The Emergence of Twitter and Facebook Marketing
The role of social media marketing was questioned by many critics when it was first introduced some years ago. Critics were cynical of the growth of business on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. Few thought that after a couple of years, social media marketing would be on the rise and would become the easiest, fastest and most effective way to sell products. Unfortunately, even with this kind of major success, many small corporations, freelancers and business houses have yet not joined the social networking bandwagon.
A recent study shows that a vast majority of marketers (88 percent) are now using some form of social networking to market their products. 
No one can deny the vast roles played by the social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in marketing these days. Products and services are now sold more through the virtual world of social networking rather than spending thousands of dollars on large corporate advertisements. Who wouldn’t like to board the social networking train now? The most common complaint from those who still haven’t joined it is that they don’t know where to begin, or how to do it.
Let’s look at some of the ways to engage Facebook and Twitter for marketing purpose. Facebook is the new face in social networking these days. The site is the second most visited site in the world at present, right after the Google search engine page. With over 200 million users, Facebook has graduated from being a mere hobby of a couple of Harvard folks to a giant social networking site whose clout is respected all over the world. Ranging from small business owners to corporate giants, everyone is slowly recognizing the power of Facebook to connect with potential clients and drive steady traffic to their websites.
Facebook has a friendly atmosphere where you can add another person as a ‘friend’ through a ‘friend request’. Mutual friends can see each other’s posts, photos, videos, blog streams and any other posted content. Anyone who uses Facebook as a marketing tool must acknowledge the fact that this is basically a social networking site, and certain decorum and etiquettes need to be followed. The key thing to note here is that you need to build relationships first. Facebook is unique in this way- you need to pursue strong bonds with people as you would do with friends in your real life.
Facebook offers two distinct ways of marketing your products: creating a group or a fan page for your brand. Groups are organizations of people who are interested in whatever discussions or topics the groups are associated with. For example, ‘New York Rental Cab’ can be a Facebook group with cab owners, drivers, and customers joining the group to keep themselves abreast of latest news, products and services offered. Groups require a moderator who shall keep an eye on what is going on within the group, and take necessary actions to prevented unwanted activities. Groups are an effective way of engaging the attention of like-minded individuals. The business house owning the group can offer free information to starters who might be looking to invest without knowing the details of the business. The groups can also serve as a place for discussing the new product release, or for offering free tutorials, or for discussing about emerging ideas and products. These are excellent ways to promote your product as well as build a personal relationship with a loyal base of customers.
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Another way of Facebook marketing can be done by creating a Fan page for the brand. Unlike the Facebook Group, a Fan page requires no monitoring. A Fan Page can include weekly newsletters, special offers, contests, question and answer sessions and polls, along with a number of other things. A Fan page can be easily integrated with the blog to stream the blog posts and host power point presentations and tutorial videos. 
Through the large powers of groups and fan pages, any brand can build a base of followers in Facebook with effective marketing. Just remember- don’t go over the top by shamelessly promoting a product several times each day. Try to keep things short and simple, as you yourself would like to see if you were a customer.
Next in line is Twitter, a micro-blogging site that has become the new rage in social networking circles. It already has a strong user base, with some of the most famous names signing up as Twitter users each day. Smart businessmen can profit enormously from Twitter, since it presents a diverse range of options to choose from when marketing for a particular brand. Use the ‘search’ tool in Twitter to find people who share common interests with you, or rather with the business idea you are going to market. Twitter offers only 140 characters to talk, so be precise and concise. Find other Twitter users who share the more or less same interests and become their followers. Usually, people respond by following you back, and through this responsive chain of events, you are on your way to build a steady base of followers (or potential customers).
There are a few things that are needed to be taken care of while using Twitter. Don’t spam your followers with hundreds of promotional offers each day. That way, many of your followers would surely desert you.
Maintain the basic etiquettes that you would do in a normal, official business atmosphere. Pushing potential customers with uncomfortable, sly marketing tricks doesn’t pay off at the end. Ideally, you should tweet about your blog post that in turn contains information about your business. Blogs and Twitter go hand-in-hand. If you can find some of you followers to re-tweet a particularly important tweet, the information can spread at a lightning pace in the Twitter world. Try to engage your followers in interesting topics, making sure they don’t get bored of hearing marketing jargon every day.
There are thousands of Twitter apps, plug-ins and tools to help you market in Twitter. Some of the noteworthy ones are Buzzom, CoTweet, Twellow and HootSuite. Some of these have both free and paid service. Use them if you like in aiding you to properly market your products and services in Twitter. Facebook and Twitter marketing is just the tip of the iceberg. With thousands of social networking sites coming up each day, marketing in social media shall be much bigger than traditional marketing in coming years.
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