Scoial Networking Essay: Introduction
Social Networking Essay discusses that Every entrepreneur desires profitability in their businesses – a process mostly caused through heavy traffic to 
their website. Internet advertisement is based on marketing goods and services with the use of the internet in order to make buyers aware of what a person or organization is offering for sales. Advertisements over the internet involve awareness through emails, search engine marketing (SEM), web banner displays, mobile advertisement, and most importantly, Social Media marketing. [1] Social media advertising is becoming the major form of marketing products and services in the world today. Businesses have taken this commercial advertising medium a priority because the social media are directly used by everyone. Basically, most of the things written on social media are published by general users of the internet and not just the owners of a website or employees. [2] For instance, posts on Facebook are published by anybody and not Facebook staffs, same thing go for YouTube videos and other social media. Apparently, this fact makes business owners explore the use of the social media as an advertising medium since it is targeted at meeting the final consumers directly. Because social networking reaches end consumers and the general public directly, it will continually become a major advertising medium all over the world.
Social networking motivates more money (dollars) to be spent on advertising on the internet. According to a post from CMO Council, it was recorded that in April 2015, BIA/Kelsey showed in an estimation that the funds spent on the US mobile advertisement on local, or location targeted, and placement would increase by 56% which is about $6.7 billion or an increase in the mobile advertisement dollars in June 2015. [3] Many senior marketers keep disbursing funds to digital marketing to their website development, performance optimization, and content. A percentage of them, around 53% spend a cut of their budget on social media community engagement, as well as growth. With this high percentage of the way money is spent on social media advertising, it is expected that about 540 billion dollars internationally would be spent on advertising and marketing before the end of this year [3] The major reason why more money will be spent on internet advertising is because it had been observed that majority of people in the world spend time with their phones, tablets, and personal computer they are mostly seen on various social media websites. According to a survey from eMarketer, the US adults spend at least 2 hours, 51 minutes on average with their mobile devices. [4] Marketers have decided to seize this opportunity to reach users and consumers directly. Additionally, this increase in the money spent is influenced by the gradually developing revenues from some leading internet media companies, specifically the ones that are based on mobile revenues. [4]
Advertisers will always create new ways of using the social networks such as Facebook with different approaches. Facebook had been regarded as the largest social network in the world today and marketers wouldn’t stop seizing using this medium as a yardstick for the awareness and profitability of their business. A post by Rodriguez, 2013 from Forbes describes a way ads are carried out on Facebook. Using the social network, such as Facebook for any kind of advertisements requires some programmed link to the social networking domain. [5] A form is created on a Facebook tab to gather contact and other related information from users. Using this helps to generate more reasonable lead compared to getting such information on just an external website. Facebook feature adverts for brands based on users’ location, interest, and the pages they “Like”. This then makes marketers target social media users to know which ones would become their customers and prospects. [5]
Smartphones have become the best tool for marketers to help their strategies for reaching consumers and users directly and effectively. According to a post by eMarketer.com, it was estimated that mobile is leading the advertising industry at a very high speed, making the use of television and radio gradually phasing out. [4] It was estimated that the use of smartphones will rise in total media ad expenditure in the United State marketers will spend 83.0% of its use for their adverts which is a progressive increase of about $8.04 billion compared to the estimate in 2013. [4] The conclusion was that by the end of 2014, smartphones will take nearly 10% of media ad expenditure, facing out newspapers, radio, and magazines. [4]
Conventionally, smartphones are interesting to fondle with and people generally spend ample time surfing through their phones. The development of some sophisticated mobile applications is helping marketers to connect directly with customers to create campaigns across these social networks in an attempt to display e-commerce and advertising. [6] Marketers have combined this creative technology with the nature of their job to tap into the aspirations and desires of people recommending the needful to them. Marketers do not work alone, as they get technical staff and other marketers to work with them, which is one of the challenges faced in the advertising industry. Considering the fact that the knowledge required to effectively carry out this task requires some skills in statistics, computing, and mathematics. [6] The development of the applications from creative marketers has relatively improved user involvement in e-commerce. Many of these applications are advertised on social networks and are provided with links for installations on these smart phones. Smartphones are majorly the tools used to get many organization operations close to users, and its use is becoming increasingly important in the world today. [6]
There are problems or risks involved in the use of the new methods of marketing. Everything advantageous in life always comes along with its side effects. The internet is a large word of business opportunities where everyone wants to tap from its goodness. However, security problems are associated with the major advantages of the use of the internet. Most especially the social media, it introduces an increased level of risk with different evolving dynamics and complexities that requires some managing, control, and full understanding in order to ensure businesses are securely operated. [7] Generally, social networks are not restricted to the personal computers, it is available on PDAs, smartphones, tablets, and any device that is capable of transferring data and is a part of a network. This brings some lines of approach for malware propagation, and creating concerns about information pilfering and availability – one of the major problems of this method of marketing. Associated problems include privacy issues, identity theft, as well as fraud likelihoods. The concept of authentication is not prevalent to solving these issues, and it is becoming a worry to the marketing industry. [7] Buyers and users may tend to assume some of the adverts on the internet are scams except for the well-known organizations.
