Introduction

In this competitive world acknowledging the customers and the public about the products and services offered is very keen and important for growing successfully in the market. For this brand, promotion is necessary for effectively commercializing the business and its related activities. Promotion is a way of advertising the firm’s product and services to the public. The brand promotion makes the firm or company to differentiate from other and build reputation and brand image in the market. Social media marketing management being the fastest medium for communication is used by companies to promptly and proficiently establish and promote their brand to the public (Darley, 2016). It helps the firms to reach the target market and develop a positive and strong perception in the consumer's mind in an influencing manner.

Project objective

The key objectives of the project are:
1. Assessing the importance of social media for brand promotion.
2. Analysing the factors and impact of social media on rand promotion
3. Evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of social media on the brand promotion of a company or firm
4. Exploring the effect of social media on firms growth and brand development

Project scope

The scope of the project is to determine the need and importance of social media in developing a brand image of the company or firm. Brand promotion is used by the company to extend and reach the public effectively and efficiently. The brand promotion develops the scope for future expansion and find out ways for growth and earning a profit for the company. The brand recognition through promotion on social media helps the company to earn a competitive advantage in the market and extend the operations of the business (Schultz, et al. 2015).

Literature review

(Fan and Gordon, 2014)in their analysis of social media and its power, synthesises the increase in the customers and their unique and diversified demand for making them satisfied with their requirements. For this the use of social media for brand awareness and its related concerns make the companies to effectively analyse the wants and desires of the customers and reach them efficiently. This evolves the need for social media as a promotional tool for the companies and firms. The author has analysed the presence and importance of social media in respect of the three factors that are, capturing the market, understanding the need of customers and presenting the company via its products and services. All these key factors made the social media an effective tool and medium for ascertaining the cutover need and analyse their requirement with developing a perception in their mind for the brand of the company. Social media analytics is concerned with the brand promotion and helps the business to flourish and establish a strong image in the market. This is done via developing and using social media as advertising and information tool for making the people and consumers visualises and monitors the company's product and services with different activities as well. Facebook, YouTube and various other websites on the social media guide the customers to develop and build perception about the brand of the image of the company.

(Xie and Lee, 2015),has studied in their research about the exposure a company gets by advertising and doing promotional activities on the social media. Interacting with social media makes the company build a strong and positive brand image by familiarising the consumers about the product and services the company is offering. For building a brand the company has to take part divergently in the promotional activities over the internet and social media. This made the firm and business to effectively and diversifiable compete in the market with another brand. A brand is an identification of the company and its ongoing business with the acknowledgement of its various offerings in the public minds; made them explore more about the company and its products and services. This made the social media a way of exploring the firm's brand image which contributes to a higher amount of sales and increases in profitability of the business. Brand health promotion marketing on Facebook via blogs, pages and on YouTube via videos and blogging on other sites makes the firm to online promote its various offerings and brand among the customers.The best way of promoting the brand on social media is either via allocating different advertising on online sites and various shopping websites and channels or via owning a dedicated page or site on the social media.

(Habibi, et al. 2014),operating social media markeitng for promoting brand and offering of the business is very crucial and important for the company. The promotion may negatively impact the business and its operations which affects and hampers the company’s brand position in the market and among its loyal customers. Developing an ideal image and arguing about the positive branding in a well-developed and diversified environment makes the company establish a strong community on the social media. For reaching hike and surviving in the competitive world a diversified approach is to be adopted by the companies such that their brand is recognised by the customers and people identically. For this one of the important factors in developing the unique logo and tagline that are easy to understand and within reach of the entire potential customer base. There may be various implications of using social media as a way of brand promotion and approaches that negatively impact the image and reputation of the firm. So while advertising and promoting on social media and over the internet, the firm has to initialise its content and material in respect of the rules and guidelines and consider the ethical values and norms conveying in the society.

(Hollebeek, et al. 2014),for conceptualising the brand promotion of the company social media is an effective tool as it collaborates different customers with a different perception, need and desires and demand under one roof and effectively identifies their need. Engaging customers over social media is very easy and effective for understanding the different requirement perceiving among them and by analysing this, the company can efficiently value their customers by providing them better services and quality products. This makes the firm to build a brand image over the internet and social media. With effect to social media as a tool for brand promotion, CBE i.e. consumer brand engagement is also necessary. The CBE lead the consumer to relate to the brand and postulate the brand's ideologies, services and with this helps the company to maintain a comprehensive relationship with the customers and identify the new target market. For serving the customer in a better way and developing the CBE network for brand promotion, socialmedia is the best tool as it drives the consumers to emotionally, socially and cognitively relate with the company's brand and its products and services.

