Download Roberts_IM3e_IM_ch09_rev - Dr. Robert Davis (Ph.D) FCIM (UK)

Chapter 9
Social Media Marketing
Learning Objectives:
By the time students complete this chapter they should be able to:
 Define social media marketing.
 Explain why marketers find it necessary to engage in social media marketing.
 Explain why social media marketing is not free.
 Describe the ways in which marketer communications are different in social media from
those in traditional mass media and online marketing.
 Identify the elements of a social media marketing strategy.
 Explain what it means to build a community around a brand.
 Discuss the differences among paid, owned, earned, and shared media.
 Identify metrics that can be used to measure the success of social media marketing
campaigns.
 Understand how to build your own personal brand in Internet space.
 Discuss the potential of location-based marketing.
Chapter Perspective
This chapter should be especially engaging for students because they are avid users of social
media. Which networks, for what purposes, and how much/how often will make for interesting
discussions throughout the chapter. There are two things to be especially aware of. First, students
think they know all about social networks because they use them. That is significantly different
from being an effective social media marketer and they need to be reminded of that throughout.
Second, the space is still undergoing explosive change and some of that needs to be integrated
into presentation and discussion.
Please consider the Google+ page a resource that can be helpful in keeping up. We try to
remember to post items with a searchable hashtag, #9SMM for this chapter.
Search for specific topics is also useful. If you have discussion sessions and can use longer
videos (or want to assign them for outside viewing and in-class discussion) one of my favorite
sites is Social Media.org: http://www.socialmedia.org. They have frequent conferences of social
media marketers and they post videos on the site. Many of the presenters also post their PPT on
Slide Share. Search for the presenters by name there, or on the web in general; some post on their
corporate sites. It is fascinating, up-to-date content delivered by representatives of recognized
brands.
The Explosion of Social Network Use
Figure 9.1 is almost a placeholder. It is worth a bit of attention because it includes some very
large networks like Orkut and Ozone that may not be known to most students and that alone is an
important point. It should be supplemented by current data. Searching for something like “size of
social networks” will uncover interesting recent data. You can use “infographic” in your search
stream to get recent visual presentations. The Social Media Map (Interactive Exercise 9.1) shows
the wide array of social networking sites available, many more than just the usual suspects. If
you want to download it you can follow the links to some of the sites, which is interesting
although it doesn’t necessarily answer the size question.
Marketers “Follow the Eyeballs”
That is hardly a new idea; traditional mass media advertisers invented the concept long ago.
Clearly a lot of the eyeballs are trained on social networks now, so marketers must be there also.
Unfortunately, it is more complicated than it sounds. The importance of planned strategy and
measurement is emphasized throughout the chapter.
This section contains three case histories. They are not new, but they are still classics in the B2C,
B2B (especially Interactive Exercise 9.2), and NP spaces. Live links and some updates are
provided on the PPT.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
I like to tell students it’s not fun and games making a Facebook page—continuing to try to make
the point that it’s different from consumer use.
The definition used in the text is:
Social media marketing is business use of selected social media channels to understand
customers and to engage them in communication and collaboration in ways that lead to
the achievement of ultimate marketing and business goals.
It’s all important, but in my mind, the most important is the resultant achievement of marketing
and business goals. I use the term “so what?” a lot when students tell me that objectives are
things like getting Facebook Likes and twitter followers. For what marketing purpose???
Which Businesses Use Social Media Marketing?
Figure 9.2 makes what seems to be a valid point; B2C marketers have been quicker to adopt
SMM than B2B. While that may be true, B2B marketers who use social media wisely and
experiencing great success. People are people, after all, and they like to be informed and
engaged, whether for work or pleasure.
Figure 9.3 suggests measurable business benefits like increased website traffic and business
partnerships (leads also, although that isn’t included in this chart). The presence of “exposure” at
the head of the list is absolutely true, but it tends to lead students down one of my least favorite
Internet marketing paths. I’ve long had a campaign going against “awareness” in the traditional
mass media sense. To me, it’s a perfect waste of time and effort in any type of Internet
marketing, including SMM. Read my latest rant here and see if you agree with the reasoning of
behavior trumping awareness: http://diy-marketing.blogspot.com/2011/06/creating-brandawareness-on-internet.html.
