INTRODUCTION SOCIAL MEDIA Social media is the interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information

and ideas in virtual communities and networks. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. Furthermore, social media depend on mobile and webbased technologies to create highly interactive platforms through which individuals and communities share, co-create, discuss, and modify user-generated content. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between organizations, communities, and individuals. Social media differ from traditional or industrial media in many ways, including quality; reach, frequency, usability, immediacy, and permanence. There are many effects that stem from internet usage. According to Nielsen, internet users continue to spend more time with social media sites than any other type of site. At the same time, the total time spent on social media in the U.S. across PC and mobile devices increased by 37 percent to 121 billion minutes in July 2012 compared to 88 billion minutes in July 2011 For content contributors, the benefits of participating in social media have gone beyond simply social sharing to building reputation and bringing in career opportunities and monetary income, as discussed in Tang, Gu, and Whinston (2012). Geocities, created in 1994, was one of the first social media sites. The concept was for users to create their own websites, characterized by one of six "cities" that were known for certain characteristics Social media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, social networks ,podcasts, photographs or pictures, video, rating and social bookmarking. Technologies include blogging, picturesharing, vlogs, wall-posting, music-sharing, crowd sourcing and voice over IP, to name a few. Social network aggregation can integrate many of the platforms in use. By applying a set of theories in the field of media research (social presence, media richness) and social processes (self-presentation, self-disclosure), Kaplan and Haenlein created a classification scheme in their Business Horizons (2010) article, with seven different types of social media: 1. collaborative projects (for example, Wikipedia) 2. blogs and microblogs (for example, Twitter) 3. Social news networking sites (for example, Digg and Leakernet) 4. content communities (for example, YouTube and DailyMotion) 5. social networking sites (for example, Facebook) 6. virtual game-worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft)

7. virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life) However, the boundaries between the different types have become increasingly blurred. For example, Shi, Rui and Whinston (2013) argue that Twitter, as a combination of broadcasting service and social network, classes as a "social broadcasting technology". Today Social Media refers to a collective group of websites whose content is primarily written and published by users and not owners or employees of the website. For example most of the videos you see on YouTube are uploaded or published by ordinary people like you and me; not by YouTube employees or staff. Nearly all articles published on Wikipedia are written and/or edited by people who are not connected to Wikipedia in any way. Instead of normal corporate websites which are created by the companies, the contents on Social Media websites are created by you and me. And possibly Larry from next door. Social Media is where people exchange personal comments and views using various online platforms such as blogs and micro blogs, chat rooms, social networks and bookmarks, bulletin boards, photo and video sharing sites and virtual worlds. SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING Social media marketing refers to the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites. Social media advertising is a form of social media marketing Social media advertising programs usually centres 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. To put it in more simple terms, Social Media Marketing (SMM) or Social Media Advertising (SMA) is a particular segment of marketing that utilises Internet's social platforms to deliver commercial messages to potential consumers. The reasoning behind this action is simple: The advertisers have to go where their clients hang out. And today their clients hang out on web2.0 Social Media websites. Thats the easy part. The hard part is to execute and manage the form of advertising or communication on these social platforms. If you go in with a normal hard sell ad message youd use on traditional media, such as magazines, radio and TV, youre almost certain to crash and burn quickly. Direct commercial messages are quickly considered as spam and you will find yourself black listed in no time. SOME INTERESTING FACTS AND FIGURES ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA
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There are over 13.000.000 articles on Wikipedia. More than 100.000.000 videos are viewed on YouTube daily. There are currently over 200.000.000 blogs published.

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Second Life has over 1.5 million residents. Almost 40% of active Internet users subscribe to an RSS feed. 57% of them have joined a Social Network. Three out of four Americans use social networks. Visiting social networks is more popular than online pornography. Twitter features over 50.000.000 tweets or micro blogging messages per day. Facebook is used more than 80.000.000 hours daily. Close to 15.000.000 pieces of information (photos, wall posts, links, news, notes etc.) are shared on Facebook; daily. Michael Jackson, Barack Obama and Vin Diesel have close to 30.000.000 fans combined on Facebook. Over 90 % of social media users think all companies should have a presence in social media. Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers in 2010. 96% of Generation Y has joined a social network. About 12.5 % of married couples in the United States met through a social network. Facebook added 100.000.000 users in just under 9 months. If Facebook was a country it would be the fourth biggest in the world after China, India and the United States. 80% of the companies are using LinkedIn to find new employees. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than there are people in Ireland.

