Social Media - a compulsory ingredient of today's business

It is important to understand what does the term Social Media Marketing means and why is it so important in today’s world? Social Media Marketing (SMM) uses social media portals or websites to influence consumers towards a brand. Typically, the goal is to make the customer buy the brand or product or avail the service.

Many conventional or traditional marketers do not understand the importance of SMM and associate certain myths with it like;
~It is just a FAD
~It is just for the youth
~There is no financial return in SMM
~SMM doesn’t suit this type of business
~It is new
~It is time consuming (and most of the time , time wasting)
~It is free for all

In the real world however these myths hold no reality …

How brands run giant social media chanels. Follow, one of my favorite bloggers on how National geographic is nailing it

SMM is a different approach in the marketing industry and that is the only reason why it is not accepted widely by conventional marketers. Several areas distinguish SMM from traditional marketing, depicted in the table below;

Difference	Traditional Marketing	Social Media Marketing
Control vs contribution	The marketer chooses to control the market i.e the presence of competitiors or the good views on substitutes, it will focus on the brand’s exclusivity	The bloggers or social media marketers invite the competitors or general public to provide views and reviews about the product and its substitutes
Trust building	Traditional marketing spins around exaggeration and highlighting of the brand, this fails to win the trust of general public or consumer	Social media chooses a down to earth strategy and involving the consumers on a personal level, this wins the hearts and trust of general public

source: Social Media Marketing, by Barker, Melissa, International Edition.