It has become a well known fact that businesses have needed to strategically transform themselves from a product orientated firm to one that is customer focused. Historically, businesses would make their product, and due to a limited competition, would be in a position to force the customer to choose products and services that were offered. For example, in the beginning, the Ford car was only offered in black color.

However, within the current marketing environment, it is crucial for businesses to ensure the customer is kept center of strategic planning and product decisions. Due to this change, it has become essential for thorough customer research to be conducted on a regular basis. With the advancement of technology and the internet, and with the increased number of both clients and potential customers enabled to conduct their own research regarding products and businesses, the growing trend is for businesses to conduct marketing research via social media methods, such as blog reviews on their products and services, as well as utilizing the social media mediums that both customers and desired potential clients already utilize. Some social media mediums include, but are not limited to: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn.

All the social media mediums have their own set up and target customers themselves. Thus, it is important for businesses to strategize which social media mediums would be most profitable to be used to help enhance their marketing tactics and to reach as many targeted customers as possible. Thus, the main question is, which social media medium is best for your own business? Unfortunately, this answer cannot come from any website, but from a detailed look into one’s own business and its strategies, as well as becoming aware of its targeted market.

Furthermore, one may ask, what is the difference between each social media medium? One must continually stay up to date with the new additions and changes that each social media medium undergo to ensure the utilization of a social media medium is not unprofitable for the business. However, each social media medium can be placed within their own categories to help a business start to make their decision. For instance,

Facebook is a very popular form of social media that was originally geared towards college students for means in which to meet new people and to keep in touch via internet. Since its beginning, Facebook has become much more than just a social networking tool for college students. It has advanced to becoming a social media medium for the whole world to meet others, share ideas, and to form groups or join causes. Within this new realm of Facebook, there are opportunities for businesses to link in with and for the Facebook users to provide a means of marketing among themselves by identifying if they like a particular business or product, or include the business or product to their own cause interests.

Twitter, on the other hand, appears to be focused on individuals becoming involved and connecting with others with similar interests or causes. Within Twitter, it would be easy for businesses to follow what their customer’s are saying, and to act quickly on them. Thus, Twitter could be seen as a social media medium that can be used as a source of customer feedback and competitive advantage.

MySpace, another type of social media, seems to be focused on music and the Arts. One can listen the latest popular music, or can also post their own music. This provides the music business to look for upcoming musicians, and provides a means for anyone to share their talents. The last medium identified above is LinkedIn. LinkedIn focuses on the professional aspect of a person, allowing one to stay in touch with classmates, to create a portfolio for businesses looking for employees, and provides a way for businesses and individuals to network with other businesses and potential customers/employees/partners.

As discussed above, there is an ever increasing need for online marketing through social media. Depending on the type of customer’s a business is trying to attract, depends on which social medium one utilizes to market themselves. Out of all the different social mediums, ones listed above and others, which is best for businesses to market with?