SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
LECTURE 1
Social media:
- Enables firms to communicate with their customers
- Allow customers to communicate with each other (user-generated content)
Goal:
- Build brand loyalty
- Increase brand awareness, brand recognition, brand recall
User generated content (UGC):
- Internet as a source of information about products/services
- Consumers share experiences with products/services among each other
- Consumers trust other consumers
Word-of-mouth (WOM) and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) are forms of user generated
content (UGC)
Important campaign elements: If you can dream it, tweet it (X, formerly Twitter)
- Authenticity: campaign with real people and real tweets
- Product is central to the campaign
- Consumers plays central role
- No specific target group
- Personalization
- Emotional marketing
Real-time marketing: something is happening (vacation, events, Christmas etc.) and company uses it
in ads
Campaign Shein on the road: influencers were going to an innovation factory, which is not a real
factory, but a place where clothes were being tested etc.
Response: backfired with hate > boss admit it and says they regret it
Six groups of UGC participants:
- Active creators (13%)
- Critics (19%): commenting, posting reviews, etc.
- Collectors (15%): saving URLs, adding tags to web pages or photos, etc.
- Joiners (19%): click and join
- Passive spectators (33%): reading and watching
- Inactives (52%): do not participate in social media activities
The positive impact of social media:
- Collecting money and spread awareness for victims of a war etc.
Clubhouse: social audio app, users enter rooms where they can listen and participate in
conversations about specific topics.
Audio is becoming increasingly important
Social media use in the Netherlands: WhatsApp is the largest platform in 2024, followed by Facebook
and YouTube
,Conclusions Newcom:
- 14.3 million Dutch people use social media
- We spend 2 hours a day on social media platforms
- WhatsApp, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn remain at the top and keep growing.
- X (Twitter) has seen an increase with 240,000 daily users. Instagram and TikTok also continue
to grow in daily usage. The success of Threads appears to be short-lived. 400,000 users have
already quit, and few non-users seem inclined to adopt it.
- BeReal has lost momentum among teenagers and twenty-somethings, with a quarter
decrease in daily users.
- 6.3 million Dutch people believe that social media pose a danger to our mental well-being.
Two million even feel less happy due to the use of social media.
Social media:
- Internet application
- For social interaction
- Where users can add content, to
o Share
o Inform
o Create
Mass media versus personal media:
- Mass media: capable of reaching many people throughout communication (TV, radio,
newspaper)
- Personal media: channels through which interaction is possible on a smaller scale (Email,
telephone, chat, face-to-face)
Social media can be both: it allows for one-on-one communication as well as reaching a large number
of people
Social media marketing (definition in this course) five characteristics:
- All marketing communications
- Initiated by a marketing/organization/firm
- In order to influence a target audience
- By means of creating a process of sharing the communicated message
- By users of a social medium
Active presence of brands on social media:
- Banners/paid ads (on Facebook and Instagram timeline and stories)
- Social campaigns
- Company pages
- Web care
Social media versus traditional media (TV/radio/telephone):
- Social media are used for different purposes (from the user side)
- Different characteristics of the medium
- Social media have different effects (effects side)
,LITERATURE 1: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY: DEFINITION, CONCEPTUALIZATION,
TAXONOMY, VALIDATION, AND FUTURE AGENDA
Social Media Marketing Strategy: organization’s integrated pattern of activities that, based on a
careful assessment of customers’ motivations for brand-related social media use and the undertaking
of deliberate engagement initiatives, transform social media connectedness (networks) and
interactions (influences) into valuable strategic means to achieve desirable marketing outcomes.
Differences between traditional marketing strategy and SMMS:
Traditional approach pays attention to the heterogeneity (variousity) of motivations driving
customer engagement, while SMMS emphasizes that social media users must be motivated
on intellectual, social, cultural, or other grounds to engage with firms (and other customers)
The consequences of SMMS are decided by the firm and its customers (rather than by
individual actors’ behaviors), and it is only when the firm and its customers interact and build
relationships that social media technological platforms become real resource integrators
While customer value in traditional marketing strategies is defined to solely capture
purchase behavior through customer lifetime value, in SMMS, this value is expressed through
customer engagement, comprising both direct (customer purchases) and indirect (product
referrals to other customers) contributions.
