Evaluate the Role of Social Media Marketing in Regards to Apple’s Products
Introduction
The story of social media marketing started a long time ago when the markets were conversational places for people. Almost everyone is aware of the importance of social media marketing, networking sites, and blogs. Social media marketing techniques have been adopted by businesses and governments. All the major businesses and companies in the world use social media for marketing their products. Apple on the other hand has proved everyone wrong who thinks that success without social media marketing is not possible, and is considered to be a type of company that does not directly play in the world of social media or market their products with the help of social media.
Recent Apple SMM Strategy
Almost all business leaders believe that companies need to be socially active in order to be successful in today’s world, but Apple acts in a different way. Up till 2011, Apple remained absent from all social networking sites, but was still ranked as one of the most admired brands in the world. The company only maintained Twitter and Facebook accounts for iTunes and App Store, and these accounts were not used to engage customers (Mashable, 2012). This means that social media marketing directly did not play a great role in the success of Apple’s products, but the opposite.
But this also does not mean that social media marketing is not helping Apple or Apple is not getting benefited from social media. Other companies are advertising Apple’s products for them and they are doing social media marketing for Apple. What Apple has actually done is outsource its social media responsibility to other companies who promote Apple’s products by creating a buzz. Apple products are being marketed all over Facebook, Twitter, and other blogging websites, and these social media websites help Apple to achieve more customers because social media is supposed to be a more trustworthy source of information by consumers as compared to other paid marketing channels (Foux, 2006). If you see Apple’s original Facebook page, you would notice that Apple does not show any activity on its Facebook wall, but if you observe Twitter or other companies’ pages on Facebook you would notice that plenty of people are talking about Apple’s products. People want to follow Apple but Apple prefers other people to do word of mouth marketing for them while they are developing their next great thing (Flow Experience Marketing, 2013). Apple never embraced social media because people embraced it on behalf of Apple, and it has helped the company to gain popularity for its products more quickly.
Apple’s SMM Focus
Apple was not involved in social media marketing activities directly in the past and hired other companies to do it for the company, but now it is making a shift in its approach. Apple has recently bought social media search and analytics startup Topsy Labs to better realize the needs of users (Apps Tech News, 2014). The company is focusing more on social media tools so that it can achieve and understand more customers. There are many different accounts on Twitter that inform readers about Apple products and more people are following such accounts. It could also be said that Apple’s social media marketing strategy is to create products and let people do the talking about their products. So in short, consumers are made to think that Apple does not have any proper representation on social media such as Facebook and Twitter, when there is representation of Apple and millions of consumers are signing up to be fans of this brand on unofficial accounts. Social media marketing has indirectly helped Apple to gain more consumers and increase the brand awareness of Apple’s product.
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