Social Media Marketing
Content
INDEX:
SR No.
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
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15.
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17.
Particulars
Overview
Purpose, Objectives & Scope of study
Limitations of study & Research Methodology
Introduction – Social marketing
Channels of Social marketing
Role of Social Media Marketing
Benefits
Problems
Social marketing strategy
Steps to Social marketing
SN – integral part of marketing strategy
Social networking sites
Facebook
Tata Docomo – case in action
Adidas – BMW – case in action
Conclusion
Bibliography
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Page no.
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7
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13
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OVERVIEW
Social marketing is a recent component of organizations' integrated marketing
communications plans. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of
the promotional mix—advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct
marketing, and sales promotion—to produce a customer focused message.
In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and
medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent,
i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms. However,
the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate with their
customers. In the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow
people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on
projects online.
Social marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts
attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their
social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates
because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.
Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet
access, opening doors for organizations to increase their brand awareness and facilitate
conversations with the customer. Organizations can receive direct feedback from their
customers and targeted markets.
However, as with any shift in philosophy and trend adoption, understanding the true
benefits of leveraging social media in marketing initiatives continues to be a challenge
for business organisations. Many question the value of investment in social media and its
direct influence on revenue generation.
Nonetheless, this sentiment is beginning to change and marketers are increasingly
embarking on social media campaigns in support of traditional marketing efforts.
2
PURPOSE OF STUDY
I have selected this study because social networking has become an important element of
day to day task. Thanks to this development that people are connected even though they
are far away from their homes. The importance of such media has reached to the levels
where many companies are realizing its benefits and value it derives. Various companies
are now-a-days using such medium very effectively. It is cost efficient and creates
customer touch points. Social networking has become the niche segment of its own and
generates almost 7-8 % revenues if used effectively.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
To understand concept of social marketing with respect to Facebook
To study process, steps and various platforms provided by social networking
To determine application of concept and it study various benefits created by it
To study facebook in detail along with case study Tata docomo, adidas and BMW
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study understands facebook and its role in social marketing. It studies various
concepts with the help of social networking websites. It covers concepts, application of
concepts and cases in action:
Overview and reasons for choosing this particular study
Concept of social marketing, time lines, channels of social marketing, role, benefits
and problems of social marketing
Social networking concept, development and various social networking websites.
Analyzes various social networking websites
Case studies on Tata docomo, adidas and BMW
Conclusion, references and annexure
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LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Study limits itself to the following:
Does not study various other mediums like blogs, podcasts etc
Facebook is taken into consideration so as to narrow down the concept and
make the study more specific
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Methodology used is secondary research. Referred to:
Journals
Websites
Books on Social Media Marketing
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INTRODUCTION
Social marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media
channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive
amounts of traffic.
There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large
numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.
If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media
marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.
Those who ignore the efficacy of social media usually fall into three categories; the ones
who don’t know much or anything about social media, the ones who are interested but
don’t know how to use it and those who don’t believe in the value that a social media
strategy can bring to any site or business.
Social marketing consists of the attempt to use social media to persuade consumers that
one's company, products and/or services are worthwhile.
Businesses using social media want to sell their products or services of course. But as
blatant advertising on social media would, in most cases, alienate their intended audience
or even get them kicked out of the particular social community they're trying to infiltrate,
businesses need to use other methods to promote themselves.
To use social media marketing effectively, businesses have to be perceived as members of
the social media community, willing to interact with other members.
The main problem with social marketing from a business perspective is that it can be
incredibly time-consuming. Social media marketing campaigns are not one-shot affairs;
they need to be nurtured over time. While big businesses such as Dell, Microsoft and HP
have been using social media marketing effectively, they have the kinds of marketing
budgets that allow them to assign x number of staff to conduct and manage social media
marketing campaigns, resources that a lot of small businesses don't have.
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Still, social marketing is a type of marketing that many small businesses could benefit
from, if only to find out more about what their customers are thinking - and saying about their brand and their products.
Four Reasons to Practice Social Marketing
Following are reasons for using social marketing:
1. It’s natural. Not only do you get natural links without any discernible pattern,
your website is exposed to large groups of people in a spontaneous fashion. This
differs from paid advertising which has overt commercial overtones.
2. It’s defensible. Once successfully mastered, social communities can be a great
source of web traffic on top of any traffic you are already receiving from search
engines. While you can’t easily increase your search engine traffic, social media
traffic can be very easily controlled through strategic marketing.
3. It’s low-cost/high returns. If done by you, costs are limited to only time and
perhaps the expenses involved in hiring a freelance programmer/designer. The
benefits will often exceed the cost. It would take you thousands of dollars to buy
many links; social media has the ability to give you that for free.
4. It complements other efforts. Social media optimization and marketing is
usually community-specific. It doesn’t interfere with any other methods of getting
traffic to your website. It can and will fit perfectly with an advertising campaign
targeting other websites or search engines.
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CHANNELS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
1. Social Networks:
These sites let you create your own personal page and connect with friends and family to
share content and connect. The largest social networking site today is Facebook with
more than 400 million users.
2.
Blogs
Perhaps the most common form of social media are blogs. Blogs are online journals,
generally open to read and comment by anyone. Blogs often contain product reviews that
are sponsored by the producing company.
3. Wikis
Wikis are websites that comprises the work of many different authors on different
subjects. A wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or add content. The most commonly known
wiki is Wikipedia with over 3 million articles today.
4.
Podcasts
Podcasts is a series of audio or video files that are episodically released.
5.
Forums
Forums are websites for public or private online discussions, often around specific topics.
6.
Content communities
These are sites where you share content, like video (YouTube), images (Flickr) and
bookmarks (del.icio.us).
7.
Micro blogging
These are commonly downsized blogs with a touch of social networking. Twitter is the
most common micro blogging platform
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ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media marketing represents low-cost tools that are used to combine technology
and social interaction with the use of words. These tools are typically internet or mobile
based. A few that you have probably heard of include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and
YouTube.
Social media marketing gives marketers a voice and a way to communicate with peers,
customers and potential consumers. It personalizes the "brand" and helps you to spread
your message in a relaxed and conversational way.
The downfall to social media, if you could call it that is that it must be a part of your
everyday life in order to keep the momentum and attention you need for it to be
successful.
Following are companies that have involved in social media sucessfully:
Absolut Vodka - Online Video on YouTube and Using Facebook to house their Top
Bartender fan page.
BMW - Utilizing Facebook to promote their 1-Series Road Trip and they have
created a Rampenfest Page for fans.
Dunkin Donuts - That's right they've found value in social media and have set up a
microblogging Twitter account.
Barack Obama - He has been seen as a leader in the use of Twitter during the
Presidential Election. He has over 3,66,59,000 followers and is following over
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BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
The two-way communication feature of social media enables organizations to
communicate with their customers. This type of communication is a good thing –
organizations can form more personal relationships with customers by letting them
become part of a community around the brand they want to support. Creating a
community around the brand increases the possibility of having customers for life. The
community can also gain new customers or find new professional partners for new
ventures and expand the brand to new markets.
Using powerful tools such as Twit Links, Socialwhois, and Social Too to do real-time
searches on the latest feeds and tweets around your social community your organization
can gain valuable market data about what your customers like and dislike and you can
also do searches around new markets if you are in the expanding stage.
Few of the major benefits of Social Media Marketing are:
1. Generates exposure for business
2. Increases online traffic/subscribers
3. Results in new business partnerships
4. Helps the company rise in search rankings
5. Reduces overall marketing expenses
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PROBLEMS
Social media includes risks and other problems you can encounter as an individual as
well as an organization. Several major organizations have encountered social media
disasters. Domino’s Pizzas social media disaster occurred about a year ago when two
Domino’s Pizza workers posted a video on YouTube that showed the employees doing
disgusting things with pizza toppings. The employees were fired and faced criminal
charges, but Domino’s Pizza had to deal with a disaster that could have been prevented.
Problems and risk within organizations
1. Create a social media handbook for your employees; a pamphlet with a set of
common sense guidelines that lay out the organization’s policies regarding social
media.
2. Create a social networking crisis management team to manage any negative or false
information.
3. Put the social networking crisis management team to monitor your company’s name
on social networking sites via Twitscoop, RSS feeds, and Technorati to track recent
posts about your organization.
Problems and risk for individuals
1. It’s easy to give away personal information that can enable people to find you or your
family´s members. Never put your personal address, phone number or full name on a
social networking site.
2. People can easily use this information to find your exact location and address.
3. Connecting on social networking sites are great, but people there are not always who
they seem to be. People pretend to be someone else and private accounts have been
stolen (identity theft).
4. Identity theft is increasingly common and usually the motive to identity theft is
financial gain.
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SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGY:
As a marketing strategy social media marketing strategy can deliver value in three main
ways:
1. Community and relationship building
Engagement, being part of the conversation around particular topics or areas of interest,
builds familiarity and trust with people, and garners notice. Being an active, positive
brand in the marketplace = good brand image. Customers want to deal with businesses
they feel a connection with.
2. Creating authority
By helping people, giving away info/expertise, answering questions, providing insight,
etc. in the social network arena a company establishes its credibility, its value, its quality.
Customers want to do business with authoritative, quality brands.
3.
Creating Content
The heart of any social media marketing programme is content, usually created through a
blog but also can include video, pictures, polls, whitepapers, ebooks, reports, enewsletters, etc. In general content is information in one form or another that makes
people want to pay attention to you. It’s helpful, informative, interesting. It is through this
content that customers or referrers find out about you, what you do, and how you can
help them. This is a subsection of social media marketing called content marketing.
Content marketing refers to the technique of creating and freely sharing informative
content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat
buyers.
Creating great content for your marketing is important. But great content doesn’t
distribute itself. It needs vehicles (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) for people to pass it
along, discuss its merits, argue over its controversies, blog it, mash it, tweet it and even
scrape it. This is where the social networks come in.
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The best distribution network in the world is pointless if you have nothing to deliver
across it. You might have a million followers on Twitter, but unless you engage those
followers, they won’t listen and you will achieve nothing. Equally, what is the point in
fabulous content if no one ever hears about it? Social media is an unsurpassed tool for
getting content distributed. On the flip side, great content gives social media life, by
giving people something more interesting to talk about than what they’re ordering right
now at Starbucks.
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STEPS TO SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING:
Find your audience. Listen. Learn.
Find out where your customers, competitors, or people who share similar interests,
values, etc are online and be there yourself. Monitor the social networks to find out what
is being said about you, your products, your competition, and your industry. This will
give you an idea of the current landscape; this is competitive and industry analysis.
Record this information as a starting point against which to measure the impact of your
social media strategy over time.
Strategize and plan
Is a social media effort right for you? How can it help your overall business goals and
marketing strategy? What are you looking to achieve? Set a goal (or goals) and set
measurable objectives against the goal(s) that will help determine the success or failure of
the effort and allow you to adjust the strategy if required. Then, with an understanding of
the landscape and established objectives, write a strategic plan and a financial model to
achieve the objectives. Finally, develop the tactical implementation to undertake the
strategic plan. Decide who will be responsible. Within
what timeframe do you plan to achieve the (goals)? What milestones should be targeted?
What tools, platforms and programs are required? How will you measure the outcomes
along the way?
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Implement
Plug the tactical plan into the organization. Are you hiring new staff, reassigning existing
ones, or simply allocating internal responsibilities differently? Establish those roles,
responsibilities and working practices. If the strategy calls for cross-departmental effort,
build those communication lines and workflows. Train the staff (and management) on the
“what” and the “how” but also on the “why” of the social media program. Set up the tools
and platforms that will be used. Integrate those tools into existing platforms/procedures.
Create guidelines for corporate/employee social media usage (note: I said “guidelines”
not “rules” – the best results in social networking come from allowing employees to be as
personal, natural and authentic as possible in their dealings with others).
Manage
This is the day-to-day execution of the program. Depending on the strategy, it may
include some or all of these: content production and publishing, content distribution,
reputation management, community engagement, customer support, business intelligence
(competitor activity, customer insights), brand management, market research, monitoring,
measurement and analytics.
Measure
Measurement is a part of the management function because there is a regular ongoing
aspect to it, It is through proper measurement that you understand if your objective are
being met and, if not, to help you reassess your strategy and/or tactics (or even the people
responsible for carrying them out). Measuring is defined by both the “what” and the
“how.” What are we going to measure? Is it measurable? Is it the right thing to measure?
The “what” question goes back to the strategy development piece and should have been
defined then and there. The currency here is probably numbers or statistics: numbers of
followers/friends, number of social mentions, click-through, comments, website visitors,
discussions, emails delivered, and, ideally, sales. But the currency might also be less
defined: positive or negative press, change in sentiment about your brand, company or
product, tone of discussions, and positive or negative word of mouth.
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The “how” begins with monitoring (which should have started even before the strategy
work) using tools and processes that enable you to track the results of your activities.
This means social media monitoring tools, conversion metrics, web analytics, RSS feed
counters, even things like feedback forms, surveys, and customer recommendations.
However, monitoring is not measuring. People often get them mixed up. Measuring is
how we calculate the results of our monitoring over time against our objectives to test
whether we are achieving them. Again, measuring is so important because tells us if we
are having success.
Review
As your social media plan progresses you should be analyzing your results against the
milestone expectations you established at the outset. Review your plan regularly and if
things aren’t working as you intended, adjust your approach. It is a cyclical process of
regular reviewing and refining.
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“Social networks grow 23% worldwide; India sees the fastest
growth”
According to new estimates by E-Marketer, over 1.2 billion people worldwide used social
networking sites at least once per month as of December 2012. By the end of 2013, this
number will climb to more than 1.5 billion internet users. The study also examines the
number of social networking users, penetration rates and growth rates in countries around
the world, as well as the projected global growth of Facebook from 2011-2014.
Worldwide, social networking saw 23.1% growth over 2011, and while the growth rate
will drop in the next few years, it will remain in the double digits. This growth is largely
fueled by Facebook’s expansion – except in China, where the site is banned – which is
expected to pass the billion-user mark by the end of 2013. Facebook saw 44% growth in
2011; this is expected to drop to 13.9% in 2014.
India will see the fastest growth in social networking this year (51.7%), followed closely
by Indonesia with 51.6%, and China lagging further back with 19.9%.
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Countries were also ranked by social network penetration, or having the greatest share of
social network users as a percentage of the total population:
• US took the lead with 49.9%
• followed by Canada (49.3%)
• South Korea (46.6%)
• Australia (44.4%)
• Russia (41.9%)
Developing countries – where fewer people are online overall – showed social
networking as a highly popular activity for those who are online. In Brazil, 87.6% of
internet users will use social networking sites in 2012 (Indonesia follows closely behind
with 87.5%).
In terms of overall users, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest number of social
network users in the world, with 615.9 million internet users logging on to social sites by
the end of this year. Nearly half of those users will be in China, where social network
users will outnumber their counterparts in the US by nearly two to one (despite the
absence of Facebook). China and the US are the two countries with the highest number
of social network users overall.
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SOCIAL MEDIA- INTEGRAL PART OF MARKETING:
As usually happens with hype we are going through a pendulum swing now. Wharton’s
Van den Bulte comments on this, “Yes, there is much more information flow among
consumers, and not all of them beat the same drum as the companies, so firms have lost
power. Living in denial is not going to be healthy. On the other hand, totally surrendering
and letting go of all control may be too much…I think firms need to find a balance.
In the end, any marketing campaign a company wants to launch is going to use all the
channels and mechanisms available. They will continue to make extensive use of
traditional broadcasting tools and complement them with other social networking
mechanisms that provide additional benefits. Considering that Social networking is
becoming pervasive, traditional broadcasting and new social marketing will benefit from
each other. As individuals can bring their profiles beyond the social networking
platforms, they can start leveraging this fact when they visit traditional media. This is
possible today with Facebook as some media sites provide a log in that syncs up with the
Facebook and hence identifies your profile.
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New metrics for social marketing
Multiple analyses point out that marketers today are not satisfied with the way they
measure the effectiveness of their social campaigns. The measurement and accountability
of social marketing goes along two dimensions: being able to measure what happens in a
meaningful way and, being able to provide measurement to anticipate or predict the
effectiveness of a given campaign. Traditional measures like hits and pages viewed do
not really focus on the specific value of social marketing. According to Paula Amunátegui
Perelló, project manager for new media at Switzerland-based General Motors Europe, the
traditional metrics won’t do. Simply looking at the number of people who visit a website
is not sufficient. Her team looks at metrics like how many blogs link to the web site, how
many people subscribe to the site’s content or watch videos and the number and quality
of comments posted directly on the site.
As social marketing becomes more mainstream we expect a significant development of
the type of data captured and measured. This will evolve into new behavioral marketing
techniques that will help launch effective campaigns by understanding the diffusion paths
within social networks. For example, key influencers for a given product or service could
be identified, and specific campaign messaging channeled through them to hit their
followers.
We expect measures such as the speed of propagation, the density of networks and the
variety of networks to enter the lingo of social marketing in the near future. Together with
the pervasiveness of the social networking profile, will come a pervasiveness of social
analysis; a comprehensive use and understanding of the social graph. This means
sophisticated analytics of patterns of diffusion of ideas or products will become
mainstream. Predictive engines will therefore emerge that focus on these patterns using
techniques like psychographics and semantic analysis.
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VARIOUS SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
1) Orkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The
service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships.
The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
2) Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online
community created by Ludicorp and later acquired by Yahoo!. In addition to being a
popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely
used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. As of august
2010, it claims to host more than 4 billion images.
3) Hi5
Hi5 is a social networking website. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu
Yalamanchi. Bill Gossman was appointed CEO in April 2009. In early 2010, hi5 acquired
social gaming company, Big Six. The company raised $20 million in series A venture
capital from Mohr Davidow Ventures, as well as $15 million in venture debt, in 2007, and
announced it had raised $3 million convertible note from existing investor Mohr
Davidow, bringing the funding up to $38 million.
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4) Linkedln
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and
launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 9 August
2010 (2010 -08-09), LinkedIn had more than 75 million registered users, spanning more
than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The site is available in English, French,
German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
5) MySpace
MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California
where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, News Corp. Digital Media,
owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site
in the United States in June 2006. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken
internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique
visitors. MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30 percent of its workforce
in June 2009; the company does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News
Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006, in the
Netherlands.
6) Twitter
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter
Inc., that enables its users to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets
are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page. Tweets
are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their
friends list. Users may subscribe to other author tweets—this is known as following and
subscribers are known as followers. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter
website, compatible external applications (such as, for smartphones), or by Short
Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing
it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
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FACEBOOK
Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and
privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500 million active users in July 2012.
Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal
profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks
organized by workplace, school, or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial
name of books given to students at the start of the academic year by university
administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other
better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to
become a member of the website.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow
computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The
website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was
expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It
gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high
school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The original concept for
Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg's prep school Phillips
Exeter Academy, which for decades published and distributed a printed manual of all
students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book".
Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several
countries including Pakistan, Syria, China, Vietnam, and Iran. It has also been banned at
many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.
Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook
settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property. The site has
also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.
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CASE STUDY: TATA DOCOMO
Many independent observers refer to Tata DOCOMO as a “child of Social Media”. In
effect that is quite close to being the strategy for Tata DOCOMO even before the time the
brand was officially unveiled.
Why Social Media?
When Tata DOCOMO was planning to enter the Indian market as the 9th GSM operator,
it faced entrenched incumbents and strong brand communication barriers from other
telecom operators. However Tata DOCOMO was determined to change the game and cut
through the clutter through pure innovation and doing the New.
Social Media became the first opportunity which had not been picked up by most Indian
brands in June 2009 leave alone the telecom operators. It was unchartered waters but we
knew that Social Media connects us with the exact TG that the brand wanted to associate
with. It further had the wow element and was clearly doing the New. The perfect reason
for Tata DOCOMO to draw up an extensive strategy to harness the power of Social
Media and build the brand with its consumers.
Laying the Social Media Strategy
At the very core of the Social Media strategy was the idea of humanizing a telecom brand
and make it warm, friendly and conversational. The strategy was simple yet brilliant.
Reach out to every corner of the web and to every possible TG not as a corporate brand
but as a friend willing to engage the consumer in a one-on-one dialogue on anything and
everything pertaining to the brand, its offers, its deficiencies as well as anything to do
with telecom per se. The desired outcome was clear in everyone's mind – to build the
most loyal set of beta customers who will champion the brand in their microcommunities at every moment.
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The execution
A dedicated Social Media team at Interface was built to execute the plan. Twitter,
Facebook, Orkut, Youtube accounts were opened up and optimized even before the brand
launch took place. The website itself actively solicited visitors to signup to the Tata
DOCOMO communities months before it became a fad for others. The Social Media
team set about targeting each of the Social Media platforms differently.
TWITTER:
Twitter typically has a more evolved and techy audience that other Social Media
platforms. Tata DOCOMO acknowledged the importance of these thought leaders and
made sure they got their worth by following the brand. All products, offers and schemes
were first announced to our Twitter followers before they were allowed on any other
media. On many occasions Twitter followers were given teasers and prelaunch feelers
much before the product was even in a state of launch readiness.
Today Tata DOCOMO has more than 7500 followers and they know most of them by
name. They have solved their telecom problems, passed on their messages to relevant
people in the company and brought about resolutions or simply just said a hello when
someone was missing in action for an extended period of time.
FACEBOOK:
Facebook clearly has a large influential community that was identified right at the start as
being a major influencer of brand advocacy. Tata DOCOMO set about creating
conversations among its fans on Facebook.
Like Twitter a one-on-one communication was maintained with all its fans helping
resolve problems, providing information and escalating issues. The community was kept
engaged through a variety of status updated including discussions on TV commercials,
jingles, product service launches and fun and games.
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ORKUT:
Orkut has a mass user base and was identified as an important element in managing mass
sentiment around the brand. The forum has been used both as a community feedback tool
as well as a platform where free discussions were enabled on specific topics (either
product-service related or band related). The platform has also extensively been used for
contests to keep community members engaged.
YOUTUBE:
Youtube has been a central repository for all brand commercials and videos. Tata
DOCOMO has made a departure from the traditional way of only uploading videos
created by the brand to also showcasing user generated content, specifically animation
videos submitted by users at the create.tatadocomo.com platform.
In continuation of its strategy to be omnipresent in Social Media, Tata DOCOMO is
perhaps one of the few Indian brands to have reached out to less popular social
networking and community portals in India. It carries through the same brand promise of
being everywhere that out potential consumers could be however small the reach of the
portal might be.
The Tata DOCOMO strategy with respect to third party blogs and forums were both
proactive and reactive. Everyday 100s and 1000s of blogs and forums were scanned or
any mention of Tata DOCOMO and whenever a user had posted a question, comment and
complaint, the Social Media team made it a point to go and respond to resolve (wherever
necessary) every post or comment.
Tata DOCOMO is probably the only brand in the Indian landscape who have gone ahead
and created official accounts on hundreds of blogs and forums and have always
responded through its official id.
25
Demystifying the strategy
The Tata DOCOMO social media strategy has been carefully built on five pillars.
1. Build consumer engagement
Beyond the day-to-day and one-on-one interactions with our fans and followers, Tata
DOCOMO has constantly launched consumer engagement programs with a heavy social
media angle. This has helped us build repeat engagement points with a large number of
our fans. Be it dietsms which was rolled out exclusively through social media, ageekthing
which involved Orkut, gadgets , Facebook applications and automated Twitter tools or
happy DOYear which could be played through Facebook, Twitter and Orkut.
2. Address and resolve complaints
Even before the launch of social media engagements, a dedicated customer response
mechanism was laid out for priority resolution of all social media grievances / enquiries.
Top management at Tata DOCOMO has taken great pains to make sure that literally the
buck stops when an issue is raised through social media channels. From activation
problems, network issues, handset settings or billing related matters, every single issue
has been promptly addressed and resolved. Comes as no wonder therefore that initially
the Tata DOCOMO Twitter account was nicknamed the “unofficial helpline”.
3. Crowd sourcing
Very early in the social lifecycle of the brand Tata DOCOMO realized it had hundreds of
well wishers who were all brimming with ideas on new product-service offerings that
could be a real differentiator for the company. The social team has repeatedly engaged
with its beta consumers, collecting feedback about usage, preferences, bounced off
product ideas and pretested concepts to help the product team develop compelling
product service offerings. The icing on the cake was when we involved our techy Twitter
followers to hack into a social game launched by Tata DOCOMO as part of the
ageekthing contest and suggest ways to prevent others from doing so. Many of the recent
product service launches like gprs packs and parts of the buddyNet program have been
built on crowd sourcing inputs.
26
4. Build brand advocacy
Continuous engagement and proactive problem resolution has helped Tata DOCOMO
build extremely loyal fans on social media. Innovative ways of recognizing such efforts
through fan of the week on Facebook and Twitter has further enhanced the cause.
5. Micro communication
With close to 100,000 direct followers and over 6 million secondary reach, all
communication from Tata DOCOMO enjoys a sizeable instant audience. However our
social team remembers the names, occupations and past communications with thousands
and thousands of our fans. This helps us micro communicate with each individual
building a personal touch and therefore a high impact to our messaging.
The Outcome
Each media of the social media strategy has helped Tata DOCOMO build a strong and
loyal fanbase amongst the youth and has unmistakably taken ownership of the innovator
platform this firmly establishing the brand essence of do the New. The brand values of
honesty, transparency and sincerity have been well established in the minds of
consumers. Tata DOCOMO social presence is not seen to be a marketing gimmick but a
genuine effort to connect and engage with every fan and follower with sincerity and with
the authority to solve their problems. Perhaps the apt summary of the success of Tata
DOCOMO’s
social
media
has
been
a
comment
posted
on
Twitter.
“In the world of telecom if airtel is Microsoft, Tata DOCOMO is google. DoDo do Do
Do...”
27
Quantifying the Outcome
Tata DOCOMO has significant Klout on Twitter even when compared against global
heavyweights
Today Tata DOCOMO’s Twitter Klout is equal to AT&T though it has been achieved in
a very short period as is evident by the meteoric rise displayed in the graph below
The social mention parameters like strength and passion outscore competition by a good
distance
Twitter: Grade of 99.8 Means the Tata DOCOMO Twitter Account Ranks Higher than
99.6% of all Twitter Accounts
Facebook: Grade of 87 Means the Tata Docomo Facebook Account Ranks Higher than
87% of all Facebook Accounts
28
CASE STUDY: ADIDAS AND BMW
Social networking is a new online territory. In our one-on-one interviews with marketers,
some expressed that social networking is a new ballgame and they don’t know how to
keep score – they don’t even know the rules. Some marketers feel they’re playing on
unfamiliar turf, where the consumer names the rules and controls the filed. Most
marketers don’t have the equipment to play, and for some, there is comfort with the
traditional advertising model: pay a media owner to insert an advertisement, and assume
it generates impact (or measure impact using traditional measurement models). When it
comes to social marketing, how does a marketer know if value is created?
The fact that social Marketing is different and requires fresh thinking might explain why
the past decade of digital marketing has focused on translating the game they knew
(advertising) to the new landscape of the Internet. The common thread of this past decade
of digital Marketing and Research is the traditional advertising model translated into new
digital environments. Times are changing. Enough marketers have conceptualized how
traditional marketing models transferred online, and now many are focusing attention on
a new model for brand value creation. To help them, we need a well developed
framework to quantify and analyze how value is created.
If marketers have a framework to measure and manage value creation in social
networking, it significantly expands usage of social networking as a meaningful element
of the Marketing mix; hence Marketers achieve better overall ROI. Developing a
standard framework across community sites is one of the central aims of the research, so
let’s get started.
How is value created for brands in a social network?
First, let’s defi ne value. The definition of value begins with understanding the Brand
Manager’s Marketing goals. Generally, the Marketing goals revolve around the following
core branding metrics:
Brand awareness (unaided and aided)
29
Positive brand image (such as agreement that the brand is better than others)
Intent to take action (such as purchasing the product)
Action (actual purchase of the product)
Loyalty
Advocacy
Some ask, why isn’t sales (or profit) the sole measure of value?
Sales and profit is a legitimate business goal, but most Marketing programs can’t achieve
sales on their own. Marketing is one key component that generates sales and profit.
Marketing can positively influence conditions resulting in sales. Other factors such as
product distribution, sales force acumen, pricing, promotions plus a host of externals such
as competitive activities, weather and so forth all influence the actual purchase. By
focusing directly on what marketing can influence and control, we get a clear measure of
marketing value creation.
The Campaign
The adidas soccer custom community on MySpace has been in existence since 2006, with
the most recent refresh launched in February 2007. The new campaign is focused on
fostering an environment of friendly discussion and debate of adidas’ two models of elite
soccer cleats/boots, Predator and F50 TUNIT. Visitors to the community have the
opportunity to align themselves with one product “team” and offer comments in support
of their preferred model. Additionally, the new content offers information about
professional adidas soccer players on each “team,” rotational product views,
downloadable graphics, forum discussions, a link to additional product information, and a
link to the adidas Mexico Fútbol profi le page. One of the most sophisticated aspects of
the adidas custom community is the way that consumers can align their own personality
with the choice of adidas brands. Once a brand is picked, the consumer’s locked in with
the brand experience.
30
CONCLUSION:
Marketing has always been a crucial part of a business. Good companies have become
great on the sheer basis of effective marketing strategies. In the era of huge competition,
organizations are going great length to advertise and promote their products and earn
valuable customer loyalty.
The concept of marketing has kept evolving with the passage of time. Companies are
forced to adopt new changes in their marketing strategies to remain relevant. If there is
one factor that has really affected the way marketing plans are being defined then it must
be technology.
In the new century, the marketing tools of earlier years were rendered obsolete. Those
who manage to anticipate the changes and adopt them quickly have better chances of
survival. Social media marketing is one such great change that many companies have
started to accept in a big way. Though, it is still in a nascent stage but canny marketing
strategists are already harping onto the next big marketing revolution taking place in form
of social media marketing.
Social media is an extremely useful tool using which companies can get their
information, product descriptions, promotions all ingrained in the chain of networking
world. Considering the newness of this marketing method, organizations are coming up
with innovative ways to develop their marketing plans. New platforms are being created
to approach potential clients. A large number of business organizations are allocating
budget for online business development using social media marketing. It is a booming
sector which is going to redefine the way marketing strategies are being formed and
promoted. Social media marketing is a potent method applied by progressive companies
for selling their products/services or for just publishing content for ad revenue.
Although social media is a recent arsenal to the field of business marketing, its potential
as a marketing tool cannot be overlooked. However, further development in its practice
and usage is required in order to increase corporate adoption. Also, a study into the
measurement of social media’s effectiveness and its return on investment must also be
31
undertaken. Only then can the real value of social media to an enterprise be ascertained.
Nonetheless, social media is a powerful tool for any organisation moving in the Web 2.0
space and beyond.
32
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Boyd, D and Ellison, N, ‘Social Network Sites, Definition, History and Scholarship’,
Journal of Computer Mediated Communication (October, 2007),
Boyd & Ellison, ‘Social Network Sites’ (2007).Boyd, Dana. ‘Why Youth Love Social
Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics (2008) pp. 119-142.
Boyd, Dana. Why Youth Love Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics
in Teenage Social Life, (2007).
Lenhart and Madden (2007), p. 15.
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2007_0158.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/telecoms/reports/byron/.
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4502550.stm
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=2
http://media.guardian.co.uk/trends08/story/0,,2237886,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/nyregion/17facebook.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/aug/07/digitalmedia.facebook1.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tce/ce07/research07.pdf.
http://www.ofcomconsumerpanel.org.uk/information/documents/Children_and_the_in
ternet.pdf
Nielsen Online August 2012.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/cm/icmr07/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/25/nface125.xml
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/story/0,,1776732,00.html
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/articl
e3198167.ece
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/oct/09/news.uknews. See also
33
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=233860517
http://www.myspace.com/stopthetraffik
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/pm/weblog.php?id=P309
http;//www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/business/media/14digi.html?
pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.socialnetworkingwatch.com/all social-networking statistics/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/04/business/media/promotin-products-using-socialmedia-advertising.html
http://therealtimereport.com/2012/03/07/social-newtworks-grow-23-worldwise-indiasees-fasttest-growth/
http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/SCT-SOM-facebook-is-the-most-preferred-socialnetworking-site-in-india-3673188-NOR.html
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SR No.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Particulars
Overview
Purpose, Objectives & Scope of study
Limitations of study & Research Methodology
Introduction – Social marketing
Channels of Social marketing
Role of Social Media Marketing
Benefits
Problems
Social marketing strategy
Steps to Social marketing
SN – integral part of marketing strategy
Social networking sites
Tata Docomo – case in action
Adidas – BMW – case in action
Conclusion
Bibliography
1
Page no.
