CCMC Task 8
How to use social
media as a marketing channel?
Find answers to the
questions:
LO1: What are the
social media platforms and how to utilize them? (combine them)
LO2: How to create an
identity through social media channels? (examples)
LO3: How to measure
the impact of social media? (tracking measurement)
1. “What are the social media platforms
and how to utilize them?” (combine them)
Youtube: How to use
social media
There are a lot of
different social media platforms, as you can see from the picture above. The
most popular (in our environment) are nowadays facebook, Instagram, twitter,
Pinterest, YouTube, MySpace, Blogs, etc.
They are inevitable in
our modern lives which is the reason, why also companies have to jump on this
train. Me personally, I only use facebook and from my point of view, there is already
a huge number of companies present on this social platforms.
Facebook and all the
others without advertising… ? That is hard to imagine and not realistic any
more. The internet is a very effective method to reach a wide range of people.
It is rather cheap and easy to set up – you only need an account and there it
goes…
As in the YouTube
video above mentioned, it is not necessary to be present in every single social
media channel, as there are too many and having control over every single
channel is unthinkable and would be very time intensive. It is better to
concentrate on a few, but well updated platforms. It has a bigger impact, if
you update your page(s) regularly and concentrate on one or a few than having
little, poor and not up to date information, but therefore on several channels.
This could harm the company more than it brings benefits.
According to an
article in ‘The Guardian’, companies are missing something if they decide, not
to be present on social media platforms, as customers are a kind of expecting
it.
"The key message is to think about who your customers are,
think about everything you know about
them, where they live, what their lifestyles are, what their interests are, business wise and
outside of business, and that'll give you big clues as to the social networks
they're likely to be using." (The Guardian. Small business tips: How to use
social media to boost business)
Next step is to think
about a strategy and the possible benefits you can expect from your social
media presence.
What can you do on those platforms?
-
PR:
promote your good/s or service/s, update information,
-
R&D:
ask questions, receive suggestions for improvements from your ‘fans’, ‘followers’,
customers…
-
CRM:
replies, comments on your products, reclamations, build up a customer relation
(more or less…), helpdesk,
-
…
2.
“How to create an identity through
social media channels?” (examples)
Most important: a
clear and consistent message!!
On Danny Brown’s
homepage I found three main steps, how to create both trust and identity within
social media:
1. The message is the key:
Don’t go onto social media channels because
your competitors are present there as well. Find your own reasons. Why are you
going online? What benefit does it offer you? – Do it for the right reasons!
Define your message:
·
What’s our brand’s value proposition, and
how do we convey that?
·
Who
will be our spokesperson/spokespeople, and in what capacity? How do we want to
be perceived – thought leaders, the company that listens, educators, or
something else?
·
How will we ensure the message we’re
sharing is consistent and built to last?
Prepare answers to those questions.
2.
It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it!
Blogs: Consistency of all your posts
Social Network: Responsible
people have to post regularly and respond in time
Social Media
promotion: integrated and
clear message, so information exchange between online- and offline-employees is
important
Also colouring and other general things should
be consistent.
3. The long and winding road
Social media is not die answer to all problems, it also has to be worked
on the right online performance. It is not that easy to figure out, how it will
work must successfully, but brand loyalty is reached through brands which fulfil
the needs, customers are looking for.
3.
“How to measure the impact of social
media?” (tracking measurement)
Via social media
monitoring.
There are a lot of companies,
who have specialized on creating tool to monitor internet-activities such as
writing blogs, in forums or making internet videos. This enables the companies
to track, what customer think or better tell others about certain brands and or
the company.
ROI-formula
Youtube: Measuring Social
Media
Youtube: Measuring the
ROI of social media
“Social media
analytics provide metrics that accurately estimate how many customers are
converted across their journey. For instance, number of views of a Facebook ad might reflect an increase in
awareness; number of clicks might
reflect interest about a product; similarly, companies might use the number of fans as a reflection of their
interest in their products; and finally, online
purchases capture the conversion of new customers.
Today, most brands and companies use one of a
combination of these metrics to assess social media efforts. For instance, many
business-to-business (B2B) companies, such as Dassault Systèmes, measures
social media effectiveness through cost
per lead or customer acquisitions.
Other measures, often favoured by business-to-consumer (B2C) companies include
metrics of Brand Impressions Frequency,
and Reach. Companies also use more
specific metrics such as product sales,
referral site traffic or even social product mentions.
While each of these
metrics do represent a portion of social media activity, together, they can
look like a kaleidoscope that slows down marketers’ understanding of the true
value of social media. Worse, they can sometimes mislead executives in their strategies. To illustrate, a brand
might get much more revenues from 1,000 highly interactive fans who post one
comment each, than from one million fans who rarely interact with brands.
So why are these metrics so popular today, if
they are so dangerous? First, they are very simple to assess (given they are numbers). Second,
they are aligned with metrics that are well
understood by companies’ marketing departments because already used for other media channels, such as reach and frequency. Finally, having
an army of fans and followers represent a goal that is easily communicated to
senior management.” (Digital Inside)
“We live in a time where social media has
disrupted industries, started a myriad of political movements and has even
contributed to overthrowing governments. Every business wants to harness the
power of social media. Yet, with the fast-changing nature and proliferation of
platforms, many businesses get all caught up with being present on social
media, reporting its success to management in conventional ROI terms, and tend
to forget about growing engagement. What businesses need to do when measuring
ROI is take into account both the positional and relational to reflect social
media’s true added value.”(Digital Inside)
(This article was
originally published at INSEAD Knowledge.)
Conclusion: there are
a lot of mearsuable variables but not all of the results do really make sense. The
quantity is not as good as the quality. In the long-run, customer should kept
satisfied, so the customer relationship is more important than simple figures.
It is nice, that a facebook page for example has a lot of viewer, but does it
mean that they really know the product or even want to buy it? It depends on
the goal each company sets for itself. According to that they can define their
own variables for measuring the success of their social media presence.
SOURCES:
The Guardian. Small
business tips: how to use social media to boost business, URL: http://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2013/aug/29/social-media-boost-business-tips,
last accessed 18 November 2014
Danny Brown. How to
build the Commodities of Identity and Trust in Social Media, URL: http://dannybrown.me/2014/07/21/how-to-build-the-commodities-of-identity-and-trust-in-social-media/,
last accessed 18 November 2014
Inside Digital.
Measuring Social Networking Success: More than just likes, URL: http://insidedigital.org/measuring-social-networking-success-just-likes/,
last accessed 18 November 2014
Pictures:
Wonderful Engineering.
New Techniques will increase your internet speed by 10 times, URL: http://wonderfulengineering.com/new-technique-will-increase-your-internet-speed-by-10-times/,
last accessed 18 November 2014
Edalet, URL: http://www.adalet.az/21/menu-texnologiya/,
last accessed 18 November 2014
Texere. Controlling
your image on the internet, URL: http://jengonyer.com/tag/social-media/,
last accessed 17 November 2014
Inside Digital. Measuring
Social Networking Success: More than just likes, URL: http://insidedigital.org/measuring-social-networking-success-just-likes/,
last accessed 18 November 2014
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen