Social Media Approach As A Marketing Tool Media Essay

genial Media Approach As A trade s fleetcock Media Essay mixer media isnt a raw(a) lucre Hip that reasonable popped up, save it has been somewhat for years in the shape of forums and intelligence agency convocations. So what has changed? The entree of various new official documents and the tremendous increase of the internet user ungenerous in the h grey up decade along with easier internet access gave the tabusized push. To best define cordial media, we need to break it d admit. Social is relating to charitable society the interaction of the individual and the congregation. Media is a medium of cultivation, conveyance, or flavour (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary). So, genial media is a media designed to be disseminated through companionable interaction, seduced using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues ( single-to- many anformer(a)(prenominal) a ka conventional media) into complaisant media dialogues (many-to-many). Primarily, affable media depends on interactions amid passel -as discussions and integration of sacred scriptures -using technology as a conduit. Social media has been touted as presenting a fresh direction for market by every(prenominal)owing companies to babble out with consumers, as opposed to spill the beansing at them (Wikipedia). It lives on the contri scarceions and feed binding of every unmatched. It eliminates the gap between the writers and the readers and forms a conversation- wish well content.As menti championd earlier, amicable media get along withs in the forms of various online similarlyls or diversionctions. These quarter be categorized into numerous groups sever every(prenominal)(prenominal)y with its prosecute in characteristics and enjoyments. To elaborate, web logs, for example, aka web logs ar an online journal for the writers to sh argon their experiences, opinions, and thoughts while providing the readers the option add their feedback and comments to the return. Social interlockings atomic number 18 online usefulness websites consists of in-person or commercial pens of their users, their cordial relationships, and offer a variety of early(a) activities (Wikipedia). Micro- web logging is a net dramatic playctional function that pocketlyows mobile users of cell ph integritys and opposite Internet connected devices to stay attentive of activities within a group by receiving frequently published updates, typically of cxl characters or less. text mental objects be uploaded to a micro-blogging server, and then distributed to group members (R. Kayne). Social bookmarking is a service that leads its users with the ability to store, organize, shargon, search, and rate bookmarks for web pages. thither is to a fault a change form of social bookmarking sites sack outn as social news where users balloting on articles and news. These ar e some of the social media variations available and are the roughly influential peerlesss for backinges, There are others but are not mentioned as they are either hold no signifi bungholet use toward the calculate of this document or reside outside its scope.2. The gain of adopting Social Media MarketingSocial media provides companies with the capability to penny-pinchingly produce a large occur of consumers providing similar experience to direct merchandise with much lower cost. It gives you the hazard to take in advantage of the power of word of mouth (WOM) or in this flake electronic one. fit to a study done by Steffes and Burgee from Towson University, the information the students gained from eWOM is more(prenominal) than(prenominal) than inuential in their decision than speaking with friends in person (2008). Also, according to Alexa, A web traffic monitoring company, out of the light up 10 to the highest degree visited websites in the world, four are social o nes and the rest are general search engines. Looking at Malaysias top 10, the number increases to five with the outgrowth spot occupied by Facebook -a social ne tworking website (Alexa.com). Social networks give care Facebook has everywhere 350 million industrious users of which 70% are international ones with an average time spend of 55 minutes per day (facebook.com) MySpace -another social network -has over 100 million active users (myspace.com) Technorati has more than 133 million indexed blogs (January 2009) and 77% of active internet users are reading blogs (Adam Singer, 2009). macrocosm able to influence until now a humiliated portion of a consumer base of this magnitude leave produce noticeable results despite the worry of relating social activities to a percentage of revenue. Bear in mind that Social Media Marketing (SMM) is not to be used to sell, at least not directly. However, SMM is used to hand awareness and exposure to the business, reduce overall marketing e xpenses, increase traffic or subscribers to own website, create new business demotenership, rise up in search ranking, improved PR, and an ending with more loyal clients (Michael Stelzner, 2009). If set abouted with intent to sell, internet users are now are savvy, they give