Social Media has been established as an important medium to reach an audience and researchers have written on how Social Media can be integrated with traditional marketing tools.
(Bansal & Bharti, 2014) A shift in trends was detected with Social Networking Sites (SNS) emerging as a marketing tool for brands. One of the important applications discovered was how brands can facilitate the creation of online communities using SNS. Online communities provide a wealth of information and are great sources to gather feedback. Response to products and services can be useful for improvement for same.
(Si, 2016) The author in this paper titled “Social Media and its role in Marketing” presents his viewpoint on the shift brands and companies have taken from traditional media to social media. In the paper, he discusses about what social media is and how it is useful as a marketing tool. He emphasizes on two points in the favor of social media marketing: Economical and Higher Reach. One of the major roles of Social Media, as perceived by the author, is to have a way to connect with the target group that seems genuine and authentic to the customers as if they were talking to a person and not a company. The paper also discusses the use of social media promotion in Bangladesh, which according to a Regus International Survey tops the list of countries where companies use social media. As compared to USA’s 35%, 52% of companies in Bangladesh reported an increase in sales after using social media.
(Ismail, 2017) This paper titled “The influence of perceived social media marketing activities on brand loyalty” discusses whether social media marketing is helpful in building brand loyalty. The author begins with the hypothesis that social media marketing has a positive effect on brand loyalty. To test the hypothesis data is collected via a structured questionnaire from 346 students of the University of Northern Malaysia between the ages of 19 and 25. The results of the study were helpful in proving the hypotheses correct. The author concludes that those who follow certain brands on social media tend to be loyal to that brand and its products and hence social media marketing proves to be an effective tool for brands to build that connection with the customers.
(Felix, Rauschnabel, & Hinsch, 2016) Co-authored the research article titled “Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework” where they present the four main pillars of social media marketing. The paper identifies the following four dimensions for a social media strategy:
Scope: The brands can be defenders or explorers meaning they use social media as a one-way communication tool or for communication with a variety of stakeholders.
Culture: This is further divided into the conservatism and modernism approaches taken by the brands.
Structure: Whether the companies follow a centralized approach where one person is responsible or where all the employees are accountable for social media marketing.
Governance: Whether the company has autocracy or anarchy when it comes to designing the rules for the social media marketing strategy.
The author concludes that a proper mix of all four elements is imperative for an effective social media marketing strategy.
Social Media Marketing Applications
Since companies figured out that social media can be utilized as a marketing tool, various authors have put forward how different organizations and industries are using Social Media Marketing. They have also examined how social media helps these firms as well.
(Ramsaran-Fowdar & Fowdar, 2013) In the article titled “The Implications of Facebook Marketing for Organizations,” the authors have discussed the widely used tools for Facebook marketing and its perceived benefits for organizations. According to the authors, organizations can utilize Facebook to create a strong profile of their target audience that allows them to connect with the customers. Firms make use of Brand fan pages and Advertisements to capture their attention. One of the main advantages identified by the authors is the possibility of sending tailored messages for an individual. Facebook and other social networking sites offer economic alternatives for marketing and are considered to be a better replacement for telemarketing. Social networking sites are a great tool for Interactive Marketing.
(Banerjee, 2015) Banerjee wrote an article comparing the traditional v/s social media marketing efforts in the FMCG sector in India. Banerjee interviewed key personnel from seven different companies in the FMCG sector and 70 customers to get their opinion. One of the important conclusions drawn was that social media provides an opportunity for two-way communication. This leads to the higher brand association and brand advocacy.
Social Media Marketing is increasingly being utilized in the retail industry as well. A paper on the Impact of Social Media Marketing in the Retail Industry (Sharma, Mathur, Chadha, & Shandilya, 2014) discussed that Facebook is one of the top most utilized platforms in Social Media Marketing in industries like Footwear, F&B, Toys, and Electronics. Word of Mouth marketing is found to be one of the major advantages here.
For luxury brands, social media is found to have a great impact on consumers. (Godey, et al., 2016) In their research, they discussed that social media marketing is not just important for building brand awareness but also for creating a distinct brand image. One of the important findings of their study was that social media marketing had a higher impact on brand image than on awareness. They found a positive impact on brand loyalty and preference as well.
Social Media Marketing is important not just for B2C brands but for B2B brands as well. (Vasudevan & Kumar, 2018) Research on Social Media and B2B brands from an Indian perspective revealed that on social media the lines between B2B and B2c get blurred. Social Media is used to promote more informational content. While analyzing these brands on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn it was found that more than 50% of posts were brand related and 67% of posts were of a B2B nature.
Branding content on social media platforms
(Lozan, 2019) A website published an article that conducted a study of 101,421,493 posts to analyze what kind of content worked best for which platform. Posts with emojis in caption lead to an increase in engagement while questions in caption lead to a decrease in engagement. Captions with less than 10 words are found to be more engaging. Instagram was found to be the platform that generated the highest engagement as compared to Facebook and Twitter.
(Parsons, 2013) An analysis of official Facebook pages of 70 global brands revealed that polls provide an effective way to engage with consumers. Content such as contests or sweepstakes sees the active participation of consumers as well. Hence Interactive content would ultimately help increase sales for the brand.
(Gutiérrez-Cillán, Camarero-Izquierdo, & José-Cabezudo, 2017) For Facebook brand pages there were three types of post categories identified either for entertainment purposes or utility purposes. The three categories were: Information posts, Interactive posts, and Image posts. Research findings indicated that Information posts and Interactive posts were found to have more impact on consumer engagement than image posts.
