Since the dawn of industrialism, businesses have come up with thousands upon thousands of ways to push their products and services. Companies around the globe have used marketing strategies that range from paper flyers and leaflets to live seminars and radio advertisements. However, those forms of marketing have taken a bit of a back seat; the internet is the cornerstone of modern life and is now the main component of most companies’ marketing approaches.
When social media was born in the early 2000s, its main goal was to connect people to other people. The “social” in social media was the most prominent part about it. People used these websites to find other people and that was about it. However, nowadays, social media has become more dynamic in terms of how it can be used. Social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter were originally designed for users to market themselves and their personal lives and interests, so to speak. Now, companies are jumping on the bandwagon and reaching broader audiences by marketing their products in mediums that people actually use.
Instagram, originally an app for iPhone, took a leap into the unknown by being the first social media platform to rely almost entirely on photos, rather than words. This gave social media goers the opportunity to share pictures of their lives with their loved ones, rather than typing out an entire dialogue to post to Facebook. It’s quick and easy to post photos to your Instagram feed but even easier to scroll through other people’s photos. This type of exposure is ideal for companies trying to promote their products to a wider audience.
How a company markets a product is very important, but without strategic placement of advertisements, they can kiss all their hard work goodbye. Exposure is the key element to getting the word out there. A bad advertisement is 100 times better than an advertisement that is being marketed somewhere where no one is going to see it.
While pictures can be a compelling way of attracting the attention of potential clients or customers, short blurbs about products can also be effective. The average attention span of the general population has decreased significantly in the last decade or two. This is due in part to our lack of patience as a species. The longer we have to wait for something, the angrier we get. So, by default, we click away and look for something else to entertain us.
Tweets max out at 140 characters. Not much information can be conveyed through 140 characters but interest most certainly can still be sparked. Essentially, Twitter works in the same concise fashion as the news industry works. You provide the most amount of information you need to get someone’s attention using the least amount of words possible. This hooks people in and then they can choose to commit to the story as a whole or not.
Social media marketing is the future. In today’s day and age, a lot of your success is weighed upon by your adaptability. Technology is constantly changing, so following your target market from one social media platform to the next becomes a necessity for marketing your product. If a business isn’t already using social media to market their products to the wider world, they’re definitely thinking about it.
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