Why Social Media works

With mobile and social media booming in the internet, so are the ways and methods for how advertisers can reach consumers through social media marketing. Mobile and social media marketing work very well together, for one, most of the usage on mobile comes from Social Media apps especially with the new iPad Facebook app which was one the fastest downloaded app of all time. Are search and display media a thing of the past? Absolutely not, but advertisers are now thinking and shifting dollars to capturing their audience in the Social Landscape. This is nothing new, but the technology and analytics to drive brand engagement or performance marketing on the social graph is growing by the second.

For old school internet marketers, social is a new way of thinking. It’s about getting into the consumers mindset and sending a message that drives the user to interact. People are influenced by their friends opinions and social does a great job of displaying an ad to a user but also showing you which one of your friends is interested in that ad or brand as well. This increases engagement and click through rates on Social ads dramatically. However, social media is still more closely tied to branding where as search advertising should more closely tied to performance marketers. Reason being that people use sites like Facebook to interact with their friends, look at pictures, see what’s going on, and many people are not fans of brands or want to even see ads on Facebook. Even as Facebook has done a good job of making brand advertising feel like another part of the user experience, social media ads still aren’t exactly users raising their hands to find an ad.

On the flip side, the engagement a brand can get from one like from a user can last a very long time. Users may receive messages or updates from that Brand for years to come so the lifetime value of grabbing that like in the near term is very valuable to brands. This created the race for likes and follows on Twitter, however, brands should focus in more on the quality of the user that likes their brand verses sheer quantity. The higher quality user will be a brand advocate, spread the word to more friends, and be more likely to purchase or convert against an advertisers message.

In addition to simply buying ads on Facebook, a hot trend in social media is running a social contest with tons of new start-ups launching each day to provide solutions to advertisers on effectively implementing a contest within an Advertiser brand page. Contests within social media do a great job of driving interaction and user engagement.

So where is social media advertising heading? Well Facebook and Twitter have just touched the surface of the advertising opportunities within their platforms. The more and more creative they get, the most unique and interesting ad products will arise on the social networks. One likely direction is for Facebook to syndicate their ads to publishers and compete the with billion dollar Google adsense business. You can expect that coming for sure. If you’re not ready for the new wave of Social Media marketing, then you better buckle up for the ride.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-social-media-works-2011-11#ixzz1dWMl1ht4