MASARYK UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF INFORMATICS

Social Media and Content Marketing as
a part of an effective Online Marketing
strategy
Diploma thesis
Michal AUGUSTINI
Brno, 2014



Declaration
I hereby declare that this thesis is my original copyrighted work which I developed alone.
All resources, sources, and literature, which I used are quoted in the thesis properly,
stating the full reference to the source.



Resume
The thesis is focused on creation social media and content marketing strategies. Also
provides analysis of techniques, activities and software tools used in these marketing
fields. Theoretical knowledge is explained in several case studies.

Keywords
Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Strategy, Online Marketing, eWoM,
COBRAs, Social Business, SEO





Thesis Supervisor: RNDr. JUDr. Vladimr md, CSc.



Acknowledgement
Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Vladimr md, for
his guidance and valuable comments.
My sincere thanks also goes my family and especially to my brother, Martin Augustini,
for his valuable feedback and proofreading.
I thank my friends for their support and positive energy.
And also my thanks go to those who will read this thesis until the very end.



Table of Contents
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 6
2 Marketing Definitions ............................................................................................................ 8
3 Online Marketing Basics ...................................................................................................... 12
4 Social Media Strategies ......................................................................................................... 34
5 Content Marketing Strategy ................................................................................................ 44
6 Black Hat & White Hat in Social Media Marketing ......................................................... 55
7 Software Tools ....................................................................................................................... 63
8 Case study VideoFlot ............................................................................................................ 67
9 Conclusion.............................................................................................................................. 76
Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 87

6

1 Introduction
Looking for the Holy Grail. This is how todays marketing times may be called. One
might argue that in the past it wasnt much different - true. Nevertheless, today with the
technology, social media, big data, analytics, marketers got new powers, a new way that
has shifted marketing to another level and may be closer to the Holy Grail. Other fact is
that these technologies enabled people to easily spread their ideas and opened up
possibilities to transform these ideas into a business. Some say that traditional forms of
marketing are obsolete and becoming successful online is easier and cheaper, but often
the opposite is true.
1.1 Motivation
In late 2012, I started to work as a Social Media Specialist for Axiory, a forex broker, and I
gathered a lot of valuable experience. As this was my first job in marketing, it was the
time when my knowledge that I gained from books and blogs, was tested and compared
to the reality. There are many articles, many books and people giving presentations about
online marketing, social media and other new areas of marketing, but the enormous
number of these materials creates a huge clutter. I chose to write a thesis where I will use
my working experience combine it with the theoretical knowledge and create a set of best
practices how to approach social media and content marketing. I found it really difficult
for some startup projects to understand the use of social media for the right and profitable
purpose not just because everyone is doing it.
My vision of this thesis is to help companies and individual entrepreneurs to understand
the potential of social media and content marketing and help to find the way how to use
them in an effective way. To accomplish this goal analysis of various tactics, techniques
and tools is needed supported by customer activities theory.
Online marketing is a synergy of the world of information technologies and the world of
marketing. Successful businesses are excellent in both of these areas and as a student of
SSME at the Faculty of Informatics I find it very appropriate and actual to write about this
topic for non-technological marketers as well as for IT professionals without many
experiences in marketing.
7

1.2 Outline
The thesis starts with basic marketing definitions because I found a lot of confusion when
studying the online marketing topic. This confusion many times caused serious problems
and misunderstandings.
In order to focus on social media or content marketing it is needed to understand the basic
principles how online marketing works (Chapter 3.1 ACT Methodology) and where is the
core of its success (Chapter 3.2 Zero Moment of Truth). Another confusion emerges in
terms social media and content marketing, because for many these are just two term
naming the same thing. This is explained in chapters 3.3 to 3.5. Online marketing brings
companies and customers closer together and for understanding this relationship and
customers behaviours there are chapters about COBRAs and eWoM. For a better
overview, Ive created an infographics that connects described theories with marketing
and customer activities together.
A lot of literature about social media strategies is only dedicated to the platform usage but
forgets about the whole goal and principle of social business.
Social media platforms update very quickly, thus I focused on how to grasp social media
as whole (Chapter 4 Social Media Strategies), not just to describe few of the platforms. Ive
put emphasis on social business concept (Chapter 4.2) because I find it very interesting
according to my experience when Ive met with concept where social media were used
just as a marketing tool alone.
More specific solutions are outlined in content marketing strategies (Chapter 5) where I
focus on quality of the content, its creation, distribution and evaluation.
Next there is a chapter about black hat and white hat marketing with emphasis on black
hat techniques examples and its effects that are demonstrated in a case study.
I also provided a brief overview of software tools (Chapter 7) that are used in online
marketing today.
Finally I conclude the thesis with a case study (Chapter 8) based on my work experience
in an IT startup company VideoFlot where I analyze their social media and content
marketing activities.
8

2 Marketing Definitions
The way people communicate was always a fundamental driver for our evolution.
Technological advancement in last years is changing how we get, evaluate and use
information. For marketers, this doesnt bring only new possibilities, but also new
challenges how to use and control these technologies. There are more than 2 billion
people using the internet and it caused that marketing is online and new forms of it are
being created faster than ever. For many people, even professionals, it is nearly
impossible to keep track of all these new online marketing terms.
Before diving into the waters of online marketing lets first look at the marketing itself.
2.1 Marketing
In 2010 Scott Brinker, marketing technologist and CTO of ion interactive, wrote down a
list of 131 kinds of marketing [1]. And the number still raises. Not only because of new
technologies and dynamically evolving marketplace, but also marketers are creating new
types of marketing to promote themselves. Inbound Marketing for example is a term
created by HubSpot company in 2006 *2+ and its practically synonymous to Seth Godins
Permission Marketing from 1999.[3][4]
Therefore, there is a large number of different definitions of marketing. According to the
American Marketing Association (AMA) Board of Directors: Marketing is the activity, set
of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings
that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. [5] Seth Godin defines
marketing as the art of telling a story that resonates with your audience and then spreads. [6]
And a very popular definition of marketing is: Marketing is everything you do [7]
2.2 Digital vs. Online vs. Internet Marketing
There is a lot of confusion in the terminology when it comes to digital, online, and internet
marketing.
Digital marketing is a broad term that describes a set of marketing processes that utilize all
available digital channels to promote a product or service or build a digital brand. [8]
9

As the main digital channels we consider the Internet, TV, radio, mobile. This sets Internet
marketing a subset of Digital marketing.
Difference between Internet and Online marketing is just in the name itself. Its all about
the trend which word works better with search engines. In the US, Internet Marketing
holds a 2-1 ratio to Online Marketing in monthly search queries according to Google
Adwords Keyword Generator from April 2013. But globally Online Marketing appears
in searches 9 times more than Internet Marketing.
Note: there is also a difference between marketing and advertising [10]. One might argue
that companies producing viral videos or pay per click ads are not doing marketing rather
advertising. But from the online point of view all this Online Advertising tools and
techniques are considered to be a synonym to Online Marketing.
Online Marketing is the art and science of leveraging the Internet to get your message across so
that you can move people to take action.*11] The major channels of Online Marketing are:
Web site
Search marketing (SEM) - includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid
Search Advertising (PSA)
Social media marketing
Content marketing
Email marketing
Mobile marketing
Display advertising
2.3 Online and Traditional Marketing
Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process
information, and think.
Traditional marketing ways of reaching people like print, TV, radio are being repressed
by the Internet. For a long time they were a guarantee of a marketing success. And there
were 3 main reasons for that:
1. Marketing was a one-way communication channel. Customers didnt have any
viable way to communicate back.
10

2. Easier targeting. People were more alike. Diversity in activities, habits and goods
that people owned was very small. Marketers knew who and where the buyers
were.
3. People werent fed up and believed advertising. The marketing clutter was
significantly smaller.[11]
Traditional marketing has evolved through the Internet into the new era of marketing.
Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) said that The amount
of change in marketing over the past three to five years probably equals the amount of change over
the past 30 years. [12]
The lightning speed evolution of marketing has brought many opportunities but also
chaos. Many marketers started immediately applying traditional principles into online
marketing and so they produced even bigger clutter then it was in the before-the-internet
era. Another problem was, and still is, the investment into the online advertising with
very vague estimate of the return of investment (ROI).
In April 2012, Gartner's interviewed 98 marketing executives in companies with revenue
greater than $1 billion. The survey showed that 54% of interviewed marketers invest in
digital marketing because they believe it's strategic to their competitiveness. But they are
not certain of their ROI.[13]

Figure 1 Position on Investment and Impact of Digital Marketing [13]
However, another survey from Gartner, shows that companies spent 10.4% of their
annual 2012 revenue on marketing activities that include both traditional and digital
marketing. Whats more, 2.5% of revenue is spent on digital marketing and is expected to
11

increase by 9% in 2013. That makes digital marketing the fastest growing area of
marketing. [14]
Traditional marketing on the other hand is no longer the top priority for a lot of
organizations. 28% of marketers have reduced their budget for traditional marketing to
fund more digital marketing.
Interestingly, it is getting harder to differentiate the marketing spendings as digital and
traditional marketing techniques are merging. Nowadays over 20% of companies
reported that they no longer separate budgets between digital and traditional.
There is no right or wrong answer to the question about investing in traditional or digital
marketing. The well-balanced combination is what will bring the success to the
companies. The top 3 digital marketing activities that will drive success in the nearest
future are corporate websites, social media and online advertising.
12

3 Online Marketing Basics
3.1 The ACT Methodology
From the definition above online marketing is about delivering a message via the Internet
to real people and make them do something - in most cases it is to make them spend
money.
According to Shama Kabani, author of the book The Zen of Social Media Marketing
[11], successful online marketing basically works on a simple framework called ACT
Methodology that can be broken down into 3 three distinct components:
A - Attract
C - Convert
T - Transform

Figure 2 ACT Methodology [11]
3.1.1 Attract
To attract means to get attention or stand out. The goal of this phase is to get traffic to the
website by standing out from others. This happens mostly by using Social media and
Search Engine Marketing. To be visible and remarkable there are 3 essential elements
needed:
Brand: What is your brand? Use one word or phrase.
13

Outcome: What do you do? Sum it up in one line.
Differentiator: How are you different from your competitors? What is that makes
you more special than others?
If you dont have the right elements, you cant stand out from the noise. If you dont
stand out, you cant attract people to do business. *11+
3.1.2 Convert
Converting strangers into consumers or customers. Primary focusing on attracted users
who are ideal fit. These people are more likely to buy your product and spend money.
There two types of conversion:
Stranger to Consumer
Consumer is a person who is consuming your information for example from your
Blog, Twitter or Facebook. These people dont spend money yet, but it is more
likely that they will. Consumers are somehow binded with the brand and with
that they can attract their friends and acquaintances to the brand. Social media are
suited to this kind of conversion.
Stranger to Customer
Converting people become paying customers. This happens via the company
website .
3.1.3 Transform
Transforming companys successes into attraction tools. It has two key parts:
1. Doing a good job and provide a perfect service and customer support.
2. Spread the word about success with clients. Share their stories of what they
achieved through service or product.
Successful transformation tools are for example video interviews with customers, case
studies, clients testimonials.
3.1.4 Case study Chytra Zed
Chytra Zed (Smart wall) is a company providing service that will turn ordinary material
i.e. wall, wood to a white board by using special paint. Company launched their Facebook
14

and Twitter in March 2013 and started to post simple pictures with only one sentence and
link to the website as shown in the picture below.

Figure 3 Chytra Zed Picture Facebook Post [16]
They immediately started to attract people to their website where the visitors watched the
explanation video and provide the brand their email address so that they can get news
about the product launch. People not only provided the brand their email but also started
to follow their Twitter and like their Facebook page. Strangers were converted to
consumers. In fact, the company could not convert them to customers yet, because they
launched the service after 7 months as they waited for product supply.
More than half a year the company was focus on attract and convert (to consumer)
phases. They gathered more than 1000 likes and 20 followers.
On 20th September Chytra zed started to sell their service. Consumer were converted to
customers. After few successful installations of the smart walls they immediately started
to publish pictures of places and people using the walls as white boards - transformation
phase. As the picture started spreading, more strangers became attracted and the circle
continued.
15


Figure 4 Chytra Zed Picture Facebook post 2. [16]
3.2 Zero Moment of Truth
In 2011 Google published e-book called Winning the Zero Moment of Truth. It introduced
new perspective of online marketing and defined new center of focus. The Internet and IT
technologies changed customers and their process of making decisions. There has been a
classical mental model in marketing that had three critical moments:
Stimulus - an instant when consumer sees an advertisement for a product and
gets interested in it.
Shelf - The first moment of truth, when consumer visits the store where he sees
the real product, gets the necessary information and answers to his questions from
employees. Finally he buys the product.
Experience - Consumer uses the product, is satisfied with it and enjoys the value
of the product - the second moment of truth.
16


Figure 5 Classical mental model [37]
The Internet era brought a significant change to that classical marketing mental model.
New critical moment has emerged between the consumers first exposure to
advertisements and the ultimate purchase decision. The zero moment of truth (ZMOT) as
Google calls it, is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired
device and start learning about a product/service (or potential boyfriend) you're thinking about
trying or buying. [37]
Googles research from 2011 showed that average shopper used 10.4 sources of
information to make a decision. Further it revealed that 84% of the shoppers said that
ZMOT is the critical moment that shapes their decision. [37]

