Development in social media

Trigger :" Facebook Live Map"

Learning Objectives:

1. How to adapt marketing strategy from traditional media channels to new media channels?
2. How to engage people on different social media? + find examples
3. Crisis management on social media

1.How to adapt marketing strategy from traditional media channels to new media channels?

According to Patrick (2015), an increasing importance of digital marketing and its impact on the marketing world is undeniable.

Social media is now one of the essential requirements to be a successful business and many companies use social media as the centrepiece of their marketing strategy. However, there are no best media for every company as it depends on the business model, the product that company wants to market and the customers that company wants to target.

For some household products, foods or products which focus on senior people, traditional marketing such as broadcast (on TV, radio or cinema) or print media (newspaper, magazines, and posters) are still effective and has a significant impact on the mass market. There is no complete elimination of traditional marketing but, however, there is no company which runs only ads on some TV channels or radio stations to market their products. The marketing strategy depends ultimately on the products and the target groups of the corporation.

Experience shows that using both traditional and digital marketing is the most effective marketing strategy, and it is even more useful than using only one of them. Now, integrated marketing communication – which combines all media channels together with the purpose of reaching customers as much as possible, is known as a primary requirement for any successful marketing strategy. There are two strategies to integrate a traditional marketing and digital marketing:

• Combination of traditional and digital marketing

+ Include information about brand’s social media presence on print ads

+ Use a hashtag to attract people the brand’s social media presence, inspire them using the hashtag on their personal social media account, and the hashtag will become a trend/ a contagiousness in social media.

• Develop traditional techniques with new techniques of digital marketing (improve traditional marketing based on digital one)

Use the QR Code on print media such as posters, magazines or even in a company’s booth at the fair will connect the audiences to our presence on social media and have the ability to send them a significant content in a short time. An alternative option for QR-code is to put only half of the story or the message on the traditional media (poster, website) and people will use the QR-code to find out what is it all about? A requirement here that company must be a good storyteller of their message.

2.How to engage people on different social media? + find examples

According to Furgison (2014) and Beese (2016):

• A message must be consistent in different social media channels.

• Take a sense of humour and cultural diversity into consideration when a company want to reach customers globally.

• Respond customer’s feedbacks, comments or even complaints nicely and friendly as quickly as possible. People will feel more confident when the company is listening to them. On the other hand, a smart and polite response can create a new positive brand image to the public. 

• Share customer’s stories – the audiences will somehow feel themselves in these stories and feel connected with a brand they are using. The companies can also understand how they perceive their brand and how they use their products and services.

• Use social media to show your social mission (fight for or promote human rights, equality in gender, encourage education/ better life for children in developing countries, etc.) 

• Repetition

• Understand the trend in social media. Before engaging with them, a company has to be them and understand what the customers are usually doing in social media platforms. Keep up with some trends such as #TBT – Throwback Thursday, live streaming video, etc.

• Understand the development of social media techniques such as autoplay video/ads on Facebook, 360-degree photo. For instance, as Facebook did not allow videos play automatically with sounds, many companies came up with an idea to add subtitle in video ads so that people can follow it and it disturbs no one. 

3. Crisis management on social media

According to Affect,

Firstly, we have to understand what is communication crisis and where does it come from.  A social media crisis is a situation in which an online issue has a negative and long-term impact on organisation’s reputation. Social media crisis happens very quickly and changes the attitude and perception of customers towards the company’s brand in a short period.

There are four primary phases of crisis management in social media that the firm should take into consideration:

Readiness – The first step is preparation. The crisis communication management team should have some future scenario beforehand what are possible crises for the organisation and what the company can get prepared to face with these crises.

Response – A social media crisis requires strongly an immediate response regardless industry sector or size of a company. By responding immediately to public, the company will show the audiences that they have acknowledged the situation have had everything under control and they will take all responsibilities. A quick response will save organisation’s life as it will help the company retain customers or get the customers back, while the brand image is being stained.

Reassurance – After having a crisis under control, now it is time to reassure the customers by conducting a research, preparing and running an action plan and letting the public know what the company is doing to fix things.

Recovery – Besides of an action plan for managing the crisis, the company also has to take into consideration the improvement of company’s health and reputation, the re-establishing public trust and customer loyalty. There is no doubt that after one crisis, a company will lose a significant number of customers. Crisis management team is therefore required not only to a plan for the crisis but also a strategy to recover company’s reputation, retain existing customers and gain new customers as much as possible.

References:

Affect,. (2016) (1st ed.). Retrieved from http://prcouncil.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Affect_Social_Media_Crisis_Management_White_Paper.pdf

Beese, J. (2016). 6 Social Media Trends Taking Over 2016 | Sprout Social. Sprout Social. Retrieved 4 January 2016, from http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-trends/

Furgison, L. (2016). How Big Brands Keep Their Social Media Audiences Engaged : Social Media Examiner. Socialmediaexaminer.com. Retrieved 9 October 2016, from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-audiences-engaged/

Patrick, S. (2015). Get More Eyes On Your Content By Combining Traditional and Digital Marketing. Salesforce Blog. Retrieved 4 December 2015, from https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2015/11/combine-traditional-digital-marketing-content.html