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These whopping statistics drives social media as one of the most favoured advertising vehicle in the current era. It is simply a must for modern companies to operate in. ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING 1. Increased Business Exposure Facebook and Twitter alone reportedly serve 1.5 billion users globally. Social media allows your business to extend well beyond the immediate geographic area. With social media you can cross county, state, and even national lines. Social media is therefore a very convenient and also cost-efficient way for augmenting brand visibility which is great news for global manufacturers. In case of local manufacturers also social media allows the business the benefit of increased exposure.

2. Insight About Your Customers This is one of the biggest advantages of using social media. Social media provides limitless opportunities for you to interact with current and potential customers. You have the ability to engage customers in real-time conversations about your mission, products, events, and services. And since most social media users are there to, you guessed it, socialize, they are more than willing to talk to you. Heres a quick experiment you can try that will really open your eyes. Go to Facebook and use Graph Search to search for: Favorite interests of people who like Your Page Name. Youll find a treasure trove of information about your community! 3. Reduced Marketing Expenses One of the greatest things about participating in social media is that your budget and results are not linear. For example, if you spend $1 on targeted Facebook ads, you could generate 1 result, but if you spend $2 on targeted Facebook ads, you could generate 3 results. Thats because of earned media (which is a whole other topic). Overall, social media is an extremely cost-efficient marketing choice when compared with other budget-draining advertising techniques. And as youre starting to learn, provides many more opportunities to grow your business than just through marketing. 4. Lead generation When thinking about using the internet for lead generation, you probably think of it like this: I add my inventory to my website, and I also add my inventory to a boats for sale site. Then, I wait for leads to come in. Well, you know you can take a proactive approach to lead generation with social media, right? The targeting Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIns paid advertising platforms provides to reach buyers is incredible. You can search out and find people who bought boats from your competition using a combination of Facebooks Graph Search and targeted paid Facebook ads. 5. Extremely Targeted Traditional marketing strategies are usually very general. They work on the assumption that if you cast a big enough net, you will land at least a few fish. While there is some logic to this, it is also not very cost effective. You end up spending lots of money on broad, sweeping advertising campaigns that only manage to reach a handful of your targeted audience. One of the great things about social media is that you are able to focus the bulk of your efforts on those who actually have an interest in your company. This means you can gain more customers per marketing dollar. Are you starting to see a theme with using social media for business? Its extremely costeffective and targeted. 6. Competitive Advantage Everything that happens on social media platforms happens in real time. That means social media participation gives businesses the opportunity to engage in advertising that is timely and relevant which gives you a distinct competitive edge. And since everything is also happening in a public forum, you can monitor exactly what your competitors are doing. You can also see exactly whats working for your competitors (and whats not). If youre smart enough, youll pay close attention and jump in to

grab new business when the timings right. But be careful, this means your competitors can also monitor you so make sure you keep your proprietary secrets off of social media (and make sure you have a social media company policy so your employees also understand what to share and what not to share). 7. Analytics and Reporting Google Analytics, Engage and other programs can help you monitor your social media activities and assess whether or not they are having a positive effect on website traffic, lead generation and product purchases. That way you can eliminate unproductive activities and emphasize those that seem to have a positive effect. With social media, everything is trackable. When your marketing budget is being spent on more traditional strategies (like print or billboards) you really have no idea what thats doing for your business. But with social media, you know what every penny has been able to generate. 8. Strengthen Customer Loyalty Social media can help you put a personal face on your business. Instead of just a company name, customers see you as a real person who listens to their concerns and delivers helpful feedback. This is where the quality of your social media posts really matters. For example, if you only post about your newest inventory or latest sales event, customers are going to feel like they are being force fed your company advertising. If, however, you post interesting information or insight into your industry, customers will feel like you respect them and will be more likely to remain loyal to your company. 9. Rise in Search Engine Rankings And of course, theres the all-important search engine optimization. If your company has active social media accounts on multiple platforms, it can improve your rankings on search engines which will boost your visibility and potentially increase your profits. This is especially true with blogging, as companies that blog get 55% more web traffic and 70% more leads than those that dont and thats a huge benefit! Then theres search engine benefit that Google+ provides, instantly indexed posts. 10. Increased Website Traffic All of these factors combined customer loyalty, lead generation, exposure, etc. will greatly increase the number of potential and current customers viewing your website. If you have excellent website design thats mobile optimized and content to compliment your social media engagement, youll be more likely to make generate leads that your sales team can turn into sales.

CONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING 1. Social media marketing places high demands on your time. Content must be created, edited, approved and published; comments must be responded to and sites and pages must be maintained. You can alleviate these demands by outsourcing for a fee.

