Social media marketing :The way forward.....

Above picture says it all ....It was just last monday when more than a billion users were on facebook,that's every one out of every person on the planet was on facebook. well  barring china and India it was more than a population of any country.It just shows the growing fascination of the people with social media.
Well,its almost a certainty that companies wold promote their products where the  people are .. so with help of the magic words Likes,Share,Tweet etc etc. comes the phenomena of the social media marketing.
Before Rambling on and on about the benefits let me put words to what is social media marketing??well basically Its about using the social media platforms to achieve the marketing communication and the brand positioning goals.If we can increase our web traffic for our web sites ,increase the click through rate the more the merrier.But the most important part is about joining with the customers interacting with them. In the world of clicks, posts and shares it becomes more and more important that consumers get to see you on these social media sites which in turn does a part of product promotions and part of putting your brand concept in the minds of the consumers.

Because so much of the customer experience now lives on the web, social media enables brands to take part in a customer's online experience outside of the typical channels

we have established that social media acts as word of mouth,now it all depends on the the goals of the company what do they want to achieve through it?
a)web traffic
b)conversions
c)Brand awareness
d)communication and interaction with consumers
Depending on the goals of the company It can go for the planning process :keywords to use which audience to target,going for google adwords or facebook ads,twitter promotion or even promoting through instagam. these all come under planning.
next comes the content,it is the make or break content should always be of the good quality.As good quality means shares ,likes etc etc which the motive of ours.
lastly, analytics plays an important role in not only tracking your content and all but also your competitors'.
Well there is also matter of feedback and accountability in social media marketing as companies should always be ethical about it.
Few of the channels for the social media marketing are as follows:

1. facebook
2. Google +
3. pinterest
4. twitter
5. youtube
6. linkedin
7. reddit
8. foursquare
9. level up
10. And many more.....     

Before ending I just want to add social media marketing is not just about the numbers of likes,shares,
and views,in the coming future its going to be the way of life.....