Figure 6 New mental model with the zero moment of truth [37]
The zero moment of truth
happens online and typically starts with a search on Google, YouTube, Yahoo or
any other search engine
happens in real time, at any time of the day through any type of device whether it
is mobile, laptop or tablet.
17

is consumer driven. She decides what kind of information she will consume rather
than have it pushed on her by others.
is emotional. The consumer makes emotional investments to find the best solution
to satisfy her needs.
is multi-way conversation. Brands, friends, strangers, websites, all compete for
consumers attention.
Consumers have many more choices that theyve ever had before and they use them to
look for information about companies, their products or services. They use trusted third
party sources to check the consistency and credibility of companys messages.
We now have to engage people in a way thats useful or helpful to their lives. The consumer is
looking to satisfy their needs, and we have to be there to help them with that. To put it another
way: How can we exchange value instead of just sending a message? Kim Kadlec, worldwide
vice president, Global Marketing Group, Johnson & Johnson [37]
The new way of thinking about traditional marketing mental model gives a strong
emphasis on brand related content produced by company as well as consumers. This also
made the trend shift from basic social media marketing to content marketing.
3.3 Social Media Marketing
In its simplest form social media marketing is the marketing process of gaining attention
or website traffic through social media websites. It is used for promoting products or
services in different social networks in form of advertisements or in form of content. The
basic most general goal is to increase sales of a product / service or to build brand
awareness. [7] [15] [39]
Social media isnt just a new marketing platform or channel. If we look at it this way we
unnecessarily limit the scope of the opportunities just to one segment. Primary social media entails
a change in ways of communication. It is (mostly) not a conversation but a real many-to-many
communication Adam Zbiejczuk [40]
For companies to be a recognizable part of the social media communication is much
harder that it might seem at first. Neither it is cheap. In 2013 Facebook is dominant social
network with 1.200 million users and the number is still increasing. [41] Companies try to
engage with as many users as possible by spreading their content and extending their
18

social media presence to other platforms. This produces a larger and larger clutter where
marketing messages are getting lost. Facebook nowadays offers a solution with their paid
advertisements and post promotion, but many companies doesnt often have a budget to
pay for such services.
Another way is to focus on organic non-paid reach, that is connected to the type of
content and brands social media communication approach. This of course differs
depending on the social media platform and companys character, but generally there 4
ingredients that are nowadays the basis for social media success [40]:
1. Cool factor, humor
2. Usefulness and advantages
3. Immediacy and novelty
4. Personal approach
The biggest enemy factor is boredom. Official impersonal PR messages and marketing
statements are not type of content for social media.
3.3.1 Social Media Platforms
The evolution of social media is really fast and so are the updates of social platforms. The
number of these platform is still rising and the popularity of each platform depends on
mainly on the country or rather geographical location.
3.3.1.1 Facebook
Largest social media platform with more than 1.2 billion registered users [41]. Solution for
businesses:
Facebook page - possibility to share content in form of links, photos, videos and
polls.
Paid promotion of the content
Paid Facebook ads
Event creation
Geo Location
Directly engage with consumers
Key metrics: Likes, Posts, Shares, Engagement, Reach [77]
19

3.3.1.2 LinkedIn
The world's largest professional network with 250 million members. Businesses have their
own pages and individuals can be identified as their employees or just follow the updates
of the company. It is used for business promotion from a professional site and hiring. [78]
Key metrics: Followers, Group members, Discussions, Recommendations (for
individuals), Skill Endorsements (for individuals)
3.3.1.3 Google+
2nd largest social media platform and identity service [80], owned by Google. Used
nowadays for:
Search engine optimization
Sharing content
Hangouts - video conference chat often used for webinars
Event promotion
Key metrics: Circle members/followers, mentions, +1 [80]
3.3.1.4 Twitter
Microblogging social media platform, globally 3rd in percentage of internets users. [81] It
is used by companies to:
share information about the services
gather real-time market intelligence
build relationships with customer partners and influencers
Key metrics: Followers, mentions, retweets, reach, number of lists, posts [82]
3.3.1.5 Other
On Wikipedia there is a list of more than 200 social networking websites. Here are other
recently popular:
Pinterest - Online pinboard for organizing and sharing pictures
Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon - Bookmarking and Tagging
20

YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion - Online video sharing
Instagram, Vine - photo and short video sharing
Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo - microblogging - Chinese
Foursquare - geolocation
SoundCloud - music sharing
3.4 Content Marketing
Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world youre a rock star. Content Marketing
is showing the world that you are one. [42]
Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable and engaging
content to a target audience with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from
existing customers. [42]
It has become the latest trend in the PR & marketing industry. Content marketing is to
2013 what social media marketing was to 2007. [43] Social media presence is today just not
enough. Consumers decision making process has changed and new critical moment - the
Zero Moment of Truth - has emerged. One of the core elements to win the ZMOT is
content. Successful content marketing establishes company as an expert in a specific field,
and that sets the groundwork for a long-term business relationship.
Therefore a radical shift is occurring in marketing budgets as companies shift spend from
focus on advertising to investments in content. The trend is toward producing a quality
content for consumers rather than only pushing marketing messages. [46]
This content is then published on owned media channels - both fully owned (e.g.
websites, blogs) and social media channels which companies control.
Types of content that are usually part of content strategies are: Blog post, Podcast, Video,
Micro-video (e.g. Vine, Instagram), Images, Infographics, Case Studies, Ebooks,
Presentation slides, Webinars, White papers


21

3.5 Difference between Social Media Marketing and Content
Marketing
Many people tend to confuse social media marketing with content marketing as social
media are heavily involved in content marketing and content is being published by social
media marketers. Both terms are very close and there is plenty of overlap between them,
but they are actually two distinct entities. For effective online marketing it is essential to
have clear in mind the difference and following elements may help to understand it.
3.5.1 Centre of Gravity
In social media marketing the focus of the marketing activity is stationed in the social
networks themselves. Produced content is placed inside of Facebook, inside of Twitter
and inside of other social networks.
For content marketing it is a brand website or microsite for brands specific product.
Social sites are distributors of links leading back to the website content. They are not
containers of the content itself. [15]
3.5.2 Type of Content
Type of content in social media marketing depends on the context, restrictions and
limitations of the specific social platform. As example Twitter allows to post messages
that are 140 characters long. Instagram for instance is for posting only squared format
photos and videos lasting maximum 15 seconds.
In content marketing context of website provides more options of content type. Brands
can publish longer forms of content with emphasis on quality, especially blog posts,
videos, infographics, case studies, ebooks. [15]
3.5.3 Objectives
There are two main objectives that SMM tends to focus on:
Brand awareness - creating activity around the brand.
Customer retention/satisfaction - companies are using social media for a direct
dialog with customers to provide them support.
22

On the other hand content marketing is more focused on demand generation. Quality
content on websites can build a relationship with potential clients and nurture them
towards a lead conversion or purchase. [15]
3.5.4 SMM and CM in ACT process
Social media is an attracting tool. It works best in getting attention in the first phase -
Attract and also in spreading success stories in the last - Transform phase. It doesnt often
turn stranger straight into customer rather the focus of SMM is aimed on converting
people to consumers.
Content Marketing work great through the whole ACT process. Its strength is, compared
to Social Media Marketing, that it more successfully converts strangers directly to
customers. [11]
3.5.5 Conclusion
In brief, social media marketing is about promotion and content marketing is about
creation. The two work together in harmony and can generate fantastic results.
Content marketing should be the starting point of all online marketing campaigns and the
next step is social media marketing that is the number one way to promote a website or
brand online.
3.6 COBRAs
Web 2.0 and subsequently social media websites have changed users and their online
behaviour. Opportunities to interact, express, share and create content about anything
gave them significant powers which have important consequences on companies,
products, and brands. Their interactions are strongly influencing brands and their
consumers behaviour, even more than traditional forms of marketing and advertising.
[17]
Watching brand-related videos on YouTube, posting photos of products on Facebook or
commenting on brands statuses are examples of consumers online brand-related
activities (COBRAs). COBRA concept is a behavioural construct that provides a unifying
framework to think about consumer activity pertaining to brand-related content on social media
23

platforms.[18] It is essential to understand peoples motivations to engage in such
activities to effectively anticipate and direct the consequences.
3.6.1 COBRA Typology
Based on usage typologies of social media and on ones level of involvement with brand-
related content, COBRAs were categorised into 3 dimensions:
Consuming
Type with the lowest level of online brand-related activeness. People are
participating without actively contributing or creating content. They watch brand-
related videos, read product reviews or comments on brand profiles and forums.
These consumers also play branded online video games and download content
from brands websites such as ebooks.
Contributing
Contributing is the mid level of online brand-related activeness. User-to-content
and user-to-user interactions fall into this category. Here are a few examples of
these activities:
o Rating products or brands
o Engaging in branded conversations
o Joining a brand profile on social network site
o Commenting on blogs, pictures, videos and any other brand-related
content that others have created
Creating
The highest level of brand-related activeness is creating content. People are
actively producing and publishing the brand-related content that others then
consume and contribute to. They write product reviews and blogs, produce and
upload branded videos, music and pictures.
[18]
3.6.2 COBRA Motivations
There are several reasons why and how much are people being involved in a specific
COBRA category.
24

Firstly, lets look at the general social media use motivations, why people consume social
media and what satisfactions they eventually receive thereof. According to Muntiga et al.
[18] study there are six categories of motivations for social media use, plus second-order
motivations - called sub-motivations:
Entertainment - considered as overall motivation. It covers gratifications that have
a connection with escaping or being diverted from problems or routine, emotional
release or relief, cultural enjoyment, passing time and relaxation.
Integration and social interaction - This motivation covers media gratifications
that are related to other people. Connecting with friends, looking for (emotional)
support, affiliation with like-minded others are examples of sub-motivations.
Personal identity - covers media gratifications that are related to the self, like
reinforcing personal values, self-fulfillment or gaining recognition from peers.
Information - Most common sub-motivations are opinion and advice seeking,
information exchange, voyeurism, surveillance.
Remuneration - involves people using social media because they expect to gain
some kind of future reward like money, prize or personal wants such as specific
software.
Empowerment - is a motivation that refers to people using social media to exert
their influence or power on other people or firms.
These motivations also drive customers online brand-related activities but each category
is driven by a different (sub-)motivation mix.
3.6.2.1 Motivations for Consuming Brand-Related Content
Information
Entertainment
Remuneration
Information is an important motivation when it comes to consuming brand-related
content. It is the driver of reading product reviews or threads on brand communities in
order to make good buying decisions. It also gets people inspired, for instance when they
look at the new fashion collection pictures.
Entertainment is present in all COBRA types. Sub-motivations like enjoyment, relaxation
and pastime are specific for consuming brand-related content. It is consumed also by
25

people who expect remuneration, for instance, playing social media-based video game to
win a valuable prize.
3.6.2.2 Motivations for Contributing to Brand-Related Content
Personal identity
Integration and Social interaction
Entertainment
The personal identity motivation is a driver of both contributing and creating. Specifically
for contributing to brand-related content there are sub-motivations: self-expression, self-
presentation and self-assurance. For example people tend to like brands Facebook page
in order to show others that The brand is their favourite.
Integration and social interaction also drive both the creating and the contributing
COBRA types. Regarding contributing to brand-related content it covers three sub-
motivations: Social interaction, social identity and helping. People contribute to brands
social media sites in order to meet and interact with others with the same interests. They
also try to help and get help from each other.
3.6.2.3 Motivations for Creating Brand-Related Content
Personal identity
Integration and social interaction
Entertainment
Empowerment
Creating and contributing is driven by the same motivations except of empowerment that
is specifically related to the creating COBRA type. Ones blog can change other peoples
perceptions, get them to buy a product or get a company to change course.
When creating marketing strategy it is essential to anticipate and stimulate consumers
online brand-related activities. Knowing which motivations drive particular COBRAs
could be very effectively used when setting up campaigns.
This was used by Nokia in January 2012, when they were introducing new smartphone
(Lumia 800) to the Czech market. Few weeks before the introduction, Nokia identified top
Czech opinion makers and exclusively gave them the new phones. Practically, few
26

minutes later, these people started posting first-hand reactions and writing brand-related
blog posts. This caused, that others started to ask questions about the new Nokia phone
and contributed to the brand-related content created by the opinion makers.[19]
3.7 Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM)
Traditional Word of Mouth (WoM) was defined by Johan Arndt in 1967 as oral, person
to person communication between a receiver and a communicator whom the receiver
perceives as non-commercial, concerning a brand, a product or a service. *20+ There are
three important parts in that definition:
1. WoM is interpersonal communication apart from mass communication such as
advertising.
2. Content of the communication is commercial, focused on brands, products and
services - or even on their advertising.
3. Communicators are not commercially motivated - or at least they are perceived
not to be.
WoM is considered to be more effective than other marketing tools. [23] One of the
reasons is that consumer-created information is more credible than seller-created
information. Sellers present their product with strong emphasis on good aspects and try
to hide (as much as they can) the bad ones. Consumers, in contrast, provide honest
evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of a product from the users viewpoint.
Another reason is that this consumer-created information is more consumer oriented than
seller created information. It is more understandable, familiar, and focused on the usage
situations and product advantages from consumers perspective. It can be subjective
information, consisting mainly of emotion expressions, or it can be objective information
just like seller-created information. [22]
The Internet has upgraded WoM to electronic Word of Mouth (eWoM) by providing more
possibilities where the communication can take place.
eWom is defined as any statement based on positive, neutral, or negative experiences made by
potential, actual, or former consumers about a product, service, brand, or company, which is made
available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet (through websites, social
networks, instant messages, news feeds. . .). [21] [22]
27

