Chapter 5 - Book notes

Guidelines for creating effective social media content or Successful social media campaigns include the following:

- Strong brand focus - A focus on the audience rather than the organization - Targeted keywords - Present relevant information - Creates Shareworthy text and images - Invites the audience to generate content (Invitations to generate content via posts, shares, discussions, reviews, or other forms of dialogue with the organization as well as with fellow customers) - Offers incentives to participate.(Promotions that offer discounts, gifts, or other special deals in exchange for participation)

How Consumers Use Social Media Consumers rely on social media to make buying decisions in which of the three ways?

1. Discover new goods and services 2.To conduct research and share information 3. To make final purchase decisions

Any SMM plan must be built around specific goals. Clear goals help everyone involved in the campaign aim their efforts in the right direction. Generally, there are five types of goals marketers pursue with SMM:

1. Increase Brand Awareness and Generate Leads 2. Increase Revenue 3. Improve Customer Service 4. Manage a Crisis 5. Market Research and Customer Feedback

What are three majors types of social media platforms?

1. Social Networking Sites 2. Social Bookmarking Sites 3. Blogging Sites and Forums

Monitoring and Measuring Social Media Marketing Measuring and monitoring the results of a social media campaign involve looking at three categories:

1. measures of activity, 2. measures of engagement, 3. measures of conversion.

What is the approximate percentage of adults using social media?

70% This varies by age group, with 86% of 18- to 29-year-olds on social media and only 34% of those over 65.

A strong brand focus:

A strong brand focus: Every communication includes current messages relevant to the brand. Weight Watchers incorporates dieting tips and success stories into its website, Facebook page, Twitter feed, and YouTube videos. If Weight Watchers were to also provide pet tips and travel recommendations on social media, that would be irrelevant and off-brand.

1. Discover new goods and services

According to one recent report conducted by comScore and Group M Search, 28% of respondents said that sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter helped steer them toward new brands and products

Respect Privacy

Although marketers try to gather as much information as possible about a target audience, they must not distribute any personal information without consent. Because social media is interactive by its nature, marketers must be vigilant about confidentiality and not letting personal information or other data accidentally slip into unauthorized hands. Violation of these practices and other privacy laws and guidelines could destroy a company's reputation and cost millions of dollars. For example, after Sony revealed a breach of its PlayStation Network customers' personal data, an investigation revealed the breach could have been avoided had Sony's software been up to date. The company was fined 250,000 British pounds (more than $415,000) and suffered serious public relations damage.

3. To make final purchase decisions

Another study found that 72% of consumers regard online reviews as a primary driver of their decision to buy. If consumers learn about a product online, engaging with the company and other consumers via social media, they become part of the community the product's marketers want to create. Consumers may purchase the product and share their response to it through social media, widening the circle even more.

1. Social Networking Sites

Are websites or apps (such as Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, and LinkedIn) that provide virtual communities for people to share daily activities, send messages, post opinions, increase their circle of online friends, and more. Many companies and not-for-profit organizations, ranging from Zappos to the American Cancer Society, use their Facebook pages to build relationships with various stakeholders.

3. Blogging Sites and Forums

Blogging sites and forums enable members to hold conversations by posting articles, making comments, or facilitating interactions on dedicated discussion boards.

5. Market Research and Customer Feedback

Companies now have instant access to large audiences who have shown interest in the brand by liking or following it on social media. Brands like Nike and Samsung have over 25 million people who have liked their Facebook pages. That is a potential source of feedback to guide product development, service improvements, and even international expansion plans.

2.To conduct research and share information

Consumers visit blogs and social networking sites to delve further into a topic—whether it's an industry, a brand, or a specific product. Reviews or rankings by fellow consumers, along with other shared information, can carry a lot of weight in certain purchase decisions. For example, according to one survey, more than 40% of American consumers turn to social media—including YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—for information about health care. They share opinions about everything from doctors to drugs to insurance companies

Targeted keywords:

Good keywords are those the targeted audience will most likely search when looking for information about goods and services. For example, an oceanfront resort might use keywords like "beach vacation" or "hotel with watersports." They might also establish some hashtag phrases related to their campaign to make it more discoverable by other users.

2. Measures of Engagement

Having lots of likes or impressions doesn't mean that your social media activities are effective. That's why digital marketers often focus more on measure of engagement for your social audience. A more engaged audience is more likely to purchase from your company and create good word-of-mouth among their friends. This type of engagement is often what fuels growth in overall activity. Measurements of engagement include the following: Likes/comments on social media content. Re-tweets/shares/re-pins. Click-through rate.

