ABSTRACT

Social media has gained importance and acceptance at a very past pace . it has
become an avenue to share one’s personal & professional life. The usage of social
media as media marketing tool is already implemented by many business . this
reports analysed how effectively social media be used as marketing tool . the
comparison of social media versus traditional media for marketing was studied and
advantage of both are complied . this report also analysed how small business
starts ups cab benefit from the ever growing social media industry .

Method this project report used journals , magazine , articles , newspaper sticks ,
business reviews , online survey and so on from the welingkar university . Further
official media pages of Various companies facebook , twitter , LinkedIn were
analysed to generate statics .

Result social media presence is definitely an advantage for all kinds of business
Social media marketing has wider market appeal and is relatively cheaper than
traditional advertisements with a huge number of audiences and high customizes
ability of social media for required content . social media Marketing emerge as an
exciting and effective tool for marketing
INTRODUCTION

Social media marketing sites have taken over today’s world .From what was started
merely for entertainment . Today these websites provides a host of opportunities to
its Users ranging from marketing their products increasing awareness on social issue ,
sharing photos , video calls ,Joining groups and forms of interests promoting an idea ,
finding family roots finding a lost friend, gaming , entertainment application and so
on . In fact the usage of social media marketing sites has been so diverse that many
people use it for more than just entertainment . Mena et al (2012) studied the
readiness of health students to use facebook as a platform for training professional
habits particularity in the case of influenza vaccination . this clearly shows socical
networking sites serve as a creative solution to many business problems.

Now that you have an idea of the prevalence of social media and its rapidly
growing influence, let's take a look at some of the key ways in which social media
can help you connect with your target audience:

Generate awareness of your company and its products or services by tapping into one
of the largest audiences in the world.
Generate leads through your social networking connections, speeding up the process
by creating events and promotions.
Draw in visitors to your website and other online portals by using your social media
resources to promote new content.
Maintain direct relationships with your customers and potential customers in order
to improve your product and get to better know your audience.
Provide customer service and advice directly to your audience and get useful
feedback from your followers to help track your success.
Facilitate sharing of your online content through the use of social media sharing
buttons, effectively letting your audience advertise for you.
The above cites some of the key reasons to get involved in SMM, but there are many
more depending on the type of business you are operating. Local businesses can
also make extensive use of social media platforms targeted specifically towards
traditional high-street businesses. Sites like Google Places, Bing Places and
Foursquare, among others, help you to show up in local search results and online or
mobile maps. What's more is that all of the above is absolutely free to use, and while
there are also paid SMM methods, the free ones are far too valuable to neglect.

1 - Understanding the Social Media Marketing Process

Small business marketers often find the prospect of online marketing a daunting
one, not least because it can be difficult to know which areas to focus on. SMM is an
extensive subject with a complex hierarchy which you will need to familiarize
yourself with in order to plan your strategy. As is the case with many forms of online
marketing, SMM typically starts with your website:

The foundation of your social marketing campaign is your website, particularly a blog,
which provides a regular stream of content to keep your audience interested, increase
subscribers and social media followers and raise awareness to your business and its
online presence.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds allow you to aggregate and sort your
content in such a way that you can provide more personalized content to different
segments of your audience. People can subscribe to your blog to receive regular up
dates by way of RSS feeds.

Social search tools, such as Google Places, Bing Places, Foursquare, Yelp and other
online directories may be used to get listed in local search results and draw more
attention to your business and its online presence. Social search is heavily
intertwined with SMM for small businesses.
Social sharing and bookmarking refers to tagging and sharing content on social
networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ or social bookmarking
websites like Delicious, Digg or StumbleUpon. For sharing to happen, you need to
have enough high quality and useful content.
Microblogging, typically using the Twitter platform, can help to raise awareness and
promote your content, thus drawing in more visitors to your website or blog. However,
for microblogging to become successful, you need plenty of content worth promoting
and sharing.

