The Social Media Marketing Revolution

 

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Here's what I wrote for ShopBest magazine for the souvenir issue of the 2015 Best Choice Annual Awards. It is entitled "The Social Media Marketing Revolution" expressing my thoughts about how social media has changed the game play for most businesses and has also somewhat evened the playing field for startups who have very limited funding.

Social media allowed small players to gain a global presence through the help of social media since we all know many of us are in one way or another connected via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other popular social media networks that have dominated the Internet.

Especially in the Philippines where the people love to interact and become involved, the influence of social media has drastically changed the way we live and make decisions. It has evolved into a really "social" form of communication where everyone can immediately give feedback. Sometimes, it's too easy and convenient that it also becomes a dangerous tool that can either make or break a company.

We've heard of great news of long lost families or relatives being reunited, campaigns becoming widely participated at a global scale, but there are also disturbing viral images, trending hate stories, rants, bashings, rumor mongering, and so.

Social media is indeed influential that it can immediately put you into the highest pedestal but can also bury you so deep that you may not want to go back up into the real world.

Read on and enjoy my article below:

"It’s not surprising if many of us got caught up in social media. Most of us find them fun, flashy, engaging and relatively simple to use. We have fallen in love with this awesome technology available to us through our smartphones and other Internet-connected devices, and all of us are benefitting from its immense popularity.

If you really want to get your brand recognized, online promotions on social media networks like Facebook or Twitter, especially blogs that tell personalized stories and reviews, should be among your priority promotional or marketing strategies. 

It took the breakthrough of social media to really make global awareness for our products and services to immediately catch fire and continue to burn. With the influx of various social media networks that are extremely manageable, the future clearly dictates an online dominance. We are all encouraged to promote our brands across various platforms to successfully increase the online presence of our business and make it more competitive globally.

People see social media discussions as more credible and believable than standard media or marketing strategies. This is why social media has changed and influenced most people's daily activities and continues to provide marketing opportunities for businesses and professionals everywhere. 

Social Media has changed the business landscape forever even for startups and small businesses who have achieved international presence at very low budgets. It’s like they’ve rented a bulldozer to a mountain and cleared a path through it.

What's especially exciting is that social media allows people to actively connect with each other, their communities, and the companies they want to patronize. Social media has also increased the ability of a company to tap into their customers' humanity targeting their emotions and sensibilities.

The best marketing will rightly employ technology as a means to inform and influence. The companies, who really understand how word of mouth works, put the costumer at the center of their planning, their strategies, and their execution.
 
Putting costumers at the center means working hard to engage customers in a memorable way and ensure that their interactions with your brand are as positive as possible, because good experiences triggers positive word of mouth. More and more marketers are considering strategies that can spark experience-driven word of mouth and encourages positive feedback.

The ultimate goal is not to slap our ads directly to the customers’ faces but to make them advocates of our brand. We should be able to do it in a way that will make it impossible for them not to talk about their encounter with our brands to others. This is when you witness people saying “Try it, I highly recommend!”

The first ingredient, and no doubt the element that is now attracting any head of marketing worth his or her salt, is that social media allows like-minded people to coalesce. Messages are most successfully communicated to audiences that have already coalesced around common bonds. 

It's a lot easier to market your product to people who have already signaled that they like what your product is about than it is to cast a giant net to reel in potential customers. Social media offers both parties a mutual way to send and receive instant feedback to be able to quickly and conveniently adapt and evolve. 

This is how social media works, and is undoubtedly a very powerful tool that we should all invest on if we want to maintain a strong online presence. The future belongs to those who have access to the many means to communicate and remain well-informed. Social media plays a very important role in keeping us connected with our customers."

About "WazzupPilipinas.com"

WazzupPilipinas.com is the fastest growing and most awarded blog and social media community that has transcended beyond online media. It has successfully collaborated with all forms of media namely print, radio and television making it the most diverse multimedia organization. The numerous collaborations with hundreds of brands and organizations as online media partner and brand ambassador makes WazzupPilipinas.com a truly successful advocate of everything about the Philippines, and even more since its support extends further to even international organizations including startups and SMEs that have made our country their second home.