The Social Media Strategy of a Retail Enterprise - Essay Example

Social Media In a business environment Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 4 Discussion 5 Conclusion and recommendation 9 Executive summary The report is focused on the social media strategy of a retail enterprise and its implementation. Various literature and researches have been evaluated to understand the importance and limitation of social media in the development of the retail industry. The five steps of social media success have been used to introduce social media strategies and their implementation in the organisation. The study has further offered valuable suggestions and recommendations to create a successful corporate blog and social networking account. Therefore, it has recommended a properly designed training program for the employees of the organisation to handle this social media sites. Introduction The report is based on the study of the importance of social media and social networking in the retail business sector. A thorough research of various literatures has been done to understand the importance of social media and social networking for the improvement of the business sectors. It has also been analysed that how the adoption of social media in a retail enterprise can transform the interaction procedure between the organisation and their stakeholders. The five steps of the social media success have been thoroughly followed to introduce new social media strategies for a retail enterprise. These steps include the analysis of the existing social media and social media trinity, integration of all the possible strategies, identification of resources and metrics implementation (Safko, 2010). This analysis is further focused on generating valuable strategies which will assist a retail enterprise to implement the successful usage of social media and network in their business development. It has described that how the incorporation of social media and network in business operation will support and enhance its internal as well as external communications and knowledge management. On the other hand the report has also indicated the obstacles and issues related to the adoption of social media in the business enterprise. The company which has been discussed in this study is a local enterprise. It has a total of 45 retail outlets which mainly deals in apparel and accessories. The organisation also has their website to sell their product but it is not very profit making. The organisation is introducing the kid garment segment in its 20 retail centres. Since last two years the organisation is facing a huge competition in the market. The retail industry is growing to be one of the largest sectors in the global market. There are a huge number of established retailers present in the market such as Wal-Mart, Sainsbury’s, Kroger, Tesco, Costco and Target. The presence of a large number of retailers enhances the competition in the market and each of them is trying to update themselves with all the advanced technologies (Constantinides, Romero and Boria, 2009). Their market approaches are improving as per the need of the consumers. The major players of retail industry have realized that it is very difficult to predict any business growth without incorporation of social media and social network. It is an integral part of human life and businesses development (Messinger and Narasimhan, 1997). Social media is not only a channel of advertisement for businesses any more, it is a tool to connect the targeted customers with all the sectors of business (Constantinides, Romero and Boria, 2009). They also have realized that technological advancement and utilization of social media enhances the in-store experience of the customer. Most of the retailers are successfully using social computing as a part of their marketing strategy. The majority of leading retailers have their presence in the social media through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc (Messinger and Narasimhan, 1997). Social networking helps retailers to establish a close-knit relationship with the consumer by listening to their complaints, reviews, opinions and suggestions. It also helps them to improve their services and increase selling opportunities (Messinger and Narasimhan, 1997). Discussion Review of literature and practice In the last few years various studies have shown that the social media is a new tool for business communication. It is a collection of different online applications which exemplify the recent interactive stage of the internet. Nowadays these applications are very familiar to the businesses and consumers (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Most of the international business use social media and social networking for the sales, marketing, HR and communications (Nair and Kamboj, 2014). It has been shown that engaging customers in online shopping is as essential as creating an improved in-store experience for them. It ensures consumers satisfaction in the purchase procedure and increases the sales of the company (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010). Social media and social network technologies are showing significant impact on the retail business sector. Buyers are increasingly using social networking channels for promotional offers, gift coupons, price and product comparison and company information. On the other hand, retail executives are also promoting the usage of these social media channels to increase the numbers of their customers. It also helps them to increase the customer experience and evaluate new ways to execute business (Park, Kee and Valenzuela, 2009). According to the researchers, retailers who are utilizing social media as a part of the marketing strategy, tend to use almost all social applications for their customers related purposes. It helps them to improve market