Social Media

How social media works?

There are different platforms of social media:

• Social bookmarking (delicious.com)
• Social media submission sites (Reddit.com)
• Forums and discussions sites (Yahoo Groups, Google groups)
• Media sharing sites (Flickr)
• Reviews and rating sites (Amazon.com, Tripadvisor.com)
• Social network sites (Facebook, Myspace)
• Blogs (blogger.com)
• Podcasts (Apple’s ITunes)
• Micro blogging (Twitter)
• Wikis (Wikipedia)

The forms of social media are diverse in working process but still have some primary functions which are engaging to the potential customers, increasing traffic of the website and raising brand awareness from many sources.

For the marketers, the social media provide the ability to build up the company’s profile and strengthen the existing reputation. Based on the interaction with the customer, the webmasters can measure the acknowledgement of the customer about the brand, the factors that create the satisfaction as well future trend forecast. Additionally, the consumer now are able to find the product of the firm via the social media components integrated with the websites of the firms. By this way the relationship between the organization and the stakeholders is closer than ever. The customer become company’s associate who can offer the suggestion for further innovation or development to gain better outcome. At the same time, there are supports from the reverse direction when the customer receive the quick responses for their questions. The outcome of this is to develop an excellent customer support service. (Jones & Ryan 2012, 157-171).

 Likewise, the function of the social media is not limited at promoting the brand sites, it is about enabling conversation between the advertiser and the audience which include 4 engagements: Communication, collaboration, education and entertainment. The nature of social media is to enable interaction among users and the audience expect receiving other values from the company rather the product. (Brake & Safko 2009, 675). Godin (2009) described the value of the business is the relationship between the companies and the audience. The point of using social media is not to have numerous of followers but the amount of users that interact with the sites. Author also stated that networking is effective when there is “right” conversation and “real” relationship with whom we really interact with through variety of actions and becomes worthless when there are only “fake” relationship.

How to implement the social media to the business strategy?

The ACCESS model:

Brake and Sako (2009, 717-733) explained ACCESS model as a guideline for setting up and implementing a social media strategy. The main outcome of this model is to assist the marketers justify the content to deliver to the audience in an interactive environment. The word ACCESS stands for:

Audience: this is the most crucial factor that affects the whole process. If the marketer can identify the right audience, they will be able to transmit successfully the message to the audience. In addition, reacting quickly to any changes. In order to that, the marketer need to recognize the main characteristics of the audience:

• Demonstrated behaviors
• Self-reported behaviors
• Attitudes, values, and beliefs
• Needs and preferences
• Demographic data
• Professional, social, and service organizations
• Influencers and promoters

Concept: the audience gain the information about the features, functions and benefits of a product through the concept of that product. Moreover, the concept as well defines the characteristics of the users. The successful concept is applied for the right target audience so the first thing marketer need to consider focusing on specific segment rather than a broad community. The next move is to determine the concept by understanding the needs of the engaging market that can be achieved from the company’s expertise and deliver the right information that the audience want to get. Finally, testing the effectiveness of the concept.

Competition: the other rivals are big obstacle to retrain the company to access the audience due to the existence of many concepts in the same market. Therefore, there is a need for understanding and evaluating the competitors to extract the prior advantages of our own concept. Analyzing the differences in quality, the target audience’ characteristic and the context as an audience is a good way to determine what the competitors trying to achieve.

Execution: after going through all the above factors, the final step is delivering the message to the audience via social media platforms. In the message, the marketers point out the core value and the highlight of the product that are differentiated to the other ones. To minimize the risk, it’s important to review the audience’s feedback before launching.

Social media: recognize the available tools for the target audience and select the appropriate ones.

Sales viability: ROI is the most challenging factor of the social media strategy. How to measure the ROI at the end? What method need to be used to measure?

Bibliography:

Brake, D, Safko, L 2009 The social media bible: Tactics, tools & strategies for business, John Wiley & Sons Inc., New Jersey.

Jones, C, Ryan, D 2012 Understand Digital marketing, Kogan Page Limited, United Kingdom and USA.