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Did you know that Facebook has 936 Million users worldwide?

Facebook is integrated in the lifestyles of most people. They check Facebook when they wake-up, when they are waiting for the bus, when they have lunch, while they are working and right before they go to sleep. Some people also post pictures of themselves or with friend, of their breakfast and they post ‘what is on their mind’ like when they are happy, when they are sad, when they are in love. They also give their opinion about political discussions or post what they are doing like ‘in the gym’. All this to stay in touch with their friends. But why spend all your time on Facebook, when you can actually spend time with your friends in real life? Are we losing our real friends, because we keep updating our Facebook friends?

Because we are spending so much time on Facebook, you would say we have less time for our real friends and real life meetings. But it does not look that way if we believe the research being done by Michigan State University. Both non-stop Facebook users as anti-Facebook users seem to have five close friends. According to the study from Michigan State University, students with an average of 175 Facebook friends use their online time to maintain the friendship with these close friends.

Media psychologist and social media consultant Mischa Coster said: “ Because of social media, people visit each other more often in real life. Online and offline flow into on another. You do not have to ask what they are up to, because you already read it on twitter.”

I agree with Coster, because of the internet it is easier to make plans with your friends. For example you can make an event on Facebook, or you can send a personal message if you want to meet up. But I do not like it when my friends are constantly on Facebook when I am with them. For example that time when I had diner in a restaurant with my friend. The food was finally ready and although I was really hungry, I could not touch my food. Not because it was hot or anything, but because my friend wanted to make a picture of the plate ‘for snapchat’, she said. So it is a good thing to stay online, but when you are meeting up with friend in real life, you can go offline.

Do you have more or less friends because of social media? And what do you prefer, online or offline friends? Has the day, Einstein feared for, already begun?

N. B. Ellison, C. Steinfield, C. Lample. 2007. The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites. August 2007

http://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook/

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Last week, I ran into an article about the 12 best Facebook Campaign from the past year. Thought I would share it with you, since it is a very good link to last weeks article “Is your social media strategy effective”. The article of the required readings discusses five success factors for a Facebook campaign; considering the photos, time and days of posting etc. Marketing on Facebook is growing rapidly. Facebook pulled in $12.5 billion in ad revenue in 2014, and mobile ad sales now makes up more than 70 percent of the business. Considering this, Facebook made awards for the best campaigns with categories looking at the creative content, social strategies, use of technology etc. Below I will discuss a few of my personal favourites.

In the article, The Ice Bucket Challenge, is crowned as the best use of Facebook Marketing the past year. In the campaign millions of people doused themselves in ice water to raise awareness for ALS. The result was 17 million videos from 160 countries, including Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah and Bill Gates. No money was spend on marketing, and the campaign raised $220 million. An example is shown below;

Another example, which is one of my favourites, is “Like a Girl” from the Always feminine-hygiene brand. Like you can see in the video below, people are asked to do certain things “Like a Girl”. The goals behind the video were to building awareness and drive an emotional connection to Always. The campaign was successful, the emotional connection rose from 38% to 41%. The video is the most watched video in Procter&Gamble history with 76 million views all over the world and the awareness rose extremely; from 9% to 58%.

Another winner, in the category “integrated” is “Love has no label” by AdCouncil. A large installation set up for public viewings showed people dancing, kissing, playing etc. After showing the interaction the people were revealed. The goal was to raise awareness. Love has no gender, love has no race, love has no disability, love has no age and love has no religion were statements presented by the makers of the campaign. The video has 40 million views in two days and is one of the most viral video’s in history.

The last example I will discuss is “New Castle band of Brands”. This video is very different from the other examples. In this campaign a beer company came up with a way to get into the Super Bowl without buying ad space. It crowd funded a commercial together with 30+ brands. The goal was to drive brand awareness, preference and purchase intent. The result was 2,3 billion total campaign impressions. The video is shown below;

https://youtu.be/MaqRwWwXau0

http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/here-are-12-best-facebook-marketing-campaigns-last-year-165332

Li, T. and Soonius, G. 2012. Is your social media strategy effective? An empirical study of the factors influencing the success of Facebook campaigns. Proceedings of the Workshop on Electronic Business, Orlando, FL, December.

