Writing and marketing on social media

The development of marketing was on a rise motivated by the need to understand the relationships and behaviors that existed between sellers and buyers. In particular, the study of marketing made sellers recognize the significance of adopting certain strategies and tactics to make a business successful. Before the 1950s, the goal of marketing was simply selling more products and services with little regard for what customers really wanted. But starting in the 1950s and with the evolution of social media, companies began to see that old ways of selling were wearing thin with customers.

As competition grew stiffer across most industries, organizations looked to the buyer side of the transaction for ways to improve and they found an emerging philosophy suggesting that the key factor in flourishing marketing is writing properly on social media. Most of the people ask these three major questions: “ Is writing capable of attracting more audience and developing marketing?”, “ Does social media marketing play a role in a business’s success?”, and “ Is social media killing the business writing?”. In my opinion, writing is extremely important in today’s society and it is a part of a creative project, whether it is a film, building, or a piece of literature.

Without writing the flow of ideas halted shortly beyond the source. So it is considered a very important tool in the marketing field which helps the marketers reveal their brand in a creative way and attract more purchasers. Also, social media is killing the business writing due to some features and applications, such as grammar and spelling checkers, which are set by the Internet and this leads to weakening our writing ability. Methodology: Statistics, scholarly articles, and findings of surveys were used to conduct my research and to answer the questions above. Businesses and researchers across all industries use these methods to uncover answers to specific, important questions. The questions in my research paper were varied, covered a diverse range of topics, and were asked in multiple formats. Also they were strategically planned and structured in the best way possible in order to receive the most accurate data.

At first, I went to Jafet library in the American University of Beirut to get books about writing in marketing but I was not able to find anything that I can use in my paper. Therefore, I checked Google because it is the base of information and I used some keywords such as writing in marketing, importance of writing in business, disadvantages of social media marketing and other ones which were relevant in my research. After I found articles and information that seemed beneficial, I checked the sources that underwent the CRAAP test in order to make the readers trust the information presented and to convince them with my main claim which is that social media is killing our business writing which is an important tool in our everyday life.

Then I analyzed the data after obtaining it and converting it into information useful for decision-making. Also, I checked Facebook pages like “ Online Marketing and Content Writing” which I used in my discussion by providing the ways that marketers depend on in writing and branding. For example, a survey made on Facebook which has 2. 2 billion users showed that 95 % of the online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking because they are attracted by the ways of writing and describing the goods or services. This result shows that writing plays an important role in attracting the audience. Literature Review: Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube have become powerful marketing and communication tools. The number of worldwide social media users reached 2. 34 billion which makes it easier for marketers to share their brand in an affordable way.

Therefore it is important to manage these Social Networking Tools wisely by posting and writing in a thoughtful way, communicating, and responding to the audience in order to make a successful business. Several things are thought to be correlated with social media and the most significant ones are writing and marketing. In the present paper, the relationship between those three factors is investigated. It is hypothesized that writing plays an important role in marketing on social media since people recognize the words at first rather than their meanings. The following literature review attempts to demonstrate and support this hypothesis. Most social media posts include text which means that the method to make them effective is to have written a text in a good, clear, engaging, and on-message way. Writing good copy is simply putting words together: grammar, spelling, and punctuation. There is also the feature of understanding a company’s voice and using that with consistency and intelligence (Doyle, 2018). Also, a good writing is not explicitly indicative of credibility. However, strong writing skills are certainly the first step towards establishing this sincerity in either an authoritative or instructional setting. Failure to write well will result in people not taking what you have to say seriously, even if you have the best intentions at heart and best insights in your field. For marketers, it is important for them to make the audience understand the information given about their brand because they tend to make their business successful by attracting clients and purchasers (Laurinavicius, 2017).

Business writing is a significant feature of how people can share information with each other in a well-organized and proficient way. Businesses work both online and offline, sharing information through letters especially since most communication is completed via email and away from the telephone. Business writers depend on formality because it is a critical element of how writing is conducted today. In fact, each document has to be considered as a legal and an important aspect of a company’s communication system. This is reason behind considering many types of business writing as official documents and worrying about what others perceive them through printed materials. If a letter for example is written in a very formal style and received by a business, it gives the impression that the writer of the letter is formal, considerate, polite, and helpful. Also, any information shared with business writing can be read by bosses, superiors, and administration in an organization, so development of the style is important. In addition, there are four major types of business writings which are instructional, informational, persuasive, and transactional.

The instructional business writing, such as user manual, specifications, and memos, provides the reader with the information needed to complete a task. The informational business writing, such as reports and financials, includes the essential documents needed for marking progress and predicting future work. The persuasive type, such as proposals and sales emails, conveys information and convinces the reader that the presented information offers the best value. The transactional type, such as emails and letters, is used to progress general operations (DuPuis, 2017). The majority of marketers see the success of social media as an important part of the overall marketing objectives of a company. Along with more traditional digital approaches and channels such as email marketing and content marketing, social networking marketing is considered a key objective of branding and marketing strategies. Social media marketing is a form of marketing on the internet that involves creating and sharing content on social media networks in order to achieve your marketing and branding goals. Social media marketing includes activities like posting text and image updates, videos, and other content that drives audience engagement and paid social media advertising.

