Methodology for selecting Micro-Influencers as part of a Vlogging strategy

What is a Vlogger or Micro Influencer?

Vlogging – otherwise known as ‘vlogging’. A vlog is primarily a blog in video form and can be posted on any video-sharing website, where others can view, subscribe and comment on them (Gao et al, 2010). Usually showing the persons day to day life and film in personal locations such as their home or bedroom (Snelson, 2013).

Micro-Influencers –  A micro-influencer is anyone who can affect desired change for you on social media. They should be connected to your target market on social channels and be reasonably active on the right forums to help you achieve your marketing and sales goals (Dinesh, 2017). Someone who has anywhere between 10,000 and 500,000 followers on social media channels (Wissman, 2018).

Helpful YouTube Video on what micro-influencers are:

Micro-Influencers: The Future of Influencing? | The Business of Influence | Forbes –

Quickfire Positives and Negatives of using Micro-Influencers:

Positives:

  • Low Cost
  • Cover a wide range of niches
  • Can appear more authentic and genuine
  • Micro-influencers are closer to a peer-level with their followers
  • higher engagement rates compared to macro-influencers

Negatives:

  • Choosing the appropriate micro-influencer can take a while due to vast amount of them
  • Lower reach than conventional mainstream influencers
  • Less customer potential
  • In-experience working with businesses

(Influencermarketinghub, 2018; Bunn, 2018)

For more in-depth positives and negatives:

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/micro-influencers-vs-macro-influencers/516896/

Tips for finding a Micro-Influencer for your brand:

Use hashtags to find influencers – Use social media hashtags to find influencers already interested in your products or services.

Look on Google – You can always resort to Google to search for bloggers in your city. Be very specific in your search. For example, if you own a local juice bar, try searching “Gaming Vlogger in Brighton.”

Research on Social Media – Search through your own followers to see if any of them have a big following. Choosing an influencer who already has an interest for your brand makes collaborating much easier (Ake, 2017).

Use Website Tools – The analytics Website Buzzsumo can help to search for influencers by keyword/s, and then order your results based on follower numbers or website domain authority. This tool also can see what types of links each influencer shares, so you can get a better idea of their relevancy to your own audience (Buzzsumo, 2018; Bullock, 2017). Another website is Iconosquare which allows businesses to create a list of social media influencers related to key words and phrases inputted. Which can be useful as a starting point to research and selection (Iconosquare, 2018).

More Information about finding the right Micro-Influencer for your brand:

https://brand24.com/blog/who-are-micro-influencers-how-to-find-them/

Methodology for selecting a Micro-Influencer for your brand:

Selecting micro-influencers for particular brands is determined by a number of factors:

Most importantly, check their popularity and industries they belong to (Forbes, 2016) –  When selecting a micro-influencer for your brand your first check should be whether they are part of your industry. Micro-influencers have a very niche audience and selecting the wrong audience to market your products too will result in poor engagement.

Relevance: Check the followers, friends, or fans on an influencer’s profile (Forbes, 2016) – If you think you have found an influencer who might fit your brand profile, you can quickly check their audience followers to make sure they match your target audience. Without a matching target audience, the influencer will have no use to your product  marketing.

Look if the Influencer post frequently (Chatterjee, 2011) – When selecting an influencer for your brand, engagement is a necessity. If a micro-influencer is posting regularly then their audience will be engaged, and they can be trusted as a reliable source of your products.

Does the influence have shared Values and interests with your brand – Try and select an influencer who has connecting interests to yours. This will mean they care more about the brand and the advertised posts will no feel forced/paid and are more likely to entice the audience in.

After using a micro-influencer, you have selected, report back and check results (Williams, 2017) – It is important to check results of a tweet or blog post you have paid for from a micro-influencer. The results will allow you to assess the success of your choice and from this data you have collected, you can decide what to do differently next time or what to change.

For more Guidance click here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/02/how-to-choose-the-right-micro-influencer-for-your-brand/#6a51188e7885

 

Models to help select the right influencer for your brand:

Wiedmann, Hennigs & Langner (2012) have created a model listing the types of criteria needed to select a micro-influencer right for you brand. This model was specifically used for the fashion industry, however the core concept of the model can be applied to any industry.

