Today, the success of a company highly depends on promotional campaigns and integration of marketing communication are affected by the extensive use of information communication technologies. The use of internet plays an important role in this process and reaches millions of people all over the globe, it also offers for example; real time feedback. Social media is one of the main important roles in it, also defined as online tools or websites. According to I, Papasolomou. And Y, Melanthiou: “The aim of this research is to identify and discuss the growing popularity of social media and explore its potential impact on marketing practices and especially marketing public relations”.
Social Media is often defined to terms as Facebook and Myspace. This is where people can produce, control and publish certain content. An example of this are Blogs and Micro-blogs or video sharing. The way that marketers communicate with their target group and audience developed over the past few years. (I, Papasolomou. And Y, Melanthiou, N.D)
The most popular form of social media today are the sources or platforms where the consumers want to educate or inform each other on about brands, service and issues. Consumer-generated marketing or consumer-generated media are important and also the most important tools of marketing public relations.
The way this type of media is used is also creating a kind of buzz around the brand, like word of mouth communication. Furthermore, this article discusses that people in groups share information with each other because they also trust one another. This way of communicating was something not unfamiliar to marketers, but is becoming more important since there are so many social media platforms where the audience can share for example their opinions with each other.
Developing relationships with customers is also becoming more important and is also one of the main objectives . Lastly, the internet is not only used to find information about a brand or company it gives the opportunity to engage with the audience, referring to two-way communication. Further research should be carried out in order to further develop this research. (I, Papasolomou. And Y, Melanthiou, N.D)
Critical Application (350)
As described in the article, communication on social media are of great importance for companies. Communication between customers and the audience was always something of importance but a big group is communicating online on the internet and is sharing everything they can think about on it. The latter is one of the many things that can be done on the social internet.
Interesting questions this article brings to light are:
1. How does Embrace deal with communicating with their audience and existing target group?
2. What impact does mouth-to mouth communication between customers have on Embrace ?
To answer the questions above information about the company is needed.
During the last semester where Embrace was our client we did extensive research for them. Their wish was that we came up with a new communication strategy to enter the German market. During our first meeting with them it became clear they do not really make use of Social media, however they are active on LinkedIn and soon also on the German version of LinkedIn which is called Xing.
Word of mouth by the audience is also done offline, but is nowadays often done online. Embrace makes use of two-way communication with their audience and clients by using their feedback to improve their products. Furthermore, they receive feedback from their clients face to face when meeting with them or they make use of an interview which will be used for the main website of Embrace.
It is important for a company to know how to deal or to communicate with their audience, because customers can share their negative or positive view or experiences on a brand online, where everyone can see it. As said before, Embrace does not make use of other social media platforms. The audience can read about Embrace on their website by reading the client reviews or by visiting their LinkedIn page, and soon the Xing page.
Two research questions for further research:
1. How can Embrace find new ways to interact with their customers and audience?
2. Will having more social media accounts be interesting for Embrace, or should they keep it to their main website, and LinkedIn account?
Individual Artice 4. Social Media and its Role in Marketing.
Literature review (350)
“social media simply refers to communication/publication platforms which are generated and sustained by the interpersonal interaction of individuals through the specific medium or tool”. (Neti, S. 2011)
Social media, no company can escape or deny it anymore. When a company wants to connect with their customers, they should definitely consider Social Media. Social Media is considered as the medium to socialize with a company’s audience. Furthermore, when there are a lot of competitors a company cannot afford itself to have no presence on social channels. Social media is often used as a marketing platform to stronger their advertising campaign and such. Two key words to keep in mind as a basis for social networking are: Goodwill and Trust.
Social media helps companies to share their expertise and knowledge, or by helping customers with problems they encounter.
It also helps with increasing traffic and subscribers, building new business partnerships and a rise in search engine rankings. Other reasons why a company should consider social media in their marketing services is that it can have a great reach and that it boosts website traffic. (Neti, S. 2011)
According to a recent study, “The State of Small Business Report,” different industries use their social media marketing differently. E.g. 39% maintain a blog and 57% build a network through LinkedIn. There are so many ways a company can social media to connect with their customers and with their potential customers.
Furthermore, customers often use blogging to share their experience with a certain brand, it is said that 68% more leads will result from the customers who use blogging. Blogging can have a positive effect on a company’s branding and growth. It does not matter if you are an individual or a large corporation, online presence is key in success of a business as well as relationship building with customers.
There are so many things that can be helpful for a business when using social media. Lastly, developing a strategy also means that the company really needs to think about what they want to accomplish in e.g. 2018 and how social media fits their plan (Neti, S. 2011)
Evaluation:
As mentioned above in the summary of this article, social media is of great importance for businesses. In this way they can communicate easier with their customers or advertise new campaigns which have been set up. It is key for a company to become social if competitors also do it. Also to create a more well-known brand image.
