Before
start analyzing this concept on whether or not companies are in position to
promote their brands by investing time and money on social media marketing it
is necessary to pose certain questions.
Is it sure
that the company and its products will have ROI using social media platforms
(like Twitter, Facebook fan pages etc. )?
Is there a
specific methodology that will lead to one of the main objectives (which is the increased number of
fans/followers)?
If
an agency takes into account certain factors and by taking advantage of the new
technologies and carrying out a certain business plan, it is most likely for this campaign (in social
media) to be successful.
Before
start analyzing it is necessary to establish some certain facts based on solid
and concrete evidence, that should be taken into account.
Facts about social media and
companies
According to Busby et al “with
94 per cent of marketing executives responding to a 2010 survey indicating that
they expect to spend more on social media over the following three years.” Thus companies are
determined to spend more regarding their social media marketing policy.
Why
is that? According to Facebook:
More than 800 million
active users
More than 50% of our
active users log on to Facebook in any giv
More than 900 million
objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)
Average user is
connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
On average, more than
250 million photos are uploaded per day
On average, people on
Facebook install apps more than 20 million times every day
Every month, more
than 500 million people use an app on Facebook or experience Facebook Platform
on other websites
More than 7 million
apps and websites are integrated with Facebook
Twitter has 175 million registered users
100 million are active users , almost
40% log in
merely to see what other people are saying.
More than 50 million users log in each day, and the daily average
number of tweets is in the realm of 230 million
According
to Soboleva “One of the challenges for organisations attempting to
develop an effective and efficient Twitter strategy is the lack of theoretical
or empirical evidence on use of Twitter” . This means that there is no far an
academically evidenced study that can be implemented by other companies for their
brands.
36,9% of users follow companies on their
Facebook fan pages because these companies offer deals/discount whereas on
Twitter it’s 43.5, according to Get
Satisfaction.
“60 percent of businesses believe
social media content works best when used for communications, whether with
customers, prospects or potential employees. Twitter, Facebook and other social
platforms allow companies to interact in a more informal manner that makes
brands more accessible.”
Psychology. It is undeniable that the
psychological factor plays an important role. Implicitly we feel nice when
we have the sense that we are a part of a broader group (the case in point a
group that is represented by a brand and this brand belongs to a company). We
feel important and that our opinion counts for the company and its brands,
especially when there is a two-way communication. This two-way communication,
can benefit the company in the long run in terms of CRM, customer relationship
marketing. The more popular a brand is,
the more likely is to get more followers/friends. However this does not
necessarily mean that it can keep them, if the company follows a catastrophic
social media marketing strategy.
However,
despite these facts which are based on
solid and concrete evidence, there are tools that can facilitate and
organize a social media marketing strategy.
Tools that
should be taken into serious consideration before and during the social media
campaign are the following.
Facebook
Fan pages applications. Without mentioning any third companies that offer
applications that can be implemented on Facebook Fan page, a company through its marketing agency can provide
vouchers/coupons for users in order to like
the specific Fan page. Coupons which are offered to unemployed, students with discounts can
allure the potential “friends”/buyers.
Examples
are the Starbucks or the House of Fraser. A student who is interested in getting a
discount for a certain product should
provide his/her unique number to the online coupon that is available through
the company’s fan page and in this way the company will be able to verify the
student in case of multiple frauds.
Twitter is
dynamic tool that social media marketers can use for their benefit. They can
have access to accounts that are not protected by putting certain keywords
which are related to the brand that they promote. Simply by putting the brand
on the search tab of Twitter, marketers can have access on the accounts/users that refer to the product and in this way they can see if the
sentiment of the users towards the brand is positive, negative or neutral.
Popular
brands can be connected with a catchy hashtag that will connect
Klout is an
important tool in order to measure your company influence on others (on
Blogger, on Foursquare, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc. ). According to Klout :
“it provides powerful
analysis and tools to help you more clearly understand your own influence, your
network's influence, and the topical interests that make each of us special. Using
Klout, you can improve your use of social media and better reach your network.”
For example, if a marketing agency implements a social media
strategy for a brand, e.g. Lipstic from
L’Oreal , then in this case the social media marketers should conduct a
thorough research on the search tab to find relevant influencers and topics, by
putting terms like “cosmetics” and automatically relevant influencers and
topics will be at their disposal. Consecutively the social media marketers should
add the influencers (physical or corporate entities) in their list and interact
with them .
Google
alerts
An
efficient way to find out what the users think before launching your campaign and
during the social media marketing campaign is to find out what users across the Web
think about your brand. For example, if we have a brand which is Next, then it
would be necessary to keep track of any terms related to Next (clothes, women
clothing, men clothing etc) which are related to our brand; thus with the use
of Boolean/proximity operators the result types can come from everything or
from selected sources (news, blogs, videos and discussions) to the team’s mail.
In this way the social media marketers will be able to handle according every
source across the Web that is related to their brand.
Brand
Visibility Metrics
Social media
marketers before and during their social media marketing campaign can have a
daily update on the impact that the
brand has across the social web. Indicatively:
“Social
Mention is a social
media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from
across the universe into a single stream of information.
It allows you to easily track and measure what people
are saying about you, your company, a new product, or any topic across the
web's social media landscape in real-time. Social Mention monitors 100+ social
media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube,
Digg, Google etc.”
Also, it
provides details regarding the sentiment (negative, positive, neutral), that
could be useful for the marketers in order to mitigate any negative sentiment
that the brand has.
A similar
tool, related to brand visibility metrics is How Sociable.
According to How Sociable “We calculate the magnitude score by taking a sample of one week's
activity across the social web and analyzing it to find out what portion of the
activity references a brand”
These handy tools, which social media marketers are going to use are
sufficient enough to ensure that the brands of the companies will be developed
in order to expand their impact on the social web and its users and at the same
time brand visibility metrics tools can provide the necessary assurances that
any negative impact will be faced effectively in terms of crisis management (if
something comes up)
*It should be pointed out that different strategy should be followed for every brand. This passage concerns general practices/rules that should be followed for all brands; however, it is up to the marketers -in conjunction with the company- to create a strategy that matches their needs separately.
Vagelis Varfis
