Social Media Strategy for Online Service Brands. Edited by Ian Blackley

From Digital Culture & Society

Article Title: Mills, Adam J. and Kirk Plangger. "Social Media Strategy for Online Service Brands." Service Industries Journal, vol. 35, no. 10, July 2015, pp. 521-536.

Find Online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02642069.2015.1043277?scroll=top&needAccess=true DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2015.1043277

[edit] Context

Brands are in a merger with social media as a new way to advertise as well as having the best way to interact with potential and current customers. A lot of in person services are changing their ways to become more online. “Some services, like banking and accounting, have generally seen efficient industry-wide movement to the online environment via branded websites. Other services, like healthcare and law, are in a slower process of industry transition.” (p.521) Companies have the opportunities to reach new and old customers if they move their services to online. “More than a third of 18– 44-year-old social media users consciously follow brands and brand pages on social media networks, and this percentage increases to almost three-quarters for users between the ages of 24 and 34 (Edison Research, 2012 ).” (p. 528) This percentage of the population and age bracket is what companies need to be marketing to and the opportunities with social media is endless.

[edit] Overview

One of the main aspects that the article focuses on is “two- way communication between brands and customers”(p.522). This communication allows not only for brand-to-customer-to-brand, but also customer-to-customer communication. For example if a company posts a photo onto Instragram a customer is able to comment and have another comment respond or even the company has the ability to reply to their comment. The concept is great as it shows the obvious increase in technology that the inter web has gone through. Web 1.0 allowed only users to interact with users, but now there is a multi-way conversations and interactions that can happen. Marketers of service brands are able to speak directly with customers, online and immediately. Social media offers new and unique opportunities for brands to customer relationships to form online. Social media offers challenging and potentially valuable opportunities that were previously unavailable to marketers through offline channels. The article also goes over some strategic processes, along with diagrams, and step by step processes that can help companies use social media to their best advantage. Along with the great connections social media allows businesses to make with customers, it also offers a lot of marketing advantages. Overall the main focus of this article is on why companies should be marketing on social media and not how.

[edit] Strengths and Weaknesses

A few strengths are customer data collection, marketing communications, and a better customer service. Another aspect the article brought forth is that social media is always active; It is best for companies to post during certain days at certain times, but when businesses have a huge following they most likely have followers viewing there post every part of every day. This paper has attempted to illustrate 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. The article expresses that with the data companies collect from social media sites they can adjust their tactics to better their statistics. “Unique to social media, versus traditional media, is the ability to adapt and adjust media communications during the process of executing strategy; the ability to respond to and accommodate needs and desires is present in both content and context.” (p.533) This article does not have many weaknesses. I believe is it goes over all of the main points that has to do with the benefits of companies marketing on social media and moving there their services to be accessible online. The article does not go over any of the content that companies should be posting, but rather the pros of using social media and all of the different platforms. It also does not touch on what is a good way for services to move to being online.

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--Ib13wb 12:57, 13 March 2019 (EDT)