The Usage of Viral Marketing - Case Study Example

The Impact of Social Media and Viral Marketing on Film Industry . Introduction Social media is an aspect that has led to the revolution in the means by which people communicate nowadays. Use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter has been part and parcel of the modern generation that comprises the youths. Many definitions have been brought forward to give a definition of social media. However, according to a Journalist and Social Media report released Europe in (2012), it defines social media as the use of web- based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Most of the social media platforms used today are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Myspace. These social media sites have made it easier to access information and also to a greater access of a variety of sources people and opinions. With the development of social media sites, movement of information from one person to the other has been made easier. It has made the world a global village because it brings people from different places together. Moreover, the social media has led to business marketing over the social media sites. Viral marketing is one of the aspects that has been used by people and organizations to market their products today. According to a study conducted by Pittsburgh, Ann and Palo (2006), they found out that viral marketing encourages customers to share product information to their friends and relatives. Dickman (2011) defines viral marketing as a marketing strategy in which people pass on a message on advertisement from one person to the other. Viral marketing is an aspect that should be considered when starting a business. According to Mitch (2013), social media is a vital tool in online marketing of products because it reaches a large audience; hence the brand is established quickly. With the rise of social media, face to face dialogue in the sale of product information has been eliminated. In social media marketing, a viral campaign framework should be put in place by the entrepreneurs to ensure that information about a product reaches the masses quickly. A viral campaign is a marketing strategy that makes it easy and fast for product information to reach the masses quickly. According to Leena (2010), social media is important because it enables marketers to be able to establish and also to extend the value of a brand. It also helps in the protection of the products reputation and also boosts its demand. According to Orel (2010), use of viral marketing tactics in online marketing builds consumer demand. Orel conducted an experiment on the usage of viral marketing on Facebook. This experiment showed how viral marketing in the social media platforms can create demand. The experiment aimed at promoting a restaurant group page to a predefined group of twenty Facebook users. The findings showed a strong passage of the message and hence led to more people joining the page. The number rose from twenty members to eighty members. The Spin framework. Spin framework is a social media marketing strategy devised by Mills, which can help in viral campaigns. It brings out what marketers should consider in the viral campaign of their products. In this framework, Mills came up with four factors that a marketer who intends to use social media for marketing should follow in order to make his or her viral campaign successful. The factors that Mills brought forward are: spreadability, propagativity, integration and nexus. Spreadability. For a marketer who intends to use social media for marketing, it is important that he or she perceives the audience to like his or her campaign. The marketer should aim at creating a positive perception about the product he or she is marketing to his or her audience. According to Mills (2012), when the audience is convinced the product being marketed is good, the audience involved will get motivated and they will spread information about the product because they perceive that members of their social network will feel the same way they felt during the campaign. Getting to win the audience perception about a product being marketed is important because it gives them the role to redistribute the marketer’s message to their friends. Implementation of this factor in the social media marketing plan is the hardest because different audiences have different perceptions about a product. Integration. Integration is another success factor in the social media marketing (Mills 2012). A social media marketing strategy that includes and integrates different social media platforms would be most effective in a marketing campaign. Integration of different social media platforms makes the dissemination of information about a product easier because the social media platforms are linked to one another. When the social media components are integrated, information is passed between different users of different social media platforms. For example, if a social media marketing strategy requires that a message should be sent via a video, then posting it on YouTube will allow it to be shared through other social media sites such as twitter, Google+, Facebook and email. Propagation A social media marketing strategy should consider the ease of spread of information. The marketing strategy should allow for the distribution of information by the audience with ease. For example, clicking “share” on Facebook is much easier than sending a URL via messenger. Likewise, tweeting a post is much easier than emailing a post (Carvell 1999. The aim of an effective social media marketing strategy should be to eliminate, as many barriers as possible when it comes to distribution of information. All forms of social media can be used for social media marketing strategy. However, the size and type of network to be used are important factors that will determine how viral the information will be. It is more advantageous to send information via Facebook than to send it via email. Using Facebook will enable the information to reach a broader audience. Use of email will only allow the spread of information to only your email contacts. However, email is advantageous to use if the information is private and whether the information is based on personal relationship (Mills 2012). For a viral marketing campaign to be effective, the social media platform that has a larger audience should be considered. Moreover, while formulating a social media marketing strategy, it is important to consider how rich the content is. For