SMM starts with extensive planning, followed by research into your target audience.
You will then need to move your focus to engaging your audience while publishing
content (content marketing) and promoting it on your various social networks while
also encouraging your audience to do the same.
Social media has taken over the world in every sense. In the field of marketing,
advertising, brand building, promotions social media is the most sought after
method adopted by entrepreneurs’ young and old. The word social media
brings to mind the most used networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and
Linked In though there are other social media websites such as MySpace,
Flicker and YouTube. Social media is widely used in various businesses like
small business, banking, retail marketing, B2B marketing, travel and tourism
marketing, financial institutions marketing and so on. This chapter aims to
throw light on the way in which social marketing can be used effectively for
business development. The initial part of this chapter will give an overview of
how social media as a whole can help promote businesses and further down
the report, specific cases pertaining to a particular social networking website used
for developing a particular business unit will be examined.

· 2.1IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN TODAY’S WORLD

Suggests that placing an advertisement in the print media is not the best
solution for brand promotion. The problem with traditional mass advertising
according to Marie is that, these media appeal to a wide range of people who
may not even be interested to know who we are. On the other hand,
promotions and brand building must be done with people whom we think are
potential customers for our business. This can be achieved by channelizing a
greater part of promotion and advertising budget for activities such as
networking, volunteering, hosting events and so on. Out of these methods,
networking is the best that suits the need of the time With the technological
advancements in today’s world, it is fairly easy to be connected with the outside
world with the help of social networking sites. Peer networking is an important
way of advertising and this is all set to take over the world of marketing in the
near future. The biggest advantage of social media marketing is that it can be
used for any kind of business regardless of whether it is B2B or B2C. Also the
relative cost is much lesser as compared with traditional advertising.
To some entrepreneurs, social media marketing is the “next big thing,” a
temporary yet powerful fad that must be taken advantage of while it’s still in
the spotlight. To others, it’s a buzzword with no practical advantages and a
steep, complicated learning curve.

Because it appeared quickly, social media has developed a reputation by some

for being a passing marketing interest, and therefore, an unprofitable one. The
statistics, however, illustrate a different picture. According to Hubspot, 92%
of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was important for
their business, with 80% indicating their efforts increased traffic to their
websites. And according to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are
currently participating in social media—but 85% of participants aren’t sure
what social media tools are the best to use.This demonstrates a huge potential
for social media marketing to increase sales, but a lack of understanding on
how to achieve those results. Here’s a look at just some of the ways social
media marketing can improve your business:

1. Increased Brand Recognition.

Every opportunity you have to syndicate your content and increase your
visibility is valuable. Your social media networks are just new channels for
your brand’s voice and content. This is important because it simultaneously
makes you easier and more accessible for new customers, and makes you
more familiar and recognizable for existing customers. For example, a
frequent Twitter user could hear about your company for the first time only
after stumbling upon it in a newsfeed. Or, an otherwise apathetic customer
might become better acquainted with your brand after seeing your presence
on multiple networks.

2. Improved brand loyalty.

According to a report published by Texas Tech
University, brands who engage on social media channels enjoy higher
loyalty from their customers. The report concludes “Companies should
take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to
connecting with their audience. A strategic and open social media plan
could prove influential in morphing consumers into being brand loyal.”
Another study published by Convince&Convert found that 53% of
Americans who follow brands in social are more loyal to those brands.

3. More Opportunities to Convert.

 Every post you make on a social media platform is
an opportunity for customers to convert. When you build a following,
you’ll simultaneously have access to new customers, recent customers, and
old customers, and you’ll be able to interact with all of them. Every
blog post, image, video, or comment you share is a chance for someone to
react, and every reaction could lead to a site visit, and eventually a
conversion. Not every interaction with your brand results in a conversion,
but every positive interaction increases the likelihood of an eventual
conversion. Even if your click-through rates are low, the sheer number of
opportunities you have on social media is significant. And as I pointed out
in my article, “The Four Elements of Any Action, And How To Use Them
In Your Online Marketing Initiative,” “opportunity” is the first element of
any action.

