Social media marketing strategy: concepts and steps to form connections

The emergence of social media has led many companies to adopt them as marketing channels. Yet these media are novel enough that many marketers are still unsure as to how to plan an effective social media marketing strategy, actually oriented towards engaging prospects. In this article, we discuss how to shape a social media strategy. To do so, we show the key concepts and steps involved in the planning process of this type of digital marketing strategy, and how to measure their impact immediately.

Marketers’ perception of the implementation of social media marketing: Evidence from large Finnish companies’ marketing campaigns

Social media is a multidimensional marketing and communications channel which can support and enhance a business’ reputation, sales and even longevity. Social media as a business tool encourages an interaction between customers and companies which gives opportunities for a company to better understand their customers, to target them more effectively and to collaborate and create dialogues with them which is not possible through traditional media channels. The aim of a social media strategy is to increase brand awareness, image, loyalty and recognition. The peer networks that social media creates allows a company to disseminate information through loyal customers to new and prospective customers to ultimately increase reach. The purpose of the study is to understand the marketer’s perspective of social media marketing use and how it is currently utilized in marketing and communications activities in Finland. Three companies were interviewed covering fourteen different implementations of social media marketing campaigns. These were then analysed to ascertain the utilization methods and experience gained on recent campaigns in the Finnish market The utilization of social media marketing was analysed using the methods of thematic analysis and inductive and abductive reasoning. Elements and themes were drawn out of the separate interviews to create a framework with which to explore, evaluate and match theories that define social media usage by companies. It became clear from all of the interviews that social media as a tool is most effective when it captures the viewer’s interest through rich and entertaining content. This directed the theoretical research towards Engagement Theory and Content Marketing which look to emphasize the importance of communities, collaboration, interaction, and peer-sharing as the key drivers of a social media marketing campaign.

The Utilization of Chinese Social Media in Internationalization into China: Perspective of a Western Company

The purpose of this qualitative research is to analyze western-based companies’ social media usage in internationalization into China and to identify social media presence’ impact on the internationalization process. Additionally, the benefits and challenges a western company may face while using social media in China will be illustrated. Competitive advantages, knowledge, networks and relations, and costs and risks could be identified as the key antecedents for successful internationalization. A great social media presence could create a competitive advantage for a western company while competitive advantages may be communicated in social media marketing, knowledge and networks can be enhanced and utilized in internationalization via social media two-way communication. The biggest benefit for internationalization resulted from decreased marketing costs due to cost-effectiveness of social media. The results revealed that cost effective brand awareness was the main benefit from the social media usage in internationalization into China. However, companies struggled with the limited resources and despite of understanding the importance of Chinese social media, lacked sufficient resources for the social media operations. Companies should determine clear strategy and goals that they are willing to achieve via social media in internationalization process, and allocate required resources according to the social media strategy. Localization of the social media operations is important in China, and business-to-consumer companies tend to benefit more from the social media presence. Business-to-business companies may increase the brand’s credibility by successful Chinese social media operations.

Management consulting labs-Galp social media

Social Media @ Galp Project had a very specific purpose – analyze the feasibility for Galp to enter in new Social Media platforms and, if appropriate, develop a short-term strategy for the entrance in which some guidelines are valid for the medium-long-term. As expected, the majority of the project was focused on the second part, which consists in an analysis of some aspects concerning the organization as well as in the relationship with customers and public in general

Re-shaping the Resourcing: Recruitment in Social Media

Social media is very current topic in today’s society and organisations. In the times of economic challenges, companies are looking for efficient ways to resource workforce. In addition, there is competition of competent workforce in employment markets. Employer image plays important role in recruitment as people seek to organisations they find interesting and have a reputation as a good employer. This study concerns the discussion on utilising social media in recruitment and employer image in a corporate enterprise. I will find solutions how to utilize social media in recruitment, in which channels and methods that can be done and what these actions require from a company doing social recruitment. I bring up the discussion and challenges that relate to starting to take social media into use in an organization overall and in recruitment. The qualitative material has been gathered with interviews of eighteen persons and the material available about the topic in the enterprise intranet. According to the study, social media is seen both as an opportunity to reach large amount of people quickly and cost-efficiently, but then again it brings news aspects for controlling the employer image and communication towards the audience. Taking social media into use as part of recruiters and managers daily work requires both finding the right channels and attention to the internal communication culture and resourcing. Social recruitment requires a strategy and a proper plan to be able to work in a company. There are several social media channels that enable to reach people, but they don’t do the social recruitment alone.

