Marketing Through Social Media

Social media has changed the way all businesses advertise. While you can buy a commercial for thousands of dollars, you can also just create a Facebook page and advertise there for free. A big part of advertising through social media is how many likes you get, so companies will also come up with ways to get other people to like their pages. A popular way to get people to like your page is by starting giveaways or contests.
                                             

In both of these examples, the company made the customer "like" and "share" the picture. By doing this, it will pop up on the feed of the friends of the participator, and hopefully lure in others to like the page. Before social media, giveaways like this didn't exist. There's no way that a company could get to so many people in such a short amount of time before Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets. 

As far as the entertainment industry goes, I feel like it's harder to keep fan engagement, especially for movies that have a certain time of being popular and then blow over. One Facebook page I've liked for years now is for the movie 500 Days of Summer. I still enjoy their posts, even though the movie is old now. They take things from the movie and find ways to make them modern.

In this example, the page takes the main actor and uses other movies he was in to interact with the fans. This allows fans to remember their movie while also being modern and relevant, rather than using the same quotes and pictures from the movie over and over again.

This picture was a success because it admits that it's an old movie, but it brings in a question to make fans interact and be engaged, even though it's something of the past.

Another company of entertainment that advertises through social media really well is ESPN. I hope to be a sports reporter, so I follow ESPN's social media accounts very closely, and I've noticed how successful they are at interacting with their fans and allowed them to get involved.

This simple post has almost 5,000 comments. By creating a "fill-in-the-blank" status, it allowed fans to comment and interact with the company. 

Overall, social media has had a huge impact on advertising, marketing, and creating valuable relationships with fans and consumers. It has allowed those who are interesting in a product of piece of entertainment to truly immerse themselves and get involved with the companies.