Stress from the beginning, also, that social media is not free. The platforms are free; the cost in
human time and expertise is not. Unfortunately Figure 9.4 suggests that most marketers are going
in the direction of the easiest not efforts that are both labor intensive and marketing effective like
blogger outreach.
Small businesses that are willing to put in the time and effort are finding considerable success in
social media. It certainly beats a lot of money spent on paid media with a huge amount of waste
reach.
The issue of managers being afraid that consumers will say bad things about them is just as
true—maybe even more so—with large corporate brands than with small businesses. Study after
study confirms the fact that most reviews are positive and are done to be of assistance to other
consumers.
The issue of internal use of SMM to motivate employees (it is useful for collaboration also) is
interesting. Zappos is the classic example, although their networks are public, not private internal
networks. Harrah’s has been a continuing example throughout the text and they have recently
made good use of an internal network focused on motivating employees to give excellent
customer service. Find the pdf “A Case Study on New Employee Engagement at Harrah’s
Entertainment.” I am also fond of recent studies that point to the importance of top
manager/CEO involvement in social media like Tony Hsieh of Zappos. Find a recent study with
interesting data: “2012 CEO, Social Media and Leadership Survey” by BrandFog.
Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Throughout the chapter the aim is to focus on strategy, not tools, so if you want to cover the first
third of the chapter rather quickly that would increase the focus on the importance of strategy.
Figure 9.6 gives the 4 steps in developing a SMM strategy. It is important to go through it step
by step.
1. Listening (or monitoring). It’s like any good cocktail party—listen before you speak or
you’re likely to make a fool of yourself. Whether you have a formal monitoring center or
just assigned duties, listening—and learning from it is important. It’s good to play one or
more videos of a corporate listening center:
 Dell http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaCuxVHb_ME
 the center they built for the http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679467/red-cross-socialmedia-monitoring-center-tracking-tweets-to-save-tornado-victims (no video that I
can find)
 Pepsi http://mashable.com/2010/06/15/gatorade-social-media-missioncontrol/?utm_source=TweetMeme&utm_medium=widget&utm_campaign=retwe
etbutton
Jeremiah Owyang has a set of strategy steps for listening. They’re good, but it takes
awhile to go through them: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/11/10/evolutionthe-eight-stages-of-listening.
Listening tools are useful, and there are more every day. It takes human effort and insight
to make them work.
Insight includes knowledge about the audience and Forrester’s Social Technographics
ladder, Figure 9.7, is a well-known summary of social media segments. Many of us
belong to more than one segment depending on the nature of our activity at any given
time.
2. Communicating. The “Rules of the Road” are extremely important in this process. It is
not advertising, it is person-to-person communication. Keep quoting Sage Lewis, “People
don’t care about your products.” (http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1707550/no-onecares-about-your-products) That may sound simple, but it’s extremely hard for marketers
to operationalize.
3. Engaging. This is a tricky one because we use the word engaging casually, and that
doesn’t work as marketing strategy. The Mountain Dew site, Interactive Exercise 9.3, is a
good example of the work, effort it can take. It’s good to get your students to talk about
what engagement means. We typically measure it as “time spent” and I doubt that’s an
adequate measure. Radian6 lists 10 important metrics; it’s easily measured with a single
metric: http://www.radian6.com/blog/2010/03/10-key-engagement-metrics-to-track.
4. Collaborating. Again, tools come into play. Blogs are one and there is a fairly lengthy
section on what makes a good blog. There has been a lot of commentary lately that
infographics are replacing blog postings, reason being that a lot of data can be gathered
into a rather small space and visualized. That’s true, but it doesn’t replace discussion of
strategy for marketers and product uses/benefits for their customers. Twitter is listed as a
tool; it certainly provides feedback. More direct is product reviews; not the effort many
marketers now make to get you to review a product after you have purchased it.