Social media como estrategia digital para el lanzamiento de la nueva línea de cremas de la marca HINDS

La publicidad en una empresa suele ser la parte más costosa para promover el producto y además suele ser de gran impacto y corta duración o de poco impacto pero con una duración mayor. La publicidad tradicional es de fácil monitoreo, pero predecible en algunos casos, ya que su divulgación está ligada a quién y cómo se dirijan los esfuerzos de las marcas por dar a entender su idea principal. La razón de un negocio es vender y perdurar en el tiempo por lo que es fundamental tener una manera efectiva de dar el mensaje, mostrar y recordar un producto. La experiencia de compra y la experiencia de uso son aspectos decisivos en el momento de volver a comprar, pero aún más importante, es la fidelidad del individuo ya que puede producir un gran impacto en los otros consumidores que tienen en cuenta las opiniones de los demás compradores. La publicidad nos da un gran campo de acción e innovación, el cual debemos explotar de manera inteligente y estratégica, siendo claros a la hora de transmitir el mensaje y generando un estrecho canal de comunicación en el que no existan barreras que dificulten la comprensión del mensaje a transmitir. Es acá donde las empresas se dan cuenta que es fundamental conocer cuáles son los aspectos favorables al difundir información, como en este caso sería la gente bien relacionada en el eje central de las redes sociales que van a acoger un producto y promoverlo ampliamente entre las personas de su círculo social. Por esta razón decidimos escoger las redes sociales como la mejor estrategia digital para el nuevo lanzamiento de cremas corporales de la marca Hinds.

Practices in social media in the travel education business

Praticas na midia social se refere a vista ou a percepcao de uma marca nao so com base em suas ofertas e servicos, mas tambem sobre seus valores e cultura como percebido principalmente pelos consumidores. As organizacoes podem utilizer a imagem que é interessante e aceitavel para os clients. Nos ultimos anos, uma das formas que as organizacoes de forma consistente comercializar ou publicitar a sua marca envolve midias sociais. O ojetivo deste estudo é explorer quais sao as praticas de midia social no negocio de educacao de viagens. Para obter os dados, a pesquisadora entrevistou pessoas de seis empresas de educacao de viagens e cotejadas informacoes sobre o tema a partir de fonts primarias e secundarias existentes. O pesquisador conduziu a pesquisa para determiner praticas de marketing de midia social em que se aplicam nos sectores do turismo e educacao. Com base nos dados obtidos pelo pesquisador, as praticas de marketing de midia social incluem a utilizacao de plataformas de midia social com um alcance internacional generalizada tipo Facebook, Twitter, Instagram e YouTube. Outra estratégia é para postar constantemente as atualizações que não são apenas interessante, mas também informativo sobre os produtos e serviços oferecidos por uma marca ou organização. As empresas ou organizações devem também interagir com os clientes ou clientes on-line, a fim de manter os interesses deste último em ofertas e serviços da ex. O envolvimento do cliente é uma das razões por que os clientes optam por seguir as empresas on-line através da mídia social. A pesquisa também revela outras vantagens e benefícios da mídia social que constituem as melhores práticas, tais como a conversão de não-clientes para os clientes, o aumento da presença da mídia para aumentar a popularidade, a comunicação eficaz das metas e objetivos organizacionais, bem como a formação de um bom relacionamento com os clientes. As organizações também podem usar turístico criado conteúdo (TCC) e outros tipos de conteúdo para orientar a tomada de decisão no desenvolvimento do produto gerado pelo usuário.

Social media crises in the organization: exploring management strategies through cases from France and Brazil

