7. A New Marketing Trend in the Digital Age: Social Media Marketing

Technology plays an important role in the lives of businesses. For this reason, today, it is not possible for a company to maintain its existence without using technology. In the digital age, along with increasing technology usage, the distance between businesses and consumers has disappeared. In other words, technology serves as a bridge between these two parties. With such technology usage in the activities of businesses, the companies have tried to reach their target markets by using their websites. However, today, they have also started to use social media networks as a way to attract their customers’ attention to their products and, thus, communicate with them more easily. In social media, it is not just the businesses that promote products and services. Consumers can influence each other’s preferences through comments that they share over social media. Their comments on social media are important in the promotion of goods and services. Therefore, it would not be wrong to say that social media is an effective marketing tool in today’s business environment. This chapter is aimed at examining the concept of social media marketing and its effects on the marketing activities of businesses.