Social+Media

=media type="custom" key="26024738"Social Media=

=1. Introduction= Since the 21st century, the ways of communication have changed rapidly. Beginning with the introduction of the first web page in 1991, the commercialisation of the internet in 1995 and Google in 1998. All of this had led from Web 2.0 and Facebook in 2004 unto the current social media dominance (Chapman, 2009). Social media is now one of the most popular ways to communicate and gives users the opportunity to express and share their ideas and experiences. With the amount of social networks still growing, companies have a whole new opportunity to communicate with their customers. But they can only benefit from this opportunity is they use it in a correct way (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). =2. Social media Marketing=

2.1 Definition
Kaplan and Haelein (2010) identified social media as: ‘//A group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0**[1]**//, //and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content**[2]**’.// Examples of social media platforms are Facebook, Youtube, Wikipedia, eBay and social bookmarking sites, and these are just a select few of all the possible ways to use social media. For instance, it has created the opportunity for people to globally communicate with numerous others. It has also led to the growth of consumer-to-consumer communication and comparison sites, which have posed a new challenge to companies. They now have to manage their consumer relations more quickly and thorough, for bad marketing could go viral within minutes (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). This form of communication, social media marketing, has also created numerous opportunities for marketing departments. It could be defined as: ‘M //ethods for advertising products, services, or brands using the internet, by attracting the interest of groups of people who discuss them, make suggestions about them, etc. online’.(Camebridge Business English Dictionary, 2013).// In other words it is the usage of social media to advertise and communicate online. Mangold and Faulds (2009) and Saravanakumar and SuganthaLakshmi (2012) all recognised social media as the new hybrid element in the promotion mix. It created the possibility to directly communicate with consumers, start a discussion and stimulate consumers to interact with each other(Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). But social media is not easily controlled, in contrary to traditional marketing, where managers have a very high level of control. Therefore companies must learn how to effectively manage this form of marketing(Mangold & Faulds, 2009). =3. Social media for businesses=

3.1 Importance
Social media is a technology based tool to create word-of-mouth advertising and the opportunity to reach a broader market. It can be used as a tool to communicate and interact with consumers that goes beyond the traditional way of marketing. Traditional marketing focusses on finding a target market to make sales. Social media changed this around. It no longer focusses on the sales alone, but recognizes the importance to keep your already excising customers. This makes it an essential part of the Marketing Mix for a company (Social Quickstarter, 2013). Studies have shown that 92% of consumers trust word-of-mouth advertising, which forms a good indicator of the importance of social media. Other statistics show that 73% (USA) investigate their product online and 51% of the consumers based their purchase on recommendations made online (Social Quickstarter, 2013).

3.2 New opportunities
In the last few years, social media has grown rapidly. Some even say it is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution. It has provided new ways to (directly) communicate with consumers and reach out to a bigger market. Because of these opportunities, social media is now viewed as a great way to market your products and increase sales (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). To take advantage of using social media it is important for a company to be original and creative, if not the company will not stand out from the many other competitors who use online tools. Social media could create a communication channel between the company and their (potential) consumers, which could boost consumer loyalty if used with care and effort (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). This new communication channel for businesses mainly involves word-of-mouth communication and comparisons, which are more likely to happen on the internet. People tend to share experiences with others, especially when they support the product or service to the fullest. It further is a way to advertise and to ask for feedback (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). For these reasons, consumer experiences get more important. These experiences become vital for brand attachment and standing out in the online environment (Akgün, et al., 2013). This attachment can be renamed as an emotional bond with the brand and will eventually lead to repurchasing, and therefore more sales and revenue for the company (Grisaffe & Hguyen, 2011).

3.3 Risks
If it is not managed properly, social media will enable consumers to protest, badmouth and damage the image of the product and the brand itself. Therefore businesses should be thorough en detailed when it comes to social media and implement it in the business strategy for maximum results (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). Mistakes are not uncommon when it comes to social media, for example: McDonalds started a #McDStories campaign on twitter and asked consumers to tell their nostalgic experiences. This backfired rapidly when people started to share their bad experiences instead (Roberts, 2012). =How to=

4.1 Target
When using social media, always keep the target market in mind. Understand what the market is like and what want out of a product. After obtaining information about the targeted market, adjust the way of advertising and communicating to their expectancy (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). To illustrate, Dove has been very successful with their Dove for Real Beauty campaign. They made a video of an artist sketching women who described themselves. After that the artist sketched them again, but this time they were described by other women. This way they the sketches could be compared. All of the women described themselves less beautiful then they were to the other women. By sharing this video, Dove successfully reached out to their customers, showing their understanding of the market (Noman, 2013).