The difference between traditional WoM and its new electronic version, is that eWoM is
measurable, since comments are written on the websites and also some types of eWoM
messages are controllable. For instance, it is decision of marketers whether online
consumer reviews are shown on their website or not. Finally, there is credibility
difference, while traditional WoM messages are direct messages from familiar people
(family members or friends), eWoM content is created by unknown authors. But if an
eWoM message, such as online consumer review, is persuasive and logical, consumers are
more likely to believe that message. [26]
Nowadays eWoM, also called online referrals, highly influences purchase decisions.
Customer know-how exchange has an impact on consumer perceptions of product value
and likelihood to recommend the product, but is does not influence consumer repurchase
intentions *21]
3.7.1 Factors of eWoM
There are number of factors with an impact on eWoM that need to be taken into account
when designing online marketing strategy and afterwards managing eWoM, namely:
Type of eWoM - Matter of disconfirmation
Type of experience
Platforms
Quality vs Quantity
3.7.1.1 Type of eWoM
Basically there are two types of eWoM based on the effect it has on brand: positive and
negative. Both are important when it comes to managing eWoM, but it has a larger impact
in cases of negative eWoM, which it is greater for established websites than for
unestablished ones and more influential for experience goods than for search goods. [21]
[24]
3.7.1.2 Matter of Disconfirmation
From aforementioned definition of eWoM, motives to create eWoM content are
dependent on positive, neutral, or negative experiences related to a product, service,
brand or company. In other words, motives are based on emotional reaction - degree of
28

satisfaction. This could be measured as the difference between a customers expected
performance and her perception of the actual performance of a product, service, or brand.
If consumers expectations are exceeded, they lead to a satisfied consumer; unmet
expectations lead to a dissatisfied one. [21] Thereof disconfirmation of expectations
dramatically affects consumer satisfaction and so the likelihood to create eWoM.
There are three disconfirmation outcomes:
Positive disconfirmation = Expected performance < Actual performance
Negative disconfirmation = Expected performance > Actual performance
Neutral confirmation = Expected performance = Actual performance
Note: We can consider eWoM as a part of the creating brand-related content COBRA type.
Thus, the motivations for creating brand-related content can also drive the creation of
eWoM.
3.7.1.3 Type of Experience
Customer experiences could be divided into two main categories:
Brand Experiences with product itself, visual identity, advertising and
innovativeness of product or service compared to previous versions or
competition.
Customer interface experiences - dynamic exchange of information and service
between the consumer and a company face-to-face, online, via phone, email or any
other way.
According to Kietzmann et al. [21] research, consumers tend to create eWoM about all
brand experiences more, when they are positively disconfirmed. This suggest, that people
like to be positively surprised and share this experience with others. On the other hand
the negative disconfirmation must be very strong in order to motivate people to create the
negative eWoM about their brand experiences.
When it comes to customer interface experiences the trend is different. In cases of
negative disconfirmation, when the interaction with the brand was worse than expected,
the likelihood of negative eWoM creation is very high, especially in personal-but-distant
communication via email, social media and phone.
29

3.7.1.4 Platforms
Another important factor is the place where consumers share eWoM. This is influenced
by peoples perceived ease of access to a competent contact person, the firms expected
ability to handle feedback efficiently, or degree of comfort and experience with a
platform. *21+
eWoM is mostly shared on social media platforms. Kietzmann et al., who looked at the
two biggest social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter, showed that Facebook is
mostly the choice for sharing better-than-expected experiences. Twitter on the other hand,
is the place to share eWoM from negatively disconfirmed consumers. One of the reasons
might be the nature of the social media platforms. Facebook provides users with control
over their postings while Twitter has a strong public nature.
The findings of Kietzmann et al. [21] study are not very much applicable to Czech
republic, because of the number of users of mentioned social media platforms. While
there were 3.8 million Facebook users in Czech republic in April 2013, only 150 000 people
were using Twitter.[25]
Consumers share their experiences not only on traditional platforms like website or
Facebook. But constantly increasing number of social media platforms gives consumers
opportunities to share eWoM wherever it is comfortable and effective for them. This fact
adds tremendous complexity to any marketing strategy. [21]
3.7.1.5 Quantity and Quality
We can assess the quality of eWoM content on the basis of relevance, understandability,
sufficiency, and objectivity. Product review, as a form of eWoM that has noteworthy
influence on purchase decisions, can be considered as high quality when it is logical,
persuasive and gives reasons based on specific facts about the product. In contrast, low
quality eWoM contains emotional, subjective, vacuous, no factual information that is
simply making a recommendation.
Quantity, when talking about product reviews, represents the products popularity
because it is related to the sales volume of the product.
30

Parks et al.*26+ study showed that quality of online consumer reviews has a positive
effect on consumer purchasing intention, and furthermore, this intention increases along
with the number of reviews - quantity.
3.7.2 Managing eWoM
As eWoM plays a major role for customers buying decisions, it is necessary to effectively
manage it. How firms respond to eWoM has an effect on customers intention to
repurchase and to provide positive referrals. It is important to be aware of the variance in
eWoM types and pay close attention to eWoM to:
minimize the risks of harmful comments
maximize the impact of helpful eWoM
For eWoM managers the key to manage eWoM is to prioritize attention: what, where,
when to read and respond to eWoM and how much time to devote to any individual post.
This could be done by using the knowledge about eWoM factors discussed above.
3.7.2.1 Managing Positive eWoM
Many companies are not paying enough attention to positive eWoM. They appreciate it,
but they dont use it effectively. For eWoM shared on social media, it is essential to create
a dialog with the consumers, thank them for their activity and use the eWoM content for
further campaigns.
3.7.2.2 Managing Negative eWoM
As negative eWoM has a larger impact on the company it is usually priority number one.
To handle negative eWoM it is necessary to understand customers problem, try to solve
it and so transform the negative eWoM into positive one. To do that it is needed to have:
Friendly customer service - Do unto your customers as you want to be treated
when you are a customer. *28+
Boundaries - it is not possible to accommodate all negative eWoM. It requires rules
to set boundaries and agenda, then it is necessary to strictly follow them.
Prchal [27] in his presentation suggests 4 steps to transform existing negative eWoM:
31

1. step - Find out motives and causes of customers problem by sending her a
personal message via email or via social media private message. It is good to use
the type of sentence: Please tell me something about yourself. The message should
contain also truthful information about yourself, the company and its situation.
2. step - Communication exhaustion - if the customer will communicate with you
directly, he wont produce any more public negative eWoM that might do harm to
your company or brand.
3. step - Cooperate with the customer and provide exclusive benefits and advantages
only for her.
4. step - Involve the customer into a project and give her an agenda and
responsibilities.
An example to demonstrate the success of these steps is Prchals *27+ informational
campaign for Pragues transport enterprises (Dopravni podnik hlavniho mesta Prahy).
Fundamental changes in public mass transportation in Prague were made in September
2012 and they needed to be properly communicated to the passengers. A massive
campaign called: "Vdy to jede jinam!" (Cmon its going wrong direction) helped people
to notice the changes and also made them to post eWoM and questions on the special
Facebook page dedicated to the campaign. [29] In the first month of the campaign there
were hundreds of questions asked by more than 1500 people. Everything went well, strict
boundaries were set and there was a friendly customer support that replied to consumers.
But there was an unexpected problem. One consumer (specifically, his name is Martin
ubrt and he became quite popular during the campaign) started to repeatedly post
negative eWoM that was full of professional knowledge about the public mass
transportation in Prague and appeared to be unstoppable. After tens of negative posts
that were posted on Facebook timeline, one of the team members of the campaign (Marek
Prchal) contacted Mr. Subrt directly via email (1. step), thanked him for his professional
criticism and asked him to reveal more about himself and his carrier. Mr. Subrt replied
and continued in the email communication (2. step). He was then invited to join one of the
campaign events in the tram, where he also met the director of ROPID (Regional
Organiser of Prague Integrated Transport) (mix of steps 3. and 4.). It all went public and
photos of Mr. Subrt in the tram with the director were posted to the Facebook page. This
was the moment when all the negative eWoM was transformed and then perceived by
others that their opinion and criticism (if it is relevant), really matters to the enterprise.
32


Figure 7 Mr. Subrt (Left) with director of ROPID (right) in tram during the campaign [27]
After this sequence of events, Mr. Subrt didnt stop posting critical eWoM (as mentioned
above, you cant satisfy everyone), but the regularity decreased and content was written
in a different, more positive-thinking style. [27] [30]

33

3.8 Online marketing infographics

Figure 8 Online Marketing Theories Inforgraphics
To better understand how the basic theories and parts of online marketing come together,
I have created an infographic where on the top there is the new mental model with the
critical Zero Moment of Truth. Then there are approximate boundaries indicated between
the model and the online marketing types and techniques. And on the bottom there are
the ACT methodology phases to show how these are connected to the ZMOT model and
online marketing techniques.
34

4 Social Media Strategies
Despite the fact that many businesses have a social media presence, they still struggle
with low effectivity in these field. For many, setting up a social media strategy, may look
like an easy task ask at first, but then the results are not very satisfying. According to
research conducted by Constant Contact, over 50% of small businesses need help with
social media. [32]
4.1 Social Media Strategy Failures
From my point of view, according to the experiences gathered in online marketing
business there are certain myths or illusions that are causing issues to the companies:
Building up a social media strategy is easy, simple and could be done by everyone
who has at least one social media profile. It might sound little too extreme, but yes,
there are business owners who still think it will this way.
There is no need of technical skills. Its enough when one has basic internet-
browsing skills and can manage his social media account.
Many companies think that they dont need to change anything just add some
social media platforms to their current strategy and let one person to manage it.
Social media marketing is cheap since you dont need to pay for social media
accounts (at least not for the three most popular Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn)
Or the other extreme, the success depends only and only on how much money will
company invest to social media advertising (pay-per click ads etc.)
These mind-sets are the first causes of social media strategy failures.
Another problem, that occurs far too often, is that businesses dont have social media
strategy at all, or they just think they have, but the only thing in their strategy is
expanding their social media presence without any solid purpose. And this is the most
important part, these so-called social strategies are not innately linked to business goals.
Or even if the goals do exist, social initiatives face challenges in the form of a lack of
defined strategy, governance, and funding. [34]
35

Nowadays, social web is transforming how people interact, how relationships are being
formed and developed and this is changing the way people socialize, work and engage
with companies.
The new normal is that customers are leading the conversations that define your brand,
competitors are crowd-sourcing ideas to bring new offerings to market and employees are using
social media in all facets of their lives. [33] This shift presents an opportunity. Social
Business. [36]
4.2 Social Business
Altimeter company defines Social Business as: The deep integration of social media and social
methodologies into the organization to drive business impact. [34]
In other words, Social Business takes social concepts like sharing, rating, reviewing,
connecting, and collaborating to all parts of the business including customer support,
marketing, the executive team and more. These days when a company has a social media
strategy its concept usually looks like this:
Company has a Facebook page, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts that are managed
together, meaning they are posting the same posts (sometimes with slight changes
because of for example Twitters 140 character limitation) on each social media.
They have also a YouTube channel to upload their videos.
They use content calendar to plan what to post a week or maximum a few months
ahead.
Finally they measure basic metrics as number of likes, retweets, views and
engagement.
This strategy is maybe building some engagement, but definitely its more alike to the
interruption marketing [3] and goal of these kind of strategies does not correspond with
the business goal of the company.
In case of Social Business the business goals are the main focus also with customer and
customer relationships that are being the core. Every social media activity helps to meet
customer expectations and achieve business goals furthermore. From a higher
perspective, it helps to establish a competitive product or service. [36]
36

4.2.1 Engagement in Social Business
Customers engagement or consumers online brand related activities (COBRAs) are one of
the key elements in every social media strategy. Basic strategies are focused only on the
first phases of engagement (or COBRAs) that are consumption (e.g. number of views of
video) and contribution/curation (e.g. number of likes/retweets). Effective Social Business
place emphasis on the creation phase and specifically on the collaboration element
between customers and company, and between customers and employees.

Figure 9 Structured engagement [31]
For instance company can measure the number of submitted ideas from customers that
then will help to enhance their product or service. To increase such a metric number it is
necessary to know the motives of the customers to create such ideas, support them and
make it easy for them to share these with the organization. It all requires collaboration
with the company, with the employees throughout the whole company. Engagement in
Social Business is about about connecting your customers and stakeholders with the
brand, product, or service, and then tapping their collective knowledge and connecting
into the organization to drive innovation and beneficial change. *31+
4.2.2 Marketing and Operations
Social media marketing or marketing as a function inside of the company, many times
stands alone or is only vaguely connected to the other departments. Generally we can
consider marketing as function or discipline within an organization that defines and
shapes the customers expectations. On the other side, Operations, the functional team
that develops or is responsible for the product or service, shapes and delivers the actual
customer experience. The difference between what is expected and what is delivered (the
matter of disconfirmation) is one of the important factors in customers content creation
(eWoM creation). Social Business is the connection of marketing, operations and
customers. Social media marketing is most effective when the entire business is
37

responsible for the experiences and everyone within the organization is visibly
responsible for the overall product or service. *31+ Organization, as a social business,
operates as a holistic entity rather than a collection of insulated silos. *31+

Figure 10 The Marketing - Operations connection [31]
4.3 Social Business Strategy
Social Business strategy is defined by Altimeter company as: The set of visions, goals, plans,
and resources that align social media initiatives with business objectives. [34]
The strategy to be successful it requires:
1. Alignment with the strategic business goals of an organization
2. Organizational alignment and support that enables execution of that strategy
Its substantial to realize that a fully formed, coherent and integrated social business
strategy needs time to develop. The strategy changes as company goals and vision evolve
over time. [34] [35]
4.3.1 Example of Social Business Strategy - Royal Dutch Shell
Shells primary channel is Facebook, but they also have LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
Their goal is to showcase the personality of Shell in operations, drilling, retail, and
careers. As their key metric is reputation that is evaluated by asking a random population
on Facebook and other (also traditional) media two questions:
1. (On a scale of 1 to 5) To what extent do you think Shell is actively addressing
future energy needs?
38

