Social Media Marketing has Become Essential in Attracting More Customers, Sales and Converting Site Visitors into Paying Customers

• Social media marketing allows companies to create a connection with their target audience and acknowledge problems immediately.
• Social media marketing allows customers to find a company they did not know existed and companies to find customers they did not know existed.
• Social media marketing is imperative because Americans spend an average of 37 minutes on social media a day which is a higher time-spend than any other major Internet activity.

In recent times, marketing has perpetually become a dynamic landscape in which norms are diversified daily. There has been a shift in the market as companies focus on engagement and assurance rather then selling. If done properly, social media marketing can constitute to more customers, sales and conversions, as it becomes an essential part in a companies successful marketing campaign. Starbucks has been particularly successful in social media marketing as they are known for replying to individual tweets in order to listen to what their customers are saying and provide feedback. Because Starbucks has created dialogue with their customers, they have seen their audience base prosper. 


Companies use their social media accounts to construct brand loyalty with their audience in order to build trust while simultaneously creating brand awareness. 

In order to create a profitable marketing campaign,  it is imperative of all companies to establish brand loyalty. This is when consumers repeatedly buy the same brand of goods despite a different companies attempt to  gain their adherence. Social media has become the  most accessible and economical way to achieve  this. Commercial businesses now have a medium  in which they can communicate directly with their customers, which in turn stimulates consumers to  continue to be brand loyal. A study published in the March 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review  reported that Facebook pages can increase customer loyalty by 36% and consumers using the  brand’s Facebook page held a higher emotional attachment and loyalty to the brand. Continually, through social media sites such as Twitter, information is rapidly shared and spread through retweets and mentions of a company, which increases word of mouth marketing because consumers have access to “freer and faster” information. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. By effectively using the social media platform, companies are giving consumers are reason to talk and an attainable way to do it. Sequentially, this builds a trust with customers. This also expands brand awareness because more people will be seeing and discussing a company’s brand name creating an organic exposure and the name also appears in search results on the Web. Dr. Hank Boyd, a Clinical Associate Professor in the Marketing Department at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, says that firms have marketing intelligence, are constantly brailing the culture and make decisions accordingly. Many social media sites have added a feature called “Group Functionality” which allows users to search for a specific topic of interest and subscribe to updates from those topics. Also, customers become familiarized with the brand and it becomes recognizable after seeing a consistent presence on multiple social media platforms. 

Furthermore, social media marketing humanizes a company’s brand name as it reiterates the company’s mission and assists users in feeling more connected to the company and product they are potentially purchasing. The consumers feel at ease knowing there is an actual face and voice behind the hefty brand name. Providing customers with personalized assistance increases trust in the company as a whole as consumers derive a positive experience. Customers are constantly voicing their opinions about a product or company through social media, which requires intensive monitoring and fast responses from companies to fix the negative issues or thank their customers for being loyal. As a result, companies typically have a standard method for processing and tracking customers’ messages as all requests receive the same attention. There is constant communication between consumers and producers and social media is the liaison between the two. This is proven as a study conducted by HubSpot State of Inbound in 2013 recorded that 43% of all marketers have found a customer via LinkedIn and 36% of all marketers have found a customer via Twitter. By companies gaining feedback from their consumers, it strategically puts the company in a situation in which they can keep their customers satisfied and frames the company as customer-centric. Boyd says that it is imperative that companies listen to their customers to gain valuable information rather than providing their customers with too much information. 

Study's have shown that companies rely heavily on social media marketing to improve conversion rates. 

Study's show that social media marketing is a valid marketing technique and that overall it has enhanced companies marketing strategies. 83% of marketers have stated that social media is important for their business and 84% of Business to Business marketers use social media according to Aberdeen. Also, social media has had a 100% higher lead-to-close ratio than outbound marketing. By constructing a sound social media base and through the theory of social proof, which states that people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior, a company can improve conversion rates. The National Speaker Association released a statement saying, “95% of people are imitators…not initiators…so people are persuaded more by the actions of others than by any proof we can offer.” Social proof has become the greatest force of buying decisions as the Internet has become a social environment as seen through blogs, comments, Facebook “likes” and twitter “retweets” and also the idea of the “wisdom of the crowd.”