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Once upon a time there were artists and bands who record a song and made a lot of effort to publish songs and get attention for it. The artists, bands and record label would make money through the sales of the CD’s. Nowadays everything is different, it is not that hard anymore to sell your song and get noticed by the mass. Social Media is the keyword for this huge change in the music industry. What are the advantages sand disadvantages of Social Media for the music Industry.

First of all Social Media has a wider range for the artists and bands than they had before. A new song or any updates can be seen by thousands and sometimes millions of people around the whole world. This means more publicity for the artists and bands. Artists can also answer to more messages of their fans, which is easier and quicker through social media. Thereby you could get more feedback and opinions of a lot of people for your new tracks or any new suggestions for a new track.

With the introduction of social media there were also the introductions of other website which used metrics to measure the influence of fans on artists and bands. With certain apps you could even measure how and where people blogged about you or your track. Social Media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram became more popular to artists to share their thoughts and new updates. Through metric Apps you could measure for example in which region people retweeted your tweet the most.

Another advantage was given to new artists. Instead of going to record labels or trying to get a contract, you could just record a song by yourself and upload it to the web. If the song is good, it will be shared and liked through Youtube and Facebook, which gives you more publicity than than back in the days.

Besides the advantages the improvements in the music industry had also disadvantages. People could share a lot more illegal digital downloads through social media platforms, which is disadvantageous compared to legal downloads for example through iTunes. Besides the illegal downloads, there was also the end of the old school music televisions such as MTV. The online media and sharing through social media platform took over the music television.

Looking at the reality we can find a living example of a star made by Youtube. Justin Bieber is the kid who used Youtube to eventually turn in to a worldwide star. Personally I don’t think he is a star, but a disappointment tot the music industry, but opinions can differ at this point. But what does the new era of music teach us. More and more it is not only about the song of the artist but about the artist himself. Back in the days the song needed to be the best to get a chance at the record label. Nowadays people are happy with a regular good song if it is produced by a great artists, so there is a shift going on from the songs to the artists himself. This is a big disadvantage for the music industry, where the focus need to be on the music itself instead of the artist.

One af the last improvements is the streaming of music through platforms as Soundcloud and Mixcloud. Most of the times original tracks are modified and mixed in mixtapes. The designed music tracks brings new experience to the listener. Looking at the latest improvement in the music industry, what do you think the future will look like? Will the music industry become less popular and how do you think the artists can battle the fight against the illegal downloads.

For those who would love to see the video which demolished the music industry:

(Alan, T., 2014, How social media and the internet have changed the music industry, http://www.business2community.com/entertainment/social-media-internet-changed-music-industry-01070744, November 19th of 2014)

(Huynh, T., Jeffrey, M., Mead, G., Syed, J., How social media helps the music industry, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/srg/netos/socialnets/posters/GregoryMead.pdf)

(Franklin, K., 2013, Social media is revolutionising the music industry, https://www.brandwatch.com/2013/08/social-media-the-music-industry/, April 29th of 2013)

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Can you imagine yourself travelling half way across town and then having to stand in line for a taco or a few dumplings at a mobile food stand? I sure can’t! But for many people in the big cities of the US this is daily practice. Here, the once despised of ‘roach coaches’, selling low quality food, were turned into artfully spray-painted food trucks providing affordable, creative, high quality meals. But what made this such a success that people actively ‘hunt down’ their favourite truck for lunch or a snack? The answer is social media.

It all started around 2008 when two befriended L.A. chefs executed their idea for the Kogi BBQ food truck. Initially they had a hard time selling their Korean-Mexican fusion cuisine, but soon found out that social media was the perfect tool for reaching the general public. Making use of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and popular blogging platforms they quickly gained a following of young and plugged-in urban people who spread the word. Within months Kogi attracted hundreds of followers, making the truck a successful community in itself.  Nowadays Kogi has a Twitter following of nearly 135.000 people and expanded their L.A. business to five trucks in total.

This success together with the economic recession, which made a food truck much more financially feasible than opening a restaurant, fueled a completely new ‘food movement’. Making skilled chefs and entrepreneurs start high quality food trucks, creating customer engagement and word of mouth for their mobile business through social media. Turning what seemed to be a fad into a multi-million dollar industry.

Even though it’s a booming industry, business can be tough. Next to a colourful truck and a catchy name, you really need to distinguish yourself in order to be successful. Because they operate a mobile business, every food truck owner is very active on social media. Using Twitter for quick updates on location, wait times, special offers or when they’ve sold out of certain items; Instagram for posting pictures of dishes and ‘life on the road’; popular blogging platforms to share their passion and Facebook to interact.

