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  Social  media 

marketing 

  Monitoring  and 

facilitating   customer‑ 

 customer  interaction, 

participation and sharing 

through digital media 

to encourage positive 

engagement with a 

company and its brands 

leading to commercial 

value. Interactions may 

occur on a company site, 

social networks and other 

 third‑  party  site.   

and social networks. In most countries, social networks are amongst the most popular sites 

due to this need. It follows that marketers will want to ‘swim with the fishes’ or try to com-

municate with customers in this environment. Certainly there are opportunities to adver-

tise on social networks, as shown in the Saxo Bank Mini case study, above. But if marketers 

perceive social media simply as an opportunity to push messages from a brand to passive 

recipients, then the opportunity to engage with customers to develop a deeper relationship 

is missing. Facebook aims to facilitate this through its ads which typically lead through to a 

brand page or company page within Facebook where brands can collect feedback. 

 So it is important for organisations to determine how their audiences use social networks 

and assess the opportunities to reach and interact with them. Dee  et al  . (2007) also note the 

importance of social networks in influencing perceptions about brands, products and sup-

pliers. Their research shows large differences in gender and age on the types of products dis-

cussed, but recommendations on restaurants, computers, movies and vehicles being popular 

in all categories. 

 While many Facebook applications have been developed ( 

www.facebook.com/apps/

 ), 

the majority of  well-  known apps were not created by brands. Companies can also set up 

brand pages within Facebook, but these tend not to reach large numbers.  Box   9.3    (see later) 

describes further advice on the use of social networks for marketing.     

 Social media and social CRM strategy 

   Focus  on  

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Chapter 9  Customer relationship management

But the result will be a new kind of conversation. And it will be the most exciting conversa-

tion business has ever engaged in.

Of course, more than a change in mindset is required – to achieve change on this scale 

requires senior management sponsorship, investment and changes to processes and tools, as 

described in the next chapter on change management.

You can see that the Cluetrain manifesto is a call to action, encouraging managers to 

change their culture and provide processes and tools to enable employees of an organisation 

to interact with and listen to customer needs in a responsible way.