This helps the marketers in choosing the best one to share their brand and to help their company in expanding. For example, for a business that is responsible for selling food, it should market its goods and services on Instagram because it is the best for food businesses and it has 200 billion users. Marketers particularly turn to social media marketing to increase their audience engagement and brand awareness, as well as generating leads and sending traffic to the website. Global marketers also mentioned other benefits of using social media for marketing purposes such as providing marketplace insights, improving search ranking and improving sales. Thus, social media marketing is on the rise, as this type of media gains importance in the industry and shows potential for further development. Investments in social advertising worldwide are forecast to grow from around 32 billion U. S. dollars in 2017 to approximately 48 billion U. S. dollars in 2021 (Fuller, n. d.). Moreover, the Pew Research Center, a non-profit organization that studies attitudes and trends, surveyed 2, 462 US writing teachers in 2013 to look at their experience of the effects of social media on writing. For the most part, the teachers were unexpectedly positive, with 78 % agreeing that digital technologies encourage student creativity and personal expression (Funnell, 2017).

However, according to a research made by Harvard Business Review, the poor writing caused by social media costs time and money. Rather than speeding up communication, a badly written email, proposal or instruction slows down business processes. So the message is lost, and productivity suffers. There is an additional risk of wasted effort if the written word is misconstrued. For some employees, poorly written instructions can mean a task is undertaken that is not fit for purpose and must be abandoned (Maclachlan, 2017).

Discussion: Some people believe that oral communication is more effective when communication needs a human touch, establishing a direct relationship, maintaining secrets, reaching mutual understanding and avoiding complexities with oral consent. Managers usually prefer oral communication to written communication because they think that writing is not important (“ When Oral Communication is More Effective”, 2018). However, writing something worth reading is most of the battle. Written communication is so important that it is not possible to think of a business organisation without it. The working of any organisation depends to a large extent on the exchange of letters, reports, etc. There are various reasons for it and the most important one is that face-to-face communication is not always possible because the workers of an organisation may be spread over widely spread geographical distances.

We have, therefore, to depend on exchange of letters. Modern technological distances have not decreased the importance of letters. Modes of transmission have changed but written communication remains as important as ever. Moreover, the prevalence of online writing may seem like a boon for creative minds who think of themselves as storytellers. Smart marketers should heed one crucial piece of career advice before they dive head first into the world of social media: Don’t lose sight of the audience. People use these sites for a variety of reasons, and you need to align your online writing with their motivations. They likely seek a stimulated real-world connection, and you probably can’t replicate this with words, pictures, or video unless you know how to do it yourself out in the world. People use social media sites in an effort to find a connection with someone or something. They’re searching for emotion, and if they manage to find it with your brand or narrative, there’s a good chance they’ll come back for more. Pay attention to what your audience responds to on social media, and use it in your efforts. 57. 5% of the annoying actions brands take on social media is posting too many promotions (See Figure 2) which means that they are not able to deliver their message in a proper way without repeating the action several times. Also, 38. 4% of these actions is using slang and jargon which shows that our ability to write in a formal and professional way is fading and that social media is killing our business writing.

Moreover, 32. 3% of these measures is trying to be funny when they are not. This shows that writing plays an important role in satisfying the audience’s needs and making them comfortable with a certain brand. To some entrepreneurs, social media marketing is a powerful trend that must be taken advantage of. Because it appeared quickly, social media has developed a reputation by some for being a passing marketing interest, and therefore, an unprofitable one.

The number of companies using social media marketing is increasing rapidly each year (See Figure 3). In 2009, the percentage was 57% which increased to become 92% in 2014. However, these companies ignore the fact that social media marketing can be against them. For a business that depends on this technique, it can face some problems since information on the Internet is never truly deleted. A negative comment, a marketing mistake or a fake sales flier publicized on the Internet will not go away once it is simply taken off your social media page. It can be access by those who saved it to their hard drive or server. Also, many consumers are checking their social media sites several times throughout the day which requires constant monitoring to prevent hacking, negative smear campaigns and over-use by consumers who are simply trying to sell their product on the page (Lauren, 2016).

In addition, it is difficult for companies to monitor employee social media activity and prevent them from speaking on company matters without authorization. In the era of engagement, you might strive for employees to have the ability to assert their personalities online; however, this freedom comes with the risk that even a well-meaning social media post about your company’s perceived objectives and direction can damage the company’s reputation or challenge the company’s assertions to investors (Lovering, 2018). Therefore, social media marketing is not worth depending on to make a business successful.

Most of the businesses are using social media to market their brands and to attract more customers. But they are ignoring the fact that our writing quality has become worse because we are using the short writing style and writing too much on the social media which makes the audience unable to understand the main message. Social media provides us an opportunity to write in a way that does not take into account the spelling and the usage of grammar with the help of the spelling and the grammar checkers which weaken our ability of writing long formal writings and word usage. Therefore, social media is depriving us from good writing skills and the ability to express ourselves properly. But we are able to change this reality by expanding your vocabulary, reading regularly, improving your grammar, and listening to audios that teach spelling.

Everybody needs a good active vocabulary in order to be able to express ideas and perspectives in a well developed way. And learning vocabulary can be done by learning new words with example sentences not just word lists. Also, a person must know how to spell the words correctly by listening to audios that teach spelling because incorrect pronunciation changes the meaning of your sentence. For example: ‘ bare’ and ‘ bear’ sound the same but ‘ bare’ means naked and ‘ bear’ is a large animal. Additionally, professors recommend reading books in order to learn good writing skills. Reading in English is helpful in many ways because it is a great method to get to know the different styles of writing and see how to use words appropriately. Moreover, a person should know how to use grammar properly because it improves the quality of the writing and this can be done by practicing how to use the appropriate tenses. Everyone should be able to write well to survive education and work.