STRATEGIC SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

INTRODUCTION
1.1. Social Media is Social
1.2 What is Social Media Marketing?
a) Communication channels to help brands
1. Better understand their customers and competitors
2. Provide superior customer service and enhance the consumption experience
3. Capitalize on positive brand conversations
4. Co-create brand awareness, meaning and products with the consumer

b) Planning Process
1. Develop objective
2. Identify target networks of people
3. Create and curate content
4. Select technology/platforms
5. Measure and assess

c) Owned media, Paid media and Earned media

Owned – own website, social media profiles
Paid – ads paid
Earned – word of mouth earned, shares, mentions, retweets, reviews

1.3 Social Media and the Marketing Paradigm

Social media marketing is about conversations, which give consumer control over the brand’s message and
meaning.

SMM is based on one-to-one and many-to-many communication where the brand engages in two-way
conversations with consumers.

1.4 Setting Social Media Objectives

Businesses use social media to
1. Influence awareness, knowledge and attitudes
2. Motivate an action
3. Accomplish objectives with fewer resources

SMART Framework
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-based

GOALS
They provide a path or blueprint for action
They suggest specific metrics to measure
LEVERAGING NETWORKS
2.2. What is a Network?
1. People that exchange information, experiences and behaviors
2. Behavior is guided by a set of norms, beliefs and values

Components of networks – nodes and ties

Social Networks are comprised of a distinct set of entities or nodes, that are connected by links or ties. In a
social network the nodes are social entities or actors, who are often individuals or organizations, such as a club
or departments within a company. The ties between these nodes represent various types of relationships.

Two nodes together = dyad

Property of a tie = number of connections, strength, directionality, representative of a relationship

How does content go viral?

Identify key influencers: mavens (passionate about new information), connectors (link many people together),
salespeople (convince others to adopt new ideas)

Big seed – seed the idea as broadly as possible in the population rather than relying on a few special
influencers

2.3. Leveraging online networks and communities

How to identify networks?
Using hashtags, searching for groups
How can brands leverage networks?
Three types of brand communicates – pools, hubs and webs
 Pools – people have a shared connection an activity or goal, more loosely connected to each other and
loosely connected to the brand sponsoring
 Hubs – one person in the middle connecting to others
 Webs – community affiliations in which personal connections are central to the community. Created by
people for people

Brands must be incidental to the conversation to build a community.

We would group people together by common characteristics. i.e. people who likes vegan food in Hong Kong.

2.4 Identifying and leveraging influencers

Influencers are: highly involved, early adopters, centrally located in the network, and engaged in many
conversations

Influencers are members of a network, in particular micro-influencers and understand the content that
resonates to their network

They often have relationships with the audience that feel personal making the messaging more persuasive

How to select influencers?

1. Focus on influence, not network size
2. Focus on influencer’s relevance to your brand and industry

When do influencers work the best?

1. Does the product or service lack awareness in the target population?
2. Is the product or service risky in some way?
3. Does using the product or service increase an individual’s social capital or their standing within a network or
community? Kids at school
4. Is there competitive pressure to adopt the product?
5. Is there a benefit to having the product or service adopted by a large number of consumers? PayPal
requires many people

CREATING ENGAGING CONTENT

Common Objectives in Social Media Marketing
1. Raising brand awareness
2. Building brand knowledge and creating more favorable brand perceptions
3. Influencing purchases and consumer behavior
4. Improving consumption experiences
5. Creating community around the brand

Goals
1. Create content that attracts and retains consumers’ attention and encourages them to engage
2. Select a technological platform that leverages important elements of the content

3.2 Attracting attention to content

How do consumers process content?
Content must 1) attract attention, 2) maintain attention, 3) inspire action

Attention: attract, retain

Action: Like, comment, tag, mention, share, click-through, co-create

Properties of attention: limited, selective, divided

Attracting attention via the message source and/or message content

Message content
Relevant, Salient (stand out), Emotional

Consumers have limited and selective attention and therefore we need to design and distribute content in
ways that will maximize initial attention. We can do this by:

 distributing our content via a trusted source, and

 designing content that (a) is relevant to our audience’s interests, problems, pain points, and day-to-day life;
(b) stands out from the context by being visually/aurally salient or unexpected in some way; or (c) provides
emotion in the early moments so as to capture immediate attention.