Impressions for social media content:

Knowing the number of people who received your message is the foundation for most forms or promotion. Luckily, social media makes it easy to track how many people saw your blog post, watched your video, or read your tweet.

Shareworthy text and images:

Marketers can turn customers into storytellers by encouraging them to post images related to the brand. Weight Watchers' Connect app community enables and encourages customers to share stories of their dieting progress, photos, and motivational quotes.

Be Accountable

Mistakes happen. When they do, smart social media marketers take three actions to solve the problem or resolve the issue. They: 1. Acknowledge the problem and take responsibility for it 2. Communicate with the right people, via the most relevant channels, and promise to take steps necessary to correct the situation 3. Implement the agreed-upon changes and evaluate ways to avoid similar problems in the future

Click-through rate:

Often social media content will include links to content on the company's website, blog, or e-commerce store. This form of engagement is extremely valuable. First, it takes users off someone else's social media platform and puts them on a platform you control, which allows you to control the messaging, branding, and user experience of the pages. Second, it facilitates collection of leads, such as e-mail addresses.

Invitations to generate content via posts, shares, discussions, reviews, or other forms of dialogue with the organization as well as with fellow customers:

On its Facebook page, Weight Watchers hosts community question-and-answer sessions between customers and company leaders.

Most companies use a combination of methods to assess their_____________.

SMM campaigns. For example, a brand may gain a large number of likes or website comments for a particular piece of content, indicating increased engagement; but the brand does not benefit if a high proportion of that engagement is negative.

Be Honest

Social media messages travel at lightning speed around the world; potentially millions of people may view a message in a matter of seconds or minutes. This means that postings, ads, comments, and even images come under intense scrutiny—and must be checked for accuracy, fair and realistic claims, balance and objectivity, and even (or especially) potential for misinterpretation. Sprint was forced to withdraw an online video ad featuring customers saying any word that came to mind when they heard competitor T-Mobile. A white woman said "ghetto"—prompting widespread accusations of racism and insensitivity.

3. Improve Customer Service

Social media provides companies the ability not only to communicate directly and easily with customers, but also to detect and address the problems customers might be experiencing.

There are a variety of social media platforms to enable these communities, such as:

The popular blogging site WordPress, microblogging site Twitter, video-sharing site YouTube, and social networking sites Facebook and Pinterest.

1. Increase Brand Awareness and Generate Leads

The purpose of this goal is to increase the number of people who are aware of the company and its products. In addition, brands hope to increase the positive perception of the brand. Companies realize that just like with offline promotions, potential customers aren't always ready to buy upon first hearing about what a company offers. Usually the first step is to provide an introduction to the company, and then nurture that relationship until a customer is ready to buy. Marketers may use social media to tap conversations with or about their intended audience—blog posts, tweets, social news, and the like. Social media also is helpful for connecting with influencers—individuals with the capability of affecting the opinions and actions of others.

4. Manage a Crisis

The real-time nature of social media also provides companies the ability to better manage a public relations crisis. In previous eras, providing crisis response typically had to be funneled through traditional media outlets, such as television and newspapers. With social media, companies can respond more quickly and distribute their message more directly.

Likes/comments on social media content

This could include likes and comments on Facebook posts, Pinterest pins, tweets, Snapchat stories, or blog posts. When users engage with a piece of content, it makes that content visible to their own network of friends, which in turn makes it more likely that content will go viral.

Relevant information:

This is more than a list of product features or specifications. Content may include problem-solving tips, answers to frequently asked questions, community polls, guest writers, interviews, statistics, case studies, and so forth. Recent video content posted by Weight Watchers included "Oprah's Favorite Breakfast Meal" and "WW Presents: Recipe Ideas for Every Meal."

Total likes/followers/subscribers to company social media profiles:

This is the audience you can reach through your social media channels. Oftentimes, the bigger the audience, the bigger the opportunity for you to directly communicate with prospects and customers.

Re-tweets/shares/re-pins:

This type of engagement is even more powerful than likes and comments because the user is actively pushing the content to their network. This acts as a form of endorsement for your content and company, and is even more powerful when influencers, such as celebrities or leaders of a particular industry, share the content.

Promotions that offer discounts, gifts, or other special deals in exchange for participation:

To launch a gardening app called Sprout It, web developers invited their fans to snap a picture of their backyard and post it to Instagram or Twitter. The grand prize: a professional garden makeover.

