Social Media - Twitter, Facebook, & Linkedin

Thomas Marek

MKT310

2018-09-09

Dr. Scott Squires

Twitter, Facebook, & LinkedIn

        What is a social media platform? Well, let us define what social media is first. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, social media is forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content. So therefore, an example of a social media platform would be Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Now, let us explain what these new trendy platforms are and explain how and why it can be a benefit to a company’s integrated marketing strategy

Facebook was developed in 2004, and on this site you create a personal profile where you provide information about yourself. Facebook has been a way for people to stay in contact with old friends, distant family and just acquaintances. In my own experience, Facebook is not very popular with people under the age of twenty. That’s not to say that Facebook is not still very popular. According to businessdictionary.com Facebook has approximately 1.2 billion users each month. So therefore, Facebook should still be an important piece of an organization’s strategy. The way that I feel that organizations can benefit by marketing on Facebook’s platform is just sponsor advertisements on it. Facebook is a great place to widen your brands awareness. It can help just get your name out there, and it can be extremely useful when clients are looking for information on what types of services you can do and much more.

The next social media platform I will be touching on is Twitter. Twitter is kind of like Facebook in the aspects of creating your own personal profile and it being a way to keep in contact with you old friends and acquaintances. But instead of having friends like on Facebook, on Twitter you have followers. So, just because you follow someone doesn’t mean they follow you. This would be critical for an organization starting out on Twitter; they probably aren’t going to have a lot of followers. Also, the key to Twitter and its success, is the ability to engage freely with their followers. This can be great for an organization because if you have a lot of engagement then you will more than likely have a lot of people talking about your company. Which means free advertising through word of mouth, which is the best advertisement.

Lastly, LinkedIn is a more closely related to Facebook than Twitter. I would define it as the professional version of Facebook. On LinkedIn, you are not on there to see what your second cousin is doing on a Sunday, it professional networking platform for recruiters and business professionals looking to expand their network or find a career. I would not say you need a LinkedIn page to be a successful company or to have a successful marketing strategy, I would say that LinkedIn doesn’t not have to be there to drive sales. It is there to help your brand awareness to help sales, but also to create look like a positive and professional place to work to hopefully attract future employees.