be able to smell you coming and go forth shun you immediately.3. The right smart to Successful Social Media manipulationThe use of social media as a marketing tool -if done right buns yield into abundant benefits. To blanket(a)y utilize the social media, the presidential term should include it in their marketing planning as it needs a bursterful preparation to know the medium best accommodate for the companys activities. Unfortunately, lots of the great unwashed tonicity at social media as a free marketing tool, break awaying into teeny planning which in return yields no benefits and in some cases even negative ones. While it might not take much -if any- pecuniary wise, social media marketing do consume a lot of time. On the other hand, the financial requirement constrains it the best choice for start up companies and individuals. The first step in the plan is to see if social media is desirable for you as it is not for everybody. Businesses with products targeted at elderly or retired people, wont generate much benefits from using it. Also, companies with tight government regulation supervision shouldnt take social media as a marketing tool. After ensuring that you belong with the majority, whose social media betrothment efforts their activities, you have to decide on your objectives the desired results from engaging into social media. This in return volition service in choosing the best suited tools (Anita Campbell, 2009). This paper will cover in some details a part of these tools and their uses afterwards.Within the social sphere, organizations gear push their meanings or products to the consumer sort of they have to lure the consumer toward them. To be abl e to achieve that, the heart and soul should hand certain attributes to be considered attractive enough to lure them. First of all, the message should sound familiar to the target reference. People deal to communicate with each other. Try reaching them, joustening to their suppositions and thoughts, and then formulate your message. Adding a work out to the mix in the form of incentives can encourage much break away feedback as well as care spread the word associated with the incentives. The trinity element that can be thrown to the mix is fame. Providing the audience with a chance of fame, be it as small as it gets, it can real stimulate the audiences take. The forth element is the fun, entertaining one, which is shared with approximately of the online activities. Adding the fun entertaining factor can excite the audience to spread the word. Lastly, the message should contain the mobility factor the ability to move from one person to the side by side(p) (Richard Clark, 2009). Having at least one the first four elements along with the die hard one will encourage a beneficial response from the community.An organization should continue to listen to the community as long as it is in business. Since anyone can say anything, a company should always solemnize an bosom on the sphere. Listen to what the communities say slightly it. This help in absolute bad press and empowering good ones. Of course, monitoring the blogosphere may seem impossible, fortunately, at that place are some tools that keeps the company notified whenever a new entry with its shout out appear in the wild.4. The Way to a Catastrophic Social Media UtilizationAs beneficial as SMM can be, a misuse or unplanned approach can result in a heart waste of resources. Lacking a staff member who can cargo hold a frequent delivery of quality content can humble the social effort. Also, the absence of a strong message that can create a community around it will result in a partial loss for t he impact on people. Social media is global, so, cautious should be practiced at all times to avoid any pique messages. Not exclusively that, a corporation should realize that social media is an dissonant platform and on that point is no such thing as off-the-record and for that not only should they monitor their own channels but also their employees. There have been many incidents where companies had to fire their employees for in tolerate messages perspectiveed in their own personal spaces. wizard famous incident when Delta Airlines had to fire Ellen Simonetti a charge attendant over inappropriate pictures posted in her blog in the companys uniform (Ellen Simonetti, 2005). To avoid such incidents, the organization should provide clear guidelines to what is appropriate and what is not when it comes to their social messages.5. BlogsWe have mentioned earlier different social media tools that can be utilized to the benefit of the organization. Now, we will discuss these in exce pt details while providing real examples for the usages of these tools by other organizations or individuals. offset with blogs, which as mentioned earlier is a website with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other strong formly maintained by one person with few exceptions where they are maintained by a group of people depending on the hold out or goal of the blog. Blogs also give the readers the ability to leave their comments in an interactive format. This feedback mechanism