Social media plays a major marketing role in the current global business environment. Most of the organizations have adopted social media as one of their marketing strategies since it provides a wider coverage of their target population (Evans, 2012). Every individual owns at least two social network accounts which connects them to millions of other account holders. Therefore, passing information through these accounts enables the companies to reach to millions of users in the world. Social media influences the market by availing numerous information to the consumers through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, You tube, LinkedIn, Myspace and websites that provide pages for advertisements (Saravanakumar, 2012).
The information regarding the presence of certain products from a given company is passed from one customer to another which then creates a vast network of consumers (Zarrella, 2009). Most social media platforms allow companies to convey information to the consumers in a very convincing way that the recipients find it hard to resist the urge to purchase their products. Other companies use social media celebrities to market their products on their behalf (Heymann-Reder, 2012). These celebrities have a lot of followers on social media thus they are able to reach a large number of consumers and convince them that a given product is good. Social media enable consumers to get updates on new products in the market as well as offers that are offered by different companies. Also, social media influences consumers to incur unplanned expenses. Most social media advertisements are enticing and appealing to an extent that the users of social media platforms finds themselves ordering for products they had not budgeted for (Hanna, 2011). For example, advertisements such as the coca cola happiness machine on YouTube is quite convincing that anyone who watches the ad will go and purchase a bottle of coke.
References
Evans, D. (2012). Social media marketing: An hour a day. John Wiley & Sons.
Hanna, R., Rohm, A., & Crittenden, V. L. (2011). We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem. Business horizons, 54(3), 265-273.
Heymann-Reder, D. (2012). Social media marketing. Addison-Wesley Verlag.
Saravanakumar, M., & SuganthaLakshmi, T. (2012). Social media marketing. Life Science Journal, 9(4), 4444-4451.
Zarrella, D. (2009). The social media marketing book. " O'Reilly Media, Inc.".