2. To what extent do you think Shell meets its customers energy need in socially and
environmentally responsible ways?
Shell seldom replies or engages with people on the Facebook page. This may seem wrong,
but the Shells strategic goal priorities are different than engagement without purpose.
They measure Facebook daily to see how their reputations is trending in Facebook versus
other channels. Thus they can say what impact Facebook content has on their reputation.
This way they can connect a measurable key performance indicator (KPI) to a business
goal. [35]
4.4 Factors of Social Business Strategy
Before developing a strategy towards social business, realization about the current
position and the future goal is needed. Its not good to compare the companys position to
others very much, rather focus on the success factors of social business. There are 7
factors, that will make social business strategy successful, proposed by Li et al. [35] based
on their study about how businesses were developing social media strategies and whether
or not strategists aligned strategies with business goals.
The 7 factors are namely:
1. Define the overall business goals
2. Establish the long-term vision
3. Ensure executive support
4. Define the strategy roadmap
5. Establish governance and guidelines
6. Secure staff, resources, and funding
7. Invest in technology platforms that evolve
Benchmarking against these factors will help organizations invest in the efforts to evolve
social media strategies into meaningful social business transformation. [35]
4.4.1 #1 Define the Overall Business Goals
The social business strategy should be based on the specific goals the company business is
trying to accomplish, for instance making more revenue or increasing customer
satisfaction. A good place to start is to take the companys vision and mission statement,
current strategic plan and long-term goals and think about how social media activities can
39

contribute to reach these goals at a high level. Instead of just measuring likes, share,
tweets etc. it is necessary to develop social KPIs and tie them to companys business KPIs.
Example:
Organizational Strategic Goal: Decrease costs
Strategic Metric: Reduce customer service costs by 10%
Social Business Goal: Respond via social media to deflect from call center
Social Business Metric: Decrease number of inquiries addressed via call center by 20
percent
4.4.2 #2 Establish Long Term Vision
It is not enough to have goals in place, a long-term vision is needed. The vision clearly
expresses the future customer, employee and stakeholder relationships and experiences
that will be the result of the social business strategy. It also helps to reset culture and
minimize politics - but it requires careful thought to ensure that the statement builds trust
rather than engender fear and skepticism. *35+ Properly done, the vision is formulated as
a future state that is around 3 years ahead. Such period is long enough to envision a
significant change and short enough to create a plan to achieve that reality.
Just like a good message, the strategy has to be memorable. [35] So the vision has to be
something that employees, shareholders and customer can stand behind, a story that will
be inspirational.
4.4.3 #3 Ensure Executive Support
In March 2013 Altimeter study showed that only 52% top executives, of surveyed
companies, were informed, engaged, and aligned with their companies social strategy.
[34] Many executives dont understand social medias potential for business impact,
because they simply dont have experience with social media themselves. It is not
necessary for them to understand specifics about social media, rather is important is to
show them the types of relationships, experiences and outcomes that they can bring.
Executives are instrumental in granting additional budget and resources to scale strategic
social media. Depending on the scale and scope of the strategy, the engagement of
executives may be just minimal, but at least at informative level.
40

4.4.4 #4 Define the Strategy Roadmap
A work breakdown structure is needed to achieve the long-term vision along with
business goals. Developing a roadmap means to list all potential ideas and compare them
against company's readiness and ability to execute, then define what and when will be
done. What company will do is equally important as what it wont do. This kind of
roadmap will then add clarity and discipline to the social business strategy.
Brainstorming social business initiatives is the first step in building a roadmap.
Example:
Initiative name: Proactively address customer support issues
Business goal: Reduce customer support costs
Description: Look up customer conversations related to product or service issues on non-
company sites (forums, blogs) and address with customer support team.
Next step is to categorise these initiatives in order to find possible dependencies and tie
them better to business goals. There are 5 categories suggested by Li et al.[35] where most
of the social initiatives often fall into:
Learn - Glean insights from social engagement.
Listening to customers, employees and partners, by social technologies, to get
know them and their needs. These are actionable insights that can be used to make
decisions. Customers increasingly expect organizations to be listening and
responding, thus learn-initiatives are a must for most of the companies.
Dialog - Deepen relationships with conversations.
Building relationships with customers by listening to the conversations and
adding value to it. In larger companies its important not to forget about
relationship development with employees by using enterprise social networks
(ESNs)
Advocate - Enable the fans to speak on behalf of the organization.
Turning customers and employees into enthusiastic fans and encourage them to,
for example, post reviews to third party web sites, engage actively in social
channels or participate in company made advocacy programs.
Support - Assist people and create great experience in the process.
Provide customers support through social channels in (near) real-time.
Innovate - Tap the energy and ideas from others.
41

Enormous opportunities to use social technologies to gather ideas and innovate
and form the product or service.
After assembling all the social business initiatives, it is essential to prioritize them
according to:
capabilities of the company to accomplish them
value that it will bring to the company.
This could be done by simple denotation of high to low values or by using a five-point
scoring system. Those initiatives with high capability and high value will have also the
highest priority and should be executed among the first. Low capability but with high
value initiatives will be considered as areas of investment. Initiatives with high capability
and low value might need a closer examination to possibly increase the value for the
company over time. Lastly, those with low capability and low value initiatives are not of
immediate concern, but that may be activated later.

Figure 11 Prioritize Social Initiatives by Capability and Value [35]
Discovered by Altimeter, social media campaigns and activities are usually planned for 6-
12 months. For successful social business it is needed to have a strategic roadmap
designed for a longer period - around 3 years. This might be good to divide to 6 month
parts and fill them with social business initiatives according to the priority.
It is good to create a Gantt chart where in first year there will be initiatives with high
value and high capability, but if there are any dependencies it is needed to properly
address them.
42

Then fill in the next two years of the chart until there are included the low-value, low-
capability initiatives. Finally phase is aligning all dependencies and prerequisites. It is
also important to move up and label the initiatives that are strategic to the key
organizational goals.
4.4.5 #5 Establish Governance and Guidelines
With strategy roadmap in place, a good governance is needed. Otherwise, everyone will
want to use social media in their own way and for their own purposes. Without
organization and centralization, this will create chaos among employees and particularly
among customers.
Social business companies have established a hub called centre of excellence (CoE) that
help the rest of the company to understand and scale social activities. The key is to give
authority and executive support to someone who will have the responsibility to set
processes and policies for social activities throughout the company. Moreover the CoE
will provide support training and education to the employees.
For social business strategy governance it is essential to define following guidelines and
processes:
General social media policy/guidelines
Specific playbook for social business practitioners with best practices and a
description of your brand personality
Engagement triage process - a system for managing messages from followers
Risk management and social media crisis response plan
Agreement on who has decision making power
4.4.6 #6 Secure Staff, Resources, Funding
Social business strategy needs to include details about resources needed to execute the
strategy. One of the crucial question here is how to get right people to the core social
media team. In the early stages of social business maturity, one way is to outsource to an
external agency that will then help to build develop strategic capabilities in-house.
43

The first position to hire for is a social strategist, skilled in both social media and business.
Implementing training programs in the organization can make then everyone helpful
with social media.
Regarding funding, it is good to test strategies with pilot programs to see the results they
bring but it is vital not to get stuck with them and keep moving forward.
4.4.7 #7 Invest in Technology Platforms that Map the Strategy
Everyday technology innovation often makes companies to jump immediately into
technology selection and implementation. In other words it makes them to choose tactics
before setting up strategy. Then these companies find themselves doing and investing
into something that is beyond their interest and goals.
For organizations to make such decisions there are two basic types of tools related to
social business that will help them:
Monitoring Platforms
Social Media Management Systems
Putting the success factors into practice is more a journey than a destination.*35+
Important is that social business strategy always stems from companys business goals
and it should be constantly evolving. This doesnt require a full-on examination of the
entire strategy but rather a quick check to make sure that all elements are still in
alignment.
Some may argue that these factors and the whole concept of social business is only
suitable for large companies, but the other side is true. Startups and small companies
often strive with social media and this provides them a good framework for getting the
wheels turning. When their business and number employees will grow, properly defined
social business strategy will become more coherent and consistent.

44

5 Content Marketing Strategy
Content marketing is a very essential part of social business and it is necessary to have a
solid strategy to understand what content is being produced and how it supports overall
vision of the social business. When building such a strategy, it is important to always have
in mind all the social business strategy factors. All content has to work together; all the
groups need to work together *44+
There are 6 essential components of content marketing strategy [43]:
Creation
Curation
Optimization
Social Media
Amplification
Analysis
5.1 Creation
Creating engaging content on a consistent basis is probably the hardest part and it cannot
be accomplished by accident.
5.1.1 Know your Audience
The number one rule here is to know the audience. *45+ Its good to start with gathering
demographic and behavioral information from Google Analytics, Facebook Insights or
other analytical tools. Then analyze COBRAs motivations and try to find what type of
content does the audience consume. When distributing content such as ebooks or white
papers a great way to get more sophisticated information from the consumers is by
getting them to fill out forms or questionnaires in order to get access to the content.
Another important way is to communicate with the audience and ask them for their
opinions and ideas.


45

5.1.2 Deliver Real Value
If you deliver to your audience a value they cant get anywhere else, they will keep coming back.
[43] The content must be a lot of things at once:
Timely and relevant - it has to address an issue, trend or problem that affects the
reader
Varied and consistent - the subject has to be fresh, newsworthy, actual, but
publishing style and frequency has to be consistent and stable.
Well written and well produced - it has to add value and include a certain
expertise that is unique for the organization.
Call to action - it must somehow engage and call the audience to action such as
subscribing for further content.
5.1.3 Type of Content
Besides the specific types of content mentioned in previous chapter, there are 2 general
types of content depending on time and resources needed for the production:
Brick content - larger content productions such as research papers, case studies,
applications etc. It requires a larger budget, more resources and time. But this kind
of content has a large payoff in terms of better SEO rankings, lifespan and metrics.
Feather content - smaller content often in form of simple text or photo content that
is posted to blog and social media. It requires less time and resources to produce,
but has a shorter lifespan and diminished SEO potential. [43]
5.2 Curation
Content curation is form of content marketing where company editorially collects the best
content related to a specific topic, enhances that content by adding personal opinions and
expertise. This kind of content then delivers added value to the target audience who
consumes it after it is published. Well-executed content curation isnt just a recyclation of
content that was already published but rather a personalized retelling of a story. It is good
to start with reading blogs and following experts in the companys industry on social
media and keep up with new articles and trends.
46

By promoting these external stories, it allows company to get in front of their audience
and be seen as a thought leader and not just someone who always promotes their own
brand. [43] [44]
5.3 Optimization
Great content can only meet its true potential if it can be easily found and consumed. *43]
Optimization of the content for search engines will help to get the content more in front
for audience searching for related topics. Increasing readability and availability of the
content will engage people with it and make them share it further.
5.3.1 Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web
page in a search engines natural or un-paid (organic) search results. [43] SEO helps search
engine algorithms and social sites figure out why your content is relevant to your
audience.
The importance in getting found in search engines is undeniable. There are people trying
to get their websites to the first positions since first search engines emerged. SEO as a
topic is huge, changing and innovating every day therefore only some parts and simple
basics of SEO will be covered in this thesis.
5.3.1.1 On Page Optimization
One of the most important element in optimization for search engines are keywords. In
the process of creating content is it good to use an analytical tool, such as Google
Keyword Tool, to identify the most relevant keywords. Once these are found it, there are
three important to places in content and in html code where the keywords need to be
integrated:
Title tag <title>
Headline tags <H1>
First paragraph of the content
There are also other places that can be easily covered:
Using ALT and TITLE tags with images
47


Figure 12 ALT tag
Building links to other content with relevant anchor text

Figure 13 Relevant text as a link to other content
Integrate Meta description into HTML code that is then displayed in Google
search results

Figure 14 Google Search Result
5.3.1.2 External Search Factors
According to Google there are over 200 factors that affect how well the page ranks. And it
is always good to look at few of the basic ones:
Number and quality of inbound links - hyperlinks that link from a webpage back
to the company's website. This factor strongly determines popularity and
importance of the content.
Domain name
Google Authorship - links authors google+ profile with him created content and
gives it extra credibility and visibility. In search results authors picture is
displayed next to the search result.
Using multimedia - such as pictures, infographics, videos etc.
Sharing button - it's important to make sharing as easy as possible and integration
of social media sharing buttons will help.
[43] [46]
5.3.2 New Optimization, New SEO?
There is a certain amount of necessity for basic SEO as mentioned above. Other more
complex techniques and factors cost a lot of time and money and are often outsourced.
48

SEO companies are very good at on page optimisation based on keyword placement,
keyword density, inbound links etc. All those are still markers of relevance and quality,
but increasingly Google and other search engines are optimising their algorithms to look
at social signal as a truer measure of quality and relevance. Content that people choose to
consume and share within their social networks is driving higher organic search rankings.
And this is leading to a new form of content marketing which is about producing high
quality, engaging, compelling content that is share-worthy and that people want share
within their networks. So Google and other algorithms are looking at things like original
authorship and consumptions patterns, content thats followed, content thats liked,
content thats shared. This is causing a broad change in optimization of content. Content
shouldnt be optimised for search engines but rather for people. [46]
Investing in nowadays SEO techniques to get better rankings is not a long term solution
because Google (as the leading search engine) is constantly changing their algorithms
how it rates websites so it can provide more accurate results. The best way to improve the
ranking is to produce great content that people link to and this is produced better by
company in-house rather than being outsourced to an agency. Before spending money on
an SEO company, it necessary to be sure that the basics are in place first. [47]
5.4 Social Media in Content Marketing
As mentioned before social media play a huge role in content marketing. If a good and
quality content is produced it needs to get to the right audience. Social media nowadays
are the most effective tools to shout a message to the world. The effectivity is high only
when social media are used appropriately depending on their type and audience so that it
supports the goals and overall vision.
As the content is being pushed through to the social media it is necessary not to forget
about the engagement with the audience. They are not just one way communication tools
so its necessary to follow the conversations about the content that company published
and manage the following eWoM produced by consumers.
5.4.1 YOUtility
As the number of messages and content on social media is rising and it is getting harder
to get the attention. Companies have to present something that is really exceptional and
49

useful. One idea, presented by Jon Bayer, is called YOUtility - marketing so useful that
people would pay for it. [12] The difference between helping and selling is just 2 letters.
But those letters make all the difference. Sell something, and you make a customer. Help
someone, and you make a customer for life. [12]
As a great example of youtility in practice content marketing of the company called Geek
Squad
1
- company that provides 24 hour technology support in USA. [48] Geek Squad has
a YouTube channel
2
where they provide hundreds of instructional videos about hardware
and software. The obvious question might be how does that make business sense when
they provide detailed how-to videos on YouTube for free. The best answer to this
questions has provided the founder of Geek Squad Robert Stephens himself: Well, our
best customers are the people that think they can do it themselves. But even if they can,
someday theyll be over their head, and who will they call for help? Were betting its the
company whose logo they looked at for 8 minutes when we gave them free video help.
[12]
5.4.2 Identifying and Engaging Influencers
One of the best ways how to ways to build audience on social media is through
identifying and engaging influencers. Identifying such users in the industry the company
operates is similar to keyword identification. There are plenty of tools that provide
number of metrics about users and their activities on social media or blogs. One of the
tools is Klout
3
which rates users according to the Klout score that is measuring ability to
drive action according to the topics user is talking about, how is she talking and how
people react to the posts. Higher Klout score means that the user is more influential. [49]
Forming relationships with your influencers is important because the impact and reach of
your content is amplified when your influencers share it also. It helps the message/content
resonate with the community because it has been endorsed by a trusted third party. [43]
The best way to build relationships with influencers is to actively engage with the content
they are producing. That means commenting on their blog posts, liking their Facebook
posts, retweeting them etc. Sharing their content that might be beneficial for your