communication, after sale services and customer relations (Lin and Lu, 2011). Different market studies have conveyed that famous social medias such as Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Linkedin is attracting near about hundreds and millions of customers across the globe (Geddes-Zoltess, 2012). The development of web 2.0 and web 3.0 has influenced businesses to create a strong and collaborative experience for customers (Nair and Kamboj, 2014). Studies have shown that development of these technologies, applications and devices has increased the communication of masses which has the capability to accumulate the global audience (Castells, 2011). Social media helps retailers to improve their market intelligence and collect added advantages over their competitors. Various studies have described that the market positioning is very strong for those retail houses which have their presence over different social networks in comparison to those who does not (Geddes-Zoltess, 2012). A social media management dashboard, Hootsuite, promotes their contents through Twitter ads. These ads help them to increase reach and improve demand generation (Geddes-Zoltess, 2012). According to few surveys by Social Media Observatory depicts that near about 65% of users in Facebook are following some brands in that social media and 33% are following different brands in Twitter (Nair and Kamboj, 2014). Market researchers have mentioned that social media and social networking has been utilized in three different ways to facilitate the marketing procedure in retail sector. It is primarily used in the retail sector as a medium of communication to convey the information of the organisation, product and services (Bondarouk and Olivas-Lujan, 2013). It has also been utilized as a tool to influence customer interactions. It plays an important role to help customers to gain product knowledge and influence their decision-making process. In the third level, retailers personally sell their product through the social networking sites (Li, 2013). Researchers have proved that the mass collaboration of social network enhances transparency and positive participation between organisation and customers. Some studies have suggested that the usage of social media by the strategic planners helps them to gather required knowledge about the consumers (Bondarouk and Olivas-Lujan, 2013). The major social networks such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter are inclined towards relationship building where few of them such as Xing and Linkedin have a professional and political slope (Zhou, Wu and Luo, 2007). A number of studies have proven that these social media are one of the best places for retail organisations to connect with the consumers. These sites generate the psychological urge of consumers to communicate and share this information with people having similar passion (Charlesworth, 2014). Social commerce study by a marketing communication organisation, J. Walter Thompson (JWT), has shown that near about 40% of male consumers and 60% of female consumers are more likely to purchase any product if it is being recommended by any friend over the social media (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). Apart from the benefits of social media, businesses are also getting aware about their in competencies. A social media strategy leads to generate desire on consumers but it does not confirm the purchase of the product. A study by Ad Age has shown that just 17% of marketing professionals believes in using social media strategy to generate their sales leads (Meister and Willyerd, 2010). A number of retailers have found that it is very difficult to build a customer base in social network and to influence them to be an avid shopper (Kietzmann, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre, 2011). Various retailers such as GAP and JC Penny have opened active Facebook communities followed by Facebook store to enhance their audience engagement. In a short span of time they need to shut down this Facebook commerce as they were not very easy to maintain (Saravanakumar and Suganthalakshmi, 2012). Application assessment tools and their purpose and activities A proper social media strategy is very necessary for any organisation to target the right customers and increase the sale. The primary responsibility of a social media strategy is to increase the desire for products and generating leads. The procedure of introducing an effective social media strategy in the retail enterprise follows the five steps of the social media success. The first step is the analysis of the existing media used by the enterprise. The organisation needs to analyse its current marketing plan, campaign and strategies. This step also helps to compare the cost of the company with customer acquisition (Safko, 2010). The primary marketing strategy of this organisation is to increase its online customer base. Customers prefer to buy staffs online as it is less time consuming and provide them the capability to compare a large number of brand in a short span of time. Another marketing strategy is to promote the kids brand section to attract new customers to buy this brand from their physical and online stores. The annual cost of web development for the online marketing site is near about $32,000 which includes upgradation and basic content management of the website of approximately 15 pages (Executionists, 2014a). The establishment of the new kid garment segment is generating a cost of near about $2.5 million including its advertisement (Executionists, 2014a). The next step is the social media trinity which focuses on the most important categories of social media such as blogging, micro blogging and social networking. These three elements of social media strategy are the essential tactics to adopt and support the online presence. A blog represents