Developing a SMMS:
- Drivers: the firm’s social media marketing objectives and the customers’ social media use
motivations
- Inputs: the firm’s social media engagement initiatives and the customers’ social media
behaviors
- Throughputs: the way the firm connects and interacts with customers to exchange resources
and satisfy needs
- Outputs: the resulting customer engagement outcome
SMMSs:
- Social commerce strategy: activities influenced by an individual’s social network in computer-
mediated social environments, whereby the activities correspond to the need recognition,
pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase stages of an exchange.
- Social content strategy: the creation and distribution of educational and compelling content
in multiple formats to attract and retain customers. Aims to create and deliver timely and
valuable content based on customer needs, rather than promoting products.
- Social monitoring strategy: a listening and response process through which marketers
themselves become engaged.
- Social CRM strategy: a philosophy and a business strategy supported by a technology
platform, business rules, processes, and social characteristics, designed to engage the
customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a
trusted and transparent business environment.
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,LITERATURE 2: SOCIAL MEDIA IN MARKETING RESEARCH: THEORETICAL BASES, METHODOLOGICAL
ASPECTS, AND THEMATIC FOCUS
Values:
- Social media as a promotion and selling outlet
- Social media as a communication and branding channel
- Social media as a monitoring and intelligence source
- Social media as a customer relationship management (CRM) and value cocreation platform
- Social media as a general marketing and strategic tool
LITERATURE 3: USERS' MOTIVATIONS TO PARTICIPATE IN VIRAL COMMUNICATION ON SM
Content characteristics (meaningfulness, emotional tone, and arousal) are relevant to individuals'
attitudes toward viral communication; some campaigns can negatively influence their willingness to
share the content, particularly for less intensive social-network users.
Heavy users are more likely to share things because of social pressures. Overall, users are less likely
to create than share content, and what they share is influenced by content characteristics.
Sharing behaviors differ between users with distinctive social-media personas: some users are not
suited to begin the spread of messages and there is a need to adopt carefully designed customer-
segmentation strategies to engage with different consumers.
Results:
- When the three social-media-user types were compared regarding the elements that
influence their willingness to share viral content, the only significant differences was the
impact of meaningfulness on users' sharing behaviors and attitudes toward the viral content:
heavy users are more likely to share meaningfulness content
- The differences found between social-driven and search-driven users related to the impact of
meaningfulness on attitude and thus on their willingness to participate.
The study investigates the impact of meaningful content and emotional arousal on users' decisions to
share viral content on social media:
- Different user groups show different attitudes toward sharing content, highlighting the
importance of understanding user diversity.
- Findings suggest that not all users are equally likely to share content, and the nature of the
content significantly affects sharing behavior.
, LECTURE 2: MOTIVES OF SOCIAL MEDIA USERS & SOCIAL COMMUNITY
Dark side of social media: buy likes, comments, followers
Fake marketing:
- In 2022: ACM warned influencers who buy fake followers/likes that they will be fined
- Damages are estimated at 1.2 billion euro worldwide
- Companies pay more money to influencers with more followers
How do you recognize a fake account?
- Account names consisting of a random combination of letters, numbers and other characters
- An account with few followers, but a lot of likes and comments
- An account with few likes and comments, but a lot of followers
- The comments on a post don’t seem to relate to the post
- Check the accounts of the commenters and followers
Traditional marketing definition: the activity, sets of institutions, and processes for creating,
communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners,
and society at large.
Offerings: goods, services, ideas
These are achieved through the marketing mix (4P’s) the complete set of tools to achieve your goals
Social media marketing mix:
Consumer empowerment: the consumer has become responsible for attracting new customers
The consumer has more input in products and services. They are involved in all stages of the
marketing process (all the Ps)
Fifth p: participation (customer is everywhere, so surround the marketing mix)
Place: social media account
Traditional marketing:
- Push communication: the sender (company) sends the communication to the audience
(consumer). One-way communication (mass media)
- Limited opportunities for interaction between company and consumer
- The company controls the message being sent: top-down
Think about how easy it is now to return a product and get in contact with a company