3.3 Maintaining attention to content

Maintaining attention by telling a story
Protagonist, obstacle, climax/resolution/overcome, takeaway, role of the brand

How to tell a story in the digital world?

Invoke curiosity
Create content for the digital environment – sharable and conceptually linked

3.4 Motivating action, sharing and engagement

Engaging content: deeply processes and remembered, evoke consumer responses that stimulate discussion
and sharing with others in the network.

What makes content go viral?

Berger’s work identifies six factors that increase the likelihood that content will be shared. Specifically, he
suggests that content is more likely to be shared when it
(1) is positive;
(2) is arousing;
(3) creates social capital;
(4) includes memory-inducing triggers;
(5) provides practical value;
(6) provides a good story.

1) Social Currency
2) Memory – inducing trigger – we share what we think about
3) Share info
4) Quality of story

Motives for sharing content

Self-enhancement (feel good about themselves), Group Identification, Utilitarian benefits

When sharing information with a wide audience, consumers are more likely to be:
Focused on the self, so they would share content that makes themselves look good.

When consumers engage with content

1. They think about the content more deeply and remember it better
2. They are more likely to share the content with their networks

3.5 Linking content to platforms

Selecting Platform
(1) use by the target network;
(2) need for mobility;
(3) need for rich content;
(4) permanence of message;
(5) type of interaction desired

Framework for selecting the platform

1. Objectives, 2. Know your target network, 3. Understand your content characteristics
SOCIAL MEDIA LISTENING AND CO-CREATION
4. 2 Using social media to learn about consumers
Social Media Listening can inform decision about:
1. Brand awareness and perceptions
2. Customer satisfaction and pain points
3. Ideas for new products and services

Social Media Listening is the process of monitoring all of a brands’ social channels for conversations about:
1. the brand
2. competitive brands
3. the consumption and purchase process

What can we gain from social media listening?

1) Identify problems and address them in real time
2) Brand sentiment
3) Understanding of how consumers perceive the brand
4) Identify networks and influencers
5) Identify ideas for new products

Selecting a company
Crimson Hexagon – important to be familiar with the algorithms

Disadvantage? Often is messy and unstructured

4.3 Social Media Listening in the Organization

Levels of social media listening
1) Observation and monitoring
2) Data Mining Techniques
3) Prediction
Social Observation and Monitoring
1. Provides insights about consumer choice and consumption
2. Enables a firm to respond to consumer problems
3. Builds marketer’s intuition

Predictive analysis is not 100% accurate due to the amount of data analyzed

The process:
a) Collect data from a wide variety of sources
b) Combine these data with other data sources (online search, web visits, transactions)

Analytic Methods for Social Media Data

1) Content-based analytics – what consumers are saying about the brand, competitive brands, and the
purchase and consumption process
2) Structured-based analytics – how information flows within these networks

4.4. Using social media for co-creation

Social Media provides a valuable input to the open innovation process.
Motives for Consumer Co-Creation
Extrinsic Motives – external recognition or reward
Intrinsic Motives – make consumers feel good in some way

Types of open innovation through social media

 Screening ideas
 Developing new ideas
 Promoting a product

ASSESIONG SOCIAL MEDIA ROI

5.2 Calculating ROI – Linking Metrics to Objectives
Seven-Step Process
1. Start with objectives
2. Identify social media metrics that connect to those objectives
3. Track the appropriate metrics
4. Assign a monetary value to each metric
5. Calculate investment
6. Calculate return or benefits
7. Calculate the ROI and assess

Formula
ROI = (A – B)/C
A: Return
B: Investment
C: Investment
What is the value of a like?
1. People who are loyal customers are more likely to “like” a brand’s FB page
2. Promoting a brand’s FB page to those who liked it leads to more brand purchases

