social media marketing definition and strategy
Social media marketing is a marketing term that refers to the use of social media to promote a product or service.
Social media is part of a logic of online collaboration and collective intelligence, integrating technology, social interaction and content creation. Marketers increasingly use them in their strategy and exploit them taking into account the different characteristics of the media in order to optimize the effectiveness of the actions carried out.
The different types of social media
Digital social networks
They are often confused with social media, but they are nevertheless very different from other media in terms of usage, forms of communication and social relations. The primary use of these systems is to find friends or acquaintances, and to exchange with them through easy and immediate means of communication. They can interact through public and private messages, groups and events, games and applications. This together creates a social attractiveness. Are considered as digital social networks, Facebook, MySpace.
Networking (networking site)
Its technical characteristics are quite similar to those of digital social networks, which is why they are often confused, but the objectives are distinct. Networking such as LinkedIn and Viadeo is indeed intended to "promote professional careers".
The blogs
The term blog is a shortcut to "weblog", which probably appeared in the late 1990s with Jorn Barger. The blog can be defined as an "online diary". The major advantage of the blog is probably its ease of use. It generally consists of a succession of articles, organized from the most recent to the oldest, containing text, photos, audio or videos. Interaction is present through the comments that readers can publish, which is the author's main objective. This participation in the blog's content leads to a social dynamic, hence its membership in social media.
Micro-blogging
As its name suggests, microblogs are small blogs, broadcasting short messages from users, dedicated to a group of subscribers. They are quite similar to digital social networks, but are distinguished by the absence of community functions such as the creation of thematic groups, private messages or the exchange of images. On microblogging services, only the broadcasting of public messages is possible. The most used microblogging site is Twitter, followed by Tumblr.
Multimedia sharing
We share text, but also music, videos and images. Social networks, including Facebook, exploit this principle of sharing. Other sharing sites specialize in video such as Dailymotion. They allow "interaction between users, usually by allowing them to share the files they like". In addition, there is the possibility of commenting and communicating with users in a private way.
Online communities
The main practice of online communities is exchange. They are defined as platforms through which particular groups form around common values and interests, bringing them together and giving them a sense of belonging.
Geolocation
This service allows you to identify your geographical position using your smartphone and transmit it to other users or to check if there are other users in the vicinity. Its objective is to "create face-to-face contacts through a virtual network". The main geolocation services currently available are Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt.
Wikis
Wikis are online applications that allow a large number of users to build and modify content. They give way to a logic of universal collaboration. The most consulted is Wikipedia, but there are others such as Wookieepadia, Bibliopedia or InnoCentive
The interest and objectives of social media for marketing
Marketing through social networks is a recent approach that uses these networks to convince potential consumers of the quality of the products or services a company offers. Marketing is developing very quickly, especially on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, etc. A recent study showed, for example, that among the large companies in the Forbes 100 ranking, 84% of them have visibility on at least one social network.
Along with the popularity of Instagram these days, it has become an important platform between different companies in terms of marketing. The number of Instagram followers and opinions on each publication is important to most companies around the world, and these figures are sometimes converted into each company's success rates.
Objectives of the project
A company that wants to communicate on social networks must have a strategy with clear objectives
defined:
provide information on the brand, product or service offered;
present this information carefully to create empathy among users;
save the time of the user who does not have to make much effort to have the information at his disposal;
publish new content several times a week in order to build loyalty and keep the community;
provide incentives to purchase (e. g. through promotions and discounts);
follow a strategic monitoring approach by observing what is said about the company and its competitors in order to be able to react if necessary.
This general corporate strategy has led to the development of the community manager profession.
Interests
The company's interests are:
the availability of a means of communication with its customers and other potential consumers;
the possibility of customizing the brand or product. Customers then have the impression that they are talking to the brand and no longer to the company;
the opportunity for clients to inform and assist other clients;
some sites offer the possibility of targeted advertising for a group
specific;
create traffic on the company's website and blog;
the formation of a virtual community for the consumption of the product or brand. This community will react with appreciations, criticisms and suggestions that can only be useful in return for the company's marketing policy.
Benefits
Marketing on social networks allows the company to benefit from the wisdom and experience of consumers. A large majority of fans of a brand on Facebook, for example, would recommend it to friends.
Marketers have the opportunity to get feedback from customers in the form of suggestions, grievances and complaints.
They can also identify influence groups and virtual consumer communities that can become brand ambassadors and contribute to the growth of brand awareness.
Another important benefit is that marketing on social networks has a cost close to zero (compared to the costs of traditional marketing programs) especially since most social networking sites are free.
Social Media Strategies
Strategies implemented
There are many companies using social media. Thus some authors have sought to define an effective social media marketing strategy by analyzing the methodologies and practices used by these companies on social media.
The authors regularly highlight the fact that the social media marketing strategy is part of the company's digital strategy, which is itself a component of the marketing strategy. It must therefore be consistent with other e-marketing actions and with the overall marketing strategy. In addition, social media marketing strategy is a long-term strategy, so do not expect immediate results. Finally, all authors agree that for an effective social media marketing strategy to be effective, it requires active participation on social media, allowing users to track and interact with the brand. Interaction with customers will provide interesting information and ideas for companies that can sometimes improve their product or service. It is therefore important to know how to take advantage of the different social media sites for an effective strategy.
The construction of the social media strategy is done in stages. One of the mistakes regularly made by companies is precisely the lack of upstream analysis, as the author shows in the following sentence: "The lack of upstream reflection inevitably leads (at best) to overly dispersed actions that could be more effective or (at worst) to inefficient, even counterproductive actions". The first step is strategic analysis, which consists of listening and seeking information about what is said about the brand, who is talking about the brand (potential customers) or about competitors. This analysis phase should make it possible to define a main objective and several sub-objectives (which can be quantitative or qualitative) where social media can make a real contribution.