2
3
4
5
7
8
9
10
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13
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OVERVIEW
Social marketing is a recent component of organizations' integrated marketing
communications plans. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of
the promotional mix—advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct
marketing, and sales promotion—to produce a customer focused message.
In the traditional marketing communications model, the content, frequency, timing, and
medium of communications by the organization is in collaboration with an external agent,
i.e. advertising agencies, marketing research firms, and public relations firms. However,
the growth of social media has impacted the way organizations communicate with their
customers. In the emergence of Web 2.0, the internet provides a set of tools that allow
people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on
projects online.
Social marketing programs usually center on efforts to create content that attracts
attention, generates online conversations, and encourages readers to share it with their
social networks. The message spreads from user to user and presumably resonates
because it is coming from a trusted source, as opposed to the brand or company itself.
Social media has become a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet
access, opening doors for organizations to increase their brand awareness and facilitate
conversations with the customer. Organizations can receive direct feedback from their
customers and targeted markets.
However, as with any shift in philosophy and trend adoption, understanding the true
benefits of leveraging social media in marketing initiatives continues to be a challenge
for business organisations. Many question the value of investment in social media and its
direct influence on revenue generation.
Nonetheless, this sentiment is beginning to change and marketers are increasingly
embarking on social media campaigns in support of traditional marketing efforts.
2
PURPOSE OF STUDY
I have selected this study because social networking has become an important element of
day to day task. Thanks to this development that people are connected even though they
are far away from their homes. The importance of such media has reached to the levels
where many companies are realizing its benefits and value it derives. Various companies
are now-a-days using such medium very effectively. It is cost efficient and creates
customer touch points. Social networking has become the niche segment of its own and
generates almost 7-8 % revenues if used effectively.
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
To understand concept of social marketing with respect to Facebook
To study process, steps and various platforms provided by social networking
To determine application of concept and it study various benefits created by it
To study facebook in detail along with case study Tata docomo, adidas and BMW
SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study understands facebook and its role in social marketing. It studies various
concepts with the help of social networking websites. It covers concepts, application of
concepts and cases in action:
Overview and reasons for choosing this particular study
Concept of social marketing, time lines, channels of social marketing, role, benefits
and problems of social marketing
Social networking concept, development and various social networking websites.
Analyzes various social networking websites
Case studies on Tata docomo, adidas and BMW
Conclusion, references and annexure
3
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Study limits itself to the following:
Does not study various other mediums like blogs, podcasts etc
Facebook is taken into consideration so as to narrow down the concept and
make the study more specific
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Methodology used is secondary research. Referred to:
Journals
Websites
Books on Social Media Marketing
4
INTRODUCTION
Social marketing is the process of promoting your site or business through social media
channels and it is a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive
amounts of traffic.
There is no other low-cost promotional method out there that will easily give you large
numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to your website again and again.
If you are selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media
marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time.
Those who ignore the efficacy of social media usually fall into three categories; the ones
who don’t know much or anything about social media, the ones who are interested but
don’t know how to use it and those who don’t believe in the value that a social media
strategy can bring to any site or business.
Social marketing consists of the attempt to use social media to persuade consumers that
one's company, products and/or services are worthwhile.
Businesses using social media want to sell their products or services of course. But as
blatant advertising on social media would, in most cases, alienate their intended audience
or even get them kicked out of the particular social community they're trying to infiltrate,
businesses need to use other methods to promote themselves.
To use social media marketing effectively, businesses have to be perceived as members of
the social media community, willing to interact with other members.
The main problem with social marketing from a business perspective is that it can be
incredibly time-consuming. Social media marketing campaigns are not one-shot affairs;
they need to be nurtured over time. While big businesses such as Dell, Microsoft and HP
have been using social media marketing effectively, they have the kinds of marketing
budgets that allow them to assign x number of staff to conduct and manage social media
marketing campaigns, resources that a lot of small businesses don't have.
5
Still, social marketing is a type of marketing that many small businesses could benefit
from, if only to find out more about what their customers are thinking - and saying about their brand and their products.
Four Reasons to Practice Social Marketing
Following are reasons for using social marketing:
1. It’s natural. Not only do you get natural links without any discernible pattern,
your website is exposed to large groups of people in a spontaneous fashion. This
differs from paid advertising which has overt commercial overtones.
2. It’s defensible. Once successfully mastered, social communities can be a great
source of web traffic on top of any traffic you are already receiving from search
engines. While you can’t easily increase your search engine traffic, social media
traffic can be very easily controlled through strategic marketing.
3. It’s low-cost/high returns. If done by you, costs are limited to only time and
perhaps the expenses involved in hiring a freelance programmer/designer. The
benefits will often exceed the cost. It would take you thousands of dollars to buy
many links; social media has the ability to give you that for free.
4. It complements other efforts. Social media optimization and marketing is
usually community-specific. It doesn’t interfere with any other methods of getting
traffic to your website. It can and will fit perfectly with an advertising campaign
targeting other websites or search engines.
6
CHANNELS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
1. Social Networks:
These sites let you create your own personal page and connect with friends and family to
share content and connect. The largest social networking site today is Facebook with
more than 400 million users.
2.
Blogs
Perhaps the most common form of social media are blogs. Blogs are online journals,
generally open to read and comment by anyone. Blogs often contain product reviews that
are sponsored by the producing company.
3. Wikis
Wikis are websites that comprises the work of many different authors on different
subjects. A wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or add content. The most commonly known
wiki is Wikipedia with over 3 million articles today.
4.
Podcasts
Podcasts is a series of audio or video files that are episodically released.
5.
Forums
Forums are websites for public or private online discussions, often around specific topics.
6.
Content communities
These are sites where you share content, like video (YouTube), images (Flickr) and
bookmarks (del.icio.us).
7.
Micro blogging
These are commonly downsized blogs with a touch of social networking. Twitter is the
most common micro blogging platform
7
ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media marketing represents low-cost tools that are used to combine technology
and social interaction with the use of words. These tools are typically internet or mobile
based. A few that you have probably heard of include Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and
YouTube.
Social media marketing gives marketers a voice and a way to communicate with peers,
customers and potential consumers. It personalizes the "brand" and helps you to spread
your message in a relaxed and conversational way.
The downfall to social media, if you could call it that is that it must be a part of your
everyday life in order to keep the momentum and attention you need for it to be
successful.
Following are companies that have involved in social media sucessfully:
Absolut Vodka - Online Video on YouTube and Using Facebook to house their Top
Bartender fan page.
BMW - Utilizing Facebook to promote their 1-Series Road Trip and they have
created a Rampenfest Page for fans.
Dunkin Donuts - That's right they've found value in social media and have set up a
microblogging Twitter account.
Barack Obama - He has been seen as a leader in the use of Twitter during the
Presidential Election. He has over 3,66,59,000 followers and is following over
8
BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
The two-way communication feature of social media enables organizations to
communicate with their customers. This type of communication is a good thing –
organizations can form more personal relationships with customers by letting them
become part of a community around the brand they want to support. Creating a
community around the brand increases the possibility of having customers for life. The
community can also gain new customers or find new professional partners for new
ventures and expand the brand to new markets.
Using powerful tools such as Twit Links, Socialwhois, and Social Too to do real-time
searches on the latest feeds and tweets around your social community your organization
can gain valuable market data about what your customers like and dislike and you can
also do searches around new markets if you are in the expanding stage.
Few of the major benefits of Social Media Marketing are:
1. Generates exposure for business
2. Increases online traffic/subscribers
3. Results in new business partnerships
4. Helps the company rise in search rankings
5. Reduces overall marketing expenses
9
PROBLEMS
Social media includes risks and other problems you can encounter as an individual as
well as an organization. Several major organizations have encountered social media
disasters. Domino’s Pizzas social media disaster occurred about a year ago when two
Domino’s Pizza workers posted a video on YouTube that showed the employees doing
disgusting things with pizza toppings. The employees were fired and faced criminal
charges, but Domino’s Pizza had to deal with a disaster that could have been prevented.
