Connor
From Digital Culture & Society
Contents |
[edit] "Social Media Strategy for Online Service Brands."
- Find Article Online: DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2015.1043277
- REDIRECT[[1]]
[edit] Context:
This article focuses on how major companies have strategized and change their marketing needs to focus on social media. Social media is one of the newest aspects of technology that allows users to post various types of content. This is great for businesses because they get the chance to promote themselves on many different platforms and get their name out to numerous potential customers. This article goes into detail about companies such as IBM, Dell, Starbucks, Burger King, PepsiCo, Levi, and Ford and how they use social media to their advantage. Each company uses social media in such different ways and it is neat to see how each company uses each different platform to their advantage, within an ever changing digital landscape that sees a wide range of marketing tactics utilized. By looking at the marketing methods of various companies a better understanding of technology can be established, explaining many current social phenomena’s.
[edit] Overview:
Business is forever changing and especially how marketing is done. “Over the past 40 years, there has been a radical shift in how business in conducted and how people cooperate.” (p.4445) Different companies with different types of social media applications that better their marketing needs. Social media is not only Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Everything from a website to a blog, to a YouTube video, to a post on Pinterest will reach a different costumer on a different platform. And each company notices these different platforms and the differences between them and picks the platforms that best suit their marketing needs. The most highlighted concept within the article is, “Social media is about ordinary people taking control of the world around them and finding creative new ways to bring their collective voices together to get what they want.” (p. 4452) This quotation embodies what social media is all about, creativity, and all of these companies use social media and creativity to benefit them. Another great aspect of this article besides showing what platforms companies use to their advantage, it also goes over all of the different platforms/applications that can be considered social media and how they help businesses if they market using them.
[edit] Strengths and Weakness:
Some of the obvious strengths within this article are the uses of primary data to provide examples of all the different platforms available for online marketing. For example(s), IBM does not only promote on social media, but owns more than 100 different blogs, several official Twitter accounts, accounts on YouTube and Slide Share. Like Dell Starbucks also has created their own idea site, My-Starbucks Idea Site, where customers are able to share their ideas, vote on ideas, and also comment on others ideas. Burger King on the other hand has taken a different approach to their use of social media. “The burger chain offered Facebook users a free Whopper coupon if they would "un-friend" 10 of their social network connections.” (p. 4445) -Each company is using social media in such a diverse way and catering to their unique customer base and the author does a good job of communicating this diversity. Another great aspect of this article is that it took common social media platforms and showed a percentage of who are using them. The most prevalent sites where found to be Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They oddly did not show Instagram- a possible weakness of the article. The article also goes into detail about blogging and the benefits of blogs for social media marketing, “Blogs influence roughly one in five readers at important purchase decision stages… blogs help consumers discover products and services, refine choices, get support and answers, and decide on a specific product or service.” (p.4446) This article also touches on the idea of, “interacting with or attracting the interest of current or prospective customers through the channels of social media” (p 4451), which is one of the greatest aspects of social media. Companies are able to interact to potential customers through using social media. The article even broke down the benefits and uses or each type of social media and went over thirteen different types of applications that can be considered social media. While the article goes over all of the different social media platforms the article also goes over important information on how each platform can benefit your business. Throughout the article I was very surprised to only have Instagram mentioned once, and briefly. Instagram is one of the main applications where small businesses do their marketing. It is a free app and enables businesses to post and reach out to anyone they desire. Instagram is one of the best ways to interact with your potential customers because you can view their profile, like their photos/ comment on them, or respond to their comments on your own post. Lastly, the article did reference some outdated information that is off topic. For example, Facebook taking over MySpace statistics is not very relevant to the point of the article. Since MySpace is not used anymore, it should not have been in the article.
[edit] Assessment and Final thoughts:
In conclusion, the article research on service brands’ participation in online activities has focused largely on Internet-enabled transactions and functional interactions between the firm and the customer. This insight is extremely valuable when exploring the role of social media’s as a direct line of communication between business and consumers that has the potential to foster brand-consumer relationships. Therefore this article holds an intangible value for businesses attempting management and measurement of online marketing practices that are ultimately successful due to the phenomena of the increased customer relationship. C. Scicluna 2019-02-07
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