The aim of this Master’s thesis has been to shed light on the response strategies that organizations are implementing when facing a crisis created on or amplified by social media. Since the development of social media in the late 1990s, the interplay between the online and the offline spheres has become more complex, and characterized by dynamics of a new magnitude, as exemplified by the wave of “Twitter” Revolutions or the Wikileaks scandal in the mid 2000s, where online behaviors deeply affected an offline reality. The corporate world does not escape to this worldwide phenomenon, and there are more and more examples of organizational reputations destroyed by social media “fireballs”. As such, this research aims to investigate, through the analysis of six recent cases of corporate crises (2013-2015) from France and Brazil, different strategies currently in use in order to identify examples of good and bad practices for companies to adopt or avoid when facing a social media crisis. The first part of this research is dedicated to a review of the literature on crisis management and social media. From that review, we were able to design a matrix model, the Social Media Crisis Management Matrix, with which we analyzed the response strategies of the six companies we selected. This model allows the conceptualization of social media crises in a multidimensional matrix built to allow the choice, according to four parameters, of the most efficient (that is: which will limit the reputational damage) response strategy. Attribution of responsibility for the crisis to the company by stakeholders, the origin of the crisis (internal or external), the degree of reputational threat, and the emotions conveyed online by stakeholders help companies determining whether to adopt a defensive response, or an accommodative response. The results of the analysis suggest that social media crises are rather manichean objects for they are, unlike their traditional offline counterparts, characterized by emotional involvement and irrationality, and cannot be dealt with traditionally. Thus analyzing the emotions of stakeholders proved to be, in these cases, an accurate thermometer of the seriousness of the crisis, and as such, a better rudder to follow when selecting a response strategy. Consequently, in the cases, companies minimized their reputational damage when responding to their stakeholders in an accommodative way, regardless of the “objective” situation, which might be a change of paradigm in crisis management.

The use of social media to communicate child health information to low-income parents: A formative study

The Internet, and specifically web 2.0 social media applications, offers an innovative method for communicating child health information to low-income parents. The main objective of this study was to use qualitative data to determine the value of using social media to reach low-income parents with child health information. A qualitative formative evaluation employing focus groups was used to determine the value of using social media for dissemination of child health information. Inclusion criteria included: (1) a parent with a child that attends a school in a designated Central Texas school district; and (2) English-speaking. The students who attend these schools are generally economically disadvantaged and are predominately Hispanic. The classic analysis strategy was used for data analysis. Focus group participants (n=19) were female (95%); White (53%), Hispanic (42%) or African American (5%); and received government assistance (63%). Most had access to the Internet (74%) and were likely to have low health literacy (53%). The most preferred source of child health information was the family pediatrician or general practitioner. Many participants were familiar with social media applications and had profiles on popular social networking sites, but used them infrequently. Objections to social media sites as sources of child health information included lack of credibility and parent time. Social media has excellent potential for reaching low-income parents when used as part of a multi-channel communication campaign. Further research should focus on the most effective type and format of messages that can promote behavior change in this population, such as story-telling. ^