of the blogs is one of the main reasons why blogs are one of the most important social mediums. From an SMM point of view, the feedback is the opinion of their consumers, their needs, or their dissatisfactions which work out them a gold mine of information for the company. A lot of companies had already choose blogs and integrated them to their daily operations starting with CEOs like Jonathan Schwartz (President CEO, fair weather Microsystems) and George F. Colony (Chairman CEO, Forrester Research) and a long list others. So what does these CEO talk skillful about? Most would think that talking about their companys milestones, new products or services, or future plan would be the obvious choice. But red ink back to the reason should most companies based their activities on social media is to filch awareness. Not many people will want to read about the companys achievements or its products, thats the purpose of the main website of the company. These CEOs blogs actually contains stakeing and useful materials. If we take a quick look at George Colonys blog, we will find his personal thoughts, have a bun in the ovenations, review, etc. but all with a unified theme, the CEO perspective. One of his entries were regarding the imminent dominance of Apples iPhone among CEOs over the Blackberry ones and listing iPhone features that the blackberry lacks. Normally, you wouldnt expect to see a mobile review in a interrogation company CEO blog though he still man aged to keep it relevant to the overall blog theme, but that what makes it interesting. Thats what makes people coming back to you. Because each blog will compete with millions of other blogs and to stand gangling among the fight, you have to distinguish yours. If you are a small business owner, your blog could be relevant to your industry. But regardless of the blogs theme, without valuable content, the blog will be a definite waste of time. Passing the CEO blogs and passing game further into the companies hierarchy, we can also find many of the management team, adding their own touch to the blogosphere like Tom Berquist (CFO, Ingres) and Michael Tiemann (CTO, Red Hat). Going further all the way to developers, analysts, etc., you will find plenty of other blog writers. well-nigh companies have also what can be called an official blog. These official blogs are similar to an announcement board, where organizations announce new products, technologies, or ideas of future plans, tho ugh in most of these cases, these companies already have interested loyal audience who are eager to listen to them. A good example is Nokia Conversations. This blog might seem to be a portal to announce new mobile phones, software, or services. But it is more than that, as the name suggests, Nokia tries to engage their readers as much as possible. They hold social activities sometimes, for example, a motion picture context for one of their camera phones. This blogs provides lot of valuable knowledge to Nokia. ground on the feedback from this website, Nokia fix problems, annoyances, or add missing features to their products from the comments and suggestions of their audience. This creates loyalty to their brand. It is a win-win situation for both(prenominal) the customers get the product and the company gets the sales. Of course, when it comes to small businesses and entrepreneurs, the case is usually different as their first and main objective is to acquire awareness as oppose, for example, to Nokia Conversations where the main goal is the good usuality, the customers feedback and the loyalty. For those individuals, creating a blog, or creating a page in a social network -as discussed later -is not enough. For people to come to you, you have to get to them first elaborateness on other blogs -in the homogeneous industry -will inform the audience of your existence, your personality, and you interests. You cant tell people to come to you, but you can go to them, refer their interest and let them follow you back.One of the best utilizations for the power of blogs is demonstrate by adobe Inc. They have create a comprehensive network that allows for personal interaction between people with common interests-those interests, of course, are link up to Adobe and their broad range of software products. The result is an officially sponsored message board and blog site dedicated to informing the public about Adobe, answering questions about products and product applications, and whats more is allowing public input on the developmental process of future Adobe software titles. They have compiled all of these features together in a feed aggregator called MXNA (Adobe XML News Aggregator). According to Adobe, this tool is designed to monitor over 2400 Adobe associate blogs and news sources all in one place. As a result, users can search through all of these sources for articles, tutorials, code samples, downloads, sample applications, information or help they need and if they have a question that doesnt have an answer, they can post it to get their answers from Adobes staff. Thus creating communities that are completely and wholly devoted to organism the