Problems and risk within organizations
1. Create a social media handbook for your employees; a pamphlet with a set of
common sense guidelines that lay out the organization’s policies regarding social
media.
2. Create a social networking crisis management team to manage any negative or false
information.
3. Put the social networking crisis management team to monitor your company’s name
on social networking sites via Twitscoop, RSS feeds, and Technorati to track recent
posts about your organization.
Problems and risk for individuals
1. It’s easy to give away personal information that can enable people to find you or your
family´s members. Never put your personal address, phone number or full name on a
social networking site.
2. People can easily use this information to find your exact location and address.
3. Connecting on social networking sites are great, but people there are not always who
they seem to be. People pretend to be someone else and private accounts have been
stolen (identity theft).
4. Identity theft is increasingly common and usually the motive to identity theft is
financial gain.
10
SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGY:
As a marketing strategy social media marketing strategy can deliver value in three main
ways:
1. Community and relationship building
Engagement, being part of the conversation around particular topics or areas of interest,
builds familiarity and trust with people, and garners notice. Being an active, positive
brand in the marketplace = good brand image. Customers want to deal with businesses
they feel a connection with.
2. Creating authority
By helping people, giving away info/expertise, answering questions, providing insight,
etc. in the social network arena a company establishes its credibility, its value, its quality.
Customers want to do business with authoritative, quality brands.
3.
Creating Content
The heart of any social media marketing programme is content, usually created through a
blog but also can include video, pictures, polls, whitepapers, ebooks, reports, enewsletters, etc. In general content is information in one form or another that makes
people want to pay attention to you. It’s helpful, informative, interesting. It is through this
content that customers or referrers find out about you, what you do, and how you can
help them. This is a subsection of social media marketing called content marketing.
Content marketing refers to the technique of creating and freely sharing informative
content as a means of converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat
buyers.
Creating great content for your marketing is important. But great content doesn’t
distribute itself. It needs vehicles (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) for people to pass it
along, discuss its merits, argue over its controversies, blog it, mash it, tweet it and even
scrape it. This is where the social networks come in.
11
The best distribution network in the world is pointless if you have nothing to deliver
across it. You might have a million followers on Twitter, but unless you engage those
followers, they won’t listen and you will achieve nothing. Equally, what is the point in
fabulous content if no one ever hears about it? Social media is an unsurpassed tool for
getting content distributed. On the flip side, great content gives social media life, by
giving people something more interesting to talk about than what they’re ordering right
now at Starbucks.
12
STEPS TO SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING:
Find your audience. Listen. Learn.
Find out where your customers, competitors, or people who share similar interests,
values, etc are online and be there yourself. Monitor the social networks to find out what
is being said about you, your products, your competition, and your industry. This will
give you an idea of the current landscape; this is competitive and industry analysis.
Record this information as a starting point against which to measure the impact of your
social media strategy over time.
Strategize and plan
Is a social media effort right for you? How can it help your overall business goals and
marketing strategy? What are you looking to achieve? Set a goal (or goals) and set
measurable objectives against the goal(s) that will help determine the success or failure of
the effort and allow you to adjust the strategy if required. Then, with an understanding of
the landscape and established objectives, write a strategic plan and a financial model to
achieve the objectives. Finally, develop the tactical implementation to undertake the
strategic plan. Decide who will be responsible. Within
what timeframe do you plan to achieve the (goals)? What milestones should be targeted?
What tools, platforms and programs are required? How will you measure the outcomes
along the way?
13
Implement
Plug the tactical plan into the organization. Are you hiring new staff, reassigning existing
ones, or simply allocating internal responsibilities differently? Establish those roles,
responsibilities and working practices. If the strategy calls for cross-departmental effort,
build those communication lines and workflows. Train the staff (and management) on the
“what” and the “how” but also on the “why” of the social media program. Set up the tools
and platforms that will be used. Integrate those tools into existing platforms/procedures.
Create guidelines for corporate/employee social media usage (note: I said “guidelines”
not “rules” – the best results in social networking come from allowing employees to be as
personal, natural and authentic as possible in their dealings with others).
Manage
This is the day-to-day execution of the program. Depending on the strategy, it may
include some or all of these: content production and publishing, content distribution,
reputation management, community engagement, customer support, business intelligence
(competitor activity, customer insights), brand management, market research, monitoring,
measurement and analytics.
Measure
Measurement is a part of the management function because there is a regular ongoing
aspect to it, It is through proper measurement that you understand if your objective are
being met and, if not, to help you reassess your strategy and/or tactics (or even the people
responsible for carrying them out). Measuring is defined by both the “what” and the
“how.” What are we going to measure? Is it measurable? Is it the right thing to measure?
The “what” question goes back to the strategy development piece and should have been
defined then and there. The currency here is probably numbers or statistics: numbers of
followers/friends, number of social mentions, click-through, comments, website visitors,
discussions, emails delivered, and, ideally, sales. But the currency might also be less
defined: positive or negative press, change in sentiment about your brand, company or
product, tone of discussions, and positive or negative word of mouth.
14
The “how” begins with monitoring (which should have started even before the strategy
work) using tools and processes that enable you to track the results of your activities.
This means social media monitoring tools, conversion metrics, web analytics, RSS feed
counters, even things like feedback forms, surveys, and customer recommendations.
However, monitoring is not measuring. People often get them mixed up. Measuring is
how we calculate the results of our monitoring over time against our objectives to test
whether we are achieving them. Again, measuring is so important because tells us if we
are having success.
Review
As your social media plan progresses you should be analyzing your results against the
milestone expectations you established at the outset. Review your plan regularly and if
things aren’t working as you intended, adjust your approach. It is a cyclical process of
regular reviewing and refining.
15
“Social networks grow 23% worldwide; India sees the fastest
growth”
According to new estimates by E-Marketer, over 1.2 billion people worldwide used social
networking sites at least once per month as of December 2012. By the end of 2013, this
number will climb to more than 1.5 billion internet users. The study also examines the
number of social networking users, penetration rates and growth rates in countries around
the world, as well as the projected global growth of Facebook from 2011-2014.
Worldwide, social networking saw 23.1% growth over 2011, and while the growth rate
will drop in the next few years, it will remain in the double digits. This growth is largely
fueled by Facebook’s expansion – except in China, where the site is banned – which is
expected to pass the billion-user mark by the end of 2013. Facebook saw 44% growth in
2011; this is expected to drop to 13.9% in 2014.
India will see the fastest growth in social networking this year (51.7%), followed closely
by Indonesia with 51.6%, and China lagging further back with 19.9%.
16
Countries were also ranked by social network penetration, or having the greatest share of
social network users as a percentage of the total population:
• US took the lead with 49.9%
• followed by Canada (49.3%)
• South Korea (46.6%)
• Australia (44.4%)
• Russia (41.9%)
Developing countries – where fewer people are online overall – showed social
networking as a highly popular activity for those who are online. In Brazil, 87.6% of
internet users will use social networking sites in 2012 (Indonesia follows closely behind
with 87.5%).
In terms of overall users, the Asia-Pacific region has the highest number of social
network users in the world, with 615.9 million internet users logging on to social sites by
the end of this year. Nearly half of those users will be in China, where social network
users will outnumber their counterparts in the US by nearly two to one (despite the
absence of Facebook). China and the US are the two countries with the highest number
of social network users overall.
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SOCIAL MEDIA- INTEGRAL PART OF MARKETING:
As usually happens with hype we are going through a pendulum swing now. Wharton’s
Van den Bulte comments on this, “Yes, there is much more information flow among
consumers, and not all of them beat the same drum as the companies, so firms have lost
power. Living in denial is not going to be healthy. On the other hand, totally surrendering
and letting go of all control may be too much…I think firms need to find a balance.
In the end, any marketing campaign a company wants to launch is going to use all the
channels and mechanisms available. They will continue to make extensive use of
traditional broadcasting tools and complement them with other social networking
mechanisms that provide additional benefits. Considering that Social networking is
becoming pervasive, traditional broadcasting and new social marketing will benefit from
each other. As individuals can bring their profiles beyond the social networking
platforms, they can start leveraging this fact when they visit traditional media. This is
possible today with Facebook as some media sites provide a log in that syncs up with the
Facebook and hence identifies your profile.
