With Social Media, Consumers are the Rulers, not Businesses

Social network sites are disturbing well-established marketing principles. Companies are no longer in control of purchase transactions, consumers are. The well-known 4Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) in marketing classes do not accurately showcase the reality of how customers purchase, rather 4Cs (Creating, Curating, Connecting, And Culture) tell us exactly what customers want companies to do.

Come to the social network sites era. Almost more than half of ecommerce revenues come from mobile phones because people are increasing their ownership of phones in more than any time in history. In addition, seeing that grandparents are the fastest growing demographic on Twitter shows how the society have accepted that social network sites to become part of our lives.

Today word-of-mouth determines your business success. Social network site are so significant that their users exceed the populations of large countries. For example, Facebook would be the leading country in the world if its user is counted as populations. This is stunning if you consider the fact that more than half of global populations are less than 30 years; so users joining social network sites will speedily continue to increase daily. So do why companies need to make social media as part of their business strategies?

Even today all development organizations have the same tasks and they face similar challenges. They do engage in face-to-face conferences, but this doesn’t allow their full participation to share their experiences since ONLY few people do attend these types of meetings. This is where the usefulness of social media tools comes into play.

 One aspect of using social media in the context of development relates to the application of social reporting practices, acts where organizations can broadcast their events live, and at the same time receive feedback and ideas from other online participants. This is why many organizations now include this practice in their planning decisions; and it’s actually paying off since it renders more participatory, immediate, relevant, and accessible. SDC’s Gender Equality Network and even the UN agencies are using this social reporting concept.