definitive destination of any and all who seek answers about all things Adobe (Greg Brian Martin, 2007). From Adobes perspective, they have given customers the satisfaction that the company is committed to luck them get the most out of their purchase and making sure that the customer is satis fied with the product. Second, the originated communities also exist so that those users who have discovered solutions to problems they regain are common or troublesome (or both) may share these ideas with mate participants of the communities (Greg Brian Martin, 2007). By giving the public the opportunity to not only bring when they need help but also, to answer and help other members of the community, Adobe has exponentially cut down on their customer support costs. commonly the return on investment in social media cannot be quantified, but in Adobes case we can somewhat relate to the result of their investments. Their costs of service and support went down by $6 million in the same period between 2006 and 2002 when the communities where introduced.6. Social NetworksThe second tool of interest in this paper and one of the fastest growing is the online social networks. These networks lead like an online community for internet users. It is different from site to another, but us ually members share a similar interest e.g. Flixster -for Movies enthusiasts -or similar hobbies like Spoccer -for association football players. Yet, there is the general type where most of the crowd resides. Ahead of the crowd is Facebook follow by MySpace in terms of the number of active members. It differs from one site to another, but once you sign up to one of the services, all of them will suggest that you create your profile. Though the available fields to weft differs depending on the interest, they all ask for the same basic information whether you are an individual or an organization. Honesty is an important factor when filling the profile, as getting caught lying in a social network is more devastating than off one. After preparing your profile, you should try to look for people with the same interest to start connecting. Depending on the type of industry, you might want to look into different sites. The most common website among professional is LinkedIn, though, when you are targeting the general public Facebook is the best choice as it has the largest base of members. But if you are working in music industry, for example, MySpace is usually a better choice. Though, Willa Plank would grapple that for small businesses, it is better to start in smaller more tie in communities as it is easy to disappear among huge crowds (2009).Social Media Marketing has been adopted by many of the large corporations like Dell, Hershey, and Kraft but one of the most outstanding is a community for milliamperes called Vocalpoint by Proctor Gamble. The arc pee-peeectural plan recruited thousands of women who were picked because of their large social network. They were recruited to talk about PG products to their friends (Robert Berkman, 2008). But SMM is not exclusive to businesses, but it can also help hobbyists and individuals. For example, if you are in a garage band, as mention earlier, MySpace is known for its music services and it would be the best place fo r the band to start promoting itself. One of the best examples is OmniSoul (aka. The chisel in Motive), a Newark, Delaware band. The five member of the group met at University of Delaware and they first hit when they won Battle of the Band competition there. Then the band began touring around their local area growing their fan base and the local radiocommunication started playing their songs. Eventually, they developed their own website and their MySpace pages. Their individual pages were like any normal page with basic information. The band page, on the other hand, includes a profile picture of the entire band, an audio player with four of the bands original whole songs in rotation, a list of upcoming tour dates, a list of friends, and a comment area where friends can leave messages to the band (Greg Martin, 2007). Derek Fuhrmann, the lead singer of the group had the following to say about MySpace, MySpace is an amazing tool for bands today to not only promote their music, but m ore significantly to keep in touch with their fan base. Making fans an intricate part of a bands world through daily interaction is really a brilliant impression. (Greg Martin, 2007). The band is hoping to get the nationwide exposure they need from the MySpace page. They intrust that the social networking feature of MySpace will help their exposure, by adding as many friends as possible. The more friends the band has, the more people will come into contact with them. The exposure is not for the band name only, but also for their music. We mentioned earlier they had four full-length tracks in their space, any of their friends, can take these songs and post them on their personal Space, where it will be played whenever individual visited their website. On top of gaining the exposure, they also hope to strengthen its relationship with preexistent fans. They unploughed feeding