Social media marketing: A reviewSocial media today has a huge influence on our lives. Whether it is an adult or a child, each of us spends half of our day on social media. Scrolling down and stalking, these activities have become a permanent part of our lives. This evolution of social media has helped businesses in their marketing strategies. Today with the advancement of technology, it is easier for companies to advertise their product through powerful platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Socialwider.com, YouTube, Snapchat etc. Social media marketing programs and management are created on the basis of attracting attention and encouraging readers to share it across their social networks.Social media is a highly powerful platform today. With millions of people using various social sites, the outreach of your marketing program can be immense and greater than you had ever imagined. Marketing on internet in general has become easy as well as inexpensive. Social media marketing has its own pros and cons. This article is a review about social media marketing and its impact on businesses and audiences.Cost effectiveThe biggest benefit that social media marketing brings to businesses is cutting down their marketing cost. Social media is an inexpensive yet effective way to advertise your product or service. It costs nothing to set up accounts on social media sites. It only requires your sincere efforts and unique ideas to be a huge boost for your company. It also helps non profits organizations and agencies to reach their target audience in Nigeria, Africa and any part of the world.Geographical differencesMarketing through social media eliminates the geographical differences standing between people. Similarly, people speaking different languages, belonging to difference races see your advertisements. This provides you a vast audience and can be beneficial depending on the nature of the company. Having said that, bigger audiences can be a hurdle when you want a certain type of people as your target audience and want a reaction from a certain group of people.Reliance of online businessesSocial media marketing has a lot of contribution in the existence of online businesses. Similarly, small scale businesses use social media to market their product or services. They do not have enough budget and here social media is their key to survival.Easy to connect Marketing through social media is an easy way to connect with your audience. Your consumers have a direct contact with the company. This has many benefits. It results in increased customer care and an outstanding customer service. The platform of having a direct contact develops feelings of trust and credibility between the customer and the company. This invests in long term relationships of the consumers with the company.CreativityCreativity is the key to good marketing. You can make your campaign stand out by using unique ideas and infusing ingenuity into it. Social media marketing campaigns are the most successful when they connect with people’s emotions.Measuring your success is easierThe success of your social media campaign is easy to measure. Social media lets you track the reach of your post or advertisement. You can easily view the number of clicks, shares and likes on your post that informs you about the efficiency of your marketing scheme.The number of retweets on twitter, likes and shares on Facebook, views on YouTube informs the company about its position in the market. Having said that, this measurement cannot be termed as the perfect analysis about your campaign. You cannot locate the scams and fake profiles that are viewing your campaign.The other side of social mediaSocial media marketing however has a side which we are not sure to be categorized as a positive or negative. Through social media, you receive immediate reactions. You can see the responses, suggestions and reviews about your campaign at the spot. You know how the audiences are reacting to your marketing. The risk with social media marketing remains there of wrong interpretation. The negative elements include spammers, scammers, trolls and all other sorts of malicious individuals all out to do harm to your online reputation. Sometimes the reviews posted by the viewers are bad and cannot be removed. This might generate a negative impression about your company.CompetitionOne of the negatives associated with social media marketing is that it is easily accessible to everyone which leads to a vast competition. Since anyone can promote themselves on social media, it becomes a bit difficult to make yourself stand out from the lot. Similarly, the ideas get stolen way too often in social media marketing and plagiarism is indeed really common. Creating brand awareness is one of the greatest challenges of new companies. Using the powerful platforms of social media, launch your brand with zero cost.Time consumingSocial media may consume less money, but it sure consumes a lot of your time. This is one of reasons you need a service of AdHang to help you professionally market on social media. If you are a beginner and own a small scale business, you have to invest in your marketing to reach bigger audiences. You have to spend time in your marketing strategies and ideas to make them appear catchy and able to expand your business. By hiring AdHang you save yourself the trouble and headache while experts do the hard works for you. On the other hand, if you own an enormous business with a huge audience, time will be consumed in connecting with your audience. Often social media platforms are used by users for asking their problems or queries. Explaining and responding to them consumes a good amount of your staff. It requires the team to effectively and constantly participate with their audience to remain relevant.In a nutshell… Social media marketing maybe taking over the world but experts still believe there’re a lot of other internet marketing components and means to be more effective than only it as it has its merits and demerits in different cases. It has been suggested that social media is the most effective when combines with other marketing activities. It is an effective yet economical marketing tactic and should be used by businesses to lift themselves.