A marketing strategy would not be complete without the use of social media. Forty-seven percent of marketers spend at least sixteen hours per week concentrated on social media activities (Stelzner, 2011). Social media is defined as electronic tools where content, perspectives, and insights can be shared amongst users. It is also used to generate connections between people and businesses (Nair, 2011). Social media tools include blogs, discussion boards, wikis, consumer product rating sites, chat rooms, and social network sites (Stelzner, 2011)..
4.2 Review of Literature
4.2.1 Social Media Sites
The increase in social media is changing how people communicate with one another. It is highly interactive in the fact that people share information …show more content…
An increasing number of companies are using Facebook to find new customers, build online communities and gain demographic information (Pattison, 2009). Businesses need to be where the customers are and with 300 million people on Facebook, and still growing, that’s increasingly where the main audience is for a lot of products and services (Stelzner, 2011).
Besides creating a business Facebook page, through its automated advertising platform, advertisers can create ads that slip into the news stream of select users, based upon their age, location, and interests, as reflected in their activities on the site. Every time a consumer clicks the “like” button, Facebook records it. If a person likes a certain video, they will see ads from local businesses similar to the video in their news stream. Since the ads are targeted at users’ interests, they can be very applicable; Facebook provides tools for advertisers to measure just how effective (Cassify, 2014). …show more content…
(2009) assessed the content of “tweets” on Twitter corporate accounts and determined that consumer purchases are influenced by communications and social media. Twitter is also seen as an opportunity for expanding brand awareness and creating relationships with potential consumers. Businesses use Twitter to promote their products and answer questions. In 2014, small businesses outnumber the big ones on the site. Twitter is a more useful tool for them because many small businesses have a limited advertising budget, making Twitter a sole means of marketing. It is easier to set up and update an account than it is to uphold a web page (Miller,