The Role Of Social Media In Marketing

Marketing is a fast paced ever changing part of business and in the past few years and Social Media has become a very important part of it for businesses. The basic function of marketing is to attract and retain customers at a profit. It is a main part of the digital era we now live in and has alerted companies approach to Marketing because they know how important social media has become for getting their product advertised to a large audience online through this medium. Companies need to manage social media correctly to appeal to their micro environment, mainly customers. It is also a cheap and a great way to build relationships with the customer (Argawal ,2016) Social media marketing is a connection between brands and customers while also

The company would send its message out to the customer with no interaction, they were talking at the customer and not with them. The main types were magazines, radio advertisements, television commercials, billboards and telemarketing to name a few. In the 1980s the first personal computer by IBM which was used for very basic needs until the internet in 1991 when a computer programmer named Tim Berners Lee invented the world wide web which would lead to the internet becoming widely available for all as it is today. The first social media sites like bulletin boards however first came to existence in the late 70s, these were the first type of sites that allowed users to interact with each other. Internet relay chat in 1988 where people could keep in touch and share files. Dating sites and forums also came into existence in the 70s which are still common forums of social media we have today and is used for marketing purposes as they have large and varied audiences. In the early 2000s there was developments in social media with the introduction of sites like Friendster,,Linkedin,Myspace,Facebook,Youtube,Twitter,etc (Chapman,2009) These sites now have millions of followers and have become an ideal form of marketing for companies because of the large scale of people they can access to market their product to, while also being able to interact with customers and potential customers to see what

They have to be creative and interact with consumers and potential consumers in order to stay ahead of competitors. These sites make it easier to get a target market through the analytic tools they have which is very beneficial and also it helps to gain brand loyalty. Companies have to engage with consumers and help if any issues may arise in a quick and effective manner through these sites and thus need quality people running and managing their social media sites. There will become a greater need for highly qualified employees in this area because social media is getting more and more popular, so if a business is not using it to their best advantage they will lose out to competitors who will be. Feedback from consumers is very helpful for a business to improve their service or product and can also even help for future ventures like creating a new product that there is a demand for. It is essential for small businesses to get up and running. Social media will play an important role in the future of marketing as social media sites are getting easier to access now with computers widely available and the use of smartphones, which means people can use and view these sites any time of day or night no matter where they are in the world. Companies are aware of this, so expect to see more and more enter