(Laroche, et al. 2013),the negative and undesirable use of social media and internet for immoral and wrong activities makes the companies think over its use and practice. The on-going destructive activities via using the technology for wrongful purposes makes the social media to emerge as a threat to the companies brand image. Any negative information or publication about the company or its offering in regards to the product and services led to lower its brand value and reputation in the prevailing market and other developing markets as well. The reliance of the people on the social media makes the wrong information presented as a truth irrespective of the brand and company. This impacts the brand loyalty and influence the other business element as well such as goals and objective of the firm, customer loyalty and also affects the firms operation and working both internally and externally. Developing brand community is also a major concern of the company as it helps to develop a positive brand image among the people and consumers. This affects and establishes the company’s brand in relation to the customer/product, customer/brand, customer/company and other relationships. The extravagant advertising on social media may also led to attract the competitors divergently which may hamper the brand image of the company through negative articles and promotion tool over the internet and social media sites.

(Mini and Jacob, 2014),using social media for promoting or for launching any product is becoming a trend nowadays. Since the modern technologies has evolved over the globalisation period, made the people to interconnect and transfer information fastly, majorly by the use of internet. This made the firm to be in the competitive in the market and use internet for faster and accurately interconnect with the people and consumer. Social media being a most common and easy way of connecting people from different regions, culture or country made the firm to initialize and use it in promoting different products and services and developing and creating the brand image of the company. Brand promotion is very crucial for the company as its forms positive or negative perception of the company in the consumers mind. So, the author in his research suggested a communication plan for brand promotion via using different social media tools and sites such as Facebook, shopping sites, blogging sites and YouTube channels. This will help the firm or company to expand its business via using online marketing channels and different websitesand reach out a large customer base. A strong brand promotion using the social media and its different channels and sites make the firm to develop a strong relationship with the customers and establish trust over the company’s brand among them.

(Lake, 2014),there are various misconceptions or say confusion about branding among the people. It is simply a symbol, name, sign or combination of the either things that makes the people to easily identify a company, product and services offered. Using social media for branding is very comprehensive technique and is the fastest medium to reach a large public over a single platform. The use of internet as a technology for using social media makes the process of branding and advertising to reach and cover wide areas is very economical and effective. There are various tools for marketing but using social media divergently attracts large population and helps the business to build a strong customer base and further expand in the market diversifiable. Social media being the fastest conveying promotional tool influences many factors and element of the company and its brand. Branding through social media leads to approach and target the potential consumers effectively and develop and plan the strategies accordingly. The promotion of brand in an effective manner over the social media makes the firm to clearly define its target market, set objectives effectively, increases credibility, and builds relationship management with the customers for future growth.

(Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014),social media is a most visited and used tool for interconnecting and acknowledging people about the different product, services, and various other things. For adding and publishing any information or advertisement on the social media proper strategy and planning is to be made by the company. This will help the company to protect and safeguard form the misuse of the information by the other rivalry firm or other competitors, avoiding any negative feedback and comment on social sites and many more. Framing policies and procedures for brand promotion and its further development and advertising is important as it is for influencing and guiding the customers towards the brand. So to avoid any misuse or deliberately wrongful use of the information and advertise on the social media strategising an impactful policy is necessary. For effectivelypromoting the brand over social media the norms such as no direct comparing or using the other company’s confidential information over the internet and using it for advertising is being regulated by the government and company norms. For safeguarding the confidential information of the company while promoting the brand company should strategies and develops policies and procedures for effectively and efficiently promotes its brand in the market and creates a positive impact over the public and builds a strong brand image over the other competitors in the market ethically.

Conclusion

Form the aforementioned literature reviews and project objective and scope it has been evolved that the social media is important and serve as an effective tool for brand promotion of the company or firm. Social media work as an advertising and promotional tool for the brand development of the business (Baxi, et al. 2016). The brand promotion through social media marketing leads to develop and incorporate a strong image and recognition of the unique name of the company to attract and retain the loyal consumers.

Reference list

1.Baxi, B., Panda, R. and Karani, A., 2016. Community Marketing: an effective Marketing Strategy. Romanian Journal of Marketing, (3), p.2.
2.Darley, W.K., 2016. Brand building via integrated marketing communications. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Brand Management, p.201.
Fan, W. and Gordon, M.D., 2014. The power of social media analytics. Communications of the ACM, 57(6), pp.74-81.
Habibi, M.R., Laroche, M. and Richard, M.O., 2014. Brand communities based in social media: How unique are they? Evidence from two exemplary brand communities. International Journal of Information Management, 34(2), pp.123-132.
Hollebeek, L.D., Glynn, M.S. and Brodie, R.J., 2014. Consumer brand engagement in social media: Conceptualization, scale development and validation. Journal of interactive marketing, 28(2), pp.149-165.
Lake, S., 2014. A Consultant’s Analysis of Bond Public Relations and Brand Business Strategy.
Laroche, M., Habibi, M.R. and Richard, M.O., 2013. To be or not to be in social media: How brand loyalty is affected by social media?. International Journal of Information Management, 33(1), pp.76-82.
Mini, U. and Jacob, P., 2014, March. Information diffusion through Social Media-analysing brand promotion through Social Network Analysis tools-a business case study. In IT in Business, Industry and Government (CSIBIG), 2014 Conference on (pp. 1-4). IEEE.