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).