4. Higher conversion rates.

Social media marketing results
in higher conversion rates in a few distinct ways. Perhaps the most
significant is its humanization element; the fact that brands become more
humanized by interacting in social media channels. Social media is a place
where brands can act like people do, and this is important because people
like doing business with other people; not with companies.

Additionally, studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher
lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing, and a higher number of
social media followers tends to improve trust and credibility in your
brand, representing social proof. As such, simply building your audience
in social media can improve conversion rates on your existing traffic.

5. Higher Brand Authority. Interacting with your customers regularly is a

show of good faith for other customers. When people go to compliment or
brag about a product or service, they turn to social media. And when they
post your brand name, new audience members will want to follow you for
updates. The more people that are talking about you on social media, the
more valuable and authoritative your brand will seem to new users. Not to
mention, if you can interact with major influencers on Twitter or other
social networks, your visible authority and reach will skyrocket.

6. Increased Inbound Traffic. Without social media, your inbound traffic

is limited to people already familiar with your brand and individuals
searching for keywords you currently rank for. Every social media profile
you add is another path leading back to your site, and every piece of
content you syndicate on those profiles is another opportunity for a new
visitor. The more quality content you syndicate on social media, the more
inbound traffic you’ll generate, and more traffic means more leads and
more conversions.

7. Decreased Marketing Costs. According to Hubspot, 84% of marketers

found as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to generate
increased traffic. Six hours is not a significant investment for a channel as
large as social media. If you can lend just one hour a day to developing
your content and syndication strategy, you could start seeing the results of
your efforts. Even paid advertising through Facebook and Twitter is
relatively cheap (depending on your goals, of course). Start small and
you’ll never have to worry about going over budget—once you get a better
feel for what to expect, you can increase your budget and increase your
conversions correspondingly.

8. Better Search Engine Rankings. SEO is the best way to capture

relevant traffic from search engines, but the requirements for success are
always changing. It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog,
ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions, and distribute links
pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be
calculating their rankings using social media presence as a significant
factor, because of the fact that strong brands almost always use social
media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand signal”
to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy.
That means, if you want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a
strong social media presence could be almost mandatory.
9. Richer Customer Experiences. Social media, at its core, is a
communication channel like email or phone calls. Every customer
interaction you have on social media is an opportunity to publicly
demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your relationship
with your customers. For example, if a customer complains about your
product on Twitter, you can immediately address the comment, apologize
publicly, and take action to make it right. Or, if a customer compliments
you, you can thank them and recommend additional products. It’s a
personal experience that lets customers know you care about them.

10. Improved Customer Insights. Social media also gives you an

opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are
interested in and how they behave, via social listening. For example, you
can monitor user comments to see what people think of your business
directly. You can segment your content syndication lists based on topic and
see which types of content generate the most interest—and then produce
more of that type of content. You can measure conversions based on
different promotions posted on various social media channels and
eventually find a perfect combination to generate revenue.

These are the benefits of sustaining a long-term social media

campaign, but if you’re still apprehensive about getting started,
consider these points:

Your Competition Is Already Involved. Your competitors are already

involved on social media, which means your potential social media traffic
and conversions are being poached. Don’t let your competitors reap all
the benefits while you stand idly by. If, somehow, your competition is not
involved on social media, there’s even more of a reason to get started—
the field is open.
The Sooner You Start, the Sooner You Reap the Benefits. Social media is all
about relationship building, and it tends to grow exponentially as your
followers tell their friends, and their friends tell their
friends, and so on. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be able to start
growing that audience. Potential Losses Are Insignificant. Realistically,
you don’t have anything to lose by getting involved in social media. The
amount of time and money it takes to create your profiles and start posting
is usually minimal, compared to other marketing channels. Just six hours a
week or a few hundred dollars is all it takes to establish your presence.