Businesses have the responsibilities of assessing the benefits of their organization through marketing and communications using the social media. Setting up policies such as business risks will help many businesses stand firm if there comes any kind of threat to their organization. This is necessary to keep the organization abreast of their integrity and keeping their brand recognition at the highest level they desire. As much as mobile devices are one of the major tools for marketing, they are not usually subject to the same control as the computer of an organization can do. This implies that there are vulnerabilities with respect to employee usage of organization’s advertisement on social media. This includes insecure applications that may be present on an employee’s personal social network page; those vulnerabilities may result in an unacceptable exposure on a corporate network. In addition to this, malicious outsiders could utilize the social network pages of an employee to launch attacks through gathering information for the purpose of executing the commercial campaigns and advertisements. [8] Other risks involved include the threats that could affect the organizational computing assets are possibility of viruses and malware. This could risk losing files and important data. Lastly, when the social media account of an organization is operated by unauthorized individuals, they could post wrong information against the plan and permission of the organization, and this could tarnish their image and integrity on those platforms.
Managers always had to change their methods in response to increased Internet advertising. The world has become so connected together by the technology around us, and this had created a means of using the Internet for various e-commerce activities on a very high level. Buyer-seller activities follow the same norm and processes and still maintains their productivities and brand recognition. But the increased Internet advertising in the world today demands strategies to stand out of the competition, and this requires some strategic methods to go about it. The internet is enough to effectuate change when things are not going well. Consumers gain access to millions of data from every part of the world and with just a click, they can access meaningful insights about any organization and the products or services they are offering. [8] Since the social media is even closer to consumers, they find it very easy to compare product qualities that are advertised on those platforms, find favorably lower prices, go through the reviews from other buyers, and even communicate with those users about the quality of the product and how satisfied they are. A finding from MBA Exchange.com shows that more than the approximate of 64% of buyers surf the internet for whatever products they intend to purchase. When users are satisfied with a particular product, they tend to share it with others which imply information is being disseminated unprecedentedly.
Long time ago, internet marketing was majorly controlled by managers and website administrators, and was limited to those who had the basic understanding of website development using html codes and other related website development codes. The revolution had made life so easy and unique, the world is now digitally based, and business environment and marketing functions have been transformed due to high internet usage. This was when the World Wide Web became known and was popularly known as Web 2.0, this allows users upload, create, or share content. [8] The proliferation of change is narrowed down to managers creating content that are unique, eye catching, attractive designs, and great product brands. They have been motivated to use the right format, tones, and scope to reach out to customers in the challenging market world. The deterrence of mass customization of organization content has become the order of internet marketing and the use of technologies, such as Demand Side and Ad Exchange platforms to intended messages are received by the intending recipients. [8]
Social Networking Essay Conclusion:
The Internet had come to stay in the world of humans and the social media will still continuously connect users and consumers together. The massive population of Facebook users in the world today will continuously motivate organizations to spend more money on advertising on the internet, and this will continually boost their popularity, recognition, and productivity. The high competition in the market will increase organization innovation, rebranding, and strategies of advertising on social media such as Facebook, and this will boost organizational distinctions. The smartphone is an important tool of telecommunication, internet transfer, content creation, and media. Its use in the marketing industry will keep helping organizations directly reach out to users of social media and the internet at large. The underlying problems and risk associated with the use of social media are provided with solutions and preventions, they are not enough to pull an organization out of the market. Managers have the responsibilities to develop different concepts to effectively measure up great standard in the industry. Therefore, the social networks are great tools of marketing and they will continue to help businesses grow productively and improve the economy globally.
Also study: Impact of Social Media Websites on Students
Work Cited:
- [1] Online advertising. (2015). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising#Social_media_marketing
- 2 Social Media Advertising. (2015). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://social-media-advertising.com/
- 3 Facts & Statistics. (2015). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://www.cmocouncil.org/facts-stats-categories.php?view=all&category=marketing-spend
- [4]Total US Ad Spending to See Largest Increase Since 2004 – eMarketer. (2014). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Total-US-Ad-Spending-See-Largest-Increase-Since-2004/1010982
- [5] Rodriguez, N. (2013). How To Triple Your Success Using Social Media Advertising Platforms. Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2013/05/01/how-to-triple-your-success-using-social-media-advertising-platforms/
- [6] How technology is changing marketing. (2014). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2014/sep/29/technology-changing-marketing-digital-media
- [7] Security Think Tank: What are the risks associated with social-media use, and who owns these risks? (2015). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Security-Think-Tank-What-are-the-risks-associated-with-social-media-use-and-who-owns-these-risks
- [8] Knowledge Article. (2015). Retrieved November 29, 2015, from https://www.mba-exchange.com/candidates/How-Has-Technology-Changed-The-Role-Of-Marketing-In-The-Past-Ten-Years,-And-How-Do-You-See-It-Changing-In-The-Next-Five-285-session-