Social Media Marketing: Foundation

Author

Affiliation

Ashish Kumar

School of Economics, Finance & Marketing
RMIT University

Social Networks

Networks are mechanisms or tools through which we analyze the relationships in social systems among entities that make up the system, which we call actors or nodes.

Relationships among actors/nodes can be of various kinds, and each type can give rise to a corresponding network. Node’s or actor’s position in a social network in conjunction with the type of relationship determines in part the constraints and opportunities that it faces. Therefore, identifying that position is important for predicting the actor’s outcomes such as behavior, performance, or beliefs.

For example, in a social network such as Facebook, nodes are individuals; in a cellular network, nodes could be towers (communication) or cells (biological).

Network Analysis at Three Levels

Dyad level

Pairwise relations between actors - `do a pair of actors with business ties tend to develop affective ties?’

Node level

Characteristics of nodes - `do actors with more friends tend to have a stronger immune system?’

Network level

Studying network as a whole - `do well-connected networks tend to diffuse ideas faster?’

Mathematical Representation of Network

Graphs are mathematical constructs to conceptualize networks. A graph \(G(V,E)\) consists of a set of vertices \(V\) (also called nodes or points) and a set of edges \(E\) (or links or lines).

The edges connect pair of vertices. When an edge connects two vertices, we say they are adjacent and hence have ‘a tie’. The number of edges incident on a node is called the `degree’ of that node.

How social networks form is a topic of intense research across various fields. For example, in social sciences, researchers have observed that people tend to have similar friends as the most pervasive feature of social networks. This tendency of individuals to bond with similar others is termed as homophily.

Social Media: Definition

Some of the most popular websites on the Internet are social media sites. These sites not only draw the maximum amount of web traffic, but users on these sites also tend to spend a significant amount of time.

Therefore, social media has transformed the mode of business tremendously. The various ways firms conduct businesses and consumers consume and experience products and services are greatly influenced by this technological revolution.

TipSocial Media

Social media is a platform for an online social network where nodes are users and connections (or ties) between these users are social in nature.

Social Media Strategies

Using social media can give firms a tremendous business advantage. However, social media differs from traditional marketing channels, and firms should be cognizant of the pitfalls of using it to their advantage. Therefore following are some of the social media strategies that a firm should follow:

Listen First, Act Second

Consumers primarily use social sites as a means of personal communication with friends and family. A marketer from a company may be regarded initially as an outsider to a certain extent. Carefully and patiently allow consumers to speak to and about the company before entering the conversation.

Engage and then Interact

Firms should first try to engage consumers in their products and services. Then, once this engagement has been established, they should start interacting with them, keeping their interests and preferences in mind.

Nurture Customer Relationships Through Social Media

Firms must carefully manage and devise opportunities to create and nurture relationships with customers through social medium. For example, maintaining a user-friendly social media site interface, providing regular updates about events, sending personalized messages to individual customers, and encouraging member contributions can create interactive communication that can enhance firm equity.

Be Wary; Not All Customers are Created Equal

Managers need to understand that not all customers will have a similar response to the firm’s social media efforts. Therefore, managers must integrate their knowledge about customers from offline and online social media sources to better serve them.

Create Product Based Social Media Forums

Managers can increase the response to social media participation by creating specialized subcommunities or discussion forums for customers looking for premium and unique products.

A Social Media Funnel

\(Awareness->Listening->Purchase->Advocacy\)

• Attention, Reach, Engagement, Sentiment
• Understand and quantify the list of social media followers
• Web-traffic, email opt-in, purchase
• Building advocacy to keep up with the changing requirement of users.

Advantage of Social Media Marketing

There are several advantages of using social media for marketing. Some of the benefits of social media over traditional marketing channels are :

• One-way (Monologue) vs. Two-way communication (Dialogue) vs. Three-way communication (Trialogue)
• Minimizing wasted efforts
• Ability to target a specific segment of consumers
• Formation of brand communities around ideas and commonalities, regardless of the physical location of their members.
• It creates a unique marketing channel that enables Paid, Earned, and Owned Media to be leveraged to create a virtuous cycle of brand impact. For example, Brands use display ads and other paid media (Paid) to attract Fans to the Brand Page (Owned), which serves as a platform for marketing communications that reach Fans and Friends of Fans (Earned) in the News Feed and other sections of the website.