(Pletikosa & Michahelles, 2011) A content analysis of Facebook brand posts identified three categories to distinguish between different posts. Post Type included status, photo, video, and links. Post Category included descriptive questions, Announcements, promotional advertisements, Questions, and Competitions. The day of the week on which the post was put up was also taken into account.
Social media content and consumer engagement
With social media emerging as an important platform for marketing activities researchers have tried to understand what kind of content works for social media platforms.
(Barger, Peltier, & Schultz, 2016) Authors Barger, Peltier, and Schultz did an extensive literature review of papers that focused on consumer engagement through social media. Their research paper offered FIVE categories of precursors that affect consumer engagement on social media.
Brand Factors: Attitude, warmth, word of mouth, traditional v/s social media marketing spends, etc. are factors that affect consumer engagement.
Product Factors: Product quality, experience, and type of product has an effect on levels of engagement.
Consumer Factors: The authors elaborate on reasons why consumers engage with brands which could include entertainment, information gathering, bond with the brand, etc.
Content Factors: The format of the message and the purpose of the message of branded content affect consumer engagement.
Social Media Factors: Perceived characteristics and usefulness of platforms.
(Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012) There are two variables that define the popularity of a brand post: Likes and Comments. The factors such as interactivity and vividness of the message as well as the use of informative or entertaining content determine the number of likes and comments on posts. The extent to which a particular post has received positive comments also affects the level of engagement.
(Ashley & Tuten, 2015) In the research article titled “Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement” take a content analysis approach to analyze the content strategy of the top 28 brands across various social channels. The content was taken from Facebook, Twitter, and blogs of the brands and was collected for a period of one week. The content categories were further divided into message strategies, sales promotion and user-generated content. The number of likes and comments for the posts was also analyzed. The research led to the conclusion that brands use functional appeal more in the message content than emotional appeal. Emotional and entertaining content on the contrary has been proved to be a better source of engagement and hence the authors recommend a change in the strategy to appeal to a larger audience.
(Lee, Hosanagar, & Nair, 2018) One of the interesting observations was that content that has an emotional angle to it or brings out the personality of the brand has a higher rate of brand engagement than informational content. Researchers identified 8 variables each for both informative and personality-related content and the metrics to study engagement include likes, comments, shares, and click-through rates.
(Ordenes, Grewal, Ludwig, Ruyter, Mahr, & Wetzels, 2019) Research has shown that speech, i. e., the actual text message, and images have a considerable effect on consumers. Message sharing by consumers is higher if brands use repetitions and alliterations in the composition of messages. If coupled with images message sharing is higher.
2 Bibliography
Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement. Psychology and Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.
Banerjee, B. (2015, January). TRADITIONAL vs. SOCIAL MEDIA AS A MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS TOOL IN FMCG SECTOR IN INDIA. Asia Pacific Journal of Research, 1, 154-162.
Bansal, H., & Bharti, C. (2014). A Study on the Emergence of Social Networking Sites as the Tool for Marketing. In G. Hegde, & G. Shainesh (Eds.), Social Media Marketing: Emerging Concepts and Applications (1st ed., pp. 175-1184). New Delhi: Excel Books.
Barger, V. A., Peltier, J. W., & Schultz, D. E. (2016). Social media and consumer engagement: A review and research agenda. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 10(4), 268-287.
Felix, R., Rauschnabel, P. A., & Hinsch, C. (2016). Elements of strategic social media marketing: A holistic framework. Journal of Business Research.
Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., et al. (2016). Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior. Journal of Business Research.
Gutiérrez-Cillán, J., Camarero-Izquierdo, C., & José-Cabezudo, R. S. (2017). How brand post content contributes to users’ Facebook brand-page engagement. The experiential route of active participation. Business Research Quarterly, 258-274.
Ismail, A. R. (2017). The influence of perceived social media marketing activities on Brand Loyalty. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 29(1), 129-144.
Lee, D., Hosanagar, K., & Nair, H. (2018). Advertising Content and Consumer Engagement on Social Media: Evidence from Facebook. Management Science.
Lozan, T. (2019, November 14). Social Media Content Research. Retrieved March 3, 2020, from SocialInsider: https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/social-media-content-research/
Ordenes, F. V., Grewal, D., Ludwig, S., Ruyter, K., Mahr, D., & Wetzels, M. (2019). Cutting through Content Clutter: How Speech and Image Acts Drive Consumer Sharing of Social Media Brand Messages. Journal of Consumer Research, 45, 988-1012.
Parsons, A. (2013). USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO REACH CONSUMERS: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF OFFICIAL FACEBOOK PAGES. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 17(2), 27-36.
Pletikosa, I., & Michahelles, F. (2011). A Case Study of the Effects of Moderator Posts within a Facebook Brand Page. Social Informatics - Third International Conference, (pp. 161-170). Singapore.
Ramsaran-Fowdar, R. R., & Fowdar, S. (2013, March). The Implications of Facebook Marketing for Organizations. Contemporary Management Research, 9(1), 73-84.
Sharma, A., Mathur, R., Chadha, A., & Shandilya, K. (2014). Impact of Social Media Marketing in the Indian Retail Industry. In G. Hegde, & S. G (Eds.), Social Media Marketing: Emerging Concepts and Applications (1st ed., pp. 287-301). New Delhi: Excel Books.
Si, S. (2016). Social Media and Its Role in Marketing. Business and Economics Journal, 7(1).
Vasudevan, S., & Kumar, D. (2018, September). SOCIAL MEDIA AND B2B BRANDS: AN INDIAN PERSPECTIVE. International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Technology, 9(9), 767-775.
Vries, L. D., Gensler, S., & Leeflang, P. S. (2012). The popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 83-91.