The Pepsi Refresh Project Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

The Pepsi Refresh Project - Research Paper Example Social media marketing entails using these social media platforms for direct marketing. Corporate blogs have become an important medium for enhancing communication with the internal and external customers (Cox, Martinez & Quinlan, 2008). Viral transfer of messages through corporate blogs reduces advertising costs while disseminating new about products and services (Scammel, 2006). The social media, being interactive in nature, has enabled customer involvement in content creation and value generation, which helps businesses to understand and serve their customers better (Abrahams, 2012). This enhances customer engagement thereby enabling the organization to build long-term customer relationship. Engaging the customer has become important in the turbulent business environment today. Apple or its iPod and iPad, CNN and Starbucks have been extensively using social media marketing for building brand awareness and brand community (Palmer & Koenig-Lewis, 2009). The number of active FaceBook users reached 500 million by 2010 with over 70% users being outside the US. More than 10 million Tweets or messages had been sent by March 2010 since its launch in 2006 (Baird & Parasnis, 2011). These have now reached a state that consumers and their virtual networks drive the conversation, which poses challenges for businesses. Companies are increasingly becoming engaged in social media marketing because they believe they will be â€Å"out of touch† if they do not do so. However, consumers have their own reasons for being engaged in social media platforms. They expect tangible benefits such as discount coupons for sharing their opinions. Thus, while social media marketing has a wider reach and great potential to engage and build customer relationship, it also poses challenges. It is also not known to what extent businesses are ready for using this platform as this is a shift from the traditional marketing media such as advertising through television and magazines. Moreover, the users might be increasing but many use social media merely to connect with family and friends. 2. Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of Social Media Marketing for business entrepreneurs. Social media marketing has several advantages such as that it allows business to gather information about their clients, create communities and encourage participation (Champoux, Durgee & McGlynn, 2012). Entrepreneurs that have been able to incorporate the social media into their business model have been able to increase brand awareness (27%), boost sales (15%) and improve customer service (11%) (Tuttle, 2010). They use the social media marketing to achieve a high level of search engine optimization (SEO) and natural search generate more sales. Increased brand awareness, increased customer acquisition and spread of information and other links is very fast through linking systems. This facilitates stakeholder communication but the disadvantage here is that the company has no control over t he content (Aula, 2010). Both small and big businesses have been harnessing the potential of social media marketing. Big businesses such as IBM own more than 100 blogs, several official Twitter accounts and a popular forum called developerWorks (Zarrella, 2010).