Social Media Marketing: Myths, Truths, and Strategic Approaches

Abstract

Social media has become prominent in the 21st century. Companies are persistently looking for ways to utilize this new platform within their marketing strategies to increase business growth. Since social media is a networking and communication platform, it is important for companies to create a voice to humanize the business and maintain foot traffic. Although there are studies on how to use social media marketing within a business, there is minimal corroboration available of how social media marketing activities influence a consumer is buying behaviour. The most used social media platforms are Facebook and Snapchat with 22.7% of participants having an account in these platforms, and 70% of participants indicating using more than 3 social media platforms. The results showed that 55% of the respondents say that online visibility would affect their purchase. The most important factor for a business using social media was customer engagement and the least important factor was the timing of posts. The survey also revealed that only 55% of the respondents post about products or services a business. However, 95% of the respondents believe that a business will receive better results when it comes to customer loyalty and profits if social media is integrated into marketing and 75% of the respondents believe that social media is the best way to reach a business’s targeted audience.