Specific Social Media Tools and Measuring Engagement - Essay Example

Analyzing Social Media of the of the Contents Contents 2 3 Introduction 4 Research on Specific Social Media Tools 4 Measuring Engagement 6 Best practices 8 Conclusion 8 References 10 Abstract The growing importance of social media, as an effective mode of marketing, is analyzed in details in this paper. The structure is divided into three main parts. The first part will discuss tools, which are used in social media marketing by various organizations, to reach out to their customers. The second part of the project deals with measurement of the social buzz, which underlines the influence of social media in impacting decisions of consumers. The final part discusses the case of Hubspot and understands the strategic use of SMM in strengthening the organizational image. Introduction Social media marketing (SMM) is one of the most talked about marketing techniques in the last decade. It is a marketing technique, which uses social media at its core and is quite different from traditional methods of marketing using television or print mediums. The content of social media is created by regular people, using highly accessible and scalable technologies like, blogs, message boards, podcasts, micro-blogs and social networks, to name a few. The rise in the wave of social media has emerged from the quick feedback, which is associated with it. This is because advertising through television, radio or newspaper cannot be interactive and even if customers disagree with a particular content in a newspaper or magazine, they cannot give an instant feedback. This makes social media unique as customers can directly interact with organizations and helps the latter to better understand their customers. The purpose of this project is to study the ways in which social media has been used in marketing of large and small brands. The paper is divided into three parts and each part deals with the analysis of social media in marketing. Research on Specific Social Media Tools Social media is crumbling the geographic walls between companies and customers and has become one of the most significant methods of marketing, since the discovery of television. The most common forms of social media that is used by companies and brands to promote themselves include blogs, forum, message boards, pictures and video sharing sites, user-generated sites, wikis and podcasts. They have been employed extensively by both large and small brands in order to reach out to customers, like, Nike, Dukin’ Donuts, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble and Jet Blue, to name a few (Borges, 2009). Social media is definitely much cheaper than traditional media and has provided a large boost for companies to employ social media for their advertising purposes. There are certain differences between traditional and social media: Firstly, responsibility for the content in social media is generally shared, while for traditional media, the same is borne by the author who develops the content. Secondly, the content of social media is either printed or produced, while that of social media is developed almost continuously. Thirdly, in traditional media, the mode of delivery is distinct, where one person is the sender and the other one is the receiver; whereas, the mode of delivery in social media is two-way, where everyone is a producer as well as consumer. Fourthly, feedback mechanisms of social media are instantaneous, whereas, that of traditional media is delayed in forms of ‘letters to the editors’. Fifthly, traditional media is restrained by finite space and storage, but social media is limitless, in terms of length or quantity. Finally, traditional media is constrained by cumbersome copyright requirements, high funding, elaborate corporate plans, whereas, social media is largely based on internet access and technology skills (Mergel & Greeves, 2012). IBM has created a very strong social network with more than 100 social blogs, more than a dozen virtual islands in Second life, twitter accounts and a popular forum called developer works. Dell, on the other hand, has created a very strong platform called ideastorm. Using this model, Dell has started to ship computers with Linux installed, which has added to the community support. Microsoft has also created a very strong social networking ground to reach out to customers. They are not only consumers of digital social media, but also the supplier of it. These attempts have been quite successful in raising awareness among customers. These website based applications have allowed customers to not only gain better awareness about company’s products, but also enabled employees to upload presentations or new ideas as contribution towards development of the company. These marketing moves are also interactive because users of the service can give ideas about new products and others can vote for them. People can even comment on the ideas that increase their attractiveness. The process is educative as both the customers and companies can learn from one another. These processes help to create communities for customers (Zarella, 2009). Measuring Engagement Though formal relationship between online buzz and offline influence is yet to be confirmed, there still is a strong relationship between the two. The conversations of people on social media often influence their real life conservations at workplaces, malls and home. One way of measuring the social buzz is to compare conversations regarding the brand of a particular company, before and after employing social media marketing campaign. The key measures that have been considered for measuring the qualitative aspect of monitoring the social media buzz include (Mitchell, et al., 2012): People Browser: This is a great tool to measure positive or negative reactions of people towards the brand. This platform can also be segmented into “students” and “bloggers” to recognize reactions in a better way. Social Mention: This tool provides an in-depth analysis of the sentiments of customers towards image of the brand and helps to categorize the reactions according to people as positive, negative or neutral, considering parameters