Social sharing is a way of encouraging customer collaboration without much effort.
Problem is, the icons are all over the place and customers usually lack motivation to use
them.
Communities are wonderful platforms for sharing, but remember the statement that “the
Internet is littered with dead communities.” It is a lot of work, as many enterprises find
when they make a feeble effort in that direction. A thriving community, though (think the
Harley HOGs) does a lot of the marketer’s work for him.
Owyang summarizes the tools in his social business stack, Figure 9.12.
Executing SMM Strategies
The Nokia example, Figure 9.13, introduces the media concepts of SMM. It is as good a
statement of the difference between mass media and social media as I’ve seen—“from Big Bangs
to Continuous Engagement.” The difficulties they’ve had in execution are interesting. Mark
Squires summarizes recent activities and successes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBqWbz9dU3k.
Table 9.1 presents the concepts of paid, owned, earned, and shared media and their marketing
implications. It is worth going over carefully.
Social Media Marketing Metrics
SMM requires a whole new set of metrics and they have yet to be integrated into traditional
online metrics platforms completely, although that work is progressing. The need for integration,
and the number of channels to be integrated, is the subject of Figure 9.14. Radian6 has a good
demo on social media metrics (http://www.radian6.com/what-we-sell/social-enterprise) and they
have case studies and other videos and learning sources.
Google Analytics, and all the other metrics platforms for that matter, are adding social metrics
tools to their platforms: http://www.google.com/analytics/developers/socialhub.html.
Continuing the emphasis on the importance of objectives to successfully measuring marketing
accomplishment, see Table 9.2 for an example of what objectives and corresponding metrics
might look like for a personal blog.
Building Your Personal Brand in Social Space
I can’t imagine any student who would not find this section compelling. It is part of the
reasoning behind the Internet Career Builder Exercise that continues throughout the text.
However, the idea of personal branding goes further.
There are a number of personal branding gurus; the one who has built a successful career on it is
another of my local favorites, Dan Schawbel. Just doing a Google search on his name gives you
a good idea of the dimensions of the brand he has build, and a successful marketing services firm
along the way. You might want to introduce your students to his blog and encourage them to
follow it at http://www.personalbrandingblog.com.
The 5 rules given in the text are a good start, as is the Internet Career Builder Exercises. Students
should be motivated when they are in the process of searching for a job. Point out that career
building is a life-time project and maintaining and enhancing their brand along the way will
mean it is viable when they need it. It may also open opportunities to them that they would not
have otherwise found.
This is a good opportunity to bring in a guest speaker. It could be someone from your career
services office who can summarize what recruiters who come there are looking for. It could be
one of the actual recruiters, which works to bring the subject to life.
Bringing Top Management into the Social Media Fold
The resistance of top managers to social media may be lessening, but in many quarters it is still
alive and well. Measuring ROI is certainly a problem, but my sense is that the real reason is that
many mangers fear loss of control. There’s some truth to that, but my reply is always that it is
better to know what is being said about your brand and deal with it in an appropriate way than it
is to be blissfully ignorant. I believe the quality management process is the correct way to begin
instilling social media into the corporate culture; choose a small project and demonstrate success.
All the suggestions at the end of the section are useful.
I also am fond of a recent study, which looks as if it may be updated annually in the future, that
finds managers who participate in social media “better equipped to lead companies.”
http://www.brandfog.com/CEOSocialMediaSurvey/BRANDfog_2012_CEO_Survey.pdf
Social media, even if the platforms are free, does require corporate resources, especially human
time and effort. Top management needs to be on board to make the investment forthcoming.
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think social networks have grown so quickly in countries all over the
world?
It seems to me that it’s the irresistible human urge to communicate. Add the desirability of
images and videos to that, and you do have a compelling experience. It will be interesting to hear
what your students say about their own experiences and why they think social networks in
general are so popular.