You can use these scales to pin point whether the micro-influencers you have picked out directly fit with this model and can be used to distinguish social influencers from non-influencers (Wiedmann, Hennigs & Langner, 2012).

This is followed on by giving another helpful model for identifying types of influencers, which again could be useful at highlighting what type of influencer you want to target and for what purpose you need them for.

(Wiedmann, Hennigs & Langner, 2012)

How to find local Instagram influencers – 

References:- 

Ake, C. (2017). How To Choose The Right Micro-Influencer For Your Brand. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/08/02/how-to-choose-the-right-micro-influencer-for-your-brand/#6c1c9fa27885 [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].

Bunn, C. (2018). Pinch Social | The Pros and Cons of Macro and Micro-Influencers. [online] Pinchsocial.ca. Available at: http://pinchsocial.ca/2018/02/06/the-pros-and-cons-of-macro-and-micro-influencers/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].

Chatterjee, P. (2011). Drivers of new product recommending and referral behaviour on social network sites. International Journal Of Advertising, 30(1), 77-101.

Dinesh, D. (2017). Why Micro-Influencers Are a Social Media Marketing Imperative for 2017. EContent, 40(3).

Forbes, K., 2016. Examining the Beauty Industry’s Use of Social Influencers. ELON JOURNAL, 78.

Iconosquare: Instagram & Facebook Analytics and Management Platform. (2018). Iconosquare: Instagram & Facebook Analytics and Management Platform. [online] Available at: https://pro.iconosquare.com/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].

Influencer Marketing Hub. (2018). Pros and Cons of Working With Micro-influencers. [online] Available at: https://influencermarketinghub.com/pros-and-cons-of-working-with-micro-influencers/ [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].

Klaus-Peter Wiedmann , Nadine Hennigs & Sascha Langner (2010) Spreading the Word of Fashion: Identifying Social Influencers in Fashion Marketing, Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 1:3, 142-153, DOI: 10.1080/20932685.2010.10593066

Snelson, C. (2013). Vlogging about school on YouTube: An exploratory study. New Media & Society, 17(3), pp.321-339.

Williams, D. (2017). 7 key steps to choosing the right social media influencer. [online] Business.twitter.com. Available at: https://business.twitter.com/en/blog/7-key-steps-choosing-social-media-influencer.html [Accessed 28 Mar. 2018].

Wissman, B. (2018). Micro-Influencers: The Marketing Force Of The Future?. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrettwissman/2018/03/02/micro-influencers-the-marketing-force-of-the-future/#496587366707 [Accessed 27 Mar. 2018].

How to Effectively utilise ‘Vlogger’ Endorsement in Social Media Marketing and the Risks it can Bring to your Business

Vlogger/Personality Endorsement

Vlogging – otherwise known as ‘vlogging’. A vlog is primarily a blog in video form and can be posted on any video-sharing website, where others can view, subscribe and comment on them (Gao et al, 2010). Usually showing the persons day to day life and film in personal locations such as their home or bedroom (Snelson, 2013).

Personality Endorsement –  Companies spend large sums to hire celebrities to endorse their products and brands (Lee & Thorson, 2008 cited in Mishra et al, 2015). Celebrity endorsement influences advertising effectiveness, brand recognition, brand recall, purchase intentions and even purchase behaviour (Spry et al, 2011).

How to effectively use Vlogger/Celebrity endorsement

It’s important when running a vlogger endorsement campaign to choose the right audience for your product. Kelman’s (1961) social influence theory provides a background for the endorsement procedure. The three processes of social influence:

  • Compliance
  • Identification
  • Internalisation

These result in an individual’s adopting the attitude advocated by the communicator, identification occurs when individuals conform to the attitude or behaviour advocated by another person because these individuals derive satisfaction from the belief that they are like that person (Choi & Rifon, 2012). Leading to consumers wanting to be like their idols and emulate their behaviour, which is buying the product they endorse. This a great starting framework, as it provides a basis and makes critical sense of the idea.

Leading to consumers wanting to be like their idols and emulate their behaviour, which is buying the product they endorse.

The Platform for Vloggers:

YouTube is the 2nd most popular website worldwide, behind Google according to Alexa.com (2018). YouTube is the main platform that vloggers use, as it offers the widest number of consumers and views so is the most effective choice.