2. Increase Revenue

Typically the end goal of any promotional campaign is to increase sales. Brands have better success when first engaging with potential customers before directly pitching them.Aligning social media promotions with traditional offline promotion campaigns can also increase the return on investment for social media promotions aimed at increasing revenue.

1. Measures of Activity

Understanding the overall reach of a social media campaign can help companies understand whether they are reaching the right volume and type of customers. Measurements of activity include the following: - Total likes/followers/subscribers to company social media profiles. - New likes/followers/subscribers to company social media profiles. - Impressions for social media content.

3. Measures of Conversion

While activity and engagement are relevant to a number of social media marketing goals, ultimately the goal of many social media campaigns is to convert followers to customers (or repeat customers). Some social sites, such as Facebook, allow companies to conduct e-commerce right on their platform. But even when customers check out on company e-commerce sites, analytics tools allow the company to track where that traffic came from, whether it be a search engine query or a click-through from a Facebook post. This allows companies to measure their conversion rate (# of sales/# of visitors) for each of these traffic sources.

A focus on the audience rather than the organization:

While it's important to maintain a strong brand identity and meet marketing goals, social media content focuses on its audience rather than promoting the company outright. Some of the most successful social media campaigns were based on stories about customers, or content generated by the customers themselves. Weight Watchers' content is about the challenges faced by dieters—like Oprah—not about the company itself.

New likes/followers/subscribers to company social media profiles:

While the total activity number is important, it's also useful to know how quickly you are gaining new fans on social media.

While Twitter began as a microblogging site, it also demonstrates characteristics of ____________________.

a social network and a bookmarking site.

Creating Effective Social Media Content SMM content differs from traditional marketing in that it is, by definition,_______________.

a two-way street.

Social media plataforms

act as a home base for an online community. To access the conversations held there, users must become members. Usually this is a matter of typing in a valid e-mail address and creating a password, followed by building some kindterm-14 of profile. Some social media platforms require an invitation or sponsor who is already a member. Sites may also have their own rules

it's important to remember that conversion rates can be quite low when ?

advertising to new prospects.

Blogs

are sites that regularly post articles and other for readers, who can then comment on those articles and share them on other social media sites. Some blogs are created and written by single authors about single subjects, such as fitness, politics, or financial management. Other blogs function as full-fledged news or entertainment sites. blogging platform in the world, hosting millions of blogs and powering over a quarter of pages on the Internet.

Launching and Measuring a Social Media Campaign the first step in building a social media marketing campaign is to__________________.

ask what you want to accomplish from the campaign. Once you have identified the goals, you can select the appropriate measurement methods to track the success of the campaign

Tumblr is another large _________________________________________________.

blogging platform, hosting over 300 million blogs. Tumblr's functionality and dedicated fan base make it an attractive medium for organizations to market their brands.

Content marketing

creating and distributing relevant and targeted material to attract and engage an audience, with the goal of driving them to a desired action.

2. Social Bookmarking Sites

gives users a place to save, organize, and manage links to websites and other resources on the Internet. Usually these lists are then shared with other users. StumbleUpon is a form of search engine that directs users to web pages based on their interests, like ways to enjoy Pumpkin Spice Latte. Other examples of bookmarking sites are Digg and Reddit.Pinterest combines social networking with bookmarking by allowing users to "pin" photos of interesting products, places, recipes, and more.

influencers

individuals with the capability of affecting the opinions and actions of others.

Good social media campaigns are:

interactive and responsive.

What is social media?

is defined collectively as the different forms of online communication through which users can create communities to exchange information, ideas, messages, and other content.

Goals of a Social Media Marketing Campaign social media marketing (SMM)

is developing a conversation with current and potential customers on social media platforms

Social media has quickly grown to be an important tool for _____________________.

marketers to build relationships with customers, strengthen brands, launch new products, enter new markets, and boost sales.

Ethics in Social Media What are the three ethical principles:

respect privacy, be honest, and be accountable.

Facebook is easily the most popular?

social media site with visits by 68% of adults. The next closest site is Instagram (owned by Facebook), which is used by almost a third of adults.

Every strategy in an effective social media marketing campaign traces back to _________________.

the campaign's goals and ultimately links to a firm's overall strategic goals. Sometimes a campaign will have more than one goal.

In order for SMM to succeed, the content of its messages must engage ______________________.

the target audience in the conversation.