The longer you wait, the more you have to lose. Social media marketing,
when done right, can lead to more customers, more traffic, and more
conversions, and it’s here to stay.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO BUSINESS MARKETING

Michael Rodriguez et al (2012) conducted a

study on the effectiveness of social media marketing by analysing 1699
business to business clients from around 25 industries. The study proves that
social media is indeed helpful for B2B firms in generating new sales. Social
media is the best tool for finding new clients and deepening the relationship
with existing customers. The study assumed five hypotheses as follows: Social
media usage creates opportunity, social media usage helps in understanding
customers, social media usage helps in relationship management, social
media usage aids in relationship sales performance and social media usage
helps in outcome based sales performance. Based on the social capital theory,
these hypotheses were tested and data obtained was analysed using the
standard protocol (Churchill 1979; Churchill and Peter 1984). The result of this
analysis supported the hypotheses that social media usage creates
opportunities, social media usage helps in relationship management and
social media usage helps in relationship sales performance. However, the
hypotheses that social media usage helps increase outcome based sales
performance and social media usage helps in understanding customers were
not supported. Thus taking all these into consideration, it can be concluded
that social media usage helps in developing B2B sales. With over 955 million
active users, Facebook tops the social media in terms of usage and number of
active users (Mashable website, 2013). Thus it is important to know how
Facebook can be used for B2B marketing.

FACEBOOK FOR B2B MARKETING

Although the idea of integrating business into personal life doesn’t seem to be
a right choice, Facebook being a larger community than all countries of this
world expect India and China can help develop B2B business (Handley, 2013).
For this the company must have a business page as opposed to the normal
individual profile page. The following things need to be kept in mind while
promoting business through Facebook: (1) The utmost important thing is to get
as many people to ‘like’ the official company page. Also contents must be
added frequently so that users constantly get the news of the company
through the news feed on their home page. This will keep them updated about
what is going on in the company. (2) Secondly communicate to the customers
visually as opposed to text only communication. Facebook uses an algorithm
which gives more priority to videos and photos than text and increases visibility
of news item proportional to the number of people commenting or liking
·
In simple terms, if a news item is liked and commented by a
few people in the initial phase, there is more chance that it will be seen by
more people. (3) The number of times updates are added and the time of the
day when the posts are added is equally important. Choose a time which is
most likely to hit maximum number of clicks and limit the number of posts to
one or two per day. Similar to the usage of social media in B2B markets as
mentioned above, social media also aids B2C marketing. The following part of
this report analyses how various B2C clients are benefitted from social media
usage.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO CONSUMER MARKETING

Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to

increase sales. This includes business markets such as travel and tourism,
banks, retail outlets and so on.
2.3.1 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR TRAVEL AND TOURISM

Various industries within the travel industry

are focusing on social media marketing along with the traditional marketing
techniques. The airline industry is one which heavily relies on social media for
promotions and advertisements. Hvass & Munar (2012) studied the
effectiveness of the airline industry using social media for promoting their
travel and tourism packages. Initially a total of 29 full service carriers and 20
low cost carriers were selected for this study and afterwards three airlines
were chosen from this set. These airlines had an account in Facebook or
Twitter or both. The study proves that most airlines use an official
tone/language while posting their updates thereby reducing the interactive
nature of the post (Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et al 2011). Followers would like
the content of these pages to be more informal but authentic. In fact many
airlines have more than one official page which can cause both confusion and
clarity. It causes confusion because fans or followers may be reluctant to join
more than one page for the same company as it would be difficult to
distinguish between original official page and duplicate page. On the other
hand maintaining more than one official page on the social media can help to
clearly distinguish between various functionalities of the company. For
instance, content pertaining to employees need not be made public to the
customers and so two pages can be maintained which caters to employees
and customers. In any case, the result proves that maintaining a social media
account helps increase customer base for the travel and tourism industry and
as mentioned above many companies in the tourism industry are already into it
·