Here is a helpful info-graphic giving some statistics on why YouTube is a great platform:

Video Link: Facebook Vlogging vs Youtube Vlogging

Tips for working with your influencer:

When choosing a vlogger to market your product, it is key that they have a special relationship with their audience which is not always the biggest vlogger. When you have managed to select an influencer, you feel fits your company profile and needs, some tips to most effectively utilize them are (Leaver, 2016):

  • Give them creative control – They know what’s best for their audience, so they could produce an advert that is more suitable and powerful to their audience and could be more effective.
  • Find influencers who genuinely love your products – If the vlogger gives a genuine view out to their audience, then the audience is more likely to believe that the vlogger actually cares for the product. Believing that their view is trustworthy.
  • Doesn’t have to be a huge following – As long as you believe that your chosen influencer is best suited to your product, then they don’t have to have the biggest following. It’s more important to have a relatable audience.

More information on how to work productively with your vloggers is avalible here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/deeppatel/2017/05/25/3-ways-to-pick-the-right-influencers-when-marketing-to-gen-z/#3e2626485131

Zoella showing off her Lush products in one of her Vlogs.

Tips for following UK advertisement standards:

When using vloggers or celebrities to endorse a product you have to remember that there are guidelines that have to be followed under UK law (Aldridge, 2015). The ASA provide an extensive list of scenarios to make sure you follow the guidelines correctly and to allow the vlogger to have a leg to stand on against aggressive companies (ASA, 2015).

Under the ASA guidelines you must remember to:

  • Make sure the look and feel of the promotion is distinct
  • Must use hashtags such as #ad, #promotion or #gamingcompany
  • The vloggers must verbally acknowledge the partnership with the company

You can look more extensively at guidelines and advice here:

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/five-tips-successful-vlogger-marketing/1349178

https://www.asa.org.uk/news/new-vlogging-advertising-guidance.html

Risks of using Vlogger/Celebrity endorsement

The Impact of Negative Publicity:

When endorsing a person to promote your product, you as a company are not in control of their actions or life choices. Sometimes celebrities can have negative press which is uncontrollable. These can affect the validity of the endorsement and in some cases create negative effects on your brand perception.

For example, in the cases of:

  • Being accused of breaking the law (Kobe Bryant)
  • Receiving bad press regarding moral issues (Tiger Woods)
  • losing credibility for not using the endorsed brand (David Beckham and Motorola)
  • Endorsing too many brands (Indian cricket team captain Dhoni)

(Choi & Rifon, 2012)

Negative publicity has reflected badly on brands at various levels:

  • Ogilvy and Mather report that only one in five commercials using celebrity endorsements lives up to a sponsor’s expectations (Miciak, 1994)
  • Can cause stock prices to dramatically fall if the event is catastrophic enough. After the Tiger Woods scandal Accenture stock prices fell 2.9% (Brower & Hoffman, 2010).
  • You have to be wary of Bloggers getting to carried away in their stardom lifestyle and getting a bad reputation, like the recent drama with vlogger Logan Paul after launching a video feature a person who had just committed suicide.

Video Link to Logan Paul Drama:

Celebrities overshadowing the Brand – You have to be wary of celebrities having a negative effect on your brand. In the past some consumers have only remembered an advert because of the celebrity and forgot to even register that they are trying to market a product. Having their image as the focal point of advertising devalues many products. For example, do you remember the brand, or do you remember David Beckham? (FrogDog, 2013).

Cost:

It may be an obvious risk, however to hire a celebrity to endorse your product costs a considerable sum of money, so it’s key to evaluate whether the risk will pay off. Especially with Vloggers being the least effective source of product discovery, with just 7% of all internet users finding out about new brands, products and services via vlogs (Davidson, 2015).

Rferences:-

Alexa.com. (2018). Alexa Top 500 Global Sites. [online] Available at: https://www.alexa.com/topsites [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

ASA (2015). New vlogging advertising guidance. [online] Asa.org.uk. Available at: https://www.asa.org.uk/news/new-vlogging-advertising-guidance.html [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

Brower, K. A., & Hoffmann, K. (2010). Accenture CEO Doesn’t Plan to Rehire Tiger Woods after Apology. Bloomberg Business. February 24, 2010.

