If this article was written ten years back this would have raised no eye brows, decade later we are at a stage where no business would survive if there’s no digital presence. Websites which began more as a credential decades ago is really the beginning of the digital era that we are living.
Today, a pandemic is telling the world that we may not do as we please; businesses not only have changed their advertising methods and customer experience but also have started changing their business models. So what would be the baby steps to digital media. Let’s concentrate on the basics of digital marketing strategies and how they would impact on online businesses.
Over the years social media has grown at a pace which everybody expected the platforms to grow, but if anyone were to annotate that the virtuosos would take a slower approach to the growth of these platforms or that the developments would halt for a while he or she is surely mistaken. Social media platforms initially started more as an opinion sharing platforms where people also could share life events. As development teams of these platforms forecasted all businesses to take a digital turn, things escalated pretty quick. Now most these social platforms offer business related solutions that we could use to make online marketing of any business successful.
Modern times Company Directors, CEOs, Shareholders and Entrepreneurs alike are more interested about real time information. The changes that these tech developments has brought to the society has also made the approaches to the functioning of all ventures alike. None of the organizations would have thought that their forecasts towards the digital transition would arrive this early prompting them for a faster preparation to set up e commerce business connecting with their consumers.
Social media time line dates back to “HI5” which dried down with the emergence of Facebook; we have witnessed emerging of many social media platforms and have also witnessed fall of some. An important fact is that understanding of these different platforms and how they could improve the businesses. Twitter is one of the fast moving apps whilst Facebook offer variety of solutions not only to businesses but for individuals as well. Google + didn’t succeed but operates in a low profile whilst Instagram has boomed because of its content. Most of businesses do not understand the potential of Pinterest simply because of the fact that it is all about idea sharing. Emergence of these platforms not only impacted organizations but also advertising industry; changes resulted emergence of bunch of Social Media Marketing Agencies for assistance to guide and create campaigns that would make organizations standout.
Social Media created a revolution, these platforms made businesses and customers closer; too close that businesses are now more worried of the customer sentiment. Customer experience now impact stronger as their reviews are read not only by the customers who are buyers of the brand but also from possible customers that could purchase your brand. In a positive note, for customers that are really close to brand or more commonly known as loyal patrons this is in fact a perfect method to connect with the organization or the brand more easily. This is also being practiced many brands and organizations adopting social media platforms as their customer relationship tool so that they could improve from the feedback of their loyal fans. Once a brand or an organization is active on social media it is very important that the brand or the organization attend to each comment or review left out by customers. Bad reviews may hit hard, but could be a blessing in disguise where we could learn where we might have not focused. It is also important that as a brand or representing a viewpoint of an organization we be professional in replying to these comments.
Evolving of Social Media platforms have taken them from it’s intial vision of brand presence to a point where they could make a sale from the Facebook Page, some of the tools such as Facebook Shop and the ability to drive traffic to websites through advertisements have opened up doors to brands and organizations to reach bigger goals with social media. Most of the social media platforms offer their own insight tools however there are number of third party tools that would assist to analyze how successful the campaigns are. Finally it is utmost importanat that as a brand or as an organization we select the correct social media platform to campaign with, and identifying the correct posting strategy so that customers are engaged with the brand instead of being bored or disturbed.