Contemporary Trends in the Use of Social Media in Marketing and Branding

Modern companies exist in a highly competitive environment and are forced to look for new tools to promote their products and expand their audience. Companies, along with the mass media, use social communities as media resources to share their content with people they consider their audience. Initially, it was all about driving traffic to their websites, hoping to increase sales. But very quickly, social media went far beyond being just a place to share content. Today, social networks have become a full-fledged platform for promoting goods and services. And the formation and implementation of SMM strategies (social media promotion strategies) is becoming perhaps the most important link in the formation of the marketing system. Given the relevance of the research topic, its purpose is to summarise theoretical aspects and develop practical recommendations on the use of social media to promote products and create a positive company image. As a result of the study, the author analyses the dynamics of growth of social media users, identifies the benefits of forming a marketing campaign in social media, and develops recommendations on creating and implementing an SMM strategy for an enterprise.