Social media steadily influences marketing because without it, incoming sales are restrained to people who are accustomed to the brand name. However, each individual social media site that a company has is another opportunity or link back to their brand name and product. As a result, the bigger presence and quality information a company provides, the higher the chance they will have at generating a greater amount of inbound traffic leading to a continuation of conversions. According to Hubspot, over 84% of participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours per week invested in social media marketing.

Social media marketing has increased in popularity among companies as it is an easy way to cut down on advertising costs.

Another major benefit to social media marketing is the immense amount of money that companies save due to decreased marketing costs. All social media accounts are free and essentially are the most effective form of marketing as companies are able to execute interactive techniques. Therefore, companies are spending less money on paid ads to market their products and instead creating blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook pages and more in order to advertise their services for free. By doing this they add validity and credibility to their brand name. Furthermore, companies are saving on recruitment costs as they can leverage through the social media sites to find new employees. 

In conclusion, it is the responsibility of every company to stay connected to the ever-changing social media platform if they want to stay a competitor in the market. The longer companies wait to indulge in social media marketing, the greater risk they are running and the more they have to lose. Competitors are constantly joining social media platforms because of how easy it is and reaping the full benefits from it. Therefore, in order to launch a successful marketing campaign, one of the companies main focuses should be on their social media marketing.

An Interactive Timeline Demonstrates the World's Biggest Company Data Breaches of 30,000 Records or More from 2004 to 2015

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/worlds-biggest-data-breaches-hacks/

I found this interactive timeline that talks about the largest data breaches in the world more than 30,000 records. There are many good things about this visualization and many negative things also. To start with the negative aspects that could be fixed to maximize the viewers learning experience, the timeline is a bit confusing. Although it distinctly shows the difference in years, the data is scattered in an unclear order within that year that does not clearly depict what breach happened when. Furthermore, only some of the companies externally show the number regarding the hack and some don't. It is very inconsistent and every companies number should be displayed so the user immediately knows how big the hack was. Also, the timeline is a bit too cluttered. Lastly, the title could be a bit more explanatory. It tells us the timeline is talking about the world's biggest data breaches regarding 30,000 records or more but it is not in a complete sentence and also does not give the time period it is referring to. Furthermore, it does not specify what is being hacked. Although there are some things to fix, the timeline also has many positive aspects. For instance, the timeline lets the user filter the information by different categories such as the organization or method of the leak to narrow their search if necessary, saving the user time and effort. This keeps the user on the page longer because they will not be frustrated. Also, the timeline lets the user click on the bubble for a specific company and the bubble will flip over and provide the reader with more information. Finally, the bubbles are different sizes and colors which is a visual cue that lets the viewer distinguish the size of the hacks without knowing much information. Overall, I like this timeline and it was a positive learning experience.

Study's Have Proven That Interactive Mediums Such as Video Games Have a Significantly Larger Correlation to Violent Behavior Than a More Passive Experience Such as Television Does.

            

• There is a significant difference between interactive and non-interactive experiences that proves that interactive experiences result in a higher level of violent activity.

• Video games create real life experiences that make participants believe the actions are real.

• Video games have created a perception of the world that is violent and has therefore decreased people's sensitivity to others' harm.

Recently, exploration and inquiry have holistically proven that media has a direct correlation to provoking real world violence. The two main media subjects, video games and television, have different experiences as video games create interactive entertainment versus television that creates non-interactive entertainment, which concludes that a highly interactive medium has greater effects on media users.

Interactive experiences require participants to take an active role in constructing the involvement of the game versus passive experiences that are already properly constructed.        

