There is a shifting tendency from traditional marketing to social media marketing. Traditional forms of
marketing, such as TV and radio ads, gradually lose the credibility. Therefore, companies of the performing
arts industry have started using social media marketing to promote their services (Thakereay, 2008).
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One of the major differences between traditional and social media marketing is a principal of promotions
of a company with its clients. Traditional advertisement refers to one-way communication. Instead of talking
with the customers it talks at the customers (Scott, 2007). In contrast to traditional marketing social media
marketing introduces new promotional principles based on interactive dialogue with the customers (Clemons,
2009, Weber, 2009). It creates a stimulating environment to engage customers in intensive conversation and
establish long-term relationships. As long as customers are provided with more options to be able to
communicate with a company, e.g. searching, commenting, discussions boards, resending and connecting
with other social network sites, they may be more encouraged to integrate with and become a part of a social
community. Creating a suitable environment for interaction and exchanging information is a critical element
of effective social media marketing and growing demand for a product (Weber, 2009).
“Young netizens” would most likely reject traditional advertisements and would prefer to gather information
through online social networking sites. One of the most fast growing and popular social media tools are
Faceboook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace, and Flicker. These social media tools have gained
enormous popularity over past several years. Each social media tool can be categorized based on its functions
and the purposes they are used for. For example, Facebook and MySpace are designed for communicating
and sharing information with others allowing web users to send messages, share audio/video files, create fan
groups, monitor updating information through RSS, etc (NielsonWire, 2009, MySpace, 2010). Twitter is a
mini blog that allows sharing short messages with web users and connects them with the websites, press
releases and promotional sites
(Ostrow, 2009). LinkedIn is used for interaction among professionals.
Providing access to the business profiles this social media tool can be used for B2B interaction (Perez, 2009).
Lastly, Flicker and YouTube are user-generated content websites which are actively used by the companies
to share image and video files with their customers (Craham, 2006, StepCase, 2008, Lee, 2009). The main
task of promoters, then, is to learn the art of how to become the part of this networking life to get involved
into discussions with their customers (Christopher, 2008).