Social media marketing
is an important category of digital marketing which involves
encouraging customer communications on a company’s own site, or social presences such
as Facebook or Twitter or in specialist publisher sites, blogs and forums. It can be applied
as a traditional broadcast medium, for example companies can use Facebook or Twitter to
send messages to customers or partners who have opted in. However, to take advantage of
the benefits of social media it is important to start and participate in customer conversations.
These can be related to products, promotions or customer service and are aimed at learning
more about customers and providing support so improving the way a company is perceived.
The growth of social networks has been documented by Boyd and Ellison (2007) who
describe social networking sites (SNS) as:
Web- based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi- public profile
within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a con-
nection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others
within the system.
The interactive capabilities to post comments or other content and rate content are surpris-
ingly missing from this definition.
We’ve seen throughout this book that the opportunities of communicating with custom-
ers through social network sites, online communities and interactions on company sites
are so great today that a social media strategy has become a core element of digital business
strategy. Yet creating a social media or customer engagement strategy is challenging since it
requires a change in mindset for the company since they may have to give up some control
on their messaging to enable them to communicate with customers effectively. The change
in approach required is clear from a movement that originated in the USA in 1999, known as
the Cluetrain manifesto (
www.cluetrain.com
). The authors, Levine et al . (2000), say:
Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless
monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your- call-is-important-to-us
busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect
for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do. Corporate firewalls have kept smart
employees in and smart markets out. It’s going to cause real pain to tear those walls down.
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