Choi, S. and Rifon, N. (2012). It Is a Match: The Impact of Congruence between Celebrity Image and Consumer Ideal Self on Endorsement Effectiveness. Psychology & Marketing, 29(9), pp.639-650.

Davidson, L. (2015). Why vloggers are a waste of time and money for brands. [online] Telegraph.co.uk. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/11393587/Why-vloggers-are-a-waste-of-time-and-money-for-brands.html [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

FrogDog. (2013). The Advantages and Disadvantages of Celebrity Endorsements – FrogDog. [online] Available at: http://frog-dog.com/the-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-celebrity-endorsements/ [Accessed 20 Feb. 2018].

Gao, W., Tian, Y., Huang, T. and Yang, Q. (2010). Vlogging: a survey of videoblogging technology on the web. ACM Computing Surveys, 42(4), pp.1-57.

Kelman, H. (1961). Processes of Opinion Change. Public Opinion Quarterly, 25(1), p.57.

Leaver, C. (2016). Bloggers & Vloggers: The Role of the Influencer | After Digital. [online] After Digital. Available at: https://afterdigital.co.uk/blog/bloggers-vloggers-the-role-of-the-influencer/ [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

Lee, J. and Thorson, E. (2008). The Impact of Celebrity–Product Incongruence on the Effectiveness of Product Endorsement. Journal of Advertising Research, 48(3), pp.433-449.

Marr, W. (2014). Vlogging on: Over-20s may never have heard of them, but to tween-and teenagers these prolific video bloggers are worthy of mobbing. Telegraph Magazine.

Miciak, A. (1994). Choosing celebrity endorsers. Marketing management, 3, pp.51-59.

Mishra, A., Roy, S. and Bailey, A. (2015). Exploring Brand Personality-Celebrity Endorser Personality Congruence in Celebrity Endorsements in the Indian Context. Psychology & Marketing, 32(12), pp.1158-1174.

Patel, D. (2017). 3 Ways To Pick The Right Influencers When Marketing To Gen Z. [online] Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/deeppatel/2017/05/25/3-ways-to-pick-the-right-influencers-when-marketing-to-gen-z/#485a19015131 [Accessed 19 Feb. 2018].

Snelson, C. (2013). Vlogging about school on YouTube: An exploratory study. New Media & Society, 17(3), pp.321-339.

Spry, A., Pappu, R. and Bettina Cornwell, T. (2011). Celebrity endorsement, brand credibility and brand equity. European Journal of Marketing, 45(6), pp.882-909.

Thwaites, D., Lowe, B., Monkhouse, L. and Barnes, B. (2012). The Impact of Negative Publicity on Celebrity Ad Endorsements. Psychology & Marketing, 29(9), pp.663-673.

The Benefits and Risks of Social Media Marketing

The Benefits and Risks of Social Media Marketing

Definition of Social Media Marketing

The use of social media websites and social networks to market a company’s products and services. Social media marketing provides companies with a way to reach new customers and engage with existing customers (Radcliffe, 2017).

How Social Media Marketing can be used

Value comes not from the platform itself but from how a particular social media platform is used. More importantly, social media applications have the potential to provide additional value beyond familiar e-commerce activities such as distributing content or driving sales because they enable the formation of online customer communities (Culan et al. 2010).

A useful link here for a quick insight into what Social Media Marketing can be used for: https://www.bluefountainmedia.com/blog/advantages-of-social-media-marketing/

Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Increased Brand Recognition – New channels for your brand’s voice and content, which is important as it gives another channel for new/existing customers to find information on your brand and products. By focusing on the right channels and balancing the content, you can increase brand recognition and penetrate to your target market.

Social media channels are a key way to interact with customers and build those human relationships (Sklar, 2013). Which can be pivotal when the customer then comes to choose whether to invest in your product and can make the difference. As customers are more informed and have more choice than ever before, so if their expectations aren’t met, they’ll move on quickly (Sklar, 2013).

Specifically, social media can offer a powerful way to track your brand awareness online. This can be done in several ways. Conversation can be tracked to see what customers are saying about your firm and measure change in this over time (Frederiksen, 2015). This can be measured through ‘Social listening tools’ such as Echobot (Echobot, 2017). Also, you can track the expansion of your reach online by your number of followers, fans, and contacts.