1
http://www.geeksquad.com/
2
http://www.YouTube.com/user/GeekSquadHQ
3
http://klout.com/
50

consumers and then mentioning them in own-created content deepens the relationship
with influencers and increases the possibility of the content being shared by them also.
With this behaviour will companies then become influencers themselves.
5.5 Amplification
In December 2013 Facebook has again changed the news feed algorithm that decides
which content will be displayed in users news feed. According to the analysis from 10th
December 2013 by Ignite Social Media, the change of the algorithm is punishing brand
pages regardless of how interested fans are in that pages content. According to the
analysis organic reach percentage have each declined by 44% on average, with some
pages seeing declines as high as 88%. [50]
This fact is giving increasing the priority of paid amplification of the content. In high
cluttered topics it is sometimes necessary for companies to pay for promotion to get their
posts to chosen users. In content marketing terms, amplification refers to tactics that help
our content reach the audiences we are targeting. *43+ Amplification has become an
inseparable part of (content) marketing. There are two basic ways how to amplify the
content in content marketing:
Native Advertising - method where advertiser attempts to gain attention by
providing valuable content in the context of the users experience. It is less
intrusive than traditional advertising and consumer doesnt feel like they are
being advertised to.
Branded Content - content produced by a brand that is placed in a traditional
news medium.
Amplification allows companies to promote their content on channels where their target
audience is already engaged. Paid media is an essential way for not only expanding the
reach to new audiences, but testing content with new markets to gauge the impact. If a
company has no community to take the content to, paid promotion can be a start.
Few effective paid amplification methods:
Promoted Tweets
Sponsored Facebook Posts - 77% of Pages reach has been achieved with Promoted
Posts in 2013 according to Social Bakers study. [51]
Targeted LinkedIn posts
51

AdWords
Content placement services - e.g. Outbrain that will make links to the content
appear as recommendations on the web's largest content publishers including sites
like Wall Street Journal, Reuters & People.com. Plus it will optimize the
engagement so the more interesting the content and the more traffic it will drive,
the more it will be recommended around the web. [52]

Figure 15 Links displayed on CNN site by using Outbrain [52]
5.6 Analysis
Analysis and measurement of the efforts is essential to direct social business and so the
content marketing strategy. Numbers will always show if the strategies are working or
not. In order to measure the success of a content marketing strategy goal have to be
defined. And these have to be in accordance with the social business goals and overall
vision. From the definition of content marketing, there are 4 ways to interact with
audience:
1. Attracting current and new consumers
2. Gaining the consumers information and attention
3. Engaging with consumers questions and comments
4. Driving their profitable actions through your sales force or website
To determine the success of the strategy in each of these interaction, goals needs to be
defined. To have a good quality goal it is good to use a verified methodology such as
SMART.
SMART stands for:
52

Specific - goals are clearly defined so that it is clear what will be measured. Goals
that are defined too general are hard to accurately measure.
Measurable - goals have determined metrics which will be used to measure the
marketing efforts.
Achievable - realistic and attainable with the resources and budget that company
possess.
Relevant - to social business goals and vision.
Time-bound - goals that have associated a time frame.
5.6.1 Measuring content success
Content marketing activities will mainly increase the traffic to the companys website
where the consumers may buy the product or service - accomplish the basic goal of
increasing revenue. But the traffic, page views itself does not pay the bills. [43] Some visits
of the webpage may turn to sales, some not. By measuring and analysing each of the page
views, important information will show how consumers behave, consume the content and
if it brings the revenue to the company. By web analytics software like Google Analytics
(GA) it is possible to gain that information.
5.6.1.1 Goals in Google Analytics
Specific parts of the website or call to action buttons can be defined as GA goals from
which the number of users who reached that goals can be retrieved. GA also provides
more detailed information about users and how many call to action button did they take
before reaching the goal. This can be effectively used to determine how much revenue is
associated with each action the users take.
There are 4 types of goals:
Destination - destination goals are for specific URLs. Each time someone reaches
specified URL completes the goal. In practice the goal destination is set to a
Thank you page that is displayed after some purchase or download.
Duration - duration goals track the amount of time people spend on the website.
Pages/Screens per visit - the goal is completed when people view a specific
number of pages on the website.
Event - event goals track user interactions with content, like downloads, mobile ad
clicks, video plays, or social media button clicks. [53]
53

5.6.1.2 Referral Traffic
With the goals set up the next step is to determine how many users reached those goals
and where did they come from using referral traffic. Referral traffic is an online metric
that allows to understand where the consumers come from and when they reach the goal.
Defaultly it is possible to see whether user came from blog, Facebook, Twitter or any
other source, but is it also possible to have more specific data focus on particular content
campaign that was published. This can be done by adding parameters to any owned URL
that links to the website. There are 5 parameters that will help to collect more information
about the referral traffic:
Campaign Source - utm_source - the source of the traffic (e.g. Twitter, Google, a
newsletter, etc.)
Campaign Medium - utm_medium - medium where the traffic comes from (e.g.
150x250 banner, email, cost-per-click ad)
Campaign Name - utm_campaign - individual campaign name, promo code,
product etc.
Campaign Term (optional) - utm_term - the keywords that are used in a paid
search ad
Campaign Content (optional) - utm_content - used to differentiate similar content
or links within the same ad. It is used for A/B testing or to recognize links that
point to the same URL.
Parameters campaign term and content are not mandatory and are used tracking
additional information. [54]
Understanding the path visitors take on the website on the way to a purchase is essential for any
marketers content effort in order to understand which content has done the best and which content
still needs work. [43]
5.6.1.3 Types of metrics
Content cannot be measured with a single metric, because no one data point can
successfully or satisfactorily tell whether the content campaign is working. [55]
Nonetheless a combination of metrics is needed. There are 4 types of metrics needed to
measure content marketing efforts:
54

Consumption metrics - How many people consumed the content?
Page views, new visitors, unique visitors, downloads etc. These basic metrics that
are provided by Google Analytics, Facebook, YouTube Insights etc.
Sharing Metrics - How often does the content get shared?
Tweets, Facebook likes/shares, Google + shares, LinkedIn shares etc.
Lead Generation Metrics - How many visitors are signing up to learn more about
the companys product or service?
Email subscribers, Products trials, etc.
Sales Metrics - How many of the content marketing leads convert into sales?
Number of consumers who read the produced content and then bought the
product or service
[55]
There are many other more sophisticated techniques and tools for measuring and
analysing the content success, but it also depends what kind of goals does one want to
achieve and measure. These techniques and metrics will provide the company the basic
measurements and insights about consumers that then could be used for further
enhancement of the content and social business strategy.

55

6 Black Hat & White Hat in Social
Media Marketing
Terms black hat and white hat were originally associated with search engine
optimization. They indicate SEO techniques on the basis of deception involvement. The
white hat SEO technique involves no deception and it conforms to the search engines'
guidelines. On the other hand the black hat SEO techniques are used for improving
rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. In
other words, black hat is the term used in SEO to define spamming [40] [56] [57]
The same expressions started to emerge also in connection with social media marketing.
Black hat social media marketing can be defined as tactics that go against both the written
and unwritten rules of social media. These tactics game the system in order to achieve
better results faster. [58] Opposite to black hat are white hat techniques that respect the
rules and are honest and transparent.
But Dave Snyder, the Co-Founder of Search & Social, argues the existence of black/white
hat in social media because unlike search where theres a guideline set in front of you, the
community guides the social ethics. *59+ He aims to the fact that there isnt a clear difference
between black and white hat techniques in social media because even though there are
terms and conditions for every platform there are also rules that are the unwritten rules of
the communities that differ for each platform. According to Lee Odden, the CEO of
TopRank Online Marketing, difference between black and white hat could be seen as
difference between stupid and smart. [59]
Sometimes it is difficult to define techniques as a whole as white/black hat - it is
application in action that makes them risky. One community might find something
*technique+ offensive where another wouldnt have any issue with it. [59]

56

6.1 Black Hat Techniques Examples
6.1.1 Buying Audience
One of the obvious and very common black hat practices. Its goal is by buying Likes,
Fans or Followers reach a greater audience. In case of buying followers there are 2 main
ways:
most of the purchased fans are fake bot accounts - no real people are running
them.
purchased fans are real group of people that follow each other.
In the case of fake accounts there is a huge change that these will be found and deleted in
really short term of time. And in case of real followers there is a risk that these will
publicly write that the company paid them to be their fans and it may negatively affect
their reputation. This technique is widely used even in political campaigns, for example in
2012 TOP 09 Czech political party has bought around 6000 Facebook likes from Asia and
then they could not transparently explain how did they get these fans. This had a strong
negative effect on their social media presence. [61]
The effectivity not very long term and later it causes issues to the companies. It happened
also to Axiory where I was doing my Interim business project. 6 months before I came to
the company they didnt have anyone to professionally take care of their social media and
they bought around 2000 followers on Twitter with the aim to build brand awareness.
Then few fundamental issues emerged:
the purchased followers were fake bots and started to post spam.
company cannot really determine how many of the followers were real and thus
valuable.
number of these account were blocked and deleted so the number of followers
started to drop.
To resolve these issues someone had to clear the account from these fake accounts and
therefore Axiory had to invest additional resources to do so.
More followers do not mean more sales. Trust and engagement with the brand does.
Thats why white-hat marketing is superior to black-hat social media, because while
black-hat only focuses on quantity, white-hat focuses on quality. [62]
57

6.1.2 ClickJacking
A technique that tricks users into clicking a button or a link. It is used mainly on Facebook
that describes clickjacking: when certain websites make your browser (ex: Safari, Firefox) take
action without your knowledge or consent. For example, you might click on a link on one of these
websites and suddenly that link is posted on your Facebook Timeline [63]
ClickJacking aims to "hijack" the number of clicks meant for a particular page and then
route to the clicks to another page with a malicious content. [64] At first this content
appears to be legitimate and many times it looks like a popular site as YouTube for
example. But then, when interacted with it, it takes unwanted action on the behalf of the
consumer.
6.1.2.1 ClickJacking Example
Consumer sees a link to an interesting video from her friend on Facebook (Figure 16).

Figure 16 Fake video link posted to Facebook
When she clicks on it believing she will be redirected to a well-known website such as
YouTube. In fact she is redirected to an unknown website that requires to fill out a
captcha form to get to the promised video. After submitting the form, the video link is
automatically shared on consumers timeline to attract more users - consumers friends.
Then the video player is displayed and when clicked on the play button another obstacle
appears. To play the video a YouTube age verification test is needed (Figure 17). There
are several links to the surveys that are again fake links, or surveys that require a payment
(e.g. sending an SMS code) to complete them. Consumer is frustrated, closes the window
58

and never gets to the video. However the link is shared on her Facebook timeline and
probably attracted other users to click on it and share it again.

