SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING: NEW AVENUE TO EXPAND BUSINESS: PART 2

GET YOUR IMAGE RIGHT

-Secret behind success on social media platforms

It is rightly said that – ‘a picture is worth a thousand saying’. That is why Facebook shelled out $1 billion for Instagram, Yahoo doled out $1 billion for Tumblr- a photo essay blogging platform. Here are the various ways in which a business flourishes in social media platforms:

ARREST THE ATTENTION

Today, the attention span of an adult on the Internet ranges from 2.8 seconds to 8 seconds. Therefore it is very important for brands to attract consumers within that period. It is said that mind processes images 60,000 times faster than plain text. Therefore visuals are the best bet for any company whether start-ups or well established brands.

CATCH THAT EMOTIONAL APPEAL

Images and videos are the best way to capture emotional appeal of any customer. Be it young or old, feminine or masculine anyone. Videos help brands to engage people more effectively than anything else. Brands engrossed in YouTube and Instagram get higher engagement rate from viewers in terms of time spent than most other platforms.

FOLLOW THE 4E PRINCIPLE

Any visual content to be successful, it must have any one or more of the following:

Encouraging
Endearing
Enlightening
Entertaining

This has to be applied in accordance with the target customers like what interest them, what engages them, what drives them to a particular brand – source- Google

HARNESS THE POWER OF PICTURES

We all know that images take up more space on our Facebook’s news feed. Therefore this increases the odds of a visual advertisement getting noticed, especially on our mobile phones with smaller screens. Vine, the video service of Twitter, allows users to create six-second long videos and Bacardi uses this to show its followers how to make a great cocktail in just six seconds @ #sixsecondcocktail. I would recommend everyone to have a look at that in your homes.

TELL A STORY

Pick a story and try and connect that with the beliefs of the customers because people don’t buy ‘what’ you do they buy ‘why’ you do. You should tell them that you love selling authentic goods to your consumers and thereby satisfy their needs.

LET’S USE IT PRODUCTIVELY

-How we, the CA students, can use social media

Almost 25% of the time that Indians spend online is on social media. This is just an average. We, CA students spend more time on social media than the mentioned statistics. That time could have been utilised for researching things of our interests, for understanding about the conditions of our economy and other productive purposes. Our presence on social media should have a purpose. Time is money, therefor it is very important to invest it wisely. It’s important to know which websites are best suited for our purpose otherwise our precious time will be squandered.

Therefore I list down various websites, which I believe, can help us utilise our precious times for productive purposes rather than just wasting it needlessly.

SlideShare
1. This is the most amazing website for any curious student. A place where we can find powerpoint presentations for any topics that we can ever think of and guess what we can even upload our powerpoint presentation. Just create an account and you are ready to go. We can create content about matters that interests us. Just imagine how dynamically this would add to our knowledge and make us stand out of the crowd.
Tumblr/Wordpress/Blogger
1. These are the names of various blogging platforms where we can create our own website for free and keep blogging about things that fascinate us the most. We can also hone our writing skills. We can also get to test our creativity since developing your own website involves creative thinking and how we can differentiate it from other. The best part – we can have an income through this websites if it attracts readers progressively on a consistent basis.
LinkedIn
1. Last but not the least. When the HR personnel Google our name, chances are high that the first hit will be our LinkedIn profile. Therefore it very much imperative to maintain a complete profile which displays all our key achievements and award along with a good photo.

Following these can help us BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN TALENT AND OPPORTUNITY. Hence utilising our precious time for more productive purpose rather than scrolling up and down the newsfeed or the contacts list.

FINAL WORDS

-Evidences why social media websites is the avenue to expand business.

In this final section I would love to enumerate the critical statistics that will show the increase in the Social Media websites ad revenues and fall in newspaper and ad revenues and how the expenses incurred by the company are justified.

Twitter recently signed a $230 million deal with advertising network Omnicom
French ad network PublicisGroupe signed a $100 million deal with Instagram, in addition to its already existing $500 million deal with Facebook.
1. These are the kind of deals that newspapers and television channel can give their arms and legs for.
Amazon is allowing consumers to place orders through tweets.
Line, a popular messaging apps, features deals with from online coupon giant Groupon in India and proclaims that most deals it offers through the apps are snapped up in minutes.

JUSTIFICATION OF MARKETERS SPENDING ON SOCIAL MEDIA

The user base on social media has always been on the rise and also the time people spend on the social media platform of their choice. This gives the marketers the justification to spend and invest more money. It has been rightly said that “If we spend too little on advertising, we are spending too much”.The below shown graph depicts the time people spend on social media and will underline the fact that Social Media Advertising is really the avenue to expand business.

Therefore it has become very clear that Social Media Websites is really the force to reckon with. There is no doubt that it is the avenue to expand any business if done strategically. Marketers also know that Social Media is the place where bulk of dollars should go. Social Media Websites is the harbinger of the unprecedented growth that a company wants to achieve.