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New metrics for social marketing
Multiple analyses point out that marketers today are not satisfied with the way they
measure the effectiveness of their social campaigns. The measurement and accountability
of social marketing goes along two dimensions: being able to measure what happens in a
meaningful way and, being able to provide measurement to anticipate or predict the
effectiveness of a given campaign. Traditional measures like hits and pages viewed do
not really focus on the specific value of social marketing. According to Paula Amunátegui
Perelló, project manager for new media at Switzerland-based General Motors Europe, the
traditional metrics won’t do. Simply looking at the number of people who visit a website
is not sufficient. Her team looks at metrics like how many blogs link to the web site, how
many people subscribe to the site’s content or watch videos and the number and quality
of comments posted directly on the site.
As social marketing becomes more mainstream we expect a significant development of
the type of data captured and measured. This will evolve into new behavioral marketing
techniques that will help launch effective campaigns by understanding the diffusion paths
within social networks. For example, key influencers for a given product or service could
be identified, and specific campaign messaging channeled through them to hit their
followers.
We expect measures such as the speed of propagation, the density of networks and the
variety of networks to enter the lingo of social marketing in the near future. Together with
the pervasiveness of the social networking profile, will come a pervasiveness of social
analysis; a comprehensive use and understanding of the social graph. This means
sophisticated analytics of patterns of diffusion of ideas or products will become
mainstream. Predictive engines will therefore emerge that focus on these patterns using
techniques like psychographics and semantic analysis.
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VARIOUS SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
1) Orkut
Orkut is a social networking website that is owned and operated by Google Inc. The
service is designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships.
The website is named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten.
2) Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online
community created by Ludicorp and later acquired by Yahoo!. In addition to being a
popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely
used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. As of august
2010, it claims to host more than 4 billion images.
3) Hi5
Hi5 is a social networking website. The company was founded in 2003 by Ramu
Yalamanchi. Bill Gossman was appointed CEO in April 2009. In early 2010, hi5 acquired
social gaming company, Big Six. The company raised $20 million in series A venture
capital from Mohr Davidow Ventures, as well as $15 million in venture debt, in 2007, and
announced it had raised $3 million convertible note from existing investor Mohr
Davidow, bringing the funding up to $38 million.
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4) Linkedln
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and
launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 9 August
2010 (2010 -08-09), LinkedIn had more than 75 million registered users, spanning more
than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The site is available in English, French,
German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
5) MySpace
MySpace is a social networking website. Its headquarters are in Beverly Hills, California
where it shares an office building with its immediate owner, News Corp. Digital Media,
owned by News Corporation. MySpace became the most popular social networking site
in the United States in June 2006. According to comScore, MySpace was overtaken
internationally by its main competitor, Facebook, in April 2008, based on monthly unique
visitors. MySpace employs 1,000 employees, after laying off 30 percent of its workforce
in June 2009; the company does not disclose revenues or profits separately from News
Corporation. The 100 millionth account was created on August 9, 2006, in the
Netherlands.
6) Twitter
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service, owned and operated by Twitter
Inc., that enables its users to send and read other users' messages called tweets. Tweets
are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page. Tweets
are publicly visible by default, however senders can restrict message delivery to their
friends list. Users may subscribe to other author tweets—this is known as following and
subscribers are known as followers. All users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter
website, compatible external applications (such as, for smartphones), or by Short
Message Service (SMS) available in certain countries. While the service is free, accessing
it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
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Facebook is a social networking website launched in February 2004 that is operated and
privately owned by Facebook, Inc., with more than 500 million active users in July 2012.
Users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal
profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks
organized by workplace, school, or college. The website's name stems from the colloquial
name of books given to students at the start of the academic year by university
administrations in the US with the intention of helping students to get to know each other
better. Facebook allows anyone who declares themselves to be aged 13 or older to
become a member of the website.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow
computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The
website's membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was
expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It
gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high
school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The original concept for
Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg's prep school Phillips
Exeter Academy, which for decades published and distributed a printed manual of all
students and faculty, unofficially called the "face book".
Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several
countries including Pakistan, Syria, China, Vietnam, and Iran. It has also been banned at
many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service.
Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook
settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property. The site has
also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.
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CASE STUDY: TATA DOCOMO
Many independent observers refer to Tata DOCOMO as a “child of Social Media”. In
effect that is quite close to being the strategy for Tata DOCOMO even before the time the
brand was officially unveiled.
Why Social Media?
When Tata DOCOMO was planning to enter the Indian market as the 9th GSM operator,
it faced entrenched incumbents and strong brand communication barriers from other
telecom operators. However Tata DOCOMO was determined to change the game and cut
through the clutter through pure innovation and doing the New.
Social Media became the first opportunity which had not been picked up by most Indian
brands in June 2009 leave alone the telecom operators. It was unchartered waters but we
knew that Social Media connects us with the exact TG that the brand wanted to associate
with. It further had the wow element and was clearly doing the New. The perfect reason
for Tata DOCOMO to draw up an extensive strategy to harness the power of Social
Media and build the brand with its consumers.
Laying the Social Media Strategy
At the very core of the Social Media strategy was the idea of humanizing a telecom brand
and make it warm, friendly and conversational. The strategy was simple yet brilliant.
Reach out to every corner of the web and to every possible TG not as a corporate brand
but as a friend willing to engage the consumer in a one-on-one dialogue on anything and
everything pertaining to the brand, its offers, its deficiencies as well as anything to do
with telecom per se. The desired outcome was clear in everyone's mind – to build the
most loyal set of beta customers who will champion the brand in their microcommunities at every moment.
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The execution
A dedicated Social Media team at Interface was built to execute the plan. Twitter,
Facebook, Orkut, Youtube accounts were opened up and optimized even before the brand
launch took place. The website itself actively solicited visitors to signup to the Tata
DOCOMO communities months before it became a fad for others. The Social Media
team set about targeting each of the Social Media platforms differently.
TWITTER:
Twitter typically has a more evolved and techy audience that other Social Media
platforms. Tata DOCOMO acknowledged the importance of these thought leaders and
made sure they got their worth by following the brand. All products, offers and schemes
were first announced to our Twitter followers before they were allowed on any other
media. On many occasions Twitter followers were given teasers and prelaunch feelers
much before the product was even in a state of launch readiness.
Today Tata DOCOMO has more than 7500 followers and they know most of them by
name. They have solved their telecom problems, passed on their messages to relevant
people in the company and brought about resolutions or simply just said a hello when
someone was missing in action for an extended period of time.
FACEBOOK:
Facebook clearly has a large influential community that was identified right at the start as
being a major influencer of brand advocacy. Tata DOCOMO set about creating
conversations among its fans on Facebook.
Like Twitter a one-on-one communication was maintained with all its fans helping
resolve problems, providing information and escalating issues. The community was kept
engaged through a variety of status updated including discussions on TV commercials,
jingles, product service launches and fun and games.
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ORKUT:
Orkut has a mass user base and was identified as an important element in managing mass
sentiment around the brand. The forum has been used both as a community feedback tool
as well as a platform where free discussions were enabled on specific topics (either
product-service related or band related). The platform has also extensively been used for
contests to keep community members engaged.
YOUTUBE:
Youtube has been a central repository for all brand commercials and videos. Tata
DOCOMO has made a departure from the traditional way of only uploading videos
created by the brand to also showcasing user generated content, specifically animation
videos submitted by users at the create.tatadocomo.com platform.
In continuation of its strategy to be omnipresent in Social Media, Tata DOCOMO is
perhaps one of the few Indian brands to have reached out to less popular social
networking and community portals in India. It carries through the same brand promise of
being everywhere that out potential consumers could be however small the reach of the
portal might be.
The Tata DOCOMO strategy with respect to third party blogs and forums were both
proactive and reactive. Everyday 100s and 1000s of blogs and forums were scanned or
any mention of Tata DOCOMO and whenever a user had posted a question, comment and
complaint, the Social Media team made it a point to go and respond to resolve (wherever
necessary) every post or comment.