‘Viral’ Campaigns – Can be described as an ‘internet meme’ and is often a video, image or a story that spreads rapidly across the internet. Sometimes memes are randomly spread or can be controlled (Brown, 2011). An example of this is a recent viral campaign run by Poundland on twitter, which became an instant internet hit by sharing controversial ‘elf on the shelf’ images (Shown below). Viral campaigns can create massive amounts of traffic to your social medias but however are extremely hard to pull of and tend to require the ‘bandwagon effect’. They tend to not last long and are faddish but do give a huge surge in traffic (Brown, 2011).

Promotion Tool – You can use your social media page to offer exclusive deals on products or services, which can attract customers to your page. Even use it to gain customers to other marketing channels in Chaffey’s model, such as offering a deal if you sign up to the email list (Litster, 2017).

For extra information and in-depth points, these links are handy:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/2/#4d883630743f

https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/13/social-media-customer-engagement

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/8-best-practices-to-promote-your-business-on-social-media/

Risks of Social Media Marketing

Impact of Word of Mouth – Especially through social media sites, news can spread like wildfire and especially in situations of negative connotation. When Netflix announced it was changing its pricing structure, its customers revolted, posting 82,000 negative comments across its blogs and on Facebook and Twitter. Within months the company lost 800,000 customers and two-thirds of its market value (Benioff, 2012).

Cyber Security Risks – Social Media accounts can be prone to security breaches, breaches of client confidentiality, leaks of intellectual property, and violations of the firm’s policies or codes of conduct (Culan et al. 2010). Breaches and leaks could have devastating impacts on a company’s brand image, leaving customers and clients unlikely to invest in a company’s products or services if the strike is potent enough. Also, these types of leaks could lead legal action, which is why social media accounts should require strong passwords and firewall protection.

Employee Credibility – In a firm’s social media team a large number of employees may be creating content or interacting with customers on behalf of the firm (Culan et al. 2010). These employees must be trust worthy as they are the face of the company online. Poor responses or answers can cause viral outrage, which potentially could cause the company to lose potential customers.

Example of how social media can be used effectively

Apple – Using the #Shotonmyiphone as a marketing campaign across Facebook, Instagram & Twitter. Which helped to increase engagement across its audience. To be featured in this campaign all you had to do was use the hashtag “#ShotOniPhone” and you had a chance to be featured on Apple’s social media accounts.

 

References

Benioff, M. (2012). Welcome to the social revolution. [online] BBC News. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18013662 [Accessed 22 Dec. 2017].

Brown, R. (2011). Public relations and the social web. London: Kogan Page.

Culan, M., McHugh, P. and Zubillaga, J. (2010). How Large U.S. Companies Can Use Twitter and Other Social Media to Gain Business Value. MIS Quarterly Executive, [online] 9(4). Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mary_Culnan/publication/279893388_How_Large_US_Companies_Can_Use_Twitter_and_Other_Social_Media_to_Gain_Business_Value/links/56548c4f08aefe619b19f3c6.pdf [Accessed 28 Dec. 2017].

Echobot. (2017). Online Media Monitoring with Echobot: Powerful and simple.. [online] Available at: https://www.echobot.io/online-media-monitoring/ [Accessed 22 Dec. 2017].

Frederiksen, L. (2015). The Top 10 Benefits of Using Social Media Marketing for Business | Hinge Marketing. [online] Hinge Marketing. Available at: https://hingemarketing.com/blog/story/the-top-10-benefits-of-using-social-media-marketing-for-business [Accessed 22 Dec. 2017].

Kaplan, A. and Haenlein, M. (2010). Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Business Horizons, 53(1).

Litster, C. (2017). 8 Best Practices to Promote Your Business on Social Media. [online] OPEN Forum. Available at: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/8-best-practices-to-promote-your-business-on-social-media/ [Accessed 28 Dec. 2017].

Radcliffe, B. (2017). Social Media Marketing (SMM). [online] Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media-marketing-smm.asp [Accessed 28 Dec. 2017].