Figure 17 YouTube alike UI
This is just one of the possible scenarios that appears nowadays. There also more
sophisticated cases where the fake pages design is similar to Facebook or YouTube so that
even more experienced users will believe it. ClickJacking practitioners use iframes and
malicious JavaScript to make users unwillingly share links, like specific Facebook pages
or even download a malicious software.
One simple technique with lots of success is to redirect consumers to a website with a real
embedded YouTube video and use JavaScript to put an invisible button under the mouse
which will disappear after clicked. User will try to play the video and when she clicks on
the play button (or wherever on the site) apparently nothing will happen. A little
confused will blame the hardware mouse or the browser for slow reactions and most
likely will click again to play the video which will be played without any problems. With
the hidden button click, user will like a specific Facebook page and share the link on her
timeline. This process is not so much frustrating users as the previous example but also
has a weak point when the user notices that she unwillingly shared the link to her
timeline.
Note: JavaScript code for the invisible like button that was used in 2012 can be found in
Appendices (Appendix A).
ClickJacking in social media marketing is used to:
increase the number of fans for a social media profile.
59

Users unwittingly likes a brands Facebook page and then can be targeted for ads.
This technique is used in buying audience black hat mentioned above.
direct traffic to a specific website.
Some companies pay to increase traffic to their website and they are interested just
in the number of visitors metric not the technique how this metric was increased.
get user information such as email address.
ClickJacking practitioners build a huge database of email addresses that is then
sold to the companies that use it for advertising purposes.
The clickjacking can be considered as a hard core black hat technique with nowadays a
very short term effect. Facebook has a powerful tactics against these practices and the
clickjacking site are disabled and blocked really soon.
There are a few simple steps for users that might help to avoid clickjacking threat:
Always check the source of the Facebook link post or hold mouse over the link to
see the real URD address.
Study the privacy settings of the social networking site of choice. Make sure that
the connection to these sites are secured (https://) as this may help in blocking
malicious posts or sites.
Restrict the social media contacts to people known personally.
Proactively report or tag suspicious posts seen on social networking sites.
[64]
6.1.3 Fake Content
Production of a fake content continually appears even though there was a number of
famous companies that suffered serious reputation damage. Many marketing
practitioners have an idea to create fake positive reviews, blog posts or comments. This is
a quite a risk and when its revealed it harm the company's reputation.
LOreal created a blog that was supposedly written by a Claire, who had been using
LOreal products and documenting how well they worked. It turned out that the blog and
Claire were fake and used just to promote LOreals products.
60

When such a case is revealed, consumers then automatically lose trust in the brand. And
when the brand tries then to create something real and valuable, it is hard for the
community to trust them again. [62]
6.1.4 Sneaky Automation
In the case of automation the lines between black and white hat get blurry. When
automation purpose is to help save time in many cases it is used wrongly. Typical
example is when companies send out generic messages to new followers and fans
thanking them for becoming an audience member. Furthermore these messages often ask
the followers to take further action in engaging with the brand. The robotic behaviour is
not very much in favour of the users and it might push others away. [58]
6.1.5 Other
There are many other types of black hat techniques that in many cases break the rules of
the social media platform or the community. But as the time goes the rules are changing
and so are the line between black and white hat. For example until the end of August 2013
it was prohibited to run a Facebook timeline contest. Nowadays it is legal and supported.
Here are some other examples of black hat techniques:
using of promo messages in Facebook cover photos
posting promo link to other pages or Facebook groups
tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content [65]
It is necessary to realize that black hat techniques are not considered as not profitable. In
many cases, with good application and risk handling they could be a very powerful
techniques. However these techniques have a short term effectivity in contrast to the
white hat.
6.2 Student Agency Case Study
In September 2012, Data Boutique server released a blog post study [67] about black hat
social media tactic of the company Student Agency. Student Agency is the biggest travel
agency in Czech republic established in 1993 and They are famous for their yellow buses,
aupair programmes and their server dovolena.cz (holiday / vacation.cz).[66]
61

When Data Boutique was testing their new software functionality they accidently found a
really interesting case. The top 5 mentions of keyword dovolen (holiday / vacation)
were in Facebook statuses from more than 30 pages on Facebook.

Figure 18 Top 5 Mentions of the key work "dovolen "[67]
All contained the phrase levn dovolen zde (cheap vacation here) and the same
shortened link to the same website dovolena.cz. Bit.ly service was used to shorten the link
and when a + sign is added at the end the link, public statistic will be displayed.

Figure 19 Bit.ly statistics of the Student Agency link [67]
These showed that the link had more than 100 000 clicks in a short period of time. It was
found that there were more than 1900 statuses published on more than 51 Facebook pages
62

with this particular link. Then it was no doubt that this was a paid campaign to increase
traffic to the dovolena.cz website.
However the most interesting fact about this campaign is that the link wasnt only
connected with the statuses containing the keyword dovolen and posted on the
holiday/vacation Facebook pages, but it was mainly posted to the Facebook pages that
contained soft erotic content. Pages that produced the most traffic where called Brunettes
are sexy, Czech and Slovak girls are sexy etc. and the statuses with the link that
contained a erotic to soft-pornographic pictures. Among other thing the statuses
contained text that was completely unrelated to the shortened link that followed. This is
the sign of the black hat technique that violated Facebooks term and conditions about
hidden promotion.
Many blog discussion contributors were arguing that this campaign might be a fraud and
that the likes and traffic was made by fake Facebook users. But no data revealed such a
behaviour and it seems that this was a well prepared and targeted campaign.
However the key question in this case is if this black hat campaign was profitable and
how much. Only speculation can be made here because Student Agency refused to reveal
any other data. And after the study was published Student Agency commented on its
results and confirmed that they paid to the external company for it and the it was
successful. But they didnt provide any evidence about the conversion. They said that
they had not only sales increase goal but also other non specified goals that were
successfully accomplished. They also defended themselves of using the erotic content by
the argument that there is nothing bad about the fact that their target group might find
the brunettes sexy. The fact that the posts violated terms and conditions was argued as
that they didnt own these post and that they were posted by the pages that are not
connected to the company Student Agency. [68]
This campaign is a great example how the black hat techniques can be used effectively.
The increase of the traffic was enormous and the possibility that it turned into conversion
and profit high. One other important profit might be that the traffic they gained to their
website could have been used for remarketing purposes. By using cookies that mark each
visitor, a information database can be build and then used for advertisement targeting.
This is however questionable whether such a technique was used in this case or not.

63

7 Software Tools
In 2012 when I started to work for Axiory, one of the first tasks was to do a research about
software that will help the company in social media and content marketing. When I was
gathering software information and comparing their features I important questions came
to my mind:
Do we really need a software for what we want to do?
Do we have money for it?
Choosing software depends on the company size, its goals, strategy and most importantly
their budget. The enormous technology innovation and steadily increasing number of
software tools causes that choosing the right software is not a trivial task. Even
categorization of these tools is not easy, because every new software application wants to
bring something new, innovative and involves large spectrum of features from different
areas of marketing or other business activities.
I would like to mention here software tool that I have worked with or that I analysed
when doing the research for Axiory.
7.1 Monitoring Platforms
Analytics software tools for monitoring goals, conversion and overall performance of
online activities. Most popular tools:
Google Analytics - One of the most common and popular tools in online
marketing. It is a web analytics software that is used for measuring and analysing
website traffic. It provides a large spectrum of features:
o Analytic tools - provide standard reports with basic metrics.
o Content - highlights top content of the website and help to identify weak
points of each page of the site.
o Mobile - provides analytics focus on mobile: visits, devices, apps etc.
o Conversion - sales metrics.
o Social - lead generation metrics.
o Advertising - paid advertising performance analytics.
64

Advantage of GA is that is is free and it has a large community of users and it is
easy to find instructions and tutorials how to effectively use GA. [73]
Free
www.google.com/analytics/
Facebook Insights - Facebook has recently, October 2013, updated their analytics
part of the social platform. Many 3rd party applications have provided these
metrics before and many of them were paid. Facebooks solution is free and thus
other social analytics tools have to develop and provide more features to attract
users to them. Facebook insights provide many types of valuable metrics about
page performance (likes), audience, post types, paid vs. organic engagement and
more. [75]
Free
Other: Webtrends, Marketo, Adobe Marketing Cloud
7.2 Social Media & Content Management Systems
Useful for managing multiple social media channels. Depends on the complexity of the
strategy and platforms that is the company using.
There are simple management tools that are free or for lower cost (to 100):
Sprout Social, Hootsuite - both are nearly similar, offering features to manage
multiple social media channels: Scheduling post, engagement features,
collaborative features for multiple users etc. These tools are often updated with
new functions and have a good customer support.
Free, premium accounts from 8.99$/month
https://sproutsocial.com/; https://hootsuite.com/
Facebook Power Editor - Chrome browser extension tool for Facebook
advertisement management. It offers post scheduling and page management
functions. It provides also all Facebook Insights.
Free
https://www.Facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor/
Zumny - popular tool that convinced many people to use it because of its features
for Facebook page management that are not available on Facebook platform like:
schedule photo album or cover photo, automatic Twitter posts, automatic photo
65

check for duplicates and many more. Many of these features might be
implemented into Facebook any time, and as mentioned above these tool are
trying to find and develop new ones to attract more customers.
Free, premium account paid for unspecified price
https://www.zumny.com/
Buffer - customer scheduling application for multiple social media channels.
Offers also analytics, insights and 50 more apps and extras
Free, Premium solution 10$/month
http://bufferapp.com/
Important tools for content marketing is calendar. Mostly there and more than one person
for content creation and these people need to be organized. Content calendar is very
essential tool for content marketing strategy:
Kapost - leading content marketing platform. Provides a complex content calendar
for planning and organizing strategy with collaboration features among multiple
users. This software can be connected directly to social media platforms or other
social media management systems.
Paid, starting at 95$/month
http://kapost.com/
Divvy HQ - simple content calendar solution for content planning and
production. It is primarily intended for high-volume teams
Paid, starting at 60$/month
http://divvyhq.com/
Google Calendar - this is a simple, low cost solution for small teams. Google
calendar with combination Google Task function is a great replacement for the
expensive tools. It doesnt provide such sophisticated function as Kapost or Divvy
HQ, but there is a good chance that Google will update these tools with more
advanced functions in the near future.
Free
https://www.google.com/calendar
7.3 All-in-One
There are companies offer all-in-one solution for either monitoring and managing online
marketing activities. These tools are more complex and cover all necessary areas of online
66

marketing and moreover customizable for each customer(company). One of the leaders
on the market are SalesForce and HubSpot.
SalesForce - one of their products is focused more on social media marketing and
it's called The ExactTarget Marketing Cloud. It connects web analytics with
social marketing, email and mobile campaigns and forms a united tool for online
marketers.
Paid
http://www.salesforce.com/
HubSpot - an inbound marketing software platform that helps companies attract
visitors, convert leads, and close customers. *76+ It connect areas: email, sites,
SEO, marketing automation, landing pages, analytics, social media, blogging.
HubSpot was multiple times awarded and is considered as a number one
marketing software platform.
Paid
http://www.hubspot.com/

67

8 Case study VideoFlot
In this case study I would like to analyze online marketing activities of the IT startup
company VideoFlot with the focus on all the principles, techniques and strategies
previously mentioned in this thesis. Ive chosen VideoFlot because at the time of writing
this thesis, I started working for this company as a marketing consultant intern. It gave
me a lot of inspiration for writing and also all the analysis Ive already made by that time
gave me number of ideas how to help the company. This case study is based on
interviews with CEO David Spacil and statistics from VideoFlots social media platforms
and Google Analytics data.
8.1 VideoFlot Introduction
Videoflot is marketplace and creative platform, that connects video buyers with the best
local videomakers, bringing the power of professional videos to everyone. *69+ As
startup company it was founded in March 2012 and at first it was just a project from
bunch of enthusiastic video creators without the aim of becoming a business. [70]
Discovering that the project has a good potential, idea and minimal competition they
joined the StarCube accelerator program that helped the project to become business.
VideoFlot won the 3rd place in Vodafone Idea of the Year 2012 and also were chosen to
join a global startup accelerator Start-Up Chile.
VideoFlots plan is to become the global number one company in production of shots
videos and their mission statement is: Video changes the way of human communication,
we change the video. *70+ *71+
There are currently 6 people working full-time in this company.
8.2 Business Model
In order to analyze the marketing strategy and its activities it is essential to understand
VideoFlots business model. At least in a simple way. VideoFlot provides the platform to
2 groups:
Video Creators - anyone who can produce a video amateurs, professionals and
also marketing agencies.
68

Clients - People who need a video - Startups, individuals, music bands, nonprofit
organizations, big companies, anyone who needs any kind of a video.
The ideal process is that a client will insert a video project request to the platform and
video creators will react to the request by proposing offers. Client then (virtually) signs a
contract with the creator with the best offer.
VideoFlot does not take any percentage of the video project price. Their profit simply goes
from the paid premium accounts for the video creators, clients can post the requests for
free. However, in the future, clients will be able get extra services such as marketing
promotion for their video project request for an extra payment.
Creators also have a choice to choose a free account that doesnt provide complete
information about the project requests thus it is harder to react on them. Nevertheless
premium accounts were launched at the beginning of December 2013 and before then
everything was free.
8.3 Online Marketing Strategy
As VideoFlot is an online software platform their marketing is mainly based on online
activities. Nowadays (January 2014) they use:
Main landing page - http://www.videoflot.com/
Blog - http://blog.videoflot.cz/
Social Media presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+
Video channels on YouTube and Vimeo
8.3.1 Target Audience
As mentioned above VideoFlots target audience is composed of 2 groups: video creators
and clients. At the beginning of the project it was necessary to gather video creators and
create a creative base community for the platform. This goal was partially completed as
there are now more than 1900 video creators registered in the platform. Partially because
VideoFlots ambition is to become global and most of the registered video creators are
from Czech republic. The priority nowadays is to engage clients and increase the number
of project requests.
69

8.3.2 Viral Video
For startups, one of the hardest challenge is to introduce their idea to the world and get
peoples attention. VideoFlot has done something many companies only wish they could
do too. In April 2012 video called "Czech police chase bicycle on highway"
4
has become
viral and in first 14 day more that 2 million people saw this video. The video was created
by David Spacil, CEO of VideoFlot, whose first intention was to shoot a viral video for a
bike store. After the postproduction it was accidently uploaded to Vimeo within few
minutes it got hundreds of views. As there is no marketing claim or brand shown in
video, nobody could recognize it as an advertisement or brands viral video. It was done
very professionally thus it was very believable that it is a real video from police camera.
Actually, in panic from mispublication, the video was deleted, but a few of the viewers
have already reuploaded it to YouTube and it continued to get more and more views.
This fact has even more supported the originality and virality of the video as David Spacil
said Nobody sane would delete this kind of video if it was meant to be a viral video of a
company. Everybody then started to believe that it is a real video from police camera and
even police department was asked for an official statement.
VideoFlot took advantage of this situation and added Mr. Spacils name and Videoflots
website and Facebook address into the description so that it could be identified as
companys viral video. The virality of the video turned into a buzz in the biggest media
in Czech republic. The funny fact is that at that time VideoFlot didnt have their website
ready, so they had to put a coming soon phrase as a landing page and primarily the
video increased their number of Facebook fans.
8.3.3 Social Media
Unexpected virality of the video pushed VideoFlot to build their social media presence as
fast as possible and without any strategy. First theyve created a Facebook page which
gained the audience quickly, from tens of users to more than 400 in less than a month.
Next theyve created Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ accounts, but these werent
effectively or strategically used until today. On Twitter they posted mainly the same posts
from Facebook and LinkedIn and Google+ are left without any activity.