4.2 Choose the correct Platform
Social media is very time consuming. Therefore it is wise to only use one or a few social media applications or platforms. While making the decision, a company should keep their target market in mind, and analyse which platforms are used most often (Kaplan & Haelein, 2010). Next to keeping the target market in mind, there are other important aspects that play a role in deciding which platform is the best option. Others aspects are the company’s goal for social media, the form of content that will be shared and what the necessary skills are for a certain platform (Smith, 2013). For example, if a company wants to reach young women (18-29) Facebook is the best option. If the aim is to reach the suburban population, LinkedIn might be the best option and when trying to reach people over 65 years of age, Pinterest is the best platform to communicate on (Piombion, 2013).

4.3 Brand Community
Companies can start their own community on a social media platform, like Facebook or YouTube, by generating a brand page. This will create an opportunity for the company to promote their brand. It furthermore creates a place for consumers to discuss a product or service. This opportunity for consumers, to participate on the community site, will create more brand loyalty, and therefore keep the consumers engaged with the brand (Holland & Menzel Baker, 2001). An Interesting example of a strong brand community is Blendtec. They manufacture blenders and created a YouTube and Facebook community with the Will it blend? Campaign where they try to blend multiple suggested items such as an IPad, Bic lighters and even Justin Bieber merchandise (Blendtec, 2013). While promoting, always align the information that you share on different platforms (Kaplan & Haelein, 2010)

4.4 Active communication
When using social media, a company must aim to develop a relationship with their consumers. This way consumers will be simulated to interact with other users on social media. A company can develop such a relationship by providing an a safe place to interact and communicate. Companies must avoid to only promote their products and should be more focussed on share information about the employees, trends or other consumer interests. While posting information online, companies must be aware of the effects that these posts can have. They have to communicate in a humble and ethical way. If they do not act this way, critical online users will badmouth and backfire your efforts immediately (Kaplan & Haelein, 2010).

4.5 Engage
It is crucial to obtain engagement from your consumers, where this will create more exposure and a sense of reliability to other potential clients. An example of stimulating engagement is by organising contests such as the GilettePhenom contest where the company asked for videos where consumers were practicing their skills in sports activities. The best videos were uploaded onto YouTube and the winner received a certain amount of money. This created a feeling of involvement with the brand and increased the consumer engagement with the brand. Other ways of obtaining engagement could be by voting for a TV show, contests to invent new flavours and membership cards to offer exclusive deals and opportunities for the members (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). =5.0 Social media and the employee voice: the current landscape. =

Social media has become an important feature in the personal lives with an estimated 60% of all internet users using some form of social networking site. With the development of social media the ability for people to voice their opinions has increased.

According to the CIPD (2013) Bradley and Mconald (2011) identified six collaborative ways in which organisations are using social media. The first of these is the expertise location, this is where the organisations are using social media to find an expert of solution to a problem from an online community to enable faster responses to business issues. Secondly collective intelligence such as wiki pages or forums where people can share information about a particular topic. Emergent structure are organisational networks of hidden virtual teams who are communing via internal channels which lead to the emergence of new unplanned online structures. by studying thee groups it can give an insight into how colleagues communicate with each other informally and how they look to get their job done more efficiently and effectively. Interest cultivation use blogs, forums and feedback platforms to bring like minded people together creating interest and engagement on a wide scale particular topic. Mass co-ordination is a community which aims to spread a message virally. Finally relationship leverage is the act of maintaining and getting value form online relationships, examples of this include LinkedIn, twitter etc.

The problem with traditional employee voice schemes are that traditional channels for the employee voice such as surveys, suggestion boxes, employee hotlines, face-to-face meetings have several associated problems. Firstly, surveys can be boring to complete especially if the employee has completed these surveys more than once. Additionally, because of the love for statistical analysis the use of tick boxes is relied on heavily rather than qualitative answers. This is good for comparing results however it doesn't address the root cause. The employee voice channels are typically initiated by the manager. The employee has to wait for a survey to be distributed by management and might not have another opportunity in-between surveys. Typically most organisations are poor at anything open ended survey questions and therefore it defeats the objective of the survey. The time it takes to analyse the surveys might resemble a snapshot of past views however it might not be representative of current opinions.

