Running head: MARKETING ON SOCIAL MEDIA 1

Marketing on social media

Student: Mohammed Alqahtani

Institution:

Professor: Anne Kilfoyle

Date: 05/2/2017
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Marketing on social media

The introduction of social media was received well by individuals, and its usage has

found favor in many people who use it on a regular basis. Social media has proved to be a handy

and significant tool that many individuals and businesses cannot do without in this new world.

Social media is vital in the modern society, where sites such as Facebook, Twitter,

StumbleUpon, MySpace, LinkedIn, Blogger, and Flickr offer a comprehensive platform for

conducting advertisements (Bizzell and Herzberg, 2001). Thus, allowing companies and

individuals to reach out to their target market without necessarily meeting them in person.

Despite the positive sides of social media, it also boasts a downside like cyber bullying

and compromise of private information and disruption of relationships among others. A larger

number of cyberbullying cases are shown on Facebook where people fill their friends’ Facebook

newsfeeds with negative posts instead of the positive ones (Perez, 2010). It is mostly common

among teens who have had cases of their private information posted without their permission,

threatening messages as well as embarrassing pictures forwarded without consent (Perez, 2010).

When discussing rhetoric, it is also hard to consider the implications of social media as they

occur; overall, social media is a critical tool in advertisement and marketing the whole business

village small in terms of communication and response.

By refereeing to rhetoric, one just means the art of manipulation of language to ultimately

persuade and influence the decision of other people. However, this particular function is usually

overlooked in social media. In some extent, this fact is understandable since persuading people in
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platforms such as Facebook cannot be evaluated the same as rhetoric utilizes in the regular and

peacefully arguments. It can be illustrated by how an advertiser needs to write a short statement

that is straight to the point on Facebook to be able to catch the attention of viewers (Wellman, et

al., 2003).

The use of marketing in social media comes with several; benefits one of them is having

the ability to establish someone’s ethos. Someone or a company scan achieve ethos by posting

advertisements that are not based on assumptions but those that complements the positive

impacts of the on the community. Pathos is another aspect of rhetoric advantage that people can

utilize when they are using social media. It can be seen when charitable organizations use

Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and other social media sites to gain support by posting emotional

and persuading posts that are moving (Bizzell and Herzberg, 2001). The same campaigns use

personal experiences that provoke empathy and sympathy to influence social media users to

participate in the campaign and share the same posts and awareness with their friends. These

advertisements need to establish a well-accepted set of ethos or else they would lose their

credibility (Fifield and Gilligan, 1996).

The 21st century has come with multiple rapid changes in every sector including the

business world. In this modern world, there is dire need to reach out to a large number of

consumers within a short time. It owed to a large number of companies that are sprouting day

and night. People are always coming up with innovative ways of reaching to consumers such as

using social media sites to satisfy the growing demand of consumers. For instance the evolution

of LinkedIn to help connect people and things, which matter in the professional world. LinkedIn

assists the business community in building and develops its networks, stay updated with current
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industry and business as well as link an organization to the consumers. It is because it is an

employment and business-oriented networking service, which functions via mobile apps and

websites (Baum, 2015). The company palette includes three colors namely blue, white and black.

The color blue commonly known as the LinkedIn Blue displays the central identity of the brand

(Baum, 2015). The corporation opted for this shade of blue for many reasons. The First motive

was that several people automatically relate it to communication and networking through the

Internet (Baum, 2015). In addition, most of the LinkedIn creators are top directors from the

online money transfer site, PayPal. Hence, it is evident that the shade adjacent to that of PayPal

blue was selected as a result (Baum, 2015). Besides, mental representation of blue includes

virtues such as authority, intellect, success, and power that align with the identity of the brand.

Social media has slowly taken a greater portion of using word or mouth to reach people. These

have enabled businesses to communicate with each other and be able to sell their products to

consumers (Naughton, 2000).

Through social media, many companies have different mechanisms of getting the

attention of males and females. For the males, they get their attention by making them focus on

beautiful and attractive women. For the females, they use men who are handsome and well built.

The women are usually wearing exposing clothes, while the males always appear shirtless or

wearing a vest. Also, through bright colors and use of well-known individuals, they can attract

the youth in drinking whiskey and other types of alcoholic beverages. They make them look

classy and portraying that if the youth drink this kind of drink, they would be like the people

advertising the products. Mostly they depict people, who are just typical, and their lives are

healthy, but after using the products that they promote, the same individuals become attractive

and classy. Also, they seem to know what they want in life. Through the advertisement in social
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media, the mrke3ters show that people can only achieve this realization by using the particular

product.

