uploaded to Tumblr; 277,000 snaps are shared on Snapchat; and more than five million videos are viewed on YouTube.

● Facebook retained its position as the biggest social media platforms with 1300 million registered users in 2014.

● 25% of Facebook content is planned a month in advance, whilst 22% of Twitter content is decided the same day it is to be posted.

● Snapchat may be closing in on 200 million users in 2015 while Instagram now has 300 million active users, more than Twitter’s 284 million.

Types of Social Media● Social Networks

Social Networks like Facebook and Linkedin are service platforms that allow users to connect with each other based on matching of interests and believes.

● Bookmarking Sites Bookmarking sites are a recent social media phenomenon that allow users to organize and manage content links from various

sources available on the internet. The most popular sites in the category are Pinterest and Stumbleupon.● Microblogging

Microblogging sites like Twitter push short updates across a targeted users who have signed up for such updates.● Blog Forums

Blog forums provides users to comment on a view’s expressed by authors on various issues concerning products, services and business environments.

Defining Social Media GoalsSocial Media goals can be classified according to the purpose of communication. They can either be based on need to innovate,

need to create strategy or desire to interact with employees.

Types of Social Media Goals

● Targeting new customer base

● Generating business leads

● Driving bottom line sales

● Building awareness about products and services

● Monetising on content

● Promoting thought leadership ● Educating Customers

Social Media Marketing Trends 2015

Social media marketing is use of various online media platforms to market products, services or organizations.Website is the key factor in creating an online identity for your brands. A website helps you reach a wider target audience with efficiency.Here we enlist 4 Social Media trends to watch out for -

Trend 1- Paid Promotions Social media marketing spends continue to rise as organizations are shelling out more and more money to reach the target audience.

Only 15% of a company's facebook fans are actually able to see daily updates of the company.The share of organic posts on facebook has dropped to less than 1%

Trend 2 - Video Posts Video posts attracts 3 times more traffic than any other form of marketing content. Video content guarantees more inbound links

and helps brands share their story in the easiest ways.Trend 3 - Platform Diversity Although its is simple to say that 84% of online users visit Facebook daily, having presence on multiple platforms helps garner

more traffic Trend 4- Image Based Content 40% of online media users respond faster to visulas than plain text. this is a very important trend for small businesses, as image

based social media platforms are the biggest revenue generators for businesses with less than $10,000 of capital.

Rationale For A Strong Social Media Presence

● According to Forrester research, a third of adults post at least once a week to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and about 70% read blogs and tweets, and watch YouTube.

● According to a new survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, more than three-quarters (79% ) of the 2,100 organizations surveyed said they are either currently using social media channels (58%) or preparing to launch social media initiatives (21%).

● 94% of B2B customers research online before buying products.

● 42% of B2B buyers are active bloggers.

What’s your Social Media Strategy?Harvard Business Review studies have developed four distinct social media strategiesThe “predictive practitioner.”Under this approach, the social media strategies are focused on specific concern areas. For example a company selling tangible

products may want to focus on increasing sales through its social media initiatives. The predictive practitioner approach helps companies focus on tangible results and measure social media achievements

The “creative experimenter.”The Creative experimenter approach focuses on playing with uncertainty to find ways that will discover new social media strategies

and techniques.The “social media champion.”This approach embraces the need to have an overall impact on organizational productivity by using large initiatives that will help

achieve predictable results.The “social media transformer.”In initiatives to improve the way companies do business , the social media transformer approach helps in using the unexpected to

approach the external stakeholders.

Case Study - Social Media lessons from Oreo Biscuits

Lesson 1 Being creative and cute is the best way to garner attention on Social media. Oreo followed the approach of simple messaging through great images.Lesson 2 Oreo campaigns across social media are meant to make you fall in love with the product! They play with the emotional cord of the customer through their ads, without even directly

asking them to do so.Lesson 3 Being humourous is of paramount importance when you wish to connect with the senses of the end users. Relaxation, entertainment, social interaction, expressing opinions are some of

the most popular reasons why people enjoy being on social mediaLesson 4 If you want reactions from your customers, your social media campaign needs to be as thought provoking as those done by Oreo. Oreo brand launches regular giveaways across social

media platforms without even distributing any free giveaways. Impact Here are the list of followers of Oreo across Social Media Platforms

● Facebook – 34 Million+ fans

● Twitter – 161K+ followers

● YouTube – 20Million+ views

● Instagram – 95K+ followers

● Pinterest – 3K+ followers

References1) Davis, J. (2010, September 22). The New Conversation: Taking Social Media from talk to action. The Harvard Business Review.

2) H.James.Wilson. (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2011).The New Entrepreneurial Leader: Developing Leaders Who Shape Social

and Economic Opportunity .

3) The Ultimate Marketing Machine. (2014, July 1). Retrieved January 25, 2015, from https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-ultimate-marketing-

machine

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