Sklar, C. (2013). How to use social media to understand and engage your customers. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/mar/13/social-media-customer-engagement [Accessed 22 Dec. 2017].

How to tell if companies in the gaming industry are utilising their Social Media Marketing effectively?

Social Media Marketing

The use of social media websites and social networks to market a company’s products and services. Social media marketing provides companies with a way to reach new customers and engage with existing customers (Investopedia, 2017).

The current most popular social media sites are:

Facebook

Twitter

Instagram

Snapchat

YouTube

Reddit

What does a good social media audit do for you?

  • It serves as the ultimate health check for your social initiatives
  • It’s the single best point to start developing or improving your social media strategy as a whole and for each network
  • It unveils important trends and KPIs to add to your weekly or monthly reporting
  • It enables you to see your brand from the perspective of your customers
  • It builds awareness internally and brings the whole team up to speed regarding results, goals, and vision

Full Article Available at: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/8-tips-conducting-effective-social-media-audit

The 5W’s Model

One way of looking at how to audit social media is by looking at the Quesenberry (2015) model. This is a sophisticated model looking at a variety of factors affecting social media. This model can also be applied to all social media channels and not one exclusively. Using the “5 W’s” (Who, What, When, Where, Why) as the framework, makes it easy to apply your social media too and gives a wide picture into consumer thought. Also, the model helps digest what your competitors are doing in terms of social media strategy and allowing you to compare the differences.

Conducting a social media audit following this template helps compel companies to figure out each channel’s purpose and key performance indicators. For example, “why does the organisation have a Pinterest page and how is success being measured?” Simply because the competitor has a page is not a sound strategic reason (Quesenberry, 2016). This work was published in the book Social Media Strategy: Marketing and Advertising in the Consumer Revolution’ by Keith A. Quesenberry.

This overall, will allow companies to get an in-depth view of where they are going wrong with their social media marketing and see where their competitors are getting it right. Which means they can utilise their social media marketing more effectively.

Link to Full Article: https://hbr.org/2015/11/conducting-a-social-media-audit

Tips for a Social Media Marketing Audit

The helpful tips highlighted in this article are:

  • Determine who on the staff should be involved.
  • Take an inventory of all social media accounts.
  • Review each channel’s profile, “about us,” bios and visuals.
  • Examine community growth.
  • Review elements of each community like demographics, engagement and interests.
  • Evaluate social media posting activity.
  • Review competitors’ efforts and overall business objectives.
  • Perform an audit regularly, a minimum of twice a year.

These can be helpful to any gaming industry company, as they can create a checklist of which they can monitor social media progress. These tips are also handy as they can be done by anyone as they do not require specialist knowledge and doesn’t require any major monetary investment.

View full article here: https://www.wideawakenv.com/dr-tips-for-social-media-marketing-audit

A Quick and Easy 15 Minute Social Media Audit

Lee (2016) mentions that identifying the goals you want to achieve is important when doing a social media audit. This is important as a ‘plan of action’ for your audit and lays a pathway for future growth of your social media marketing. For example, this could be increased social engagement, which can be measured through sites such as Google Analytic or your ‘@’ twitter mentions. It should be a personal goal and tailored to your company. Another example could be follower growth, which can be easily tracked by writing down the percentage growth gained after each day.

Also, viewing and locating your competitor’s profiles is a crucial factor according to Lee. After selecting 8 similar companies to your brand, you can regularly check these to help improve your brand’s social media. Tracking branding; popularity; frequency; engagement and type of posts is key. You can make a new spreadsheet to track this or add to your existing audit spreadsheet. These will build a profile and the trends will show areas that you should improve on.

Finally, follow up on your goals and metrics to see how you’ve grown. Using sites such as Google Analytics to track the number of consumers that have visited your social media sites. Also, is there any correlation to how often you post and how your audience grows? This can be a key factor. Furthermore, engagement… dig into how many conversations you have on a weekly basis. Engagement can include direct contact, retweets, likes, +1s, and reshares.

Full Article: https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-audit

Conclusion

In an ever expanding internet reliable age in technology, social media is growing more important to businesses by the day. Which why it is so crucial to utilise this asset to make sure it is as effective as it possibly can be. The tools included in the post can dramatically help boost any gaming companies social media status and should help them to gain more reach. If they manage to make their social media marketing as effective as it can using these tools, hopefully sales of their products should rise with this.

