The Internet is the most massive and prompt source of information, so today, it is difficult to find any area of human activity that would not be represented there. A social network is a social structure that consists of nodes (individuals, groups of people, or communities) interconnected by one or more options using social links. Social networks began their history in 1995 with the American portal Classmates.com (Alalwan et al., 2017). The project turned out to be very successful, which provoked the emergence of more than a dozen similar services in the next few years. Though the official beginning of the social networking boom is considered to be 2003-2004, when LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook were launched.
Today, social media promotion is becoming more complex and unique, as many companies working with this channel are growing rapidly. Social networks are one of the most effective tools for promoting goods and services (Alalwan et al., 2017). One can increase brand awareness, quickly share the news with customers and find a new audience. The main advantages of brand promotion in social networks are:
- wide audience coverage;
- speed of dissemination of information;
- direct interaction with the audience, so one can quickly and easily get feedback;
- the ability to search for the target audience by specific criteria;
- increasing company awareness and sales.
For a business, choosing a working social network is the return on investment: both monetary and temporary. That is not to say that a particular business needs a social network; testing it for the topic (product) and the audience is important. Today, Instagram and Facebook are the top priority platforms for doing business and promoting goods. Each brand can create its content plan based on its target audience and start running a page on a social network. It is also necessary to consider the fact that social networks have become an integral part of society. Then any business can easily find and attract its audience, positively affecting both sales and brand awareness.
Reference
Alalwan, A. A., Rana, N. P., Dwivedi, Y. K., & Algharabat, R. (2017). Social Media in Marketing: A review and analysis of the existing literature. Telematics and Informatics, 34(7), 1177–1190. Web.