Social media as a top-down bottom-up tool for marketing

This paper discusses the unusual position of social media as a strategic tool for long term robust strategy design, and its use as the feedback element in marketing communications. Social media appeared on the scene as a communications medium, but the ingenuity of practical marketers in the field has applied it as a new tactical tool for them to break through many of the problems with conventional communications tools. This has achieved enormous success, given more targeted communications, reduced costs, minimised wastage. Now, it is being applied as a strategic tool, providing a quick barometer to environmental trends, and to consumer responses to them. Monitoring such trends enables organisations to have detailed, precise, timely input to their strategic plans.