Marketing in Social Media

The electronic word of mouth.

Social network advertising, social media targeting is a group of terms that are used to describe forms of Online advertising that focus on social networking sites. One of the major benefits of advertising on a social networking site (e.g. Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Bebo, Orkut, etc.) is that advertisers can take advantage of the users demographic information and target their ads appropriately.

Our Social media marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. The resulting electronic word of mouth (eWoM) refers to any statement consumers share via the Internet (e.g., web sites, social networks, instant messages, news feeds) about an event, product, service, brand or company. When the underlying message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates because it appears to come from a trusted, third-party source, as opposed to the brand or company itself, this form of marketing results in earned media rather than paid media.

Social media targeting combines current targeting options (like geotargeting, behavioral targeting, socio-psychographic targeting, etc.), to make detailed target group identification possible. With social media targeting, advertisements are distributed to users based on information gathered from target group profiles.

Social network advertising is not necessarily the same as social media advertising. Social media targeting is a method of optimizing social media advertising by using profile data to deliver advertisements directly to individual users. Social media targeting refers to the process of matching social network users to target groups that have been specified by the advertiser.

People who use social networks store various information about themselves including, but not limited to, their age, gender, interests, and location. This stored information allows advertisers to create specific target groups and individualize their advertisements. The advantage for advertisers is that their ads can reach people who are interested in the product or service. The advantage for users is that they can see ads that appeal to them. Facebook, for example, the hugely popular social network, has developed a targeting technology which allows advertisements to reach a specific audience. This is why Facebook users see advertisements on their profile page that are tailored to their gender, music taste, or location.

Within social communities users provide demographic information, interests, and images. This information is accessed by social media targeting software and enables advertisers to create display ads with characteristics that match those of social network users. The important component of social media targeting is the provision of the users’ socio-demographic and interest information. By using this information, social media targeting makes it possible for users to see advertisements that might actually interest them. The availability of user data allows for detailed analysis and reporting, which is a big part of social media targeting and what makes it more effective than statistical projections alone.