Recently, you can notice that the number of different SMM training and organizations that offer such services, and in general, the conversations on this broad topic can be seen more.

Indeed, why is SMM more active than social networking marketing, the promotion?

There are, of course, commonplace instances. Periodically, ome topic or business becomes trending, and everyone leaves their business and starts to do that.

Well, you will remember, the grill machine, pharmacy, political party etc. But there are also objective reasons, which in this case will still develop this field because it has not yet reached its saturation.

Social networks today offer an unprecedented opportunity for small and medium businesses. Traditional advertising platforms are expensive, and are said to be inaccessible sometimes. Even if you are on the platform, for example, you can get a very cheap, discounted price, putting out an outdoor advertisement, advertising is already becoming an expensive luxury.  

And social networks today give almost free opportunities. Of course, in a figurative sense.

However, would it have been possible to imagine that a housewife, willing to sell her handmade item, will be able to reach an unprecedented sales volume with a monthly ten thousand AMD advertising budget?

If we tell the truth, you cannot often see such advancement on social network right now. But it is at least theoretically possible.

It’s hard to succeed with ten thousand, but with fifty thousand that theoretical, hypothetical woman will be able to shake the entire internet.

In the case of television commercials, she would definitely have to sell her husband’s right kidney. And now it is enough for her husband to quit smoking and save money for the promotion of his wife’s business.

If we bring examples of more pressing topics to our media.am, we will also see such opportunities.

Maybe it seems that I’m talking about a nonsensical topic, because the press, perhaps, was the first that spread its wings in Armenia and started to make progress on social media. Years ago. There is something to it.  

On the other hand, the fact that SMM has been engaged for a long time, has led to the fact that some of the news stories cling to older (of course, “old” is relative on the internet) methods and lose many opportunities.

Today, the same Facebook, which is our main platform, gives you many new tools for pages that use very little news. Not to mention the possibility of using other social networks.

Of course, YouTube is widely and actively used by many, but there are also many tools that are not used.

And if we talk about using Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Telegram, VK, then very few platforms will be able to practically share interesting and positive experiences, because the experience is practically absent.

If you look at visitor groups from other countries, we will see that social networks are much more diverse. In our case, we all know which social network occupies 99% of the market.

So it seems that everyone actively uses promotions in social media, but in many cases the effectiveness can be questioned. And this is also a direction of the financial independence of Armenia’s media field. Effective advancement will allow the media to be more protected and free.

Samvel Martirosyan

The views expressed in the column are those of the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of Media.am.