ABSTRACT In todays social media driven environment, it is essential that small businesses understand Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and

the strategies behind using social media for growing their business. Unfortunately, many businesses do not have a strategy when they begin using social media. The purpose of this study is to understand how the owner of a small business, recognized for using social media to grow the business, uses social media to engage consumers. A case study is presented, followed by an in-depth interview with the business owner, and accompanied by an analysis of the businesss Facebook and Twitter posts. The results of the case study reveal the different strategies the owner uses to build and maintain relationships with consumers. The study concludes with a discussion of the lessons learned from the research: networking and creating relationships with other businesses, increases brand exposure; focusing more on relationships than sales, increases sales; interesting content promotes interaction; and one main barrier to entry is a learning curve.

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. Background Social media plays a vital role in marketing and creating relationships with customers. With limited barrier to entry, small businesses are beginning to use social media as a means of marketing. Unfortunately, many small businesses struggle to use social media and have no strategy going into it. As a result, without a basic understanding of the advantages of social media and how to use it to engage customers, countless opportunities are missed. The research aims to acquire an initial understanding of how a small business recognized for using social media to grow the business, uses social media to engage customers.

1.2. Significance The purpose of this research is to identify the strategies that aid use of social media to engage consumers. It is important to understand how businesses are taking advantage of marketing techniques and social media best practices to help promote business to consumer relationships. However, many small businesses struggle to use social media. Social media affords business firms with a variety of marketing opportunities for little to no monetary cost. Business firms should embrace such opportunities since they often face resource constraints in terms of time and money. Social media provides businesses the opportunity to engage and interact with consumers to create lasting relationships. The results gained from this study provide an initial understanding of how a business uses social media to engage customers and build long term relationships, which helps the business grow. 1.3. Statement of Purpose The prime research objective of this project is to identify the strategies that aid an business firms use of social media to interact with consumers. The project deals with two specific topics that are rarely discussed together: Business marketing

strategy and social media. The study examines a small business recognized for its success of using social media. The goal is to gain insight to how the business uses social media to engage consumers. The research provides a set of techniques that the business uses for their social media strategy, an analysis of these techniques, and lessons from the techniques that may benefit others. 1.4. Research Question The research aims to answer the question: How does a business recognized for using social media to grow the business, use social media to engage consumers? 1.5. Assumptions The assumptions inherent to this study include: 1. Participant uses social media to not only share content, but interact with the external public as well. 2. Participant in the research will be truthful in his/her responses. 3. Participant will respond to the best of his/her ability. 4. Participant will not answer the interview items he/she finds unclear. 5. A sufficient amount of data will be received for research validation and analysis.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
To analyze and find the effectiveness of communication strategy in developing brand, communication through social networking sites was done with the survey method and content analysis in the research.

Methods of data collection

The survey method helped to identify the reach of the brand among its target audience, ways of impact, usage of these social networking sites and access to these form of communication. And the content analysis is another method used to analyze the communication strategy of different social networking sites with certain parameters among top three Indian social networking sites which are tabulated with results.

Research design
This research study adopted survey and content analysis in order to find the effectiveness and the impact of communication in branding any product or the service among the target market through social networking sites like Face book, Twitter and YouTube.

Survey

Survey was conducted randomly among Face book, Twitter and YouTube user community, by sending questionnaire through online to collect the individual opinion from the respondents.

Sampling
Non probability sampling technique is used to collect the opinion from the online respondents. The sampling size is 30.

Content analysis
In content analysis, the following three popular social networking sites were selected to find the effective brand communication among its users (Face book, Twitter and YouTube).
1.6. Limitations The limitations relevant to the research include: 1. Because a variety of companies exist, it was unfeasible for the scope of this research to cover every industry. 2. The limitations of the collected data make it difficult to make generalizations across industries, companies, and locations. 3. The research lacks a comparison between the practices of a company recognized for using social media marketing successfully and a company using it less successfully.