The employee silence and declining response rates pose challenge for organisations, how o they get the opinions of their workforce. With the development of technology and graphical user interfaces, more ways of engaging with employees are emerging to gain opinions about work related issues. Social media provides a platform over which comments can be made using forums and discussion boards on topics of interest. The disadvantage of this is that the comments can quickly become overwhelming in volume furthermore without a good method of navigation some comments might never be read and a re drowned out amongst the others resulting in an unequal chance to be heard. This system favours the early birds or extreme views using a rating system highlighting certain comments. However, recent research has shown that there is a clear demand from employees to use social media for internal communications and organisational development. "Wadee (2013) reports that UK employees want more communication with senior leaders via social media channels: 42% of people would be happy to interact with their manager on Facebook and 20% would be happy to tweet the head of department or senior leaders." (CIPD, 2013)

Social media can provide a two way platform for communication, whereas communication traditionally was a monologue. It is no longer just senior leader who can see the comments but other employees (CIPD, 2013).

The barriers to using social media for the employee voice in organisations inside a lack of understanding of the wider applications of social media and how online communities an be mobilised and benefit the organisation. The fear and apprehension about the inability to control the communication between employees and leaders with the increased transparency. Organisations might not trust employees to responsibly use social media. Senior management might lac the sills and awareness about social media, this an stifle their view of the benefits that is can bring to the organisation. It prevents the leaders from creating the organisation shift required from a top down hierarchical culture to a transparent culture that fosters openness ad honesty. All employees must have access to computers and social media 'log ins' in order for the system to be applicable for everyone therefore implementation of a solely social media platform could be expensive (CIPD, 2013).

The risks involved in allowing employees to post their opinions on social media. It could allow employees to reveal work related misbehaviours, this could be posting pictures of a night out in town drinking ad then calling in sick the next day. Furthermore, the reputation of the organisation could be damaged, the organisation might not want to be associated with some of the posts of its employees, for example the products or managers of the organisation could be publically criticised. The threat of cyber-bullying is ever present because employees could post negative or insulting comments about colleagues. Competitors could also use this information to their own advantage. The line between free speech and controlled speech is fine, employees must be allowed to speak freely about issues at work but to what extent does the organisation draw the line (CIPD 2013).

= 6.0 Business Use of Social Media =

In 2012, 81% of the largest businesses in the UK (1,000 or more employees) used social media (ONS, 2012). These large businesses use social media as a tool for raising brand awareness, brand loyalty and increasing the customer base for the business or product.

Social networks are vital for the exchange of resources such as information, an essential concept of social media (Friedrichsen & Muhl-Benninghaus, 2013). The ability to dispense information with the click of a button across multiple social media platforms is one of the biggest reasons for its success as a marketing tool. Sales are about relaying product information to consumers for them to act on whether to purchase the product or not. Social Media is playing a large part in the growing ability to easily relay information to consumers and growing a larger business can be a result.

Social media marketing is a strategy growing in popularity with businesses as a way of increasing its customer audience base. Websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram are leading the way in social media platforms with some pages boasting millions of likes from customers who have chosen to follow that brand or company. 79% of the largest businesses in the UK use websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. It is evident to see the move toward social media as a more affordable way to market products and relay information to customers.

The trend of social media created something unprecedented in history – an online social community composed of millions of users around the globe. With social media, you have the power to reach people anywhere on the globe where there is Internet connection (Wright, e-book). The ease of access has led to the phenomenon of social media marketing in business. It allows the businesses to reach a large part of the world for relatively low administration costs, as social media users continue to grow, the number of potential customers for businesses will grow.

= 6.1. Facebook =



Facebook is the most popular social media platform across the world, businesses and products have pages set-up on Facebook with millions of likes from other users. Facebook’s friendly visual layout allows businesses to reach out to its customers by distributing related articles, images or videos to expand the customer base.

Businesses are presented with the option to create business pages and are then entitled to purchase various different advertising opportunities on Facebook. It also allows businesses to monitor their progress on the social media platform, allowing businesses to check their outreach for individual posts. By doing this, businesses can compare their campaigns to other competitive products by using Facebook.

Advertisement packages can be purchased on Facebook, allowing businesses to advertise products on the sidebar of this platform, increasing the outreach to consumers.

= 6.2 Twitter =

Twitter is the most popular blog form of social media, it also allows for businesses to make accounts and then communicate with other people on the site. Consumers follow certain businesses or products on twitter; problems that arise with goods and services are now brought to the forefront of things via twitter. Businesses seek to limit any negative publicity therefore issues are quickly overcome through twitter when customers blog or hash tag about certain products or companies.

Twitter use the ‘#’ button, this allows users of the site to search for key words via the hash tag and automatically find others users tweets that use the key word. This allows businesses to directly contact consumers on the site, it also allows them to quickly overcome issues raised by the consumers. This social media platform also offers business pages the ability to purchase various different advertising packages. These packages come at a price but the outreach created from the advert is worth the cost to the business.