2. Be able to explain why social media marketing is useful to small businesses as well as
large corporations. Are there differences in executing an SMM strategy in a small
business and a large corporation?
The fact that basic platform are free and do-it-yourself are powerful draws for the small business.
The rules of the road apply to small businesses just as they do to small businesses. I wonder if it
is easier for small businesspeople to think in terms of communicating directly with customers
than it is for employees of large enterprises; seems it might be.
Here’s an infographic that seems recent: http://www.intuit.com/websites/small-business-socialmedia-infographic. American Express’s Open Forum focuses on small businesses and often has
good content on social media: http://www.openforum.com.
3. How do the steps in developing an SMM strategy differ from those you have seen in
other aspects of marketing, for example, developing a brand marketing plan or an
advertising campaign strategy?
The basic rule “know your customer” is the same. However the execution is quite different.
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Listening to what customers say as opposed to conducting marketing research
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
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Communicating WITH customers instead of advertising TO them
Engaging consumers instead of treating them as passive recipients of messages
Collaborating with customers in creating content that is useful to other customers
It is a whole new mindset, and that makes it difficult for many experienced marketers to grasp.
4. Why do marketers consider earned media especially desirable?
It is like PR in traditional media; it carries along with it the brand image/prestige of the blog,
website, white paper—whatever the medium. That is why the marketers surveyed for Figure 9.4
consider blogger outreach so effective, even though it does require effort—the same type of
effort it takes to get feature articles published in traditional media. It is the social media
equivalent of PR.
5. What potential values do blogs and Twitter have for B2B marketers?
Assume we mean by this “owned media” that is published by the corporate marketer. They both
have the virtue of disseminating content and creating visibility. Blogs are especially useful
because they can contain considerable detail (although it is a good idea to limit blog posts to
500-750 words in most cases) and multiple links. Twitter is really an “announcement” medium.
You just can’t get much content into 140 characters but you can get a good teaser and a link.
That’s why a lot of bloggers automatically feed their posts to Twitter; it doubles (or more
because of retweets) the visibility of their posts.
6. What are some ways in which Facebook can be used by B2C marketers?
The ways are only limited by creativity. Distributing coupons and other offers are probably the
most used but they are not creative. Here is a list of some that are
http://adage.com/article/special-report-book-of-tens-2011/ad-age-s-book-tens-social-mediacampaigns/231498. I especially like the “send a can of soup” to your sick friend! Ask your
students what they have seen that is different and creative, and you can certainly search for other
lists of great campaigns.
7. Thinking just of corporate content, do you often share, write product reviews, or
comment or like? Why or why not?
If you look at the Forrester ladder, Figure 9.7, only 23% of the Internet user population falls into
the Creators segment. More interesting is why? Sheer inertia usually, I think. We all have other
things to do. What do your students say they do/don’t do? Why? Are any concerned about
privacy or even retaliation if they do? Should marketers be giving incentives for sharing?
8. Do you receive any coupon or other deal offers by email or mobile app? Do you like
them? Do you use them?
In my experience, the answers are usually “Yes, yes, and yes.” With the rise of location-based
coupon distribution from Groupon to Foursquare, even college undergraduates can easily get
useful coupons for retail establishments from pizza parlors to bars. The types of coupons people
get and use say a lot about their lifestyles, and students should be encouraged to recognize that.
9. In case histories throughout this chapter, the metrics that were used to measure the
success of the program have been given. Make a list of metrics and the platforms to
which they apply and be prepared to discuss their value to the marketer.
Just a few examples include blog comments, Facebook Likes, YouTube views, and Twitter
followers. Basic platform metrics like those are the most visible and most likely to be reported.
The Radian6 demo gives more in depth examples. Here’s an interesting perspective: 4 best
metrics http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/best-social-media-metrics-conversation-amplificationapplause-economic-value and 3 worst http://socialmediatoday.com/fixcourse/424806/3-worstsocial-media-metrics-and-what-you-should-measure-instead. Are you surprised that the most
commonly reported are the ones considered least useful?
