User:Ahorachel/sandbox

Week 6: Draft to Improve Social Media Marketing article
I selected the article "Social media marketing" from Wikipedia that needed improvement and below please find some of the information that I have either corrected or added to the article.

Before even reading I think the article should be retitled so that it is capitalized and reads like this "Social Media Marketing".

The two main issues with this article is the struggle to find a neutral tone and some grammatical errors, so please find listed below my corrections to some of the paragraphs in the article that needed to be adjusted.

Second paragraph Intro
When using social media marketing, firms can allow customers and Internet users to post user-generated content (e.g., online comments, product reviews, etc.), also known as "earned media," rather than use marketer-prepared advertising copy. As of 2016 there has been a shift from regular companies being the predominant users of social media marketing, now a range of not-for-profit organizations and government organizations are engaging in social media marketing as well.

Social Networking Websites
Social networking websites allow individuals, businesses and other organizations to interact with one another and build relationships and communities online. When companies join these social channels, consumers can interact with them directly. That interaction can be viewed by others as a more personal approach to users than traditional methods of outbound marketing and advertising. Social networking sites act as word of mouth or more precisely, e-word of mouth. The Internet's ability to reach billions across the globe has given online word of mouth a powerful voice and far reach. The ability to rapidly change buying patterns and product or service acquisition and activity to a growing number of consumers is defined as an influence network. Social networking sites and blogs allow followers to "retweet" or "repost" comments made by others about a product being promoted, which can occur quite frequently on some social media sites. By repeating the message, the user's connections are able to see the message, therefore reaching more people which ultimately allows for more exposure to be brought to the product or company.

Social networking websites are based on building virtual communities that allow consumers to express their needs, wants and values, online. Social media marketing then connects these consumers and audiences to businesses that share the same needs, wants, and values. Through social networking sites, companies can keep in touch with individual followers. This personal interaction can instill a feeling of loyalty into followers and potential customers. Also, by choosing whom to follow on these sites, products can reach a very narrow target audience. Social networking sites also include a wealth of information about what products and services prospective clients might be interested in. Through the use of new semantic analysis technologies, marketers can detect buying signals, such as content shared by people and questions posted online. An understanding of buying signals can help sales people target relevant prospects and marketers run micro-targeted campaigns.

In 2014, over 80% of business executives identified social media as an integral part of their business. Business retailers have seen 133% increases in their revenues from social media marketing.

Mobile Phones
More than three billion people in the world are active on the Internet. Over the years, the Internet has continually gained more and more users, jumping from 738 million in 2000 all the way to 3.2 billion in 2015. Roughly 81% of the current population in the United States has some type of social media profile that they engage with frequently.

Mobile devices have become increasingly popular, where 5.7 billion people are using them worldwide, and this has played a role in the way consumers interact with media and has many further implications for TV ratings, advertising, mobile commerce and more.

Active Approach
Social networks are, in many cases, viewed as a great tool for avoiding costly market research. They are known for providing a short, fast, and direct way to reach an audience through a person who is widely known. For example, an athlete who gets endorsed by a sporting goods company also brings their support base of millions of people who are interested in what they do or how they play and now they want to be a part of this athlete through their endorsements with that particular company. At one point consumers would visit stores to view their products with famous athletes, but now you can view a famous athlete's, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, latest apparel online with the click of a button. He advertises them to you directly through his Twitter, Instagram, and FaceBook accounts. (This was originally a paragraph that was far from neutral and had several grammatical errors that I had to edit)

Snapchat
Snapchat is a popular messaging and picture exchanging application that was created in 2011 by three students at Stanford University named Evan Spiegel, Bobby Murphy, and Reggie Brown. The application was first developed to allow users to message back and forth and to also send photographs that are only available from 1-10 seconds until they are no longer available. The app was an instant hit with social media members and today there are up to 158 million people using snapchat every single day. It is also estimated that Snapchat users are opening the application approximately 18 times per day, which means users are on the app for about 25-30 minutes per day.

More things to note...
As I continue to edit I want to update the different social media platforms that are used, the article does a good job at listing some of the different applications used but I would like to update this list as I feel like platforms like FourSquare and Tumblr have become less relevant, and important apps like Snapchat are missing from this list. I will be looking at sources that provide information about the top social media cites as of 2018.

Also, as I keep making edits I need to fix the authors mistake of sometimes capitalizing the word, Internet, and sometimes not capitalizing it. Any suggestions on this?

Peer review
You did a really good job of cleaning up the author's language in terms of grammar, neutrality, and overall clarity. Your decision to dive deeper into certain sources is smart, since the author presented some numbers without much background information. One section that is particularly redundant is: "By repeating the message, the user's connections are able to see the message, therefore reaching more people. Because the information about the product is being put out there and is getting repeated, more traffic is brought to the product/company." Some small things: I noticed that either you or the original author cited Mashable.com as a source, though may be less than reliable. The hyperlink for "Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook" only links to Twitter.com. Wikipedia titles are almost always lowercase unless there are proper nouns. Overall your editing work and future plans for adding more context are great.Nerickson32 (talk) 20:58, 2 March 2018 (UTC)