example, content shared on you tube is richer because the content is both visual and audio. The content shared on twitter is not much richer because it can only be read. The ability to share videos quickly and embed many features makes you tube a strong platform for social media marketing. The time that the information takes to be shared should also be considered (Mills 2012). If your campaigns medium is of information dissemination is via YouTube, then Facebook users can easily share and play the content through video posts directly on Facebook. For twitters, they will need to shift from Twitter to YouTube in order to watch the video. This elongates the period taken to disseminate or share the information. Nexus According to Mills (2012), this refers to the urge to follow up on campaigns. A social media marketing strategy should leave the audience wanting more. Creation of content that will make the audience be eager to follow up the campaign will lead to the viral spread of the information. Impact of social media and viral marketing on stakeholders in the film industry The film industry is one of the industries that greatly rely on social media. The industry uses social media to create awareness, connect with fans, to reorganize the industry and to promote products. One of the ways that social media has revolutionized the film industry is the means by which by which movies are being marketed. Most of the new movie studios are using the social media platforms to market the new releases. Facebook and YouTube are among the widely used film marketing, social media platforms. The marketing campaigns have led to the massive sale of movies. According to Carvel (1999), one of the most successful movie marketing campaigns was the one conducted by The Blair Witch Project. Before releasing their movie, they spent one million U.S. dollars to market their product via the social media platforms. This provoked a high hit of the product because of the good social media marketing strategy. According to the article Top Social Media Websites for Film Making, most of the social media platforms are used by movie producers to interact with their audience in order to market their films. The social media platforms are used to generate traffic and buzz about movies in different ways (Chaitanya 2010). When fans visit Facebook, YouTube, or other social media sites, they will forward links and messages of film’s statuses to their friends, contributing to the marketing of the movies. Movie directors also utilize the social media website in order to help in film production as evidenced in the movie (I love you man, 2009). The social media have also brought an impact on film production. Film production consists of activities such as funding, casting, costume designs and searching for shooting locations. Movie makers have taken an advantage of the social media to create sites specifically for movie business. According to Halfon (2008), the sites created are used by the movie directors in the movie business. When movie-makers wish to produce a film in a foreign country, they can easily connect with costume designers, makeup-artists, and look for filming locations in the country by using social media sites made specifically for the movie business.Trigger.com is an example of a site that brings together people who have movie-scripts, screenplays, clips and comics and help them to share their products. Another impact of the social media on the film industry is the means by which the films are distributed. Movie directors consider self-distribution by communicating directly with their audience. They do this by promoting and showcasing movies on their own created film websites or by use of social networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube. Moreover, when the movie makers want to deliver special features to their audience in order to enhance the marketability of their product, they use the social media platforms. This helps them to avoid cost that come with distributing films on DVDs. Conclusion The social media is an important element in the film industry. Managers in this industry should lay down mechanisms to utilize the social media platforms to run their business activities and in the promotion of their products (Reid 2010). The managers in the film industry should allow for communication through the social media because it brings credibility to the industry. This is because the social media is transparent and allow for the real time information to be sent to the intended audience. Moreover, social media prompt discussion, debate and feedback from the audience. The managers in the film industries should also consider the use of social media platforms because it guarantees that the message will be heard. By use of social media platforms, the managers in this industry can disseminate information in the manner that they want and as quickly as they want. It is important for organizations that aim at marketing effectively their product information to develop a culture in which they use social media platforms in marketing their products. Use of social media platforms has been found to be one of the best ways in which information about a product is disseminated to the people. The government today also is encouraging the use of social media platforms to disseminate information to the citizens. However, the social media sites have led to moral decadency. This is because some material that is posted on sites such as YouTube is of explicit nature, hence leading to the moral decay especially among the youths. As an organization strives to market their products over the social media platforms, they should uphold social media ethics in order to maintain the credibility of the information being disseminated. In conclusion, the collaboration of companies with the social media sites is one of the best ways that an organization can pass information to its intended audience. Facebook and twitter are among the social media websites that have registered the highest number of users, hence most organizations prefer using them to market their products. References Carvell, T. 1999. How The Blair Witch Project Built Up So Much Buzz. Available at: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/08/16/264276/index.htm. Chaitanya, N.2010.Moviebuzz. Available at: http://sify.com/movies/telugu/review.php?id=14933284&ctid=5&cid=2430 Dickman, B, 2011.Viral marketing. Teachers college mathematical modeling handbook, P.167-173. 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