Session 4 Blog: Further Thoughts on Corporate Social Media Strategy
Source: conversationagent.typepad.com
After reading the paper Social media? Get
serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, I get to
know more about the social media ecology and how firms can seize this
opportunity using social media to improve corporate image and profits. With the
development of social media, the role of consumers changed from passive
listeners to active users of the Internet. According the Fader and Winer
(2012), the growth of the web of social networking has resulted in
user-generated content, or UGC. By analyzing the seven building blocks of
social media-- identify, conversations, sharing, presence, relationships,
reputation and groups, firms can develop better strategies to monitor,
understand and response to different social media activities. Moreover, learning
how to harness user generated content, the corporation can reach more consumers.
From the corporation’s perspective, one of
the most important purpose of understanding social media is to advertise and
market their products and improve brand image and profits in the end. Through
the consumer’s interaction with a brand, we can easily find that the consumers
become active participants within the world of social media and marketing and are more like co-marketers of the firm. However, this new situation also poses challenge
for the corporation-- it is difficult to measure every positive effect which made
by various group of users in different kinds of social media, especially the non-quantitative
brand awareness and trust. Based on my personal interesting in social media
marketing, I take a further insight into the corporate social media marketing performance
measurement. As the picture showed below, we can realize what
a typical customer journey with a brand or product looks like, and there are
measurement opportunities at every stage of this journey.
source: thenextweb.com/socialmedia
Just like the seven building blocks of social media(Jan H. Kietzmann, 2011), we can focus on six big sections in this process-activity, reach, engagement, acquisition, conversion and retention and advocacy. To put it in detail, Activity means the output
of the firm’s social team, Reach stands for the audience and potential audience,
and Engagement shows consumers’ interactions and interest in the brand. Other
factors including creating a relationship, actions, sales and brand evangelists. In practice, the corporation can choose to concentrate
on several metrics as Key Performance Indicators of social media. By analyzing
those KPIs, corporations can learn more about their performance effects and
improve their social media strategies.
In the
end, I would like to share an interesting video about social media marketing
with you. Hope you enjoy it:)
Hi Xiaoxue,
ReplyDeleteThe picture you showed in the post is really organized and interesting, offering us a sense of the process about "a typical customer journey with a brand or product". I guess that most of the time, a majority of customers including myself do not seriously and theoretically think about what we do in situations regarding merchandise, so it is quite refreshing to see the definitions and explanations you have given about this topic and it is also intriguing to learn about our own behaviors. I notice that you also mentioned that you personally are interested in social media marketing, I would like to know what kind of aspect do you think plays the most central role in this field? Or there is no central role because every element or each step of the process is equally important?
Thanks for reading and leaving a comment Qinqin. From my perspective, even though there are various attractive forms of social media marketing, the content quality is still the "king" of this field.
DeleteThanks for sharing! I really appreciated how you enriched the author’s seven blocks of social media with the visual on user/customer journey as a receiver of social media marketing efforts from big companies. I notice similarities with the reader to leader framework in that while everyone is a target, only a few become members(contributors) or even advocates (leader). It is also interesting that you point out how to measure the “positive effects” of social media marketing efforts. In terms of building brand awareness and trust, I feel that many consumers today are turned-off by advertising and/or are least likely to trust a company that spends big dollars on marketing. For example, sponsored ads on instagram and facebook has an implication that “hey, you should pay attention to this post because this company said so”, and even when you swipe through the carousel, the photos look too professional. It’s especially deceiving with ads that introduce new products and ask you to buy them. I had a recent experience where I was interested in the ad of a new company that looked innovative, so I clicked to check out their store. I thought that because they are a new company and they have a nice website and nice pictures, then they would be more trustworthy (because they want to build their brand and have relationship with their new customers). I purchased a product with the logic that I would be helping this new company, and the product I received was not at all like the quality of the photos in the product page. Even with multiple photos and multiple angles of the product, what I received in the mail did not have the same quality that I expected. For me as a customer, I was very frustrated with my purchase and felt that I had been cheated by the company. Because I was attracted from Instagram, I also felt that my personal space was invaded by a big corporation - since I use instagram to follow people I know and like. It brings to question whether companies making use of social media for their marketing platforms is a good way of reaching the audience or if it will just make the audience immune to “Sponsored” content the way that billboard posters on buildings are obsolete because people know that it’s been curated and paid for by a big company.
ReplyDeleteHi Julliene, many thanks for your inspiring comment ! I am impressed with your saying about the reader to leader framework, and I think it is amazing to link the new knowledge with with what we have learned in the previous studies. In addition, I really appreciate the example you shared about your personal experience of daily life, which makes me think further on this topic:)
DeleteI think using social media for advertising can be a double edged sword. For some people, social media is their personal space, so advertising can feel intrusive. I've used the word "intrusive" to describe the end goal of using big data as well, since the end goal of big data is usually making a profit off of advertising
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the consumers can use social media as a platform to advocate or denounce products through reviews or social media posts. But as some consumers are starting to see, some reviews are "fake", bought or sponsored. This can spread misinformation, but also cause consumers to lose trust in a brand.
Hi June, thanks for your comment. I agree that using social media for advertising can be a double edged sword. It is true that those ads automatically occurred in our social media platform are intrusive sometimes, yet some of the ads can provide useful information of products that based on your personal interests——the usage of big data is achieving this kind of goal. Therefore, I still believe that social media marketing is getting better.
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