Estudio del fenómeno Social Media en la pequeña empresa del sector TIC español

En un mundo en el que cada vez son más las personas que utilizan Internet para llevar a cabo sus comunicaciones y relaciones, tanto a nivel personal como profesional, las Redes Sociales se han convertido en una herramienta, para muchos imprescindible, de interacción social. A lo largo de este proyecto se realizará un análisis exhaustivo de las características del ya conocido como Fenómeno Social Media, para posteriormente centrar toda la atención en las ventajas y desventajas de dicha actividad en el ámbito empresarial. Dado que hasta el momento no se ha encontrado ningún otro estudio que trate el Fenómeno Social Media en la Pequeña Empresa del sector TIC español, el objetivo principal del proyecto se centra en conocer la influencia que las Redes Sociales están generando en la estrategia empresarial de dicho sector de empresas, cuyas características y particularidades hacen de ellas un modelo de negocio único y diferente y cuyo número se ha visto incrementado en los últimos años, debido quizás, a la situación de crisis que atraviesa el país. Para ello, se analizarán las ventajas e inconvenientes que se derivan de su uso, como afecta a la creación de valor, y, finalmente, cual es el nivel de implicación y/o inversión que la Pequeña Empresa ha adoptado al respecto. Dentro de este marco, se pretende realizar un énfasis especial en el concepto de cocreación de valor y sus variantes (Crowdsourcing, Open Innovation e Innovación Orientada por las Personas), que permita determinar el grado de importancia del usuario como generador de valor. Posteriormente, en la parte práctica, se llevará a cabo un amplio estudio de mercado, a partir de una encuesta online realizada a un conjunto de empresas, cuidadosamente seleccionadas de entre más de 100.000 compañías, según su sector de actividad, número de empleados y volumen de negocios anual, y cuyos resultados serán analizados con la intención de obtener una visión clara del comportamiento global de las empresas seleccionadas. Por último, tomaremos de referencia las dos últimas publicaciones anuales del “Observatorio sobre el uso de las Redes Sociales en las Pymes españolas” (2011 y 2013), estudios dedicados íntegramente a Redes Sociales y Pymes, y cuya información, junto con los resultados obtenidos de nuestro estudio, nos permitirán determinar la tendencia actual y futura, y en consecuencia, obtener las conclusiones oportunas que nos permitan dar respuesta a las cuestiones planteadas durante la realización del proyecto, y determinar si nos encontramos o no ante una verdadera fuente de éxito empresarial. ABSTRACT. In a world where more and more people are using the Internet to perform their communications and relationships, both personally and professionally, Social Networks have become a social interaction tool, indispensable for many people. Throughout this project we will perform a thorough analysis of the characteristics of the Social Media Phenomenon, focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of such activity in a business scope. Given that we have not found no study on the Social Media Phenomenon in Small Business of the Spanish ICT sector, the main objective of this project is to establish the influence that Social Networks are generating in the business strategy of this business sector, the characteristics and peculiarities that make them a unique and different business model and whose number has increased in recent years, perhaps due to the crisis the country is facing. To do this, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages derived from its use, how it affects value creation, and finally, what is the level of involvement and / or investment that the Small Business has taken in this regard. In this context, we intend to make a special emphasis on the concept of value co-creation and its variants (Crowdsourcing, Open Innovation and People Oriented Innovation), to determine the degree of importance of the user to value generator. Subsequently, on the practical section, out a comprehensive market study will be carried, based on an online test to a group of enterprises, carefully selected from more than 100,000 companies, according to their sector of activity, number of employees and annual turnover, and the results will be analyzed with the intention to get a clear view of the selected company's overall performance. Finally, we will take as reference the last two annual publications of the "Observatory on the use of Social Networks in Spanish SMEs" (2011 and 2013), entirely dedicated to Social Media and SMEs studies, and whose information, together with the results obtained in our study will allow us to determine the current and future trends, and consequently, obtain the appropriate conclusions to respond to the raised questions throughout the project, and determine whether or not they are a real source of business success.

Definición de un proceso para la creación de perfiles institucionales en redes sociales de acuerdo a su estrategia de Social Media Marketing

Desde el 23 de febrero de 2004 la ETS Ingenieros Informáticos posee un perfil en dos redes sociales: Twitter y Facebook. Desde un primer momento el departamento de Unidad de Imagen y Comunicación, encargado de dichos perfiles, ha tenido claro que este era solo el primer paso para aprovechar al máximo las ventajas de las redes sociales en un contexto educativo universitario. En este trabajo se quiere dar forma a esa aspiración desarrollando una expansión del uso de las redes sociales. En este trabajo se analizan los seis primeros meses de trabajo con el perfil de Twitter y la página de Facebook con el objetivo de averiguar qué ha funcionado y qué ha fallado en la estrategia inicial prevista. Primero, se plantea un acercamiento desde el punto de vista estadístico con los datos que arrojan diferentes herramientas de análisis social y después, desde el punto de vista personal con las respuestas de la propia comunidad de la Escuela a una encuesta de satisfacción con los nuevos canales de comunicación. Además, de cara a la creación de nuevos perfiles se analiza el trabajo que realizan en ellas otras universidades y escuelas de informáticas. Con todos los datos sobre el trabajo previo se construyen una serie de buenas prácticas para instituciones universitarias en redes sociales que servirán para desarrollar los planes editoriales de dos nuevos perfiles: un canal de YouTube y una página de LinkedIn. Para terminar, se deja constancia de todo el proceso realizado en una metodología propia que servirá para poder seguir aumentando la red social de la escuela en el futuro con un enfoque en el alumno y que se fundamentará en el análisis y la mejora constante. Se espera que esta metodología pueda servir de modelo para la creación de perfiles sociales en otras universidades o para mejorar las ya existentes.---aBSTRACT---Since February 23rd of 2014, ETS Ingenieros Informáticos had a profile in two of the most popular social networks: Twitter and Facebook. From the beginning, the Communication Department in charge of these profiles knew that this was only a starting point to take advantage of all the advantages that social networks can bring to a higher education context. Thus, this paper aims at developing an expansion of the use of social networks. The present paper analyses the first sixth months of the use of the Twitter profile and the Facebook page to determine the aspects of the initial strategy that worked successfully and those that needed improvement. Firstly, I present a statistical approach the data from a statistical point of view taking into account all the information provided by the different social analysis tools. Then, I complement this first approach with a more personal point of view including the answers of the university community to a satisfaction survey regarding the new communication channels. Finally, in order to create new profiles, other universities’ work is reviewed and examined in depth. Taking into account the previous work, a series of good practices for university institutions is developed in order to be used as the basis of the new social plan to include two new social networks: a YouTube channel and a LinkedIn page. Finally, the whole process is described in a methodology that could be used to increase the School’s social network in the future. This procedure is student-centred and based on the constant analysis and improvement of the results. It is hoped that this methodology could be used as an example of a social network profile creation or improvement for other universities’ strategy.

