Today the world of Marketing is much different than it was a decade ago.  Now companies have multiple platforms to reach their consumers these include tv spots, billboards etc.  In this new age companies are now more frequently using other platforms such as twitter, facebook, instagram, google + all other forms of social media to reach their consumers.

Personally, as a person who does not use these sites or visit them often I have alway questioned the value of this type of marketing.  So this blog post will try and summarize the benefits of social media marketing.

The main purpose of social media marketing is to gain website traffic or attention through different platforms of media.  The strategy behind this is quite interesting as efforts are focused on created content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it.  If this is successful a corporate message can be sent from user to user and resonates stronger as the message comes from a third party source as opposed to the company itself.  Similar to the old word of mouth technique, social media marketing is a form of earned media.

One of the strongest arguments for social media marketing is that it is accessible to anyone with internet.  Also it is a really inexpensive way to implement marketing campaigns.  Finally and most importantly is the fact that people love using it and will continue to do so as Lance Brown outlines in his blog.

This is why people value these social media sites so much and why their IPO’s have been so successful.