4
Originally lenec na kole na d{lnici D1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze9IOtK1-RU
70

As mentioned above, VideoFlots approach to social media wasnt very strategical.
However, their activities werent completely unthoughtful. They understood the ACT
methodology well and started to share and recycle attraction material in a form of
pictures and videos related to the video production. This has helped to increase traffic to
their website, but unfortunately they didnt measure the conversion.
8.3.4 COBRAs / eWoM
To create a hub for video creators and potential clients it wasnt enough to use only the
company's Facebook page, but it was needed to communicate and engage with the
community in Facebook groups. David Spacil himself created a few groups for video
creators and enthusiasts for example DSLR video (1349 members), Jobs in film, tv and
postproduction (14 914 members) and casting cz (3640 members). These groups are
used for monitoring eWoM and trends in the community. Sometimes in the beginning
VideoFlot posted there some promotional material, but they were very careful not to
annoy or disgust people by pushing advertisements. Only high quality content or topic
related comments were posted. There were cases of negative conversations (eWoM) about
VideoFlot and it was successfully intercepted and managed because of VideoFlots active
presence in these groups.
VideoFlot has been also successfully managing positive/negative eWoM and providing
customer support on their Facebook page.
8.3.5 Content Marketing
When the hype about content marketing has gone stronger, in the beginning of the year
2013 [38], VideoFlot reacted quickly and started to produce their own content. They
understood that only recycling content wont help them to become a community
influencer and therefore relevant quality content is needed. VideoFlot is profiting from
creators premium accounts and these creators will pay for them only when there is
enough video requests from clients. Therefore the idea is to help video creators increase
the demand for the video.
Besides blog posts about the VideoFlots story, they started to produce infographics about
how video is important and popular in todays online world. These were quite common
and so they needed a new content that will be different, helpful and unique.
71

One problem that occurs in video creation business is that clients demands are too high
for low price/value offered. This results from clients lack of knowledge about the video
production. in order to help them VideoFlot wrote series of articles called How much for
a video?. This has become very popular and again has created a buzz in video
production community and also in most popular Czech media. By this way VideoFlot has
become a YOUtility[12] for their clients and also video creator who can use this material
for their own content marketing.
8.4 My Role and Added Value in VideoFlot
I started to work for VideoFlot as marketing consultant intern in November 2013 and I
was asked to help the company primarily with measuring their activities and conversion.
However I was also interested in their overall marketing activities and strategy. In the
beginning I analysed and gathered basic data from Google Analytics and VideoFlots
internal platform database and found out that the company has only an on-the-go short
term strategy and whats more they dont measure anything about it besides the basic
metrics such as number of likes, shares, registered users etc.
As the startup company already had some business goals to accomplish till the end of the
year 2013, I was trying not to suggest any extensive changes or adding them some
additional work that might affect their present business priorities. My goal was to
enhance the measurement and gather ideas get more clients. From my point of view I was
also interested to implement the social business principles.
8.5 Ebook Campaign
After analysing the social media/content marketing activities and business model of the
company I would assess it slightly positive. I really appreciated their content marketing
approach and I suggested to build an ebook campaign based on their articles How much
for a video?.
8.5.1 Goals
The ebook itself was an easy task because it was a composition of previously created
content. The most important part was to create goals and find a way how to measure
72

them. After a short brainstorming we came up with basic goals that are desired to
accomplish by this campaign:
Organizational Strategic Goal: Gather profit
Strategic Metric: Increase the number of premium account to 100
Goal #1: Increase the number of clients and so increase the number of clients video
requests.
Metric: Increase the number of registered clients and requests by 15%
Goal #2: Increase the number of consumers of newsletter and Facebook.
Metric: Gather 300 new email addresses to the database
Goal #3: Spread the knowledge about video production and so increase the average price
of a video request.
Metric: Increase the average price of clients video request by 10%
The goals will be continuously measured and evaluated after: 1 week, 1 month and then
at the end of campaign after 3 months.
8.5.2 Process
Next task was to build a process how to reach these goals, how to spread the ebook.
The PDF ebook will be downloadable from the ebook landing page listed under
VideoFlots domain: videoflot.com/ebook
Landing page will contain form that is needed to be filled in order to get to the
ebook download link. The form will contain mandatory fields: Name, Surname,
Email address, and option button "Do you want to subscribe to VideoFlot
newsletter?"
Links to the landing page will be shared through:
o VideoFlot Facebook page
o Facebook ads - with small budget around 2000kc
o Direct PR message to media - Marketing Journal was one of the media that
was publishing the articles before and there is a promise that they will
publish the ebook link as well.
o Email - newsletter database, registered users database
73

o Identified influencers - potential that these will create additional eWoM in
form of reviews.
o Blog post
Attractive download button on VideoFlot homepage
8.5.3 Measurement
Lead generation and sales metrics will be the primary metrics to evaluate the goals.
Consumption and sharing metrics will be used for analysis of the content when building a
new campaign and overall content strategy. In order to measure set goals it is needed to
use Google Analytics goals in combination with Google Link Builder.
Example:
To identify how Facebook increased the number of registered clients it is needed to set up
a destination goal in Google Analytics to the "Thank you for your registration" page. Then
use a link builder to add parameter to the shared link:
Source: Facebook
Medium: Social
Campaign: ebook_[date]
http://videoflot.com/ebook?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ebook_[d
ate]
Other goals will be measured in the similar way. Every medium should be identified in
order to determine which was the most valuable to the campaign.
8.5.4 Results
The start of campaign was many time postponed
5
because of the priority reasons and also
because of the focus on quality. The results of the campaign will not only be used to
evaluate the campaign but they will be the good resource for future strategy planning.
Today it is very blurry which activities bring the most revenue to the company and this
will definitely help VideoFlot to set clear goals and vision for their social business.

5
Expected start date is first half of January 2014.
74

8.6 VideoFlot Timeline Infographic
I have created a simple timeline infographic to depict the key online marketing activities
done by VideoFlot.

Figure 20 VideoFlot timeline inforgraphic
Note: Size of the containers does not express the length of usage. The left side of the
container is attached to the timeline to express the approximate time of adoption of the
technique or activity.
8.7 Social Business and future strategy
VideoFlot is at the beginning of the long journey to become a social business, but they are
on the good way. When building the strategy for the ebook campaign, there were goals
revealed where VideoFlot needs to put more attention. Long term vision has been there
for such time but was unspoken. Basically VideoFlot wants to help people with the video
75

production and connect creators with clients who need a video. As the company is a small
startup they have a complete execution support from CEO and he is personally involved
in eWoM management activities as well as in content creation. Social business roadmap
needs to be build according to their planned business milestones. Guidelines for the
communication is set as there are 2 to 3 people actively communication with VideoFlot
community.
One of the future online marketing goals is to continue helping clients to understand what
is video about with creating a website that will be devoted to the details about how to
proceed when I want a video. It will be connected with VideoFlot, but goal of the
website wont be the company promotion.
Another future goal is to enhance the measurement of their activities and connect them
with the business goals. Carefully plan the investments to the new technologies, software
and also allocate the resources to marketing activities in an effective way.
VideoFlot is a startup that understands the potential of social media and content
marketing and they are trying to use them not just as standalone entities but integrate
them to the whole company to build a social business.

76

9 Conclusion
Doing something as isolated activity without always looking at the goal is a total crap Jan
Tichy, SEO Expert, founder of Medio Interactive [79]
Social media and generally online marketing is getting more and more budget allocated
from the companies. Small companies, startups and individual entrepreneurs are jumping
into the waters of social media marketing without a proper preparation or strategy. For
many it is a waste of their time and money, not because online marketing is not working,
but their using it wrong. Likes, followers, shares dont pay the bills, what is, are the goals
when being accomplished.
One of the most important things about online marketing that I have learned when
writing this thesis is: to use the common sense. Build on this I would like to shortly
conclude the best practices for doing effective social media and content marketing:
1. Set a goal and always look at it. Whatever you decide to do it has to always make
sense to the goal of the business youre doing it for.
2. Develop strategy and after think about the tactics and tools. It doesnt necessarily
mean that if the competition is using a particular social platform, you have to use
it too. The more platforms is used ineffectively the more energy, money and time
you are wasting. Is is important to choose the right strategy for the goals and then
choose which social media and content will help you to achieve it.
3. Think about long term effectivity. Student Agency case study is an example how
tactics that are being labeled as bad and unethical, can drive potential success. But
the effectivity and duration is questionable. It is the matter of risk when trying to
do something fast with non-transparent techniques, rather than chose a more
difficult way, but with a long term effectivity.
4. Customer are the ones paying you. Focusing on the must be the priority.
Customers decision making significantly changed and it is more difficult for
company to just push their message through. Youtility, helping consumers and
making their lives easier is the way how to be memorized.
5. Always measure your investments. One of the biggest advantages of online
marketing is that it provides enormous numbers of data. Using this data is
77

essential for the strategical movements not only in marketing but also for the
whole business.
Many of these practices are often unconsciously adhered and applying others to build a
whole concept will help companies become successful in the online marketing area.
This thesis gave me a deeper understanding of social media and content marketing that I
have immediately applied in praxis. I dont have solid results now, to prove that all the
steps done in VideoFlot will guarantee their success, nonetheless it is a good starting
point to apply all the knowledge from the thesis and help VideoFlot to become an
effective social business.

78

[1] Brinker, Scott. Chief Marketing Technologist Blog. 131 different kinds of marketing
[Online]. December 13, 2010 [viewed 2013-11-25]. Available from:
<http://chiefmartec.com/2010/12/131-different-kinds-of-marketing/>
[2] Inbound Methodology. HubSpot. What is Inbound Marketing [Online].2013 [viewed
2013-11-25]. Available from:
<http://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing>
[3] GODIN, Seth. Permission marketing: turning strangers into friends, and friends into
customers. New York: Simon, 1999.
[4] Frick, Walter. Defining the New Marketing: Brian Halligan vs. Seth Godin [Online].
August 23, 2012 [viewed 2013-11-26]. Available from:
<http://bostinno.streetwise.co/channels/defining-the-new-marketing-brian-halligan-vs-
seth-godin/>
[5] Definition of Marketing. American Marketing Association [Online]. 2013 [viewed 2013-
11-15]. Available from:
<http://www.marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/Pages/DefinitionofMarketing.aspx>
[6] Bruce, Robert. Seth Godin on When You Should Start Marketing Your Product, Service, or
Idea [Online]. 2013 [viewed 2013-11-26] Available from:
<http://www.copyblogger.com/seth-godin-marketing/>
[7] BlokExpert.cz. Jindich F{borsk: O marketingu na internetu [Online]. October 3, 2013
[viewed 2013-10-20]. Available from:
<http://blokexpertu.cz/podzim-2013/jindrich-faborsky-o-marketingu-na-internetu/>
[8] Chris, Alex. Digital Marketing VS Internet Marketing What is the latest trend?[Online].
June 5, 2013 [viewed 2013-11-26]. Available from:
<http://www.reliablesoft.net/digital-marketing-vs-internet-marketing-what-is-the-latest-
trend/>
[9] Yohe, Simon. The Orbital Alliance Blog Internet Marketing vs. Online Marketing vs.
Inbound Marketing [Online] [viewed 2013-11-30]. Available from:
<http://www.orbitalalliance.com/blog/2013/april/internet-marketing-vs-online-marketing-
vs-inbound-marketing.html>
79

[10] Louensk, Lubo. O REKLAM A MARKETINGU [Online] September 26, 2013
[viewed 2013-11-30]. Available from:
<http://123slov.cz/o-reklame-a-marketingu/>
[11] Kabani, Shama. The Zen of Social Media Marketing: An Easier Way to Build Credibility,
Generate Buzz, and Increase Revenue.2012. Tantor Media. ISBN 145265509X
[12] Baer, Jay. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype [Ebook]. June 27, 2013.
Available from:
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B1FG7VE/ref=r_soa_w_d>
[13] McLellan, Laura. Recognize the Importance of Digital Marketing.[Ebook]. August 22,
2012.
[14] Gartner, Inc. Key Findings From U.S. Digital Marketing Spending Survey, 2013 [Online].
March 6, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-01]. Available from:
<http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/digital-marketing/digital-marketing-
spend-report.jsp>
[15] Murdock, Toby. Content Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing: Whats the Difference?
[Online] February 27, 2012 [viewed 2013-12-02]. Available from:
<http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/02/content-marketing-vs-social-media-
marketing/>
[16] ChytraZed Facebook page, Facebook [Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-02]. Available
from:
<https://www.Facebook.com/chytrazed>
[17] Kaplan, Andreas M. Haenlein, Michael. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and
opportunities of social media. Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. 2009
[18] Muntinga, Danil G. Moorman, Marjolein. Smit, Edith G. Introducing COBRAs
University of Amsterdam. 2011
[19] ez, Jan. Uveden Nokia Lumia na trh [Online]. January 18, 2012 [viewed 2013-12-02].
Available from:
<http://blog.filosof.biz/uvedeni-nokia-lumia-na-trh/>
80