= 6.3 LinkedIn =



LinkedIn is another direct way businesses can contact consumers via a social media platform. Simply, by searching for job title businesses can directly contact consumers, this can lead to direct targeting of certain trades whilst using LinkedIn. This platform is a way for people to interact in a professional manner in the business world.

__ 6.4 Instagram __



Instagram is a social media platform that allows people to document a blog through the use of photographs. By instantly uploading photos, people can keep in touch with their friends and compare images with the use of the ‘#’. Instagram, similarly to twitter offers the hash tag ability for users to search for images of key words and advertise their images. Businesses, especially SME’s make good use of Instagram in order to promote competitions of products via photo images. This, in turn improves the ability a business has to reach its customers.

= 6.5 Multimedia Contests =

Multimedia contests are when businesses run competitions through their different social media accounts on different website platforms, in order to create the largest outreach possible for their product or service. 50% of the largest businesses in the UK use multimedia contest sharing websites (ONS, 2012).

Holding a competition across different social media platforms can be extremely beneficial for expanding customer audience and customer engagement. By making a competition for people to win certain products or stock businesses can widen their customer base. If people across different social media platforms are all flooded by competitions to win free things by ‘liking & sharing’ branded products then the outreach through social media will rise.

Media promotion is becoming more strategically important in the context of multiplatform content and distribution (Powell, 2013). This highlights the importance of utilising all social media sites suitable to your business.


 * __ 6.6 Social media criteria and measurement __**

Social media marketing is the use of social media pages, Facebook and Twitter for example, to increase traffic on brand websites and increase recognition of the brand. The idea behind social media marketing is to be able to directly target a large audience easily, with little cost involved. (Evans, undated).

By creating a large following, a business can promote awareness of their goods and services through advertising and capture the attention of an increased number of consumers. However, this is not achievable without implementing a social media page into the campaign and promotional marketing strategy. In order for social media to be affective, there must be a strict criteria set by management to fulfil every aspect and maximise each advertising opportunity.

__ 6.6A Criteria for a successful social media campaign __

Rhodes (2013), states that there are 10 key areas of which a business should follow for a successful social media campaign.

1. Use high visual appeal – only a small number of campaigns will capture the attention of the individual. The campaign needs to have relevant pictures and the more eye-catching the headline, the better.

2. Select the right audience - otherwise the campaign will be a waste of time since the measurement and effectiveness will be low and will not benefit the business.

3. Invite the reader into the scene - within the framework of the layout, the graphic aim is to visualise, illuminate and dramatise the selling proposition.

4. Promise a reward – a campaign will survive only if readers are given reason to expect they will learn something of value, or receive a benefit or gain something from the advertisement. The promise should be specific.

5. Back up the promise - to make the promise believable, the campaign must provide hard evidence that the claim is valid. Comparison with competition can be convincing.

6. Present sequence logically - organise parts of the advertisement so that there is an unmistakable entry point and the reader is guided through the material in a sequence, consistent with the logical development of the selling proposition.

7. Talk person-to-person - the campaign is more persuasive when it speaks to the reader as an individual. All customers like to feel connected and that they have a relationship with the business, this is why this section is very important for repeat purchase and to build a relationship with the customer.

8. Be easy to read - this point is key, since there are numerous campaigns and businesses in each market, individuals have a choice to choose another brand if they feel it is not easy to read. Individuals want the campaign to be short and informative; they want it to be captive and short.

9. Emphasise the service - the campaign should make readers want to buy – or at least consider buying – before telling them where to buy.

10. Reflect the businesses character - a business’s campaign represents its best opportunity to portray the businesses personality – the things that will make the company liked, respected and admired.

By using these key aspects as a guideline, the business is able to maximise the potential of a campaign and ensure the consumer will be targeted and satisfied with the information given.

Although the main efforts will be to maximise the campaign, a business needs to consider measuring the effectiveness of the campaign through social media channels to compare with sales figures to understand the impact of social media through a correlation between sales and social media activity. media type="custom" key="26024828" width="151" height="132" The above shows a Twitter campaign that has implemented a successful criteria.

__ 6.6B Measuring the effectiveness of a social media campaign __

To assess the effectiveness of the businesses social media campaign, a business can monitor figures such as sales before and after, new customers and website traffic. If the objective have been met and considering a social media campaign, businesses can measure the loyalty, likes, shares, followers and hashtags associated with the campaign pages and measure the advertisements reach.