No company can escape the fact of becoming social anymore, also for Embrace.
The main issue this article brin
gs to light is the fact that a company should definitely choose to use social media when there are a lot of competitors. When conducting research for our client Embrace, we came across the fact that there are many competitors in Germany, and that most of them are also active on social media platforms. Referring back to the pervious article where I came up with a last research questions if Embrace is in need of social media accounts, it can be said that they are really in need of social media accounts to compete with their competitors and to gain a customer base in Germany. Our main advice was to advertise on Xing, the German LinkedIn. But after reading this article, they could easily advertise on social media as well.
Furthermore, something interesting that came across is that social media also helps with the rise in search engine rankings. We also created a prototype for them where we created SEA, Search Engine Advertising for Embrace in Germany. This is something very important for them to consider as well. When ranked high in search engine ranking they will probably become more visible for potential customers looking for Embrace on Google.
The two issues mentioned above could solve their main wish, which is creating a new customer base for Embrace in Germany. We created a new landing-page for them and SEA settings. They can use the information from this article and implement it in the prototypes which can be tested later.
Two research questions for further research:
1. Will sales in fact really increase for Embrace when using social media accounts?
2. Will a potential blog gain positive recommendations for Embrace?
Individual article 3. Social Media Marketing For Adolescents
Literature Review.
Adolescents who use social media and how they use it are central in this article. Companies use information on traits to create it to their strategies to better target their main marketing messages. A key concept in communicating with their consumers is that they should do it actively. Companies should also be aware of the fact that consumers behavior might change. over the past few years that has been a great increase in the use of social media among adolescents.
Social media is often used to communicate with each other, which refers to the traditional worth-of-mouth communication. (Mas-Tur, A, Tur-Porcar, A. et al. N.D).
one of the main advantages discussed in this article is that social media gives the opportunity to retrieve large amounts of information on the tastes of consumers. This can be used for product development or customer feedback. Social media also provides companies with detailed knowledge about potential customers. Often young adolescents are the ones using social media and therefore are of great importance for companies.
One of the ways a company can reach their target group with their marketing campaigns are via different platforms, because adolescents can access different communication networks from their mobile devices. (Mas-Tur, A, Tur-Porcar, A. et al. N.D).
The method used in this article is fsQCA “(fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) is a variant of the QCA method, which is based on definition of the conditions that form configurations leading to an outcome of interest”. Analysis of Necessity/ Analysis of Sufficiency was tested among males and females at the age of 14-16. Some major conclusions of this test are that: a high education level and high profession level of the parents could lead to a lesser use of social media. Or that: High hours of connection to social media requires the absence of family members at home.
Lastly, something of great importance mentioned in this article is that companies need to create some feeling a “social identity, “ which gives consumers the feeling that they belong to a particular social group, based on creating an emotional link. This applies especially among adolescents. (Mas-Tur, A, Tur-Porcar, A. et al. N.D).
Evaluation.
The last article focuses mainly on marketing and social media among adolescents and also what family circumstances have an impact of their use of social media. Of course, the article also mentions the most important advantages of using social media and what opportunities it retrieves.
However, a few questions or better said; issues arose when reading and summarizing this article, since my main goal is to apply it to the project client, Embrace. One of the issues is that the target group of Embrace are mainly adults who work for municipalities for the German government.
This article can therefore not really be applied to the client. However, we did focus on young adults who work for municipalities in Germany, and who work in the “younger” cities. Therefore, from a personal point of view it can somehow still be applied to Embrace, but this is quite difficult. Since the article also writes about advantages of using social media and what opportunities it retrieves, it is best to apply some of that theory to Embrace.
One of the main important theory that has been written about is again the word-of-mouth communication discussed in this article, which also comes back in the other articles.
Therefore, from my personal opinion, is that this is one of the most effective ways of communicating about a brand. From personal experiences as well, I rather talk to someone about something I experienced with a brand, positive and negative.
Embrace should definitely keep this in mind, that they need to be aware of the fact that word-of-mouth was and still is one of the main important ways of communicating. Referring this back to the project, we discovered that different municipalities in the Netherlands, refer Embrace to each other instead of municipalities individually look for Embrace online. Again Word-of- mouth!
Lastly, Some of the main important questions which I can come up with after analyzing this article and trying to applying it to our client, Embrace are:
1. Can Embrace also try to focus on the young adolescents when setting up a social media campaign?
2. How can Embrace implement the “social identity” to make sure their target group feels connected or have the feeling they belong to a particular group?