Social media marketing has become a powerful tool for businesses of all sizes in reaching prospects and new customers. No matter who you are, or what industry you’re in, your customers are already interacting with brands through social media. Great marketing on social media can bring remarkable success to your business by creating devoted brand advocates and driving leads and sales. Bottom line: if you’re not speaking directly to your audience through social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you’re missing out!

Organizations of all sizes have seen immense success in the use and integration of social media. The tools, data, and many other capabilities that these platforms provide, have shown to deliver significant benefits for any organization’s overall performance. Despite all the known qualities social media platforms have to offer, the true reason these organizations see positive results is because of the proper application, structure, management, overall strategy and its effectiveness when it comes to integrating social media across the whole organization. We have seen how social media can benefit organizations in a variety of areas, but once social media has been integrated across the whole organization and working in unison, we can also see more powerful and substantial results.

It is safe to say that social media is one of the most talked about topics currently in the world and it doesn’t look to be fizzling out anytime soon. Social media platforms have gone from a place to connect with friends and family, to a regular social tool for organizations to utilize and maximize the many properties and capabilities it holds. Technology is advancing at an astonishing rate, and there is no telling what a social media platform will look like or what the functionality of it will be in the future. For an organization like Metroland Media, they are already behind in terms of implementing any kind of social media, so if they do choose to move forward with it, it’s possible for them to enter the social media world at a very different and confusing time. The real question is, will they?

Any organization, despite the industry, is tracking metrics day in and day out. These metrics play a significant role in the organizations overall performance, and every organization tracks and monitor some type of performance metric, these areas could include: sales, finance, social media, marketing, lead generation, consumer data, and the list goes on. These metrics are vital for the organization to improve in those areas and their overall performance and can also be used to increase customer satisfaction, customer retention, revenue and employee performance. Without metrics, these organizations would be left without key consumer data, have a challenging time marketing their products or services, understanding their consumers, tracking sales and revenue, and their research and development would slow down tremendously. Metrics support and improve the overall performance of organizations, that is why Metroland Media remains one of the media industry leaders in Canada, due to their strong metric management.

For Metroland Media, customer engagement is essential for many aspects of their business since there are such large selections of print publications and other media sources available to the public. Although all media channels are equally important to Metroland Media, their community newspapers and print publications are their number one source of revenue.  Today we see the Internet evolving into a larger number of social media channels and television alternatives; this puts customer engagement at the top of their priority list. With the amount of choices available, competition amongst companies and brand loyalty becomes a problem.

Social media networks connect people across the world in real time.  Sharing has now become second nature.  This new paradigm has many businesses spinning.  With the objective of building brand awareness and enhancing business growth, businesses embark on many different social media strategies. With the help of data analytics, businesses can determine which of the strategies are most successful in meeting their objectives.  The world of social media is continuously evolving.  It is becoming more and more difficult  to remember a time when the world wasn’t sharing. As a powerful tool utilized by businesses to market their business and generate sales.  Some of the key benefits include: Heightened brand awareness Increases in sales generated by successfully targeting existing and potential customers Heightened communication with customers leads to improved customer service Heightened customer engagement opportunities Social media has had a strong impact on the photography industry.   Some may argue that the impact has been negative as the high usage of photography apps with various filters has diminished the value of quality photography. On a positive note, social media has also provided photographers with an opportunity to share their photographs with the world and to establish a fan base using affordable marketing tactics.  Instagram has become one of the most powerful tools used by photographers. The social media platform gives photographers across the world an opportunity to have their work viewed by thousands, if not millions of people and fellow photographers.  Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest have become vehicles for photographers to share their works with their peer group and inspire possibilities for marketing collaborations. Another popular social media tool used by photographers to market their businesses is Youtube.  Youtube photo galleries and Youtube Channels are developed with the objective of showcasing photographic prowess and providing tutorials with valuable photography tips.  The channels provide photographers with an opportunity to build brand awareness, develop a fan base in addition to giving their followers an opportunity to share the posts and contribute  comments.