[20] Arndt, J. Word of Mouth Advertising: A Review of the Literature, Advertising Research
Foundation, Inc., New York, NY. 1967
[21] Canhoto, A. Kietzmann, J. Bittersweet! Understanding and Managing Electronic Word of
Mouth. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2013
[22] Hennig-Thurau. Gwinner. Walsh. Gremler. Electronic word-of-mouth via consumer-
opinion platforms. 2004
[23] Sernovitz, Andy. Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking,
2012, ISBN 9781608323661.
[24] Park, Do-Hyung. Kim, Sara. Han, Ingoo. THE EFFECTS OF CONSUMER
KNOWLEDGE ON MESSAGE PROCESSING OF ELECTRONIC WORD OF MOUTH VIA
ONLINE CONSUMER REVIEWS. 2009
[25] Michl, Petr. Infografika: Soci{ln st v esku [Online] April 4, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-02].
Available from:
<http://www.m-journal.cz/cs/internet/socialni-site/infografika--socialni-site-v-
cesku__s416x9788.html>
[26] Park, Do-Hyung. Lee, Jumin. Han, Ingoo. eWOM - The Effect of On-Line Consumer
Reviews on Consumer Purchasing Intention: The Moderating Role of Involvement.2007
[27] Prchal, Marek. Nkdy je i nejh [Online] December 5, 2012 [viewed 2013-12-02].
Available from:
<http://www.slideshare.net/marek_prchal/nkdy-je-i-nejh>
[28] Knapp, Alex. The Golden Rule Of Customer Service [Online] July 2, 2012 [viewed 2013-
12-02]. Available from:
<http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/02/the-golden-rule-of-customer-
service/>
[29] Metro.cz. Dopravn podnik spustil kampa, kter{ m{ vysvtlit zmny v MHD [Online]
August 22, 2012 [viewed 2013-12-02]. Available from:
<http://www.metro.cz/dopravni-podnik-spustil-kampan-ktera-ma-vysvetlit-zmeny-v-
mhd-pbn-/co-se-deje.aspx?c=A120822_155552_co-se-deje_jbs>
81

[30] Girgaov, Jana. Vdy to jede jinam! [Online] October 26, 2012[viewed 2013-12-02].
Available from:
<http://www.prklub.cz/2012/10/vzdyt-to-jede-jinam/>
[31] Evans, Dave. Social Media Marketing: The Next Generation of Business Engagement.
October 12, 2010. ISBN 0470634030.
[32] Constant Contact Inc. Constant Contact Small Business Pulse [Ebook] 2012 [viewed
2013-12-02]. Available from:
http://news.constantcontact.com/sites/constantcontact.newshq.businesswire.com/files/rese
arch/file/SMBPulseReport3-26-13.pdf
[33] IBM. Becoming a Social Business [Ebook] 2012
[34] Li,Charlene. Solis, Brian. The Evolution of Social Business [Ebook] March 6, 2013
[35] Li,Charlene. Solis, Brian. The seven success factors of social business strategy [Ebook]
July 2013
[36] Armano, David. Social Business: Where It's Been & Where It's Going [Online] May 6,
2012 [viewed 2013-12-15]. Available from:
<http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2012/05/social_biz.html>
[37] Lecinski, Jim. ZMOT - WINNING THE ZERO MOMENT OF TRUTH [Ebook] 2011.
[38] Sarner, Adam. Digital Marketing Hype Cycle for 2013: Engagement on Overdrive
[Webinar] November 20, 2013
[39] Wikipedia contributors. "Social media marketing." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia [Online] December 30, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-30].
Available from:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_marketing>
[40] Marketing Festival. Uvod do internetoveho marketingu[Ebook] November 2013
[41] The Story of Social Media in 2013 #SocialStory2013. socialbakers. YouTube [Online]
December 11, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-15]. Available from:
<http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=JEzoEuiP1-o>
82

[42] Pulizzi, Joe. Six Useful Content Marketing Definitions [Online] June 6, 2012[viewed
2013-12-02]. Available from:
<http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/06/content-marketing-definition/>
[43] Cision Inc., POWER YOUR STORY [Ebook] 2013
[44] Lieb, Rebecca. Organizing for Content.[Ebook] April 25, 2013
[45] Falls, Jason. KNOWING YOUR AUDIENCE IS KEY TO ANY MARKETING SUCCESS
[Online] April 17, 2013[viewed 2013-12-02]. Available from:
<http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-research-2/knowing-your-audience-
is-key-to-any-marketing-success/>
[46] Frank, Andrew. Making Sense of the Digital Marketing Landscape [Online Webinar] June
20, 2013 [viewed 2013-06-20]. Available from:
<http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&re
f=webinar-rss&resId=2483515&srcId=1-3147426801&pcp=wb_gml>
[47] Boag, Paul. The Inconvenient Truth About SEO [Online] December 11, 2012 [viewed
2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/12/11/seo-the-inconvenient-truth/>
[48] GeekSquad, About Us [Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.geeksquad.com/about-us/>
[49] Klout, MAKE YOUR MARK, How it works[Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20].
Available from:
<http://klout.com/corp/how-it-works>
[50] Tobin, Jim. Facebook Brand Pages Suffer 44% Decline in Reach Since December 1 [Online]
December 10, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/Facebook-marketing/Facebook-brand-pages-suffer-
44-decline-reach-since-december-1/>
[51] Adriel Vasquez,R. Paid Content is King: Promoted Posts vs. Organic Reach [Online]
September 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.socialbakers.com/blog/1901-paid-content-is-king-promoted-posts-vs-
organic-reach>
83

[52] Outbrain, Amplify Your Content [Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.outbrain.com/amplify/>
[53] Google. CONVERSIONS Set up and edit Goals. Set up and Edit Goals [Online] 2013
[viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032415>
[54] Google. CAMPAIGNS Custom Campaigns. Custom Campaigns [Online] 2013 [viewed
2013-12-20]. Available from:
<https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033863>
[55] Bayer, Jay. The 4 Types of Content Metrics That Matter [Online] 2012 [viewed 2013-12-
20]. Available from:
<http://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing-2/the-4-types-of-content-
metrics-that-matter/>
[56] Boswell, Wendy. What is Black Hat SEO? [Online] [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available
from:
<http://websearch.about.com/od/seononos/a/spamseo.htm>
[57] TopRank Online Marketing. SES SJ: White Hat Vs. Black Hat Social Media [Online]
2009[viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/08/social-media-white-vs-black-hat/>
[58] Howen, Allison. Black Hat vs. White Hat Social Media Marketing [Online] February 13,
2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/02/13/black-hat-vs-
white-hat-social-media-marketing.aspx>
[59] Nussey, Virginia. Social Media: White Hat vs. Black Hat [Online] August 12, 2009
[viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/2009/08/social-media-white-hat-vs-black-hat/>
[60] Weiss Business Solutions. Is Buying Followers Black Hat Social Media Marketing?
[Online] February 19, 2013[viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.mommyperks.com/business-articles-2/black-hat-social-media-buying-
followers/>
84

[61] Matjek ,Petr. Kupuje si TOP 09 lajky v Asii? [Online] October 15, 2012 [viewed
2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.ceskapozice.cz/domov/politika/kupuje-si-top-09-
%E2%80%9Elajky%E2%80%9C-v-asii>
[62] Lechat, Ophelie. Social Media Marketing: The Dark Side [Online] August 13, 2013
[viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://flippa.com/blog/social-media-marketing-the-dark-side/>
[63] Facebook. What is clickjacking?. Facebook [Online] October 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20].
Available from:
<https://www.Facebook.com/help/103840806372798>
[64] Celestino Angelo Abendan ll, Oscar. Think Before You Click: Truth Behind Clickjacking
on Facebook [Online] 2011 [viewed 2013-12-25]. Available from:
<http://about-
threats.trendmicro.com/RelatedThreats.aspx?language=au&name=Think+Before+You+Cli
ck%3A+Truth+Behind+Clickjacking+on+Facebook>
[65] Facebook. Its now Easier to Administer Promotions on Facebook. Facebook [Online]
August 27, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-26]. Available from:
<https://www.Facebook.com/business/news/page-promotions-terms>
[66] Student Agency. Profil spolenosti . Student Agency [Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-
22]. Available from:
<http://www.studentagency.cz/o-nas/profil-spolecnosti/>
[67] lerka,Josef. Hutnkov, Elika. Epick pbh o tom, jak zskat pes 100 000 klik za
hubiku [Online] September 19, 2012 [viewed 2013-12-22]. Available from:
<http://databoutique.cz/post/31847625154/epicky-pribeh-o-tom-jak-ziskat-pres-100-000-
kliku-za>
[68] lerka,Josef. Slek, David. Hutnkov, Elika. Pbh jedn online kampan: jak zskat
pes 100 000 klik za hubiku? [Online] September 24, 2012 [viewed 2013-12-22]. Available
from:
<http://www.lupa.cz/clanky/pribeh-jedne-online-kampane-jak-ziskat-pres-100-000-kliku-
za-hubicku/>
85

[69] Videoflot Facebook page. About. [Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-23]. Available from:
<https://www.Facebook.com/VideoFlot/info>
[70] Spil, David. Kouk{m, e Videoflot pest{v{ bt free. [Online]. November 29, 2013
[viewed 2013-12-23]. Available from:
<http://blog.videoflot.cz/2013/11/koukam-ze-videoflot-prestava-byt-free.html>
[71] Svou cestou - Young Business. Videoflot David Sp{il [Online].August 8, 2013
[viewed 2013-12-23]. Available from:
<http://www.svou-cestou.cz/videoflot-david-spacil/>
[72] Barbucha. "Co za to? " aneb Kolik stl virl Bajker na D1 [Online]. November 22, 2013
[viewed 2013-12-23]. Available from:
<http://blog.videoflot.cz/2013/11/co-za-to-aneb-kolik-stal-viral-bajker.html>
[73] Google Analytics. Google Analytics Official Website [Online]. 2013 [viewed 2013-12-
30]. Available from:
<http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/analytics/>
[74] Social Media Today. 25 Awesome Content Marketing Tools To Use In 2014
[INFOGRAPHIC] [Online]. December 29, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-30]. Available from:
<http://socialmediatoday.com/irfan-ahmad/2026216/25-awesome-content-marketing-
tools-use-2014-infographic>
[75] Facebook. Facebook for business. News for Page Owners: The New Version of Page
Insights is Here [Online] October 9, 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<https://www.Facebook.com/business/news/pageinsights>
[76] WHAT IS HUBSPOT?. HubSpot Inc. [Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available
from:
<http://www.hubspot.com/what-is-hubspot>
[77] Marketo Inc., Social media tactical plan [Online]. 2012 [viewed 2013 12-20]
<blog.marketo.com>
[78] About Us. LinkedIn. LinkedIn [Online] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.linkedin.com/about-us>
86

[79] vod do praktickho SEO. Medio Interactive. YouTube [Online] April 23, 2013
[viewed 2013-12-20]. Available from:
<http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=wNQVwWQfYHw&list=PLQe0Hcp-
wfxqGJqygwLKj05QtHakqlJLC&index=5>
[80] Google. Google+ Learn More. Share and explore on Google [Online] 2013 [viewed 2014-
01-03]. Available from:
<http://www.google.com/+/learnmore/>
[81] GlobalWebIndex Q3 2013. GlobalWebIndex. Social Platforms Global Top 10 (Q3 2013).
[Infographic] 2013 [viewed 2013-12-12].
[82] About twitter. Twitter. About twitter [Online] [viewed 2014-01-03]. Available from:
<https://about.twitter.com/>

87

Appendices
Appendix A
JavaScript Code - The invisible like button under mouse
if((document.getElementById) && window.addEventListener ||
window.attachEvent){
(function(){
var hairCol = "#ff0000";

var d = document;
var my = -10;
var mx = -10;
var r;
var vert = "";

var idx =
document.getElementsByTagName('div').length;

var thehairs = "<div style='padding-left:-25px;
backbround-color: #000000;'><iframe id='theiframe'
scrolling='no' frameBorder='0' allowTransparency='true'
src='http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=" +
encodeURIComponent(fan_page_url) +
"&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=53&amp;a
ction=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80'
style='position:absolute;padding-left:-
40px;width:80px;height:24px;overflow:hidden;border:0;opacity
:" + opacity +";filter:alpha(opacity=" + opacity * 100+
");'></iframe></div>";
document.write(thehairs);
var like = document.getElementById("theiframe");

document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild(li
ke);

var pix = "px";
var domWw = (typeof window.innerWidth ==
"number");
var domSy = (typeof window.pageYOffset ==
"number");

if (domWw)
r = window;
else{
if (d.documentElement && typeof
d.documentElement.clientWidth == "number" &&
88

d.documentElement.clientWidth != 0)
r = d.documentElement;
else{
if (d.body && typeof d.body.clientWidth
== "number")
r = d.body;
}
}


if(time != 0){
setTimeout(function(){

document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].removeChild(li
ke);

if (window.addEventListener){

document.removeEventListener("mousemove",mouse,false);
}
else if (window.attachEvent){

document.detachEvent("onmousemove",mouse);
}
}, time);
}

function scrl(yx){
var y,x;
if (domSy){
y = r.pageYOffset;
x = r.pageXOffset;
}
else{
y = r.scrollTop;
x = r.scrollLeft;
}
return (yx == 0) ? y:x;
}

function mouse(e){
var msy = (domSy)?window.pageYOffset:0;
if (!e)
e = window.event;
if (typeof e.pageY == 'number'){
my = e.pageY - 15 - msy;
mx = e.pageX - 30;
}
else{
my = e.clientY - 6 - msy;
mx = e.clientX - 6;
89

}
vert.top = my + scrl(0) + pix;
vert.left = mx + pix;
}

function ani(){
vert.top = my + scrl(0) + pix;
setTimeout(ani, 300);
}


function init(){
vert =
document.getElementById("theiframe").style;
ani();
}

if (window.addEventListener){
window.addEventListener("load",init,false);

document.addEventListener("mousemove",mouse,false);
}
else if (window.attachEvent){
window.attachEvent("onload",init);
document.attachEvent("onmousemove",mouse);
}

})();
}//End.

var fan_page_url =
'http://www.facebook.com/pages/TdSdf/237666936321850';
// http://www.facebook.com/yourwebsite.cz
var opacity = 0;
var time = 7000;