them information of the bands day to day activities, news postings, the episodic MySpace promotional cont est, and by posting on friends comment spaces, the band seems to be committed to reinforcing the ties it has already created. Their efforts paid off and on December 27th, 2009 they per organise their last show on their first nationwide tour at cervid Park in Newark, DE.The success stories resulted from social networks are beyond numbering, however, for the sake of diversification, two more quick examples will be mentioned. Social networks were there to help corporation and small businesses, but they also exist to help individuals, too. Kristen Luke is a principal at Wealth Management Marketing, a small financial marketing advisory firm in San Diego. Her story with social networks started out with LinkedIn. There, she was tack by Dow Jones News Wire reporter. The reporter formed some interest in Kristen, so she called her and quoted her in a dyad of stories in Wall Street Journal. This turned into increased traffic on her website (Stephen Arnold, 2009). The second story is a bit d ifferent than the norm as Bradi Nathan and Terry Starr started by conducting a survey on Facebook out front unveiling their business. The survey was targeted at working moms and moms who wanted to go back to the workforce. The idea croupe the survey was to find out what moms would want from a mom social network. The results of the survey are the bases of their blossomed business (David Spark, 2009).7. Micro-BloggingMicro-blogging is one of the most late(a) tools to appear yet, it is growing at an alarming rate. As mentioned earlier, it is a service that allowed its users to publish short messages of around 140 characters or less. Its limitation of 140 characters is overwhelmed by its tight integration with mobile phones. Most micro-blogging services provide the ability to add a new entries using SMS and also receiving others entries by SMS in addition to the regular browser from any pc or even cell phones. This ease of access is what helped burst its success. Though, the 140 does nt seems like much to say, yet, the last play off of years have shown, as will be shown later, its devastating power. Throughout this paper, Twitter -the most successful micro-blogging service -will be used interchangeably with micro-blogging.Micro-blogging shares the some common grounds with the other social media if you want to be followed, you have to be interesting to people. only Foods Market realized that fact and since their first day on twitter, they house by that rule. Within a week of highlighting some fun things that were going on at specific stores, people started noticing them on twitter. From there the market kept getting more publicity and within a year, they had over a million followers (Cody Nolden, 2009). While Whole Foods twitters were related to their stores, the CEO of Zappos.com took a slightly different approach. He personally drives the corporal account and always has something interesting to say most of which are not related to work. But most of them ha d one thing in common, humor. Now, Zappos has over 1.6 million followers (Cody Nolden, 2009). Dell has a more direct approach toward its twitter. It uses the medium to send exclusive offers to their followers. By June 2009, they made over $3,000,000 in twitter related sales (Antone Gonsalves, 2009)Interest will get you followers, but to keep them, the personal element should be added to the mix. JetBlue Airlines and Southwest Airlines have two things in common operating in the same industry and they both twitter. Both companies offer similar messages in their twitters however, JetBlue has 600,000 followers more than Southwest. By taking a closer look at both channels, you will notice that over half of JetBlues messages are in fact replies to other people where in Southwests the percentage goes way down. People tend to expression wormer toward a personal response (Cody Nolden, 2009).The best methodology to approach the micro-blogging differs by the industry, the goals, and the targe ted audiences and limited by creativity. A group of tourist information enthusiasts at Coos Bay, Oregon, led by Katherine Hoppe, looked at twitter differently. Instead of taking a direct approach, they looked at twitter as an opportunity platform. The group kept looking around twitter hunting their towns name looking for an opportunity to promote it. One day, Lee Hopkins along with his friend were planning a road trip from Seattle to San Francisco. They twittered their friends to suggest a place to stay, and one of them suggested Coos Bay. Katherine caught the message and contacted Lee and she was successful in persuading them to stop by the city. They stayed for a couple of days, enjoyed it, blogged their trip, and added what became a popular series of videos for the trip.Unfortunately, not all companies apprehend the concept of social media and micro-blogging. JCPenney has interpreted a strange twisted approach to reach people on twitter. They stalk anyone who mentions the word sh opping in an entry. They gob the writer with a message similar to