Leveraging social networking sites for marketing

Abstract

Online social networks make viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing much easier and cheaper than ever before. The best use of social networks is not to make money ‘directly’ off them, but to harness their marketing potential and to use them to market one’s own business. This channel presents an efficient platform to spread of a company’s marketing message and to effectively track honest customer feedback. As internet is becoming omnipresent, we believe that all the major marketers will enter this channel in the near future. Thus, the use of social media and especially social networking services might bring out a phenomenal change in the field of marketing. Social networking has created new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people, and it now seems that social networking will be an enduring part of everyday life. Social networking services include those which contain directories of some categories (communities), those that connect friends, and also those that act as recommender systems linked to trust. Social networks connect people at low cost and often act as a customer relationship management tool for companies, who can use them for advertising and expanding their customer base. Since businesses operate globally, social networks can make it easier for the companies to keep in touch with customers around the world, who can upload their own content in the form of blogs, pictures, slide shows and videos. This platform has the potential to attract, aggregate and assemble large focused audiences by creating informative and interactive meeting places and enables a clear two-way dialogue. In this project, we have explored the use of the four most popular Social Networking Sites used in India – Facebook, Orkut, Twitter and LinkedIn for the purpose of marketing in the online social networking. We have noted the options available to a marketer on these sites to build and maintain brands. We have also conducted a primary survey to ascertain the usage patterns and user profiles. Finally, we have conceptualized a generic marketing plan for a social networking marketing campaign.