Social Media Strategy for Online Service Brands. Lee, B

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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 article online:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02642069.2015.1043277

DOI: 10.1080/02642069.2015.1043277

Contents

[edit] Context

The online presence via social media for online service brands has become an important factor in order for brands to promote themselves through advertisement and marketing. Many services that were once ‘offline’ have shifted their focus from one-way communication to customer-customer interaction via social media. (Mills & Plangger, p. 522). This shift creates a more meaningful relationship between customer and service, offering long-lasting relationships and personal connections between customer and service. The authors begin by explaining the various forms of social media and conclude their argument by offering a strategy of how to resource for online services.

[edit] Overview

The authors of this article discuss how brands can establish beneficial communication between their customers by improving or creating an online presence via social media (Mills & Plangger, p. 529). They argue how the communication of dialogue between brand service and customers develops a level of trust between brands and customers. With the integration of social media and the internet, there has been a migration of how these service brands must develop their interactive relationship with customers, which is now done through online services. The integration of social media has an outlonging reach as well, a third of 18-44 year-old social media users consciously follow brands and brand pages on social media networks (Mills & Plangger, p. 528). The young-adult market is a crucial market segment in order to retain customers for long-term sustainability, social media acts as the bridge for service brands to create a relationship with their targeted audience. To further their argument about the importance of an online presence for a brand, the authors provide a nine-step process of a strategic process for creating the relationship between brand and customer.

[edit] Strengths and Weaknesses

The first strength of this article is the constant reiteration of why the concept of communication between brand and customer is important. The authors go into detail about how the connection between brand and customer establishes a relationship where the customer is likely to feel association towards the brand and therefore be more trustworthy of that brand. Another point the authors make is how the constant activity of social media allows for their viewers to have a constant channel of communication between their audience. The article explains how self-promotion of a brand through social media also simultaneously engages a relationship with their customer, thus causing a constant flux of activity between brand and user. Finally, the article outlines a strategy through steps as to how a brand should think when wanting to interact with their audience. It can be summed down to targeting a set audience, building a platform for that audience and managing the interaction of the platform between the targeted audience.

The main weakness this article has is it doesn’t establish how a service brand should go about creating an online persona for their service. There is constant reiteration of the importance of why service brands should utilize social media to promote themselves, although the authors don’t dictate how that exactly should be done. They provide a process of steps, although these steps are more about reasoning than implementation. These steps explain as to what the service brand should be doing to target their audience but don’t establish how a service brand should go about creating a proper ‘persona’ of themselves on social media. This persona being what the company represents and what they offer for their customers.

[edit] Assessment

In conclusion, the article addresses the importance of why a service brand should go online, specifically through the integration of social media. The article describes different strategies of utilizing social media, and how different forms of social media can be utilized for different marketing purposes. After a brand establishes a channel of communication between their customer, it creates a level of trust that the customer has for that brand through the relationship that is built. The article analyzes the importance of an online presence and how social media should be used by brands to build their online presence.


--Bl14hl 15:28, 8 February 2019 (EST)

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