Tata DOCOMO is probably the only brand in the Indian landscape who have gone ahead
and created official accounts on hundreds of blogs and forums and have always
responded through its official id.
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Demystifying the strategy
The Tata DOCOMO social media strategy has been carefully built on five pillars.
1. Build consumer engagement
Beyond the day-to-day and one-on-one interactions with our fans and followers, Tata
DOCOMO has constantly launched consumer engagement programs with a heavy social
media angle. This has helped us build repeat engagement points with a large number of
our fans. Be it dietsms which was rolled out exclusively through social media, ageekthing
which involved Orkut, gadgets , Facebook applications and automated Twitter tools or
happy DOYear which could be played through Facebook, Twitter and Orkut.
2. Address and resolve complaints
Even before the launch of social media engagements, a dedicated customer response
mechanism was laid out for priority resolution of all social media grievances / enquiries.
Top management at Tata DOCOMO has taken great pains to make sure that literally the
buck stops when an issue is raised through social media channels. From activation
problems, network issues, handset settings or billing related matters, every single issue
has been promptly addressed and resolved. Comes as no wonder therefore that initially
the Tata DOCOMO Twitter account was nicknamed the “unofficial helpline”.
3. Crowd sourcing
Very early in the social lifecycle of the brand Tata DOCOMO realized it had hundreds of
well wishers who were all brimming with ideas on new product-service offerings that
could be a real differentiator for the company. The social team has repeatedly engaged
with its beta consumers, collecting feedback about usage, preferences, bounced off
product ideas and pretested concepts to help the product team develop compelling
product service offerings. The icing on the cake was when we involved our techy Twitter
followers to hack into a social game launched by Tata DOCOMO as part of the
ageekthing contest and suggest ways to prevent others from doing so. Many of the recent
product service launches like gprs packs and parts of the buddyNet program have been
built on crowd sourcing inputs.
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4. Build brand advocacy
Continuous engagement and proactive problem resolution has helped Tata DOCOMO
build extremely loyal fans on social media. Innovative ways of recognizing such efforts
through fan of the week on Facebook and Twitter has further enhanced the cause.
5. Micro communication
With close to 100,000 direct followers and over 6 million secondary reach, all
communication from Tata DOCOMO enjoys a sizeable instant audience. However our
social team remembers the names, occupations and past communications with thousands
and thousands of our fans. This helps us micro communicate with each individual
building a personal touch and therefore a high impact to our messaging.
The Outcome
Each media of the social media strategy has helped Tata DOCOMO build a strong and
loyal fanbase amongst the youth and has unmistakably taken ownership of the innovator
platform this firmly establishing the brand essence of do the New. The brand values of
honesty, transparency and sincerity have been well established in the minds of
consumers. Tata DOCOMO social presence is not seen to be a marketing gimmick but a
genuine effort to connect and engage with every fan and follower with sincerity and with
the authority to solve their problems. Perhaps the apt summary of the success of Tata
DOCOMO’s
social
media
has
been
a
comment
posted
on
Twitter.
“In the world of telecom if airtel is Microsoft, Tata DOCOMO is google. DoDo do Do
Do...”
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Quantifying the Outcome
Tata DOCOMO has significant Klout on Twitter even when compared against global
heavyweights
Today Tata DOCOMO’s Twitter Klout is equal to AT&T though it has been achieved in
a very short period as is evident by the meteoric rise displayed in the graph below
The social mention parameters like strength and passion outscore competition by a good
distance
Twitter: Grade of 99.8 Means the Tata DOCOMO Twitter Account Ranks Higher than
99.6% of all Twitter Accounts
Facebook: Grade of 87 Means the Tata Docomo Facebook Account Ranks Higher than
87% of all Facebook Accounts
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CASE STUDY: ADIDAS AND BMW
Social networking is a new online territory. In our one-on-one interviews with marketers,
some expressed that social networking is a new ballgame and they don’t know how to
keep score – they don’t even know the rules. Some marketers feel they’re playing on
unfamiliar turf, where the consumer names the rules and controls the filed. Most
marketers don’t have the equipment to play, and for some, there is comfort with the
traditional advertising model: pay a media owner to insert an advertisement, and assume
it generates impact (or measure impact using traditional measurement models). When it
comes to social marketing, how does a marketer know if value is created?
The fact that social Marketing is different and requires fresh thinking might explain why
the past decade of digital marketing has focused on translating the game they knew
(advertising) to the new landscape of the Internet. The common thread of this past decade
of digital Marketing and Research is the traditional advertising model translated into new
digital environments. Times are changing. Enough marketers have conceptualized how
traditional marketing models transferred online, and now many are focusing attention on
a new model for brand value creation. To help them, we need a well developed
framework to quantify and analyze how value is created.
If marketers have a framework to measure and manage value creation in social
networking, it significantly expands usage of social networking as a meaningful element
of the Marketing mix; hence Marketers achieve better overall ROI. Developing a
standard framework across community sites is one of the central aims of the research, so
let’s get started.
How is value created for brands in a social network?
First, let’s defi ne value. The definition of value begins with understanding the Brand
Manager’s Marketing goals. Generally, the Marketing goals revolve around the following
core branding metrics:
Brand awareness (unaided and aided)
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Positive brand image (such as agreement that the brand is better than others)
Intent to take action (such as purchasing the product)
Action (actual purchase of the product)
Loyalty
Advocacy
Some ask, why isn’t sales (or profit) the sole measure of value?
Sales and profit is a legitimate business goal, but most Marketing programs can’t achieve
sales on their own. Marketing is one key component that generates sales and profit.
Marketing can positively influence conditions resulting in sales. Other factors such as
product distribution, sales force acumen, pricing, promotions plus a host of externals such
as competitive activities, weather and so forth all influence the actual purchase. By
focusing directly on what marketing can influence and control, we get a clear measure of
marketing value creation.
The Campaign
The adidas soccer custom community on MySpace has been in existence since 2006, with
the most recent refresh launched in February 2007. The new campaign is focused on
fostering an environment of friendly discussion and debate of adidas’ two models of elite
soccer cleats/boots, Predator and F50 TUNIT. Visitors to the community have the
opportunity to align themselves with one product “team” and offer comments in support
of their preferred model. Additionally, the new content offers information about
professional adidas soccer players on each “team,” rotational product views,
downloadable graphics, forum discussions, a link to additional product information, and a
link to the adidas Mexico Fútbol profi le page. One of the most sophisticated aspects of
the adidas custom community is the way that consumers can align their own personality
with the choice of adidas brands. Once a brand is picked, the consumer’s locked in with
the brand experience.
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CONCLUSION:
Marketing has always been a crucial part of a business. Good companies have become
great on the sheer basis of effective marketing strategies. In the era of huge competition,
organizations are going great length to advertise and promote their products and earn
valuable customer loyalty.
The concept of marketing has kept evolving with the passage of time. Companies are
forced to adopt new changes in their marketing strategies to remain relevant. If there is
one factor that has really affected the way marketing plans are being defined then it must
be technology.
In the new century, the marketing tools of earlier years were rendered obsolete. Those
who manage to anticipate the changes and adopt them quickly have better chances of
survival. Social media marketing is one such great change that many companies have
started to accept in a big way. Though, it is still in a nascent stage but canny marketing
strategists are already harping onto the next big marketing revolution taking place in form
of social media marketing.
Social media is an extremely useful tool using which companies can get their
information, product descriptions, promotions all ingrained in the chain of networking
world. Considering the newness of this marketing method, organizations are coming up
with innovative ways to develop their marketing plans. New platforms are being created
to approach potential clients. A large number of business organizations are allocating
budget for online business development using social media marketing. It is a booming
sector which is going to redefine the way marketing strategies are being formed and
promoted. Social media marketing is a potent method applied by progressive companies
for selling their products/services or for just publishing content for ad revenue.
Although social media is a recent arsenal to the field of business marketing, its potential
as a marketing tool cannot be overlooked. However, further development in its practice
and usage is required in order to increase corporate adoption. Also, a study into the
measurement of social media’s effectiveness and its return on investment must also be
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undertaken. Only then can the real value of social media to an enterprise be ascertained.
Nonetheless, social media is a powerful tool for any organisation moving in the Web 2.0
space and beyond.
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