Also, many owners connect to local ‘foodie’ bloggers, the field’s opinion leaders, about their business, additions to the menu or special events. When these influential people spread a positive message on their already popular networks, this might make a specific food truck more popular. But the best online strategy that distinguishes success from the mass, according to successful food truck owners, is listening to your customers and engaging on what’s important to them. This online conversation can be about anything the audience cares about; new music or artists, favourite bands, trends, interesting links or simply the food.

Nevertheless popular vendors say that the emphasis on social media being their success is perhaps somewhat overrated. Of course it’s very important to their business, but it doesn’t do the cooking. Or as the creative director of Kogi BBQ states: “Food is my business. Culture is my department. And social media is just the bridge that allows for me to let those two worlds talk to one another.” Personally I couldn’t agree more. How about you?

References

Brindley, D. (2015, July) How One Korean Taco Truck Launched an $800 Million Industry. A Los Angeles chef took a crazy idea and sparked a food movement on wheels [online article]. Accessed at: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/food-trucks/brindley-text

Mariah, M. (2014, august 12^th). Food Trucks And Social Media – What Your Business Can Learn From The Masters [blog]. Accessed at: http://www.standardmarketing.com/2014/08/food-trucks-social-media-business-can-learn-masters/

Myrick, R. (2012). The Complete History of American Food Trucks [online article]. Accessed at: http://mobile-cuisine.com/business/history-of-american-food-trucks/

Sniderman, Z. (2011, June 16^th). How Social Media Is Fueling the Food Truck Phenomenon [online article]. Accessed at: http://mashable.com/2011/06/16/food-trucks-social-media/

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A lot of companies are using social media nowadays. They use it for many reasons. One example of this is to interact with their customers. Besides these active ones, there are also firms that do not want to use social media, because they are worried about mistakes or have a lacking social media strategy. It is important for this last group, to realize how important social media is.

Just 5% of the B2B marketers said social media is a well optimized part of their marketing, while nowadays a lot of customers start to look for information about a product online. Companies should be aware of this and take advantage of it, as Giamanco and Gregoire state, the biggest potential is during the prospecting and opportunity stage. Be part of it and make mistakes is better than choose not to be present on social media, but to be successful, companies need a social media strategy. This should include goals and plans that gain business value out of social media.

Li, Berens and de Maertelaere claimed users are motivated to participate in social media by two factors, namely engagement and informedness. People want to connect with the companies and be informed about the price and availability of a product. Both factors have a positive relationship with corporate reputation. According to Dijkmans et al. positive corporate reputation leads to customers that are willing to pay more for products, are more loyal to the firm and will protect the company in times of crisis.

Dijkmans et al. also stated another important reason for the use of social media. Word-of-mouth and online reviews are trusted far more than traditional marketing. Besides positive feedback, a company obviously also receives complaints and these will be visible for all users on social media, but still, Dijkmans et al. believe the net effect of social media is positive. Surprisingly, the biggest advantage can be obtained from non-customers, that show more clear their changes in preferences.

Enginkaya and Yilmaz (2014) stated some drivers for customers to interect with brands through social media, in addition to the drivers mentioned by Li, Berens and Maertelaere. Consumers care about the objectiveness of others’s opinion about products or services and believe more in this than the website of the seller. Another driver are the viral marketing campaigns. Consumers expect some entertainment and amusement from brands on social media.

Heineken can be seen as an entertaining brand on social media, and is a great example for this. They are posting some videos on YouTube and share these across different social media channels. For example, during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Heineken posted a compilation of the people at the Museumsquare in Amsterdam who were watching the soccergame of the dutch team against Mexico.

 

Sources:

Giamanco, B., and Gregoire, K. (2012) Tweet me, Friend me, Make me buy. Harvard Business Review 90(7/8) 88-93.

Li, T., Berens, G., and de Maertelaere, M. (2014) Corporate Twitter channels: The impact of engagement and informedness on corporate reputation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, forthcoming.

Li, T. and Soonius, G. (2012) Is your social media strategy effective? An empirical study of the factors influencing the success of Facebook campaigns. Proceedings of the Workshop on Electronic Business, Orlando, FL, December.