a location in the web which helps any organisation to post the information about their organisation. This includes their public strategy and reason behind their new ventures and investments. Micro blogging on the other hand helps businesses to connect with the prospects, customers and stakeholders through formal and informal conversation. The conversation through various micro blogging phenomenons, such as Twitter, gives a clear image of organisation and their strategies to their stakeholders. The content of micro blogging cannot be referenced in further conversation with stakeholders as it is not indexed by any search engine. The third component of this trinity is social networking. Popular links such as Facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, Ning and Plaxo are used to share information with general public (Groves, 2009). The third step influences the discussion of the integration of these social media trinity into the primarily mentioned market strategies of the organisation. The retail enterprise needs to build a blog onto their existing website. This blog will help them to convey the information about their new kid garments venture. This will also give a broad view about their online marketing options to their new customers. Maintaining the content of the blog is an important step for the enterprise after its creation. This blog will be important to update information regarding promos, discounts and new products. Creating and maintaining the blog will help them to connect with their existing customers and their internal workforce to gather their opinion to improve the brand. It will also help them to connect with potential investors and customers to promote their products and new ventures. The organisation needs to select more than one suitable social network to attract new customers from different age groups and different social backgrounds. The unfettered communications between customers and the enterprise will round out the social media strategy of the organisation. The fourth step of the social media success in the retail enterprise involves the resource allocation for the proper execution of the strategies. The two main resources for the implementation of the strategies are financial resource and human resources (Geddes-Zoltess, 2012). The financial resource is essential to create and maintain the blog and social network advertisement. After allocating the finances for this project the organisation needs to allocate required man power to execute these strategies successfully. The final step is the successful implementation of these strategies. The primary stage of the implementation is to create a blog in their company website. The cost of building blog is a onetime investment that varies from $1000 to $2500 (Executionists, 2014b). They need to hire new people to maintain the contents of this blog. Depending upon the frequency and the length of new content publishing on the blog, the cost of maintenance can vary from $1800 to $2000 per month (Executionists, 2014b). Thereafter, the organisation needs to create new accounts in the suitable social networks and arrange people who will maintain these sites and interact with the customers. They must arrange few training programs for their employees to understand the proper utilization of the blog and micro blogging and social networking. To set up a new social network account and providing limited training to the business partners and online PR agents may cost near about $5000 per month. The annual cost of the implementation of the strategies may vary from $96,000 to $120,000 (The content factory, 2014). Relevance to sector The implementation of these strategies will be widely beneficial to the retail enterprise. The proper blogging, micro blogging and social networking will help them to strengthen their position in the market and in their customer’s mind. It will give them the added advantage to gather the opinion of existing and new customers and convey their prospects and new ventures to them. These social media will help them to get in touch with customer complaints as well. Consumers are getting more tech savvy and they want to save their time through online comparison of products and prices. Therefore, the current retail industry is focusing on the social media advertising to capture a huge market. These strategies will help the company to have a competitive advantage in the market. The costs of the implementation of these strategies are very low and ensure maximum profit and market acquisition. Impact analysis The implementation of the social media strategies has a positive impact on the internal and external stakeholders of that enterprise. The internal stakeholders of an organisation, the employees, have an urge to get connected to all the levels of the company. Social media will give them the ease and freedom to connect to all the levels of the organisation. It will also help the top management to convey a uniform guideline for all the branches of the organisation. The external stakeholders such as the existing and new customers can easily gather information about the organisation and their offerings. It can help the existing customers to share their suggestions and complaints easily. New customers can compare their preferred brands with the offering of the organisation in terms of product availability, promos and discounts. Conclusion and recommendation The report has given a broad view about the research and market analysis of the effect of social media in the retail industry. All the benefits of the social media strategy and their limitations have been discussed in the study. The in-depth study of the five steps of the social media success of the retail organisation helps them to understand market opportunities in terms of customer preferences and available technologies. It has given an in-depth knowledge about