Twitter: Businesses Increasing Their Revenues 140 Characters at a Time
Senior Capstone Project for Adekemi O. Oyalabu
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social networking sites create an online community that brings together individuals who share
common interests, goals, aspirations, and/or hobbies. These sites offer opportunities for users
to interact with one another and facilitate communication through mediums such as instant
messaging, blogs, newsfeeds and e-mail.The goal of using social media marketing by
companies is to produce content for their users on their social network of choice that will help
them increase brand exposure and broaden customer reach. This goal and many others can be
met by companies if they study current social networking sites, understand how they operate,
and take note of the usage patterns of individuals on such sites. When users join these social
networking sites they create a profile that describes their activities, interests, and other
information they are eager to share with other users. This is essential to businesses as it allows
them to connect with all consumers of different ages and preferences, and offers a unique
opportunity to focus marketing strategies on specific target groups. Consumers are looking for
attention, especially on these social networking sites as they want to connect with those who
value how they feel, understand their needs, and take the time to hear what they have to say.
Because of this it is important that companies who look into marketing themselves on social
networking sites understand that their inability to connect with both potential and current
customers on these sites could lead to the loss in clientele. Financially, customers are essential
to the forward movement of a company, and therefore the use of social networking sites can
aid in listening to what customers want. Companies can do this by looking at those who visit
their social networking site, what they search for on the site, and what they post on their own
pages or blogs. The ability to allow interaction between customers and companies with the
opportunity to voice complaints or ask questions is known as social customer relationship
management(Band, Moore, & Leggett, 2011). This serves as a cost effective and time
efficient way for companies to intrigue consumers to support their initiatives and
communicate information about their products and/or services to them.
One of the key components of social media marketing is Social Media Optimization (SMO),
which like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is a strategy that is used to draw new and
unique visitors to a website. Social media optimization can be used in two manners: (1)
promoting activity on social networking sites by updating tweets, statuses and/or blog posts or
(2) adding links to content that one would like to publish and link to the company’s social