2.3.1.1 TWITTER FOR THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY

Saltzman (2009) conducted a real life case study on usage of
Twitter by various travel operators. It is interesting to note that different travel
agents use different strategies for marketing through twitter. While Southwest
airlines do not address most of customer service issues through twitter, it
responds to all other queries including latest fares, promotions offers and so
on. As for Marriot International which started with relatively less number of
followers, the main agenda was to implement the feedback provided by the
followers. The main success factor of Marriot’s page is that they don’t limit their
tweets to company specific deals and offers. Interesting fun facts are also
given due importance. Though Marriot also doesn’t encourage customer
service issues through Twitter as it may damage the reputation of the
company, any issues posted on Twitter are dealt with. For pleasant holidays,
the major reason they use Twitter is to communicate last minute deals to its
customers and other travel agents. Carnival Cruise Lines address customer
queries most effectively so that Twitter is more of a communication medium
between the company and the customers. Thus different strategies are
adopted by different travel operators for marketing through twitter. This
strategy has proved successful for all the travel agents because their growth in
terms of number of followers is whooping. All of them have grown to either
three digit or four digit numbers in a short span of five years and this proves
that marketing through twitter is successful. Though the real success factor
lies in the amount of revenue generated through usage of social media, the
gain in popularity of these sites can’t be ignored. Table 1 shows the growth of
various travel operators in terms of number of followers. TRAVEL OPERATOR
FOLLOWERS (AS ON AUG 2007) FOLLOWERS (AS ON 27 SEP 2012)
PERCENTAGE GROWTH Southwest Airlines 406,091 1,372,970 338%
Marriot International 13,446 197,089 1465% Carnival Cruise Lines 8,671
60,556 698% Fairmount Hotels 4,550 42,033 923% Pleasant Holidays 2,767
7,727 279% Holland America Line 1,472 15,617 1060% Four Seasons Hotels
4,157 49,251 1184%

· Another area of wide usage of social media for B2C marketing is

in financial institutions especially in the banking segment. The next part of this
report concentrates on how financial institutions utilize social media for their
marketing strategies. 2.3.2 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Many studies have been conducted to analyse the importance of social media
marketing in the financial institution segment. The use of Linked In which is
referred to as ‘professional Facebook’ is a very effective platform to build
business. “LinkedIn provides a prime opportunity to showcase your business
and its employees as experts in their field” (Hershberger, 2013). An important
fact about LinkedIn is that it has the highest average income of all social sites.
This means that LinkedIn is more to do with business than entertainment.
These days business validation is done by searching for the company in most
popular social media. If financial institutions do not have a profile, it is most
likely that the company will not be regarded as authentic. The advantages of
managing a profile on LinkedIn are as follows: The company website,
other social media presence like Facebook and Twitter can be integrated with
the LinkedIn page. Products and Services tab on the LinkedIn page can be
customised to suit the company’s requirements. Icons, Banners, Photos
and videos pertaining to brand building of the company can be included on the
LinkedIn page to increase viewership of the page. Several real life case
studies have been written about how banks in particular use other social
media sites such as Facebook and twitter for marketing. The next part
focusses on banks using Facebook as a marketing tool