Dijkmans, C., Kerkhof, P. and Beukeboom, C.J. (2014) A stage to engage: Social media use and corporate reputation. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714001757

Enginkaya, E. and Yilmaz, H. (2014) What drives consumers to interact with brands through social media? A motivation scale development study.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187704281403941X

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The article from Hoffman, D.L. and Fodor, M. (2010) discusses if companies are able to measure their ‘’return of investment’’ of social media marketing. In the article they discussed some social media objectives and how you can use those objectives as a measurement of the effectiveness of a companies’ social media effort. I found these very interesting cause the authors categorized it into three objectives (brand awareness, brand engagement and word of mouth) and explained how a companies’ social efforts could be measured. So this article suggests that there are a lot of ways different kinds of companies can use different kinds of applications  to measure their social media efforts.

After reading this article you get a better perspective on why social media marketing is better nowadays. But is it always better? What are the disadvantages of social media marketing?

Based on these points, I searched for an article that gave some insight about the disadvantages of social media marketing. I found a newspaper article that discussed a couple of disadvantages of using social media as a marketing tool. They started with the point that the social media approach takes a lot of time and commitment. A small nail-salon might encounter difficulties if they want to engage with customers on their social media page, cause they would have to keep satisfying the need of customers online on their Facebook page while also managing the nail salon. A bigger company like Apple most definitely has a whole department that only deals with social media advertising so they might encounter less problems. Another disadvantage of the social media approach is that it might feel intrusive to some people. Sometimes when I shop online and put something in my online shopping cart I see an ad on Facebook that gives me the exact same product that I put on my shopping cart. Many people see this as a violation of their privacy and this might give the company a bad image. Ads on television or radio might be annoying, but they don’t feel intrusive as ads on Facebook or LinkedIn. Another drawback of this approach is the fact that it doesn’t acquire new customers as fast as people might think. Of course it attracts loyal customers very easily, but new customers might not even know about the ads of a brand on social media. For example, I like the brand Nike so I follow it on every social media platform but my good friend Jason is more of an Adidas guy so he doesn’t follow Nike whatsoever. Let’s say that ,even though he really likes Adidas, he wanted new Nike sneakers but they are not available in the Netherlands yet. If Nike would put an advertisement on their social media platforms about new sneakers in the Netherlands, Jason would not even be aware of this cause he doesn’t actively follow those social media pages. But the chances might be bigger if he sees a random advertisement on the television (where you can’t actively select which brand you’re able to follow) (Abrons, R., 2011).

An (in my opinion) important point is the lack of feedback control with the social media approach. A news article from Miranda Brookins (Demand Media, 2011) gave the argument that if a customer had a negative experience with a brand, he might compelled to share this experience on the social media page of that company which can activate negative word of mouth.

So this begs the question, should companies ALWAYS advertise digitally or should they find a balance in digital and traditional advertising? What works best for what company? Is traditional advertising dead? What do you guys think? Leave a comment 😉

References

• Hoffman, D. L., and Fodor, M. 2010. Can you measure the ROI of your social media marketing? MIT Sloan Management Review 52(1) 41-49
• Weinberg, B. D., and Pehlivan, E. 2011. Social spending: Managing the social media mix. Business Horizons 54(3) 275–282.
• Gupta, S. 2013. For mobile devices, think apps, not ads. Harvard Business Review 91(3) 71-75
• http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304585004579417533278962674
• http://www.bu.edu/goglobal/a/goglobal_courses/tm648/spain/fordfiesta_vmc.pdf

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Would you like to have crisps that taste like strawberry icecream or maybe like french fries?

Nowadays it is all possible. Companies are engaging customers in their business processes. The customers themselves can decide what the end product should be and help the company by generating the exact right product. This way you can kill two birds with one stone: making the customers happy and generating revenue for the company.

The main key of being succesful with customer engagement is social media. Companies need to be involved on social media platforms, before they can be succesful with engaging customers in the business process. At this moment only five percent of the business has a well optimized social media marketing strategy. So a lot of companies have a long way to go before social media will eventually create value.

When a company decides to become involved on social media, the managers also need to realize that there are some factors influencing the corporate reputation. You need to make the right moves to create a successful campaign, that will not harm the company. Policies and strict rules need to be set up in order to keep the social media behavior of your employees safe.

In the guest lecture of KLM we saw the tweet of Holland-Mexico. This is a typical example of how social media can backfire on a company and instead of engaging the customer they ended up losing the mexicans as customer.

