From Digital Culture & Society

Article Title:

Mills, A. J., & Plangger, K. (2015). Social media strategy for online service brands. Service Industries Journal, 35(10), 521–536. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2015.1043277

Find article online:

https://proxy.library.brocku.ca/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=fsr&AN=102991181&site=eds-live&scope=site

doi:10.1080/02642069.2015.104327

Contents 1 Context 2 Overview 3 Strengths and Weaknesses 4 Assessment

[edit] Context

Today, social media leads the way in online advertising, as it has become one of the most powerful marketing strategies. Social media has quickly become one of the most important tools businesses can use to promote their services and product. As a result of this, traditional services are on their way to extinction in this age of new information and communications technology (ICT). Online services open the doors to expansion in new markets and pose a huge opportunity for businesses to reach new customers. Social media gives companies the opportunity to interact directly with their consumers. Because of this, brands can establish meaningful relationships with consumers.

[edit] Overview

The article by Mills and Plangger (2015) explores the important role social media can play for online service brands. A large part of the article focuses on this “two-way communication between brands and customers” (Mills and Plangger, 2015, p. 522). Two-way communication is essential in the business world as it allows brand-to-customer-to-brand and customer-to-customer communication. Therefore, online marketing channels support offline marketing strategies such as customer service, marketing communications and data collection between online service brands and current and potential consumers. Social media websites and applications enable social interactions with individuals, groups and organizations in society (Mills and Plangger, 2015). As a result, online communication channels offer brands ways to nurture strong, long-term relationships with both current and potential brand advocates. In order to build relationships between online service brands and their customers on social media, Mills and Plangger (2015) “identify a nine-step ongoing process of examining, planning and implementing strategic opportunities” (p. 531).

1. Identify target customer(s)
2. Research existing conversations about the brand
3. Find out competitors' social media activities
4. Set social media objective(s)
5. Select social media platform(s)
6. Design the social media interaction
7. Actively manage social media interaction
8. Measure results
9. Reflect on performance

These nine steps can help build and maintain brand-consumer relationships for traditional offline services that are transitioning to online environments.

[edit] Strengths and Weaknesses

The first strength of Mills and Plangger’s (2015) article is that the authors clearly identify and discuss the benefits of marketing on social media. The authors go into great detail about the different types of social media platforms, such as blogs, micro-blogs, video-sharing websites, and social networking websites. In addition, the article explains that it is important for online service brand managers to gain a deeper understanding of each type of social media and the specific channels within each in order to craft the most effective strategy for their brand (Mills and Plangger (2015). Another strength the article outlines is that it contains a diagram and step-by-step process in which companies have been recommended to follow in an effort to build and maintain customer relationships on social media. This paper did a good job “illustrat[ing] the role social media can play for online service brands not only as a promotional or communicative channel, but also as part of an integrated marketing and customer relationship management strategy that can simultaneously engage and build relationships with customers” (Mills and Plangger, 2015, p. 534).

Based on the article’s strengths, I believe there are few weaknesses present. To begin, Mills and Plangger (2015) focus primarily on the benefits of online service brands using social media and all of the different types, however the article forgets to mention what types of content companies should be sharing in order to gain such strong brand-to-customer relationships. For future research it may be interesting to conduct an in-depth analysis on traditional services and online services in order to discover which marketing strategy engages and builds relationships with customers more often than not.

[edit] Assessment

As can be seen in the article, Mills and Plangger (2015) present the role of social media for online service brands. Companies are transitioning from traditional services to online services since they enable the development and nurturing of brand-consumer relationships. The authors believe that online service brands will build a better brand-consumer relationship if they choose the right communication channel and follow the nine-step strategic process. With that said, both social media and online services bring to marketers a new way of engaging with their customers.

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[[user"Ddiclemente[Ddiclemente]] 15:00, 8 February 2019 (EST)