There are considerable differences between an interactive experience versus passive. Films and television represent passive and video games depict interactive. For passive experiences the audience are observers and as a result are not able to participate and interact with the film. Therefore, the audience is powerless and unable to change their experience or outcome directly. Also, a film or television show is already properly constructed. It is a complete and concrete matter regardless of whether the audience is there to see it or not. On the contrary, for interactive experiences the audience members are people who are taking part in the activity and the sole purpose of the video game is for their interaction in the experience. Their interplay is required to complete the construction of the video game because the game is not in a specific structure and order. The video game allows users to know what it is like to kill someone as the games are more realistic then ever and encourages violence as it is a way to win the game. 

Furthermore, passive and interactive experiences evoke different emotions out of the audiences. For passive experiences the audience is only observing what is going on, therefore showing that the emotions are reactive towards the experience they have. The audience will feel for the characters, but it does not guarantee that it will feel the same. However, with interactive experiences, because the participant is collaborating with the experience they are having, all emotions are direct and personal meaning additional emotions can surface for the participant such as guilt, revenge, etc.

Study's have shown that there is a direct correlation between video games and violent behavior. 

Study’s show that this theory of interactive experiences causing direct influence on media users is valid. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ released a statement saying, “playing violent video games has been found to account for a 13% to 22% increase in adolescents’ violent behavior.”  They continue to say that children learn by observing and trying out behavioral scripts and repeated exposure to these scripts can lead to increased feelings of hostility, expectations that others will behave aggressively and desensitization of the pain of others. This concept is derived from the hypodermic-needle model that is derived from learning theory that states that media has a profound, direct and uniform impact on the public. Moreover, the Academy addresses how media maximizes the prevalence of violence in the real world, harvesting mean-world syndrome in its users. As talked about in Converging Media by John V. Pavlik and Shawn McIntosh, mean-world syndrome is the idea that the world is a more dangerous place than it actually is as a result of interacting with violent programming. This leads to a universal fear of being the victim, provoking people to believe “I will get them before they get to me.” For the younger generation, media exposure has proven to cause depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder.       

A study conducted by Christopher Barlett, a psychologist at Iowa State University, tested 47 undergraduate students playing “Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance” for 15 minutes. The research team tested physical and psychological arousal and whether students would behave more aggressively by having them give hot sauce to a fellow student who they were told did not like spicy food but had to swallow the sauce. The results were as expected as the group that played a non-violent video games versus the group who had played Mortal Kombat, gave significantly less portions of the hot sauce. An example of the results of this experiment being transformed to real life is seen through open fire shootings such as Columbine High School, the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and the elementary shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. All of these shooters were video gamers who were acting out from a twisted fantasy. Adam Lanza, the shooter at Sandy Hook, was reportedly acting out his fantasies making the deaths resemble a “score” and even practiced shooting guns with his mother at a range. Overall, there is a significant amount of supporting evidence that justifies the relationship between video games and violence.

            Another experiment conducted by Nicholas Carnagey, Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman had participants play a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 minutes and then watch a 10 minute videotape that had filmed scenes of real violence. The point of this experiment to was to monitor heart rate. The results showed that those assigned to the violent video games had lower heart rates and were less physiologically aroused by violence concluding they had unfortunately become accustomed to violence. Additionally, the creators of the game had successfully executed the concept of framing which is the notion that the way messages are communicated can influence our attitudes and actions.

BOTH video games and television are major problems not only in the United States, but in the world. 

In conclusion, both video games and television have been integrated into American culture and it is not something that will disappear anytime soon. More than 1.2 billion people across the world are actively participating in video games. Therefore, it is our own responsibility to limit or completely stop being an active participant in video games that portray violence or become aware of the consequences that can come out of being an active user.  

Check out this article covering the debate over whether the U.S. should go back to the moon or not!
http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/should-we-go-back-to-the-moon