5.3 Evaluating Social Media ROI

Linking Metrics to Economic Value
1. Return on impressions – impressions, consideration and purchase behavior to estimate value
2. Return on earned media – advertising or public relation cost
3. Regression analysis – Return on social media impact – are two variables associated? relationship between
marketing expenditures and activities (social media) and outcome variables (revenue). Outcomes is what
we are trying to predict.
Limitations: takes time, does not include variables that might affect sales, reverse causality can be an
issue (missing other factors)
4. Experimentation – A/B Testing – cause and effect relationship. The limitation is to keep experimental
groups separate.

5.4 The Role of Paid Media

Paid Social Ads Considerations
1. Objectives
2. Budget
3. Type of paid media
4. Identify key networks
5. Make sure it links back to your objectives
6. Be aware of the forms of advertising in your platform

THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE ORGANIZATION

6.2 Managing Social Media Marketing
Three key challenges:
1. How to manage the tension between engaging many voices and message control;
2. How to manage the number and consistency of accounts speaking on behalf of the organization; and
3. How to manage compliance with regulations.
Social Media Policy
A social media policy is a document that provides rules or guidelines for the conduct of its people--usually
employees--as they engage in social media. A policy can be targeted to those involved in managing social
media as well as for those who may work in other areas of the organization who participate in social media
marketing as part of their job. Having a social media policy enables employee engagement, provide some
control over sharing and protect the firm against legal risk.

Considerations:
1. Who is it targeted to?
2. What parts of the policy are rules and what guidelines
3. Rules for the industry
4. Some mistakes that have been made in the past
5. Resource to provide

What to cover?
1. Expectations and guidelines for online behavior, including:
2. Topics and content to avoid
3. How to set up an account (individual or affiliated with the company)
4. The need for a disclaimer
5. Confidentiality and privacy - guidelines for what can and cannot be shared
6. Procedures for posting - processes that must be followed before posting and how that might differ
for individual accounts versus company accounts
7. Consequences - what can/will happen if policies are not adhered to

6.3 Managing Social Media Worth of Mouth

How to manage worth of mouth?
1. influencing where information is shared
2. how much information is shared
3. the content that is shared
4. Respond consumers in social media marketing

What is a crisis?
Brand crisis (PR crisis) and community crisis (real disaster that impacts the brand but also customers,
employees disasters)
Post about poisoning food leads to brand and community crisis

How to prepare for a crisis?

1. Assess the social media channels that your organization uses
2. Assess social media channels your organization is not using
3. List all of your stakeholders
4. Create a social media crisis plan

Three factors that influence consumer decision marking:

1. Other people
2. The person’s own experience
3. The marketer

What factors should a social media marketer consider in these situations?

1. Is this a brand crisis or a community crisis (or both)?
2. Who is affected by this crisis? List everyone who is immediately impacted.
3. What are the different points of view that these stakeholders may have? Try to see things from their point
of view.
4. What needs to be addressed immediately?
5. Are you being proactive or reactive? Are you reacting to the situation or to a specific person?
6. Should you respond? If so, should you do so publicly or privately (or both)?
7. You may not have all the facts right away. What can you do before you have all the facts?

The plan requires that you:

(1) identify channels where you interact with consumers and where consumers may post messages about your
firm;
(2) identify stakeholders or constituencies that are affected by your business;
(3) list possible crisis situations, precipitated by events that are both internal and external to the firm; and
(4) craft possible responses for each platform and stakeholder for these crises.

6.4 Ethics in Social Media Marketing

a) Both the brand and the influencer have a responsibility to disclose their relationships in social media posts.
b) Share and use information appropriately, including protecting consumer privacy
1. Do not share personal info (reply online with personal info)
2. Some industries are stricter about how companies communicate (i.e. can’t say that an individual is a
customer)
3. Use don’t abuse the data
c) Treat people with respect