A Riveting Chapter Three

 Marketing on social media platforms is one of the most effective ways of spreading a business’s message today, and this chapter of Essentials of Social Media Marketing explained that remarkably well. I feel much more well informed about not only why social media is a fantastic marketing platform, but how it can become utilized to its maximum potential via targeting markets and optimizing social media platforms in order to coordinate a good social media marketing plan.

 Establishing a target market is crucial to marketing effectively on social media. This concept is all about identifying demographics of people that would be most interested in your good or service. These could include age, gender, behaviors, spending habits, and many other identifiable characteristics online. After this, one can make a company persona of the top traits of their target market and market from there. This is so important because it sets a foundation for the rest of a marketing strategy to set upon. Without identifying the target market, marketing would be unfocused, uncoordinated, and most importantly ineffective.

 Different social media platforms have different strengths and weaknesses. We see this by the demographics that use them. A common example is that younger people tend to lean towards Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok, while older people tend to stick to Facebook. We, as marketers, can use this information to optimize the way we market on different platforms. The book did an excellent job of showing which networks are good at marketing for certain industries based upon how they present information on their specific platforms. For example, Pinterest is a great platform for the Health and Beauty industry due to its prominent visual components, but it is lacking in the Finance industry due to its lack of textual focus. Finding what social media platform is the correct one to market for your specific industry is crucial to a good marketing plan.

 Overall, it’s not the social media networks themselves that provide marketing opportunity, but rather the way we use them that provides that opportunity. By making the correct choices and being selective in matching our target demographics with the appropriate social media platform, we as marketers can establish an effective plan to bring our product to the people most likely to engage in it. I have learned a lot about social media marketing this chapter.