2. Social media marketing places high demands on your talent. It can be difficult to constantly come up with innovative exciting content that interests a variety of readers and, without relevance, your efforts will be wasted. 3. You lose some control of your marketing efforts. Anything you publish is up for grabs, and others can easily criticize you. Publish backlash is the last thing you want your social media marketing to spawn, and without the ability to control comments or even what your own team is publishing you open yourself up for potential negatives. 4. Your return on investment is delayed. Social media marketing can work to build relationships and brand loyalty, but it takes time and dedication. Social media marketing efforts are not likely to earn immense popularity overnight, so you must be willing to be in it for the long haul if you decide to launch a social media marketing campaign.

A CASE STUDY ON ADVERTISING USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO PROMOTE BRANDS IN REAL TIME The usual formula goes something like this: Marketers and advertisers spend huge budgets to craft their campaigns, then refine them over weeks or months until they find just the message that will reach their target audience. Now some companies are trying to squeeze all of that work into mere minutes. These advertisers are watching Twitter and other social networks to see what topics are getting the most attention, and putting together short blog posts, tweets and videos that match those themesin hopes that the online audience will become more aware of the brand and see it as relevant to their interests and needs. Then, if one topic isn't getting attention anymore, the companies can drop it without much fuss, and switch gears quickly to follow the next hot discussion. Consider what Bank of America Corp did during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Experts from the bank's legal, social-media, marketing, advertising and other departments scanned 60-inch screens at brand agency Digitas Inc. late into the night to see what was trending on Twitter. Their mission: to promote the bank's brand among people interested in economic issues by publishing real-time content related to the conference. During a session on women, for example, with #davoswomen trending on Twitter, the bank's team tweeted a link to a Merrill Lynch paper about the growing economic influence of women. "The data comes into the room from many sources, and you have to use that data like a modern-day orchestra leader, blending the inputs in real time in a combination that is as much an art as a science," says Louis Paskalis, Bank of America senior vice president. The bank's attempt to use the conference to promote its brand seems to have paid off97% of people who clicked on BofA's content on social media during the economic conference were engaging with the bank for the first time, Mr. Paskalis says. BEST WAYS TO MANAGE REAL TIME CAMPAIGNS USING SOCIAL MEDIA

According to a study conducted by WALL Street Journal by interviewing the best advertising and marketing experts in the field the following points turned out. Experiment with new types of media General Electric Co. started sharing content on Vinea service that allows users to post short looping videosthe day Twitter introduced it, even though it was an unproven strategy, says GE's head of global brand marketing, Linda Boff. Ms. Boff's team constantly monitored how the videos were being received on Twitter. If the videos didn't perform well, the group was prepared to pull the plug. "That's the beauty of this type of mediait's fairly easy to produce, and fairly easy to monitor," Ms. Boff says. And if you do shut down the project, "you've wasted a very small amount of time." An early videoa clip that showed how color moves through liquid, using a saucer of milk, food colouring, dish soap and a Q-Tippaid off. It has been liked by more than 227,000 viewers and GE turned it into a weeklong campaign promoting experiments tagged with the hashtag #6SecondScience. The payoff, say Ms. Boff, was spreading awareness of the brand. "Being accessible, humanizing our social channels and joining these conversations is a way for people on Twitter to become more familiar and more excited about the company," she says. Follow conversations, then join them. Companies should look for people who are tweeting about the company's core strengths and see what's on their minds. Ms. Boff's team, for instance, searches on Twitter for hashtags and conversations about science. When the companies have a sense of the kind of content that these communities care about, they can craft similar content and tweet it, perhaps using the same hashtags these communities are using. "We try to behave the way you would if you were meeting somebody in a social gathering you don't accost them, instead you try to find a commonality of interest," Ms. Boff says. Practice restraint. Saying no is a disciplinemaybe the most important thing in real-time marketing, says BofA's Mr. Paskalis. Rather than publish content on a huge range of topics, focus on where your brand has built expertise and can add the most value to a conversation. GE, for example, sticks to messages about science and technology on social mediarather than try to sell its products or take shots at competitors. Get legal permission to use material. There are often situations when it's helpful to post content owned by other people or organizations. Marketers should have a structure in place to get permission quickly, so that they can post their messages before they get stale. During the World Economic Forum in Davos, for example, Bank of America created advertising spots for news sites that updated in real time. Among other things, the ads showed tweets that the bank didn't create but were related to the conference. So, Mr. Paskalis's team