Quantitative and qualitative methods are two types of measuring data, which can be implemented to gauge the effectiveness of a social media campaign.

1. Quantitative methods

An example of quantitative methods of measuring data would be when the business uses figures from sales, likes, hashtags and followers to measure the success of the social media campaign numerically.

The business would record the data before and after the campaign was launched to identify the campaign success, through an increase in sales and social media activity. Upon review, if social media activity has increased over the campaign period, it could be said that the campaign was a success and had an increased effect on the brands awareness. media type="custom" key="26024902" width="213" height="162" The above campaign is of Coco Cola and how their ‘Share A Coke’ campaign was a huge success, yet also identifies how Coco Cola measured the effectiveness of the campaign.

Tesco launched a social media campaign where consumers had to buy, like and share any products from the Tesco page on their Facebook to receive double club card points (Dyer, 2013).

Before the campaign, Tesco share and earn campaign was at 26%. Once Tesco had measured the effectiveness of the campaign and the amount of likes, shares and purchases through the Facebook page, the share and earn was now at 54% (Dyer, 2013).

Cadburys launched their social media campaign through Twitter and Facebook, which customers had to sign a petition to bring back the Wispa bar. Cadburys sent out 40 million bars into the market, and within 18 weeks after customers responded to the petition, all of the Wispa bars were sold and were brought back into production. This also added 30% to their annual profits (Dyer, 2013). media type="custom" key="26024926" width="147" height="108" Mark E.Goodman, CEO/President of e-Conversation Solutions

2. Qualitative methods

The qualitative method for measuring the effectiveness of the social media campaign consists of using the businesses objectives in which they set out for the campaign to reach.

If the business wanted the campaign to make the individual cry, laugh, be happy, be sad, have emotional feelings or act in a certain way over the campaign, the business has to consider whether the campaign achieve these goals that were set.

The business would then use their objectives of the campaign and hold a focus group or interview to see whether the businesses objectives have been met via the emotions in which the customers has had over the campaign. (Salari, 2014)

= 7. Benefits of Using Social Media =

Social media marketing company ‘Engaged’ discuss the ten proven benefits of using social media to grow a business. (Engaged, 2013). They are as follows:


 * 1) 1. Increased Business Exposure
 * 2) 2. Insight About Your Customers
 * 3) 3. Reduced Marketing Expenses
 * 4) 4. Lead Generation
 * 5) 5. Extremely Targeted
 * 6) 6. Competitive Advantage
 * 7) 7. Analytics and Reporting
 * 8) 8. Strengthen Customer Loyalty
 * 9) 9. Rise in Search Engine Ranking
 * 10) 10. Increased Website Traffic

Another benefit from using social media is the way businesses now respond to customer opinions, reviews and questions when faced with them. This has become a large part of social media popularity as customer questions can spark popularity instantly due to the transparency of some social media websites.

= 8. Social Media Business Model =

Friedrichsen & Muhl-Benninghaus (2013) discuss a new business model for social media as a strategy for growing revenue.



As seen above, here is a business model for social media strategy. The model depicts different social media platforms businesses can use and the way utilising these drives audiences to digital platforms and websites. By driving customers to using social media websites, they are easier exposed to advertising messages, subscription offers and the purchasing options of multiple different products and services. This is a positive thing for businesses as it provides them with an easy way to access its consumers and relay product information to them with one click of a button.

=Conclusion= Social media is a new form of marketing tool that has changed the view in the field of marketing. The existing consumers now get more recognition and there is a bigger focus on their experiences. New potential consumers now have the ability to investigate other people’s opinions before they purchase something. This way the consumers will create and emotional bond with the brand, which will make them repurchase items from that particular brand. Therefore it is very important for a brand to be active on social media platforms.

If a company decides to use social as a marketing tool, there are multiple aspects that are critical for a company to be successful, while failure is not uncommon. Companies should study their target market and understand what they expect and where their interests lie.

With this information the company can make a well-considered decision on which social media platform is the right one to use for their target market. With these platforms they can start a brand community and develop relationships with their consumers by actively communicating with them. Through this communication, brands will stimulate their consumer to be more engaged and attached to the brand and they will create more loyalty and peruse consumers into repurchasing at the company.

After successfully managing all the aspects of social media, this marketing tool becomes vital for an organisation but can never fully replace traditional marketing.

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[1] Web 2.0 is the use of the World Wide Web as a platform where the content and applications are continuously modified by all users (Kaplan & Haelein, 2010). [2] Sum of all ways to use social media, where they publish personal creative content on a publicly accessible website (OECD, 2007).