check out JCPenney online at www.jcp.com No wonder they dont have too many followers.Micro-blogging has been useful to many, fruitless to some, and it has been disaster to others. Twitter has a hidden ugly face too and it showed it to Horizon Realty Group a Chicago real terra firma company. The story began with one of the company tenants Amanda Bonnen. Amanda twittered to her 20 followers that the company didnt care about the mold in her apartment. Because of the comment, the company filed a law suit against her, asking for $50,000 in damages to their reputations. They argued that there was no mold in her apartment. The next day, the law suit became one of the hottest topics in the whole twitter network which mean, the comment of irritation to 20 twitterers became a hot topic to thousands and thousands of people. Social media users do not read all the facts carefully before flaming. Whether Horizon Realty was righ t or wrong, no one in the social network would see the $50,000 as reasonable, either.The ugly face of micro-blogging doesnt just scare, it usefulness goes beyond that sometimes for a whole city like the city of Phoenix, AZ. One night at the city, a group of friends found out that their car had been towed as a part of a towing shrink from thats been going on for over a year and a half. The group behind the scam didnt know that this group was one of the most active twitterers in Phoenix. As a result, within 24 hours, there has been an investigation, and the word has reached the mayor and city council. Within 48 hours, the local media got involved screening the story. Within 72 hours, the scam has been shutdown (Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon, et al. 2009). So, what does the mean to businesses? Even though it makes twitter looks scary, it should only makes companies to jump in with both feet and warmnesss. Jumping in with both feet can help the company building a close relationship with the consumers. But thats not all they should also keep an eye on what people say about them. Being there in the first place before disasters can help form a better response and ease spreading it around.8. Social BookmarkingSocial bookmarking started as a service to keep your bookmarks with you wherever you go. Then it was morphed into a full fledged social community to share sites of interest, articles, images, or videos. Other people can rate, tag, and comment on these bookmarks which might seem like a social filtration for these bookmarks. The usage for these services is a straight forward one and the easier it is you make it for visitors of your website to bookmark it, the faster it will spread giving the interest factor existence. NBC11 in California realized the benefit of social bookmarking so they started by adding the option to share their news on Digg with a percolate of a button. Soon after, they realized also that the news with pictures are the most submitted ones. Since th e inclusion of Digg into NBC 11 website, the site traffic has spiked (Figure 1) (Adam Singer, 2008).Fig. 1 handicraft History for NBC11 before and after integrating Digg9. Video SharingAs the name implies, the websites helps their member to upload and share videos with the community. So many people became famous overnight because of these websites. The top most viewed video on YouTube -the most popular video sharing website -for 2009 was for a 48 years old Scottish lady signing in British Got Talent TV show. Now that lady signed a contract with Sony Music and released her first album which is on number 1 spot in the top 200 Billboard list (Stan Schroeder, 2009). The business sector wasnt left behind some companies were able to utilize the power of these websites too. One company to make a successful use of the video sharing is Blendtec. They introduced a expert of interesting, funny, and low cost advertisements which immediately gone viral over the network. Because of the series, the ads resulted in increasing the sales of the company five times (Samir Balwani, 2009).10. ConclusionWhen traditional media giants like CNN or MSNBC jumps into the social media wagon, you realize that it is not something to be taken lightly. Social media is here to stay it is not a passing event. For businesses, it is only a matter of what is the best way to take advantage of it and there is no special formula to answer that. It is not a one size fits all thing. But it is safe to say that the different tools of the social media can work well together and making use of more than one tool can produce better results. For example, simple things like linking your twitter or blog to your social network account, so that you can share your feed immediately in your social network. Another usage would be to twitter your blog entries. In the Coos Bay incident, mentioned earlier, the group created a Flickr -a social site for sharing images -album to hold images from around their town and bac k up the people in town to post their pictures. Social media marketing should be planned carefully, even though the financial costs might be nominal to none, but the time consumption factor isnt to be overlooked.