Cases that did end up in great success were Lays and Nike. Lays decided to engage the customer by letting them choose their own favourite flavor for crisps. A famous dutch chef rated the flavors and eventually there was a winner. Nike set up a campaign that was called: design your own shoes. The customers were able to customize their shoes the way they wanted.

These are exemples of a right customer engagement. The most important thing for companies is to set up a good working social network platform and interfere with the customers. But they need be aware of the dangers social media can have and set up a specialized team to build the right social media network.

References:

• http://smallbusiness.chron.com/negative-effects-social-media-business-25682.html
• http://www.adformatie.nl/nieuws/klm-verwijdert-social-media-inhaker-na-kritiek-mexicanen
• http://www.marketingonline.nl/bericht/maak-de-smaak-campagne-van-lays-bedenk-nieuwe-chipsmaak
• Giamanco, B., and Gregoire, K. 2012. Tweet me, friend me, make me buy. Harvard Business Review 90(7/8) 88-93
• Li, T., Behrens, G., and de Maertelaere, M. 2014. Corporate Twitter channels: The impact of engagement and informedness on corporate reputation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, forthcoming
• Li, T. and Soonius, G. 2012. Is your social media strategy effective? An empirical study of the factors influencing the success of Facebook campaigns. Proceedings of the Workshop on Electronic Business, Orlando, FL, December. PDF 

 

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In ‘is your social media strategy successful’, researchers looked at how companies can improve their social media success. The researchers analyzed multiple Facebook campaigns and measured the amount of unique people it reached. Their main findings were that the most successful campaigns :

• Include a contest, request, ask questions or thank you note
• Require co creation
• Are posted on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday around 11.00, 15.00 and 20.00
• Are creative

In ‘tweet me, friend me, make me buy’, the authors state that companies should use social network to sell their products. Not only that, companies should start actively seeking potential customers via social media. If you read a tweet, for example, that complains about the lack of functions on a certain product, you can respond and say that the product you sell, does have more functions. What I really like about this article is the way the roles are turned. Usually a customer searches for a company to purchase a product, now companies actively search for customers. The authors suggest that companies have to look at four factors in a potential customer. A customer needs a budget, authority to purchase, need the product and that a company’ timeline for delivery evens up with the customers expectations.

The ‘corporate twitter channel’ article analyzed whether user engagement and informedness in a corporate twitter channel influence the firms’ reputation. The results showed that user engagement and informedness in a corporate twitter channel have a positive relationship with corporate reputation.

I have looked into co-creation (introduced by Li and Soonius 2012), and found two very interesting articles. One article emphasized the importance of co-creation. With co-creation, a company can distinguish themselves from competitors. Besides that, the articled stated that with co-creation, a win-win situation arises. A company wins because they innovate in a time and cost saving manner. Prosumers/consumers win because they contribute to something and are being listened to (Izvercian et al. 2013).

The negative sides of co creation is described in an article by Verhoef et al. 2013. They state that strong brands (i.e. Puma, Apple, Burger King etc.) have a lot to lose, and co-creation gives people a chance to insult the brand. This is what happened with a campaign by McDonalds. McDonalds wanted to promote positive word of mouth, so they introduced #McDstories. This recoiled as it became a stage for negativity. Someone tweeted ‘#McDStories Hospitalized for food poising after eating McDonald’s in 1989. Never ate there again and became a Vegetarian. Should have sued.’ Another negative effect is that there are too many initiatives. The quantity and quality of the ideas decrease as the frequency of  co-creation campaigns increases.

References:

• Giamanco, B., and Gregoire, K. 2012.Tweet me, friend me, make me buy. Harvard Business review 90(7/8) 88-93.
• Izvercian, M., Şeran, S. and Buciuman, C. (2013). Transforming Usual Consumers into Prosumers with the Help of Intellectual Capital Collaboration for Innovation.IJIET,
• Li, T. and Soonius, G. 2012. Is your social media strategy effective? An empirical study of the factors influencing the success of Facebook campaigns. Proceedings of the Workshop on Electronic Business, Orlando, FL, December.PDF
• Li, T., Berens, G., and de Maertelaere, M. 2014.Corporate Twitter channels: The impact of engagement and informedness on corporate reputation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, forthcoming.
• Verhoef, P. C., Beckers, S. F., & van Doorn, J. 2013. Understand the perils of co-creation.Harvard Business Review, 91(9).