hired content-marketing startup Chute Corp. to reach out to the Twitter users and quickly get their approval. Be ready to turn off scheduled posts. Social-media managers tend to release automated messages at specific times throughout the day, which usually is an efficient way to ensure the brand is never silent on social media. This can backfire, however, during disasters like hurricanes or floods, when readers are searching for information on the extent of damage or number of casualties. "Customers want brands to be relevant, not opportunistic," says Paul Berry, CEO of RebelMouse, a platform that helps users combine their social-media posts, articles, videos and other online content into one home page. Watch for sudden flurries of activity on social media. "When 12 people you respect suddenly all follow one Twitter account, don't ignore it," Mr. Berry says. Typically, it's a good sign that this Twitter account represents a big playersomeone you should at least be aware of. To know when this is happening, Mr. Berry recommends following the Twitter account @MagicRecs, which sends direct-message alerts recommending Twitter accounts based on the activity of those the user is already following. Move on when content gets stale. When content performs well, it's a good strategy to double down and publish more on the topic. But sooner or later, it's time to move on. For instance, when a tweet that was getting 20 retweets a minute drops down to 10, it's time to find a new topic. "Don't try to score another touchdown when the play is over," Mr. Berry says. Never ignore negative feedback. If you're losing followers on Twitter, try to figure out why, Mr. Berry says. Every day, his social-media team publishes a report on how the company is doing on all its social-media networks, with a focus on unfollows, new follows and engagement like retweets and favorites. They discuss via email which metrics are up or down from the previous day and why. "Through these threads, we fine-tune the strategy we were working on," he says. EXAMPLES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING 1. Nike Olympics #Findgreatness Twitter Campaign: Sports giants Nike pulled off one of their most successful marketing strategies during last year's London Olympic Games. Rivals Adidas were one of the official sponsors of the games but that didn't stop Nike from launching their #findgreatness campaign through Twitter. Many giant billboards featuring images of people partaking in sports with the words 'find greatness' were placed around London. Adidas had a similar campaign featuring Team GB Athletes on billboards with the hashtag #takethestage. Figures from Socialbaker's CheerMeter revealed that between July 27 to August 2 there was over 16,000 tweets associating the keyword Olympic with Nike, while Adidas received 9,295 tweets in the same period. Adidas gained over 80,000 new Facebook fans during the Olympics compared to more than 166,000 for Nike (over double).

2. Burger King Whopper Sacrifice

Burger King put people's friendships to the test when they announced a campaign offering a free whopper burger to anyone who deleted ten friends from Facebook. The wickedness of the scheme was that any friends who were sacrificed were informed that their colleague valued a burger over their friendship. The campaign was launched by Burger King in 2009 and visitors were invited to sign up to the Facebook campaign after visiting whoppersacrifice.com.

After a week of the campaign over 233,000 people had been sacrificed from Facebook for whoppers and the social media site took action by blocking the campaign over breaches of privacy. The whopper sacrifice campaign won numerous marketing awards in 2009 including Gold for Web Applications and the ADC Hybrid award at the Art Directors Annual Awards 2009. 3. Granata Pet Dog Food Check In

German pet food company Granata Pet developed a unique marketing campaign through Foursquare. They set up a range of interactive billboards in Germany with dog food dispensers. When people visited these billboards they received free dog food in the dispensers when they checked in to Foursquare. The results led to an uptake in sales of Granata pet food and lots of hits on Facebook from people checking in through Foursquare and uploading this information on to their Facebook pages. 4. Uniqlo Dry Mesh Project Uniqlo, the Japanese clothing company made headlines with their Pinterest Dry Mesh Project campaign last year. A group of around 100 people with Uniqlo accounts hit Pinterest at the same time to simultaneously pin, creating a style similar to that of an old film strip. This led to a large mosaic visual board on Pinterest, which portrayed many of the brands products on one Pinterest board. People responded with positive feedback commenting on the visual impact of the campaign.

5. Tippex Create Your Own Ending The bright sparks at Tippex used YouTube to put together one of the most interactive forms of social marketing. Tippex made a clip entitled 'hunter shoots a bear' but the hunter changes his mind and grabs a giant tippex to remove the word shoot. He then asks the user to create their own ending. For example you can write hugs or attacks into the space left by the Tippex and a new clip will appear with those actions. The clip has had over 21 million views since it was posted in August 2010 as well as large scale media coverage.