Strategic planning comes second. In this second phase, the company will choose its positioning on social media, which may be a little different from the corporate positioning to be more adapted to the targeted targets. The company must then choose the social media to use based on the objectives and their benefits, since not all social media are relevant to the same needs. This choice is not final, it may change over time. Then it will have to choose the most effective devices by which the community can interact with the brand.
Finally, the last step is the planning of actions and content, i.e. the elaboration of a schedule containing the actions carried out and the content communicated on social media in order to avoid repetitions. This tool makes it possible to give visibility to the strategy and to show the coherence between the actions carried out, the content communicated and the strategic objectives.
As with any strategy, it is necessary for the company to evaluate its marketing strategy via social media using indicators and to be able to challenge it regularly.
Examples of strategies include
Some companies, associations and politicians have implemented effective social media strategies and can serve as examples:
WestJet Airlines of Canada, which distributed Christmas gifts to its passengers in 2013, then broadcast a video of the operation on social media.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation reached all of San Francisco in 2013 with its Bat Kid campaign.
The non-profit organization Water Is Life obtained the value of one million days of drinking water by highlighting the complaints of privileged people through a video broadcast on social media.
Nike with its Make it Count campaign using YouTube, Instagram or Tweeter created a craze on social media in 2012. Its profit for the year increased by 18%.
During the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama had a strong presence on social media to differentiate his campaign.
Performance measurement and monitoring
Marketing actions on social media take different forms, which makes it more complex to analyze their performance. To do this, there are measures, some objective and others subjective.
In terms of objective measures, companies can measure their exposure in social media, i.e. the number of people in contact with the company via social media.
To measure this impact, different figures have to be taken into account:
The number of page views and unique visitors from the social platforms where the company operates. The question is how much of the traffic on the company's website comes from social media.
The number of fans and subscribers on social media pages. This includes Facebook and Myspace fans or Twitter subscribers.
Sharing and bookmarking. This involves checking how many positive votes or bookmarks the company has received and how often content is shared by users of these social media. This applies in particular to sites such as Digg or Delicious (website).
All this allows the company to compare its exposure across all social media and determine which one is most effective in terms of visibility.
The second objective measure concerns the involvement of our audience through social media.
The first indicator of this involvement is the exposure measure seen above. This refers to the number of unique visitors or pages viewed on your corporate site from social media. These figures will tell the company whether the public exposed to their Facebook messages, their tweets, has the motivation to visit the company's website.
The second indicator concerns the rebound rate. These are visitors to the company's website who leave it instantly because it does not correspond to what the public is looking for and thought they would find after the first contacts via social media. This is very negative because it means that the image that the company wants to convey via its site does not satisfy its target.
We then find the number of comments that a company's publications may have generated. The involvement is then proportional to the number of comments posted. The higher the number of comments, the more positive it is for the company.
Finally, the company can rely on the visit time and the number of pages visited by the target. The more time the visitor spends on the company's website, the more this leads to a solid relationship between the visitor and the company. This means that the first link created through social media has a positive outcome. This is the opposite of the rebound rate.
However, the company must remain vigilant because some social media, such as bookmarking, do not allow us to measure this involvement of visitors. Indeed, when an Internet user posts a link to our site on a community site, the number of people who visit it will not necessarily be interested. This will therefore increase the rebound rate but also the visit rate. However, not all visitors will turn into customers.
Subjective performance measures
In social media, human interactions remain subjective because it is difficult to measure the value of a conversation or the sharing of a bookmark.
It seems difficult if not impossible to objectively measure the quality of a conversation. The best conversations are those that will bring you as close as possible
customers to the company and its products. These are in-depth conversations about the company's products, about functions, assets, operations: customers seem really interested. The problem is that some people will take advantage of these social media and conversations to criticize the company and be negative. So these are not quality conversations.
Questions from customers who do not find an answer from the company are also negative conversations. The company must take every opportunity to engage in discussion with its customers and build a relationship with them. In general, the most important thing is to make the most of public exchanges to encourage potential and current customers to become increasingly involved in the company. It is through the community nature of social media that everyone will share their opinion about a company and its products, which will then be exposed to a new audience.
Different measures for each social media
Because social media are different from each other, the measures are different for each of them.
Measurement for social networks:
- The number of comments made following one of the company's articles of association.
- The number of fans or friends of the company.
- The number of discussions initiated and the number of responses received to these discussions.
- The number of videos and photos uploaded by the company's fans.
- The number of videos and photos in which the company appears.
- Direct traffic to the company's blog or website from a social networking site.
- The average time and number of pages visited.
Measures for bookmark sharing:
- The number of bookmarks that reference the company's website or blog.
- The number of comments received at About bookmarks.
- The number of votes, positive or negative, for these bookmarks.
- The traffic generated to the company's website by the bookmarking site.
- The average time and number of pages viewed by visitors coming from the sharing site.
Measurements for micro-blogging:
- The number of subscribers.
- The number of subscribers who respond to the company's tweets.
- The total number of responses received.
- The number of retweets of the company's messages
- The number of tweets generated by the company's hashtags.
Measures for social sharing:
- The number of times a photo or video is seen.
- The number of comments generated by a photo or video.
- The number of opinions, positive or negative.
- The number of times a photo or video has been added to a favorites list.
- The number of times a photo or video has been added to a group.
- The number of friends or subscribers to publications on the company's website.
The limits
However, it is difficult to assess the profitability of companies' marketing actions in social media. What matters most is the quality of the relationship between customers and the company. It is therefore a question of involvement, of degree of involvement rather than pure exposure.
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