Fashion in Actions on Social Media – Spanish SME Fashion Brands Case Studies

Fashion is one of the most vibrant sectors in Europe and important contributors to the European Union (EU) economy. In particular, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play a major part in European fashion industry (EU 2012). Just like fashion, where people¿s style has inherently meant to be shared as it is foremost a representation of one¿s self-image, social media allow the reflection of ones' personality and emotions. Although fashion practitioners have embraced social media in their marketing activities, it is still relatively few known at an academic level about the specificities of fashion industry when approaching social media marketing (SMM) strategies. This study sets out to explore fashion companies' SMM strategy and its activities. From an exploratory approach, we present case studies of two Spanish SME fashion companies, anonymously named hereafter as Company A and Company B, to deepen our understanding on how fashion brands implement their SMM strategy. Company A offers high-end fashion products while Company B produces medium fashion products. We analyzed the case studies using qualitative (interviews to companies' executives) and a mix of qualitative and quantitative (content analysis of companies' social media platform) methods. Public posts data of both companies' Facebook brand pages were used to perform the content analysis. Our findings through case studies of the two companies reveal that branding-oriented strategic objectives are the main drivers of their SMM implementations. There are significant differences between both companies. The main strategic action employed by Company A is engaging customers to participate into brand's offline social gathering events by inviting them through social media platform, while Company B focuses its effort on posting product promotion related contents and engaging influencers such as fashion bloggers. Our results are expected to serve as a basis of further investigations on how SMM strategy and strategic actions implemented by fashion brands may influence marketing outcomes.

Corporate Social Media: How Two-Way Disclosure Channels Influence Investors

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

The New (Marketing) Role of Firms as Media Content Providers – The case of SME’s Strategic Social Media Presence

In the new social media context, it is gradually more common to say that each party can itself be considered a media content provider, firms included (through their brand pages). This tendency is reflected in a rising professional field called “content marketing”. This study incorporates the perspective of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) into the scope of social media (SM) as a marketing communications and media content distribution system. In an exploratory content analysis of 20 official SM brand pages with 1281 analyzed posts the authors study how SMEs respond to the advent of a new paradigm of marketing communications with special attention to their usage of media-specific contents. SM impels companies to eventually rethink the traditional one-way communication flow of their marketing messages and to incorporate a new, two-way communication into their marketing strategy, where (their engaged and involved) users can create, modify, share and discuss content related to the firm’s activity. This study’s preliminary results show that diffusing content generally acts for SMEs as a facilitator to involve fans by offering a thematized space for them to manifest themselves in company-related topics. Therefore, content adds to the firms’ possibilities of brand positioning by offering a reflection of fans’ company- and contentrelated behavior, which is a supplementary source of information.

The Attributes of Social Media as a Strategic Marketing Communication Tool

New digital trends are transforming the media industry landscape, modifying elemental characteristics and attitudes of companies as well as of consumers. Firms often claim that their presence in social media (SM) is a key element to success. SM helps companies rethink the traditional one-way flow of their marketing messages and to incorporate a new interactive pattern into their communications. Nevertheless, these tendencies involve problems of strategic myopia for firms that do not structurally integrate these tools. One main problem is that institutions can rarely differentiate between the various types of SM and the attributes thereof, while the literature equally reveals a number of contradictions in the subject. The present conceptual paper lays the foundations of a strategic approach to SM and discusses its theoretical implications. Following an overview on the concept of SM, through a content analysis of the specialized management literature (n = 14), we present various best practices and reflect on the apparent lack of strategic thinking in using SM as a marketing application. Then, we compare these practical examples with general marketing strategy theory. By merging theory and practice, we aim to provide an insight towards a well-founded application of SM as a genuinely strategic marketing tool.