The authors of these advertisements are usually all about sexual stereotypes since the

girls are always beautiful, with blue eyes and pure skin tone completed with a huge breast that

show from the cleavage. They men are usually handsome with the same skin tone, broad jaw

line, and ripped body. These means they are not just aiming to sell their products for the benefit

of the company and not that of the consumers. Many young people use the internet and more

specifically social media. Thus, they are at a high chance of bumping to these advertisements and

since many of them use girls who seem to be underage to advertise even alcohol many young

people would end up to use alcohol. The authors appear to use these girls strategically not to sell

the products to seniors but young men (Martin, 2007).

Companies and businesses are coming up with attractive adverts that would catch the

attention of viewers and post them on social media. They are aware that they use of specific

characters and colors would attract the attention of a particular group of individuals. Coca-Cola

Company uses their brilliant color red in branding to initiate impulse buying of their products, as

red depicts energy, power, excitement, and passion (Staff, 2016). Similarly, it stirs the appetite,

making it the better option when branding drink or food. Additionally, the white whirling letters

stimulate passion because of its attention-grabbing qualities. A good example is the new global

ad campaign of “Taste the Feeling,” portrayed by a series of images, which capture the everyday

moments of life like skating, a first date, and hanging out with friends (Staff, 2016). Coca-Cola

makes these daily moments extra special and passionate.

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They also know that by getting this kind of people would be a critical idea since they

would not be forced to create awareness of the same products but the same consumers are the

ones who would share posts about the products they are interested in purchasing. The companies

also allow the same customers to share their reviews about their commodities on social media;

this allows them to defend themselves from competitors’ bad reviews. Besides, professional who

knows much about the products is always online to provide information about the products when

the consumers have any query. The reports made by clients assist the company in creating an

effective marketing strategy that would attract even a larger number of individuals through social

media. Despite their significant efforts, consumers are never aware that they facilitate

commercialization of products that are good or bad. The social media platform has been a great

tool in reaching specific target group in terms of race, age or social status; thus, making the

human resource department to have an easy time. Marketing has now grown, it has become

cheap, honest and easy to manage, and with just a limited workforce, companies can be able to

reach people all over the world (Wellman, et al., 2003).

Psychologically humans have the urge belonging to a particular social circle; thus, the

virtual community has a great significance to human psychology. In these groups, they find like-

minded individuals whom they can be able to interact with and share related ideas. They help

people have a sense of identity than other classical methods do. For this reason, marketers

strategically use this realization to advertise their products actively, and without fail, they always

get the right target market for their products. Since the virtual community connects many people

and within a short time, people stumble to the information they are looking for even without

searching for them. With the existence social groups, it is easy for the marketers to sell the same

products to each person in the group since they follow each other (Martin, 2007).
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Now more than ever it is evident that marketers are using the virtual community to

advertise their products and reach out to millions of people all over the world. Many people have

expressed their interest in engaging in social media for either communication, sharing pictures,

or sell products. Many people have been able to use social media to get the sympathy of

individuals to support their campaigns, and through that, they have been able to create awareness

and expanded their groups. Social media platforms are growing, and as they do, the classical way

of meeting face-to-face is slowly fading away as people prefer to communicate through these

sites as to save time (Fifield and Gilligan, 1996). Social media has made the world to become a

small virtual village where people can communicate with each other whenever they want

regardless of time and distance. The passing of information has been made accessible and

efficient.
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References

Baum, E. (2015). Why Are Social Media Sites Blue?. Bluleadz.com. Retrieved 8 June 2017, from

http://www.bluleadz.com/blog/why-are-social-media-sites-blue

Bizzell, P., and Herzberg, B., (2001). The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times

to the Present (2nd Edition), Boston, MA: Bedford/ St. Martin’s.

Fifield, P. and Gilligan, C., (1996). Strategic Marketing Management. Oxford: Butterworth-

Heinemann,

Martin, Greg, (2007). The Role of Exigencies in Marketing: A Rhetorical Analysis of Three

Online Social Networks. Clemson University, Tiger Prints.

Naughton, J., (2000). A brief history of the future: From radio days to Internet years in a

lifetime. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press.

Perez, S. (2010). More Cyberbullying on Facebook, Social Sites than Rest of Web -

ReadWrite. ReadWrite. Retrieved 8 June 2017, from

https://readwrite.com/2010/05/10/more_cyberbullying_on_facebook_social_sites_than_r

est_of_web/

Staff, J. (2016). Taste the Feeling: Watch 6 Ads From Coke's New Global Campaign. The Coca-

Cola Company. Retrieved 8 June 2017, from http://www.coca-

colacompany.com/stories/taste-the-feeling--watch-6-ads-from-coke-s-new-global-

campaign
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Wellman, Barry et al., (2003). “The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked

Individualism.” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. 8 (3), 41-67.