like strength, passion and reach. Brand’s Eye: This protects the online reputation of a brand. It helps the company to track and manage consumer’s conservations online and to provide a real-time based feedback, which is quick and efficient. Heartbeat: This is a real-time social media monitoring and measurement tool, that helps to measure key metrics around the buzz and sentiment. It also allows engagement with opinion leaders and facilitates comparison of products with competitors. Alterian: An advanced tool that uses behavior statistics, demography, sentiment and trending topics, to understand influence of the brand for a better insight as well as analysis. Social media monitoring tools can either be free or enterprise level tools, which require high monthly investments. Social Mention, Mention, Hootsoot and Followerwonk are highly popular free social media monitoring tools. The paid one includes Customscoop (available at three different price levels), Trackur (four different price levels), Radian6 and Vision technologies. The paid ones are customized with additional benefits, tailored to suit needs of the enterprise and are highly popular at corporate levels (Weckerle, 2013). Social media advertising is not free. It has been observed that B2B businesses have a mere presence on social media. However, they do not use social media exclusively for marketing. SMM is often integrated with traditional paid media campaigns. Even so, customizing social media for the purpose of campaigning can involve from hundreds to thousands of dollars and it is extremely difficult to calculate the return on investment by business houses (Roberts & Zahay, 2012). Figure 1: Cost Benefit Analysis (Source: Authors creation) This is probably why a large number of B2B businesses did not embrace social media exclusively for their marketing campaigns. It is very difficult to establish a direct link between the hikes in sales of the company, based on social media marketing alone. Therefore, results appear to be mixed. This is because even though it cannot be strongly claimed that social media does nothing to improve visibility and sales of the company, yet at the same time, it also cannot be asserted as the only reliable way for a company to increase sales. One fact emerges clearly that use of SMM is not free. Best practices Best practices in social media marketing refer to the usage of social media by an organization, which has an impact of building a better reputation for the organization and expanding its business opportunities. The key to success in social media marketing is that the marketing plan should be flexible. This is because sometimes customers might use Twitter for customer service or existing customers might be active only on Facebook. The use of social media marketing should be adaptable as situations tend to change. Hubspot is one of the organizations, which has used social media marketing to its fullest and has achieved tremendous results. Before launching its social media campaign, Hubspot had carefully listened to its customers and considered them to identify its marketing goals and objectives. Two key parameters were identified by the company in its strategic marketing, namely customer base and importance of the content. The primary objective of the company was to generate leads and it achieved this by crafting the content efficiently to attract new customers. Hubspot started by identifying the customer’s persona, which helped it to obtain minute details about the lifestyle of their customers. This was essential for creating an appealing content. The company was of the strong opinion that a successful contentment is the core of any SMM. The organization had hired an editor from the New York Times to develop an appealing content, which proved beneficial in converting potential leads into customers. The range of social media platforms used by Hubspot includes blogs, webinars, video, Twitter, ebooks, LinkedIn, slideshare and Facebook (Barker, et al., 2012). Its social media helps to engage the existing customers into further interaction with the company. For example, if someone follows Hubspot on Twitter, it can lead the person to read a blog post about any topic of the company. This in turn may lead the person to download an ebook or attend a webinar on the same topic. To download the ebook or attend webinars, the person has to inevitably provide his email address and answer lead qualification questions. This process can convert random prospects into leads. Conclusion This paper has studied in details about the tools used, measurement of the engagement and best practices used in social media. The first section has studied about three organizations, namely Dell, IBM and Microsoft and provided an insight about usage of social media by these companies. The difference of traditional and social media was also discussed. The second part has pointed out some of the methods that are used by companies to measure the social buzz created in social media and put up a cost benefit analysis to understand the true worth of social media. The final part of the project studies the case of Hubspot as well as strategic usage of social media by the company to enhance its success. References Barker, M., Barker, D. I., Bormann, N. & Neher, K. (2012). Social Media Marketing: A Strategic Approach. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Borges, B. (2009). Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap Between Seller and Buyer Through Social Media Marketing. Tucson: Wheatmark Inc. Mergel, I. & Greeves, B. (2012). Social Media in the Public Sector Field Guide: Designing and Implementing Strategies and Policies. San Fransisco: John Wiley & Sons. Mitchell, M., Turner, J., Corbett, R. C. & Tasner, M. (2012). Measure the Impact of Online Marketing. New York: FT Press. Roberts, M. & Zahay, D. (2012). Internet Marketing: Integrating Online and Offline Strategies. Connecticut: Cengage Learning. Weckerle, A. (2013). Civility in the Digital Age: How Companies and People Can Triumph over Haters, Trolls, Bullies and Other Jerks. Washington, D.C.: Que Publishing. Zarella, D. (2009). The Social Media Marketing Book. Canada: OReilly Media Inc. Read More