Connection: Brands in the social network

In recent years, many companies have realised the potential of social networks and have started investing more in online campaigns. Facebook has been a favourite for campaigns trying to engage with consumers. Big brands such as Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret and Red Bull are using social networking sites to interact more closely with their customers. This has resulted in a new position being created to fulfil the best practices in social media — the Community Managers.
These professionals are responsible for maintaining and updating all social networks the companies are on. Before creating pages on these websites, it is necessary to ensure that the pages will be constantly updated and consumers’ feedback will be considered. If this is not done, the sites can become a problem and create a negative image for the company.

With more than 500 million members, Facebook has introduced and improved a number of on-site tools such as “Like”, photos, questions, games and place pages. These provide an interactive platform with the consumers and are a gold mine for marketing since they list the expectations, desires, opinion and feelings from the consumer about the company’s products or services.

Newspapers

This week, at the Society of Editors annual conference in Glasgow, Martin Clarke, a Daily Mail executive, said its social media site is a “gigantic free marketing engine”. He revealed that 10 per cent of the website’s UK traffic is generated by referrals from Facebook. Only Google directs more UK traffic to Mail Online. His advice for newspapers is to embrace social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter. Daily Mail online is the biggest newspaper website in England, with nearly 47 million monthly unique users in September, according to The Guardian.