Read the article The Evolution of Social Media as a Marketing Tool for Entrepreneurs on social media and its evolution and answer the following questions. The author states, “Overall, 90% of the marketers surveyed agreed with the question ‘Is social media important to your business?’ and 66% of small business owners strongly agreed with the statement.” What are some of the reasons why so many marketers believe social media is important to their businesses? How has social media evolved from its inception?

Reply 1: Melissa Tallman

An increase in exposure digitally for the business, social media helps to generate more exposure for one’s business and to its targeted audience. So many marketers believe social media is important because they know that their target audience is utilizing and engaging among the popular social networks. In addition they are also connecting with their favorite brands and engaging with them on different levels, typically in real time. With live feeds, real time tweets and social events that can easily be shared. Social media allows businesses to grow their brand recognition and usually at a cheaper rate than traditional print, tv and radio advertising (Geho, 2012).

Social media has evolved from its inception by leaps and bounds. In 1995 less than 1% of the world population was using the internet, at the time of the article The Evolution of Social Media as a Marketing Tool for Entrepreneurs (Geho, 2012) just over 32%, or 2.2 billion, of the world is active. Currently using social media, there are an estimated 2.65 billion in 2018 (Clement, 2019). To stand out among the other 2.649 billion people marketers and businesses better become proficient in the language on their preferred social media platform in order to expand the reach of their brand. Today there are behind the scenes tools on most platforms to help you understand your ROI with data to be analyzed whether it be retweets, reposts, comments, shares and likes. This is the new word of mouth referrals.

References:

Clement, J. 2019. Statista. Number of social media users worldwide from 2010 to 2021. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/

Geho, Patrick R; Dangelo, Jennifer. 2012. The Entrepreneurial Executive; Arden Vol. 17, (2012): 61-68. THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A MARKETING TOOL FOR ENTREPRENEURS

Reply 2: Rosanne Gusmus

Hi All,

In the article, “The Evolution of Social Media As A Marketing Tool For Entrepreneurs”, gives great insight into why social media is important to business owners today. One of the biggest reasons is the worlds population has mastered the online universe. 2.2 billion consumers are online so marketers must go to the platforms these consumers are at. The article also indicates that a company can spend at least six hours a week fine tuning their social media accounts and lead generation can grow by 52%. That is a huge number! That is 52% more eyes seeing your brand, 52% more word of mouth marketing, 52% more opportunities to convert a sales. With the right campaign, social media can generate more exposure which can lead to consumers turning into brand ambassadors and then doing the marketing for you.

Social media has grown tremendously since its inception. What started out as a way to keep in touch with friends and family has turned into the places consumers go first when they are in the research stage on their buying cycle. It is a place they also go get suggestions and reviews from other consumers as well. People in general are curious creations and want to give their input or advice on topics or products. When businesses first started to dive into the world of social media, companies would would set a reminder on their calendar to make sure the post on their accounts every Tuesday and Thursday at nine am for example. That type of engagement simple will not work today. Social media is for engagement and conversations and that is exactly what consumers want. They want to engage with a brand and feel like they are being heard and understood in the process. In the beginning businesses weren’t quite sure if social media was going to be a prosperous marketing avenue so a post it and forget it approach was taken. Today, social media monitoring websites and applications are all over the place to help you monitor and analyze all social media accounts. Sites like Hootsuite, Facebook Insights, Tweetdeck, and Hashtag.org are just to name a few. They were developed to create a dashboard and be a scheduler that allows posting content across all social media accounts simultaneously or separately and analyzing the data for you by sending reports back on what type of content is working and what people are seeing and engaging with you.

For business to succeed in today’s world, being absent from social media is not an option. Simply posting random ads or promotions won’t work either. Brands must create captivating campaigns that grabs the attention of the consumer and then begins to engage and create a relationship with them.

Thanks,

Rosie

Geho, P. R., & Dangelo, J. (2012). THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A MARKETING TOOL FOR ENTREPRENEURS. The Entrepreneurial Executive, 17, 61-68. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.snhu.edu/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2Fsearch.proquest.com%2Fdocview%2F1037409443%3Faccountid%3D3783