10. Do you see any value to having a “personal brand” on the Internet?
I could ask the question another way. Do you know marketing practitioners who have gotten
their current job as a result of their resume on LinkedIn? Most of us would say yes. This post has
an infographic about how recruiters search and links to a report on the subject:
http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-recruitment_b18594.
I hope you will use some part of the discussion on this subject to remind students how much
damage stupid Facebook posts can do—recruiters seem unanimously to check Facebook even
though they don’t heavily use it to find candidates. And remind them that even if they take a
dumb post down, it has already spread all over the network and it may come back to haunt them
for a long time.
Two points: We all have a personal brand these days, whether we have worked to craft it or not.
Second, that brand image can be either positive or negative, with predictable results.
11. Why do you think some managers are resistant to the idea of engaging in social media
marketing? What could you do or say to convince your reluctant boss that SMM could
be a good idea in a specific business setting?
Start out by understanding that it’s really hard to convince a non-believer. I have seen actual
amazement on the faces of managers when I present data about the majority of comments being
positive. And I can tell that a lot of them don’t believe me and my data!
A lot of managers have already made up their minds and that’s hard to change. It is not a bad
idea to do one or more killer presentations that focus on the success (ROI) that marketers have
experienced. If the examples are from the same industry or closely-related ones, that’s even
better. But, in my experience, don’t expect too much too quickly.
If the manager thinks there may be something to this social media stuff but has no clue how to go
about it, that’s a more promising situation. But the marketer must still be careful about the
amount of resources that will be required (and who those resources are going to be) and keep her
eye on the prize—ROI. I continue to believe that “start small, achieve measured success, and
build out” is always the best plan.
Internet Exercises
1. Internet Career Builder Exercise.
2. Study the Forrester Social Technographics® Ladder in Figure 9.7. Develop a short
questionnaire to determine the segment into which a consumer fits and the specific
platforms he uses and what he does on those platforms. Administer the questionnaire to
a sample of your friends, family, and colleagues as directed by your instructor. Be
prepared to discuss your findings about social media activities in class.
This is a good idea because the segments lend themselves to direct questions about what the
respondent does on which social media platforms.
There is at least one reproduction of the survey on the web, although I can’t find that Forrester
has posted the questions per se. I found this pretty easily, so your students may be able to also:
http://ericksonbarnett.com/xres/downloads/mprofs08/B2B-Marketer-Engagement-Survey.pdf.
You might find it better to have them use the Forrester social profile tool to describe a particular
market segment: http://empowered.forrester.com/tool_consumer.html. It produces interesting
results, but they need to see results from more than one segment, which could be done in the
classroom.
3. Choose a business (B2C or B2B) or nonprofit organization that could benefit from a
social media campaign and develop a campaign outline. Include the following elements
in your outline:
● Specific campaign objectives
● Identification of the target audience
● Detailed description of the social media marketing activities
● Metrics to be used to judge campaign success
● Timeline for the specific campaign
● Budget for direct costs incurred
Now that you have thought about what you want to do, write an Introduction for your plan
outline that explains why the social media initiative is important and how it integrates into
the overall marketing activities of the business.
Constructing an entire social media marketing plan is a major undertaking, although a very
useful one. As a shorter exercise you could have students develop a set of SMM objectives and
match them with the corresponding metrics.
You could have students select their own topic, but that gets it back into the realm of a pretty
large project. You could select a local organization—something like a zoo or the local Chamber
of Commerce. Or choose a student organization like the marketing club or a school activity like
alumni relations. Then divide the class up into teams and let them work on the project, presenting
and comparing their results. Students invariably find that it’s more difficult than it sounds to
establish specific, measurable results for any marketing campaign.
If it helps, you are welcome to use this graphic I developed to help my student understand where
a SMM campaign fits into the organization’s marketing program:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bfnIMhw3k_pyPGmZDJvOXWqqWMF3Cvg2IEZpag4AJ8/edit?pli=1.