2.3.2.1 FACEBOOK FOR BANK MARKETING

According to Price (2011), customers who interact with a

company through social media are not discount shoppers. Financial
institutions like banks use Facebook as a tool to deepen existing potential
customers. Evidently Facebook is a place where people like to spent time in.
When a company’s presence is felt on a place where you want to be, there
are more chances that the company’s brand building boosts up as a by-
product of the liking for the social media website as a whole. Bank Atlantic is
an example which has 2217 likes as on 26 September 2012. The following is
the strategy implemented by Bank Atlantic:
· Use Facebook to create experiences, services and values unique to
Facebook users. This can be surveys, games and so on Place interactive
contents like videos and photos which will drive the customers towards the
bank’s official pages Encourage users who are active on the page by
promoting their content like blogs. Just as different tour operators have
different marketing strategies on twitter, different banks have different
marketing strategy on Facebook as well. Albro (2012) reports the strategies
used by various banks in the United States of America to increase their sales
through Facebook marketing. For First National Bank operating mainly in
Virginia, Facebook is an important way of keeping in touch with the customers.
The posts on the bank’s page are planned well in advance so that the bank
is prepared to counter any queries from customers regarding the posts. The
bank dedicates a person for responding to customer queries on the page.
Similarly Bath Savings Institution believes in a two way synchronisation
between the banks official website and the official Facebook page. While
updates are posted on both the website and on the Facebook page, the bank
aims at creating an interaction with the customers through the Facebook page.
An important aspect of Bath Savings Institution is that it does not discuss
products or services of the bank through Facebook. The bank believes that
details of products or services are not what customers want. Just as banks use
Facebook for marketing, Twitter is also widely used by many banks to promote
their brand. The next part of the report throws light on Twitter marketing by
banks.

2.3.2.2TWITTERFORBANKMARKETING

A difference in using Twitter for marketing as compared to

Facebook or LinkedIn is that Twitter is more demanding. Frequent tweets
should be written in order to engage customers and this may require an
additional person in marketing to keep the page live and updated at all times
(Walt Albro, 2012). Also even if multiple tweets are written, the number of
potential customers in Twitter is much less than of Facebook due to fact that it
has far lesser active users than Facebook. However, many banks have
already started using twitter as a means to communicate with their customers.
Baylake Bank has two persons from the marketing department to work full time
for the bank’s social media presence. Baylake Bank is active on Twitter,
Facebook and LinkedIn. The advantage that the bank sees in being on
Twitter is the nearly real time conversations it can offer to customers. Thus
customers receive feedback on their query in a very fast manner. The
content for social media is reviewed every two weeks and approved for
posting. Avidia bank has outsourced its marketing operations through Twitter
since the bank has only a small number of marketing staff. Avidia bank aims
at creating new customers and strengthening its brand name through Twitter.
Interestingly North Jersey Community Bank has about a dozen twitter accounts.
The bank uses one as its official twitter page while the others are for
communication between employees and the bank’s clients. Thus various banks
are utilizing social media for its marketing. Apart from financial institutions and
travel and tourism industries, retailers are also on the lookout for utilising
social media presence for marketing. The next part of this report gives an
idea of how retailers use social media for marketing.

2.3.3 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR RETAILERS

The August (2009) issue of Market Watch: Technology
suggests that usage of Twitter if monitored well can help in increasing sales
revenue beyond expectations. Many retailers are already reaping the benefits
of being on Twitter. For instance ‘Dell Retail Outlet’ had 704,000 followers on
twitter in 2009 and an accumulated turnover of $2 million through twitter since
the inception of its twitter page in 2007. Today it has 1,506,824 followers which
record a 214% growth in terms of number of followers in a short span of 3
years. Fashion retailer ASOS is also actively tweeting their offers, promotions
and discounts through twitter. Similarly Fresh and Easy which is the US
subsidiary of Tesco launched a new family meal pack as suggested by its
customers through Twitter. A leading furniture retailer in the UK – Habitat –
cautions that twitter usage, particularly the use of hashtags for promotions
must be done with extreme care. The company faced a bad reputation when
it used non relevant hashtags to improve viewership. Thus usage of twitter for
retailers is also found useful. Though the above study proves that social media
usage aids in developing both B2C and B2B businesses, Handley Ann (2012)
suggests that using Facebook for business needs may create a negative impact
on the person trying to promote the business. She suggests that Facebook is
something personal and people don’t expect business deals through Facebook.
It is supposed to be a social networking site meant for making friends and
keeping in touch with existing friends.
·