FIVE SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO BE SEEN IN 2014 More Twitter Ads Twitter had a big year in 2013. The social media network saw changes across the user interface on desktops and mobile devices. The ad platform grew leaps and bounds. And perhaps most importantly, Twitter filed for and successfully completed their IPO. In short, using Facebook's IPO and subsequent development boom as an example, it is safe to assume we should expect big things from Twitter. Throughout 2013 and leading up to the IPO Twitter successfully overhauled the advertising interface and targeting functionality, launched TV ad targeting and created the impressive Lead Generation Cards.

Since the IPO in October, the Twitter development train has kept right on chugging. Now we have Tailored Audiences (remarketing), promoted accounts in timelines, and a true "broad match" for keyword targeting. Now that Twitter is beholden to shareholders, expect this kind of rapid development in the advertising platform to continue. Ad revenue = happy shareholders. Facebook Video Ads TV advertising was (and still is) a fundamental piece to the modern advertising puzzle. Video has proven time and again to have significant impact on branding and purchasing decisions. Now that the world is shifting their television habits online, this means that the video advertising model must shift with it. While the devices are different, the end customer will still be drawn to (good) video advertising. YouTube is already killing it with their video ad campaign product. The InStream ad unit alone has so much potential. So, how does all of this tie in to Facebook? Videos are prominently featured in Facebook feeds organically. After they tested the "autoplay" video content organically, it was a natural progression to see this come to video ads. This ad unit is still in testing at Facebook and the video plays on silent so the impact won't be quite the same as what is seen on YouTube. However, its to expect this testing to expand and for video to play a bigger role in Facebook ads in 2014. If Facebook is successful with video, who knows what implications that will have across the social media world? Ads on Google+? A few years into Google's gamble in social media and Google+ is still completely void of ads. Many people likely are quite pleased by this. Countless others (no doubt advertisers) are chomping at the bit waiting for the day that they can place targeted ads on this coveted real estate. Well, just a few weeks ago it came to light that Google will begin testing +Post Ads. While this isn'tan ad unit on Google+, it allows brands to take quality Google+ posts and advertise them across the Google Display Network. Could this be a baby step toward a larger advertising platform built around Google+? Maybe. In the meantime, all we can do is keep on wishing! Fragmentation vs. Variety New social media networks pop up nearly every week it seems. The vast majority of them burn out before they secure mass-appeal and adoption. A few maintain relevance and start to grow. Pinterest, SnapChat, and Instagram are just a few examples of those that have found staying power. (Instagram is owned by Facebook, so that's not exactly a fair comparison) With mass-appeal and adoption comes the added responsibility of creating revenue. Pinterest and Instagram are both experimenting with fledgling advertising platforms. Reddit, Foursquare, Tumblr and others are already providing self-serve ad campaigns.

Moving into 2014, this race to create new social media networks and advertising platforms to support them will create an interesting dilemma for advertisers. On one hand, you have a variety of channels that cater to unique targets and demographics. On the other hand, you have the issue of fragmentation. For every new social network and ad platform, you're forced to deal with varied ad units (sizes, editorial policies, etc.) and management requirements. The tools to consolidate management of these channels simply don't exist that or the channels themselves are not sophisticated enough to have APIs, etc. (looking at you LinkedIN Ads!). As the greater world of social media continues to grow and more networks take root in 2014, expect your role as an advertiser to only become more complicated. Good luck! Blurred Lines Between Paid and Organic Content The original Facebook ad unit (appearing on the right) was simple and straightforward. It followed the general format pioneered by the search engines through PPC. Safe. Predictable. Then came Twitter and the promoted tweets for timelines an ad that fit seamlessly into the organic construct of the social experience. Since then Facebook and LinkedIn have followed suit with newsfeed ad units that have boosted ad engagement and click-through rates while simultaneously blurring the lines of what is organic or paid social content. There's a precedent for this. Look at the search engines. Google, Bing and Yahoo all have conducted numerous tests to make the PPC ads look more like organic listings. Why? More people click on them. Now social networks are up to the same tricks only in a far more aggressive (nay, effective) manner. Promoted status updates blend in seamlessly save for a simple marker that says "sponsored." From a mobile device the average user may never realize that the status update they just read and clicked on was actually an ad. This trend is only going to grow in 2014. New ad units at Instagram and Pinterest are designed to blend into the natural landscape of the user's social feed. Facebook is concerned with dwindling usage and has gone so far as to suppress organic content effectively forcing advertisers to promote their content.

CONCLUSION Social media is a vastly creative tool when it comes to marketing strategies and the examples mentioned above are just a fraction of the hugely successful campaigns that have boosted brands and companies. By keeping marketing plan unique and interesting there is every chance of wide scale publicity through a range of social media channels.