Marketing with social media is the hottest new frontier in the world of online marketing for your business. Much has evolved since the early days of marketing via the Internet. First there was e-mail spam. Then there were pop up banner ads. Then there were pay-per-click ads. And now there is marketing with social media. Unless you have been hiding away on a remote, deserted island for the past decade, you must already know that social media represents the latest development in the evolution of the Internet, where news and information are being shared, relationships are being kindled (or broken), and political movements are being sparked entirely through social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

Many businesses have caught onto the fact that marketing with social media is a terrific venue through which you can advertise your product or service and reach out to a global audience. It is almost like viral, word-of-mouth marketing, because of the way you can instantly share your favorite links with tens, hundreds, or even thousands of other people. And this type of marketing method has no doubt proven to be very effective in terms of not only lead generation, but also in terms of sales conversions and revenue generation. Let’s examine why marketing with social media works so well:

Social media makes it easy to advertise on a massive scale. Facebook has friends and fans. And each friend has friends. And each fan has friends. And they can all follow each other. Same with Twitter. This makes it possible for multiple layers of people to get notified that their friends or the people they are following are themselves following that business that is being advertised.

For example, Joe had a great experience with Athens Marketing Firm, so he decides to become the company’s fan on Facebook. Joe happens to have 100 friends. Joe’s privacy settings on Facebook allows his friends and his friends’ friends to get notified whenever he becomes a fan of something. Let’s say that each of Joe’s 100 friends themselves have 100 other friends. How many people will get notified that Joe likes Athens Marketing Firm? That is a grand total of 10,000 people! Yes, you just became the medium of free advertising for a company that you dealt with, spreading the message to 10,000 people instantly. And any of those 10,000 people will be able themselves click on the link to the company’s Facebook fan page.

Another way that marketing with social mediaworks would be through pay-per-click advertisingon Facebook. Did you know that Facebook displays subtle advertisements in the margins of the web pages when you visit the site? And did you know that these advertisements are all customized based on the information you provided in your Facebook profile about your hobbies, your interests, your political views, your favorite TV shows, favorite foods, your education and your employment status, and even items that you have recently Liked or became a fan of? This represents the ultimate in targeted advertising, as the advertisements you see on Facebook are specifically geared toward you, this increasing the likelihood that you might actually click on the ads.