the usage and benefits of the social media trinity in their dealing with internal and external stakeholders and knowledge management. The study has broadly discussed about the current marketing initiatives of the organisation and the scope of social media in proper execution of those initiatives. It has also been proved to be useful to the organisation to understand the property and benefits of different social media available in the market. The five step model of social media success helps the retail enterprise to set a budget for their new venture. It plays a positive role in the selection and execution of different social media strategy. These social media strategies will help the retail organisation to achieve huge profit with minimum investment. The analysis of the different steps of the study helps in generating valuable recommendations for the successful implementation of the social media strategies. These recommendations will help the organisation to properly design the execution path of the strategies. It will also assist the organisation to strengthen the relationship with their external and internal stakeholders. The organisation needs to allocate their finances as per the different stages of the strategy. They need to generate this cost from the profit they have made through their successful apparel stores. The financial resources should be divided into four major parts such as creation of new blog, cost for time to time content update and maintenance of the blog, the creation of social network account and training program for the employees. Few personnel from the finance department need to be allocated to track the proper utilisation of the resource. A corporate blog should be designed in such a way so that it can highlight the company’s industry knowledge. The organisation needs to hire professionals to create and maintain blog for them. Few personnel need to be trained to update the blog time to time with the required information. The strong integration between blog and corporate website is very important. Hosting the blog in any third party website will not provide desired result to them and it may confuse their consumers. The retail organisation needs to use the blog posts in the newsletters and mobile application. Therefore, the design of the blog needs to be up to date and responsive so that it can adapt to different mobile phones and tablets. The main blog page should be structured in such a way that it will show the full blog contain for the ease of the stakeholders. The organisation can use snippet and featured image instead of full post for the main blog page. The content of the blog must focus on their targeted demographic rather than the competitors. The organisation must update new blog posts as frequently as possible. Delay in the post of new blog contents can send wrong message to the customers about the organisation. They should avoid vogue and meaningless blog titles. The blog title must carry the meaning of the entire blog post. It can positively influence the interest of the readers. They certainly need to avoid the industry jargons in their blog posts. Generally writers fail to notice those technical terms which may confuse the average blog visitors. The content writers of the blog must use easily understandable words and phrases. The organisation must keep an eye on the design and content of the blog and they must make it sure that the blog contains different videos and images apart from the text. This will make the blog look attractive to the stakeholders and can provide information to them in an entertaining way. Blogs can be used as an important source of educational tools for the existing and prospect consumers. The blog should contain diverse set of topics to ensure that it has been read, shared and revisited by the stakeholders. Creating an attractive blog does not ensure that it will successfully attract all the potential consumers. Apart from posting quality content, the organisation needs to share those contents through social media channels. Those blog posts should be shared through the famous social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. They need to create and maintain their corporate account on those social networking sites. They need to promote their social networking site to welcome maximum visitors before promoting their products through those sites. A team of employees need to be allocated for the time to time advertisement and maintenance of these sites. The team needs to ensure that they are avoiding over-post in these social network sites. Too many information at a time will confuse the stakeholders of the organisation. Corporate clients can avail the paid advertisement facility provided by various social networking sites. This will help them in their brand advertisement by appearing on the pages of unknown users (Mangold and Faulds, 2009). The organisation needs to purchase this paid ad facility and design it in an interesting and attractive manner to draw the attention of consumers toward their website. Finally, they need to design a training program for the employees to make them aware about the usage and benefits of these blog and social network sites. They need to hire few professional for the training program. This training program needs to be repeated after every three months to ensure that the workforce is updated with all the development of this area. The timely and proper implementation of the recommendations will help the organisation to successfully execute their social media strategy. It will further provide help to increase their customer database and successfully introduce their new business ventures. Reference List Bondarouk, T. and Olivas-Lujan, M. R., 2013. Social Media in Strategic Management. United Kingdom: Emerald Group Publishing. Castells, M., 2011. 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