Social Media, as it has exists currently has been around for just over ten years, with pioneers such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube being the most notable since the early part of the 21st century. However, as with all other forms of media, especially those utilizing the Internet, various ways of capitalizing on their existence have come up over the years. Marketing, an aspect of business, has traditionally been centered on the physical aspect, such as print, and as they grew in popularity, the broadcast mediums of radio and television.
However, the idea of social media has provided the marketing world with a unique opportunity that has allowed them to successfully capture not only the core of what they could potentially offer, but to expand in unique ways in order to beat out competition, reach new client bases and provide more brand exposure.
The term ‘social media marketing’ is an interesting phenomena that has only existed for probably less than a decade. Social media, in and of itself describes a type of network that allows individuals and groups to instantly connect to each other and not only choose exactly what they would like to be broadcast, but also who they would want to receive their message. By using this aspect of it, marketers and companies all over the world are now able to break the traditional seller/buyer paradigm, and form a personal relationship with their customers and potential users (something that before social media was not thought to be possible on such a large scale). It also removes the traditional hierarchy of the marketing process and allows users to affect the decisions made by the business/group being marketed to varying degrees.
It provides marketing strategists with an infinitely large number of potential customers, while at the same time giving the end-user the ultimate choice in their ability to choose which campaigns to be subjected to.
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