Refences:

Harvard Business Review. (2017). Conducting a Social Media Audit. [online] Available at: https://hbr.org/2015/11/conducting-a-social-media-audit [Accessed 27 Nov. 2017].

Lee, K. (2017). The 15-Minute Social Media Audit Everyone Can Do. [online] Social. Available at: https://blog.bufferapp.com/social-media-audit [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].

Radcliffe, B. (2017). Social Media Marketing (SMM). [online] Investopedia. Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media-marketing-smm.asp [Accessed 1 Dec. 2017].

Opitz, L. and Opitz, L. (2017). 8 Tips for Conducting an Effective Social Media Audit. [online] Social Media Today. Available at: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/8-tips-conducting-effective-social-media-audit [Accessed 28 Nov. 2017].

Wideawakenv.com. (2017). Tips for an Effective Social Media Audit. [online] Available at: https://www.wideawakenv.com/dr-tips-for-social-media-marketing-audit [Accessed 27 Nov. 2017].

Quesenberry, K. (2016). Social media strategy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

Spotify Website Analytics

Background Infomation

Spotify is a new digital music service that enables users to remotely source millions of different songs on various record labels from a laptop, smartphone or other device.

Spotify is intended for all ages, all genders and all demographics who enjoy listening to music anytime anywhere. They have millions and millions of songs to choose from, which are all from a extensive range of genres.

Spotify pays royalties based on the number of artists’ streams as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service, unlike physical or download sales, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold. They distribute approximately 70% of total revenue to rights holders, who then pay artists based on their individual agreements.

OCHN Model

Structural Firmness – The main influence of security on the website is that they advertise their security and privacy settings/ informations. Which is good for any consumer wanting or needing to find out this infomation. It also makes their website seem safe and secure.

Also just by browsing the website you can tell it is well put together and is easily functioning with very quick responce time.

Another point is that to access importance user infomation you must log into your ‘Spotify Account’ which requires a securely locked password. Again which is important to consumers when investing £4.99/£9.99

Functional ConvienceThe website itself is very minimalistic and easy to navigate as it is trying to persude the user to invest in its monthly service. Having mainly pictures and small infomation blocks telling users innovative facts about spotify. Also the colour scheme and pictures are used to intice the target audience into it and make it very easy to flow/ navigate.

Representational Delight – Highlighting more on the previous point about how the easy navigation through pictures and words also comes into perspective when trying to stimulate consumer senses. These colours and pictures are there to entice the customer and give them a pleasing atmospheric exprience. With also having a consistant interface which is a part of the OCHN model and with the background and text size/font all being the same; it fits this view.

 

Future?

When looking at what spotify can do to improve their website and appeal more to their audience?

Maybe spofity could look to add more pictures aswell to entice the audience more? Maybe they could add an animated background which could cause more sensational value? Or pehaps have a change colour scheme as the picture further up the page shows the Pink and Yellow background more appeals to a female sterotype demographic. Which potentially could cut off some male audience which click on the page and dislike the feel/look of the website.

Apart from that, Spotify does it’s job of simply showing what its service is. Without using block text and big pictures, this is all spotify really needs to do, to draw in its audience.

Reference:

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1290000/1284624/p84-valacich.pdf?ip=194.81.206.165&id=1284624&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&key=BF07A2EE685417C5%2E7748C8603FAAB869%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35&CFID=998527552&CFTOKEN=61169874&__acm__=1508922002_318dfea5b6cea73d681030ce26a31f68

 

IKEA Case Study

Background on Ikea and Brandwatch

Ikea is a well known international business operating in a vast range of countries all over the world. Originating from Sweden in 1943, slowely moved to a worldwide audience. Ikea currently employes 180,000 people across the globe. (Wikipedia, 2017). Generally retailing in furniture and essential household items, ikea trying to aim at a low cost model but appeals to a wide audience.

Brandwatch is one of the world’s leading social media listening and analytics technology platforms. It gathers millions of online conversations every day and provides users with the tools to analyze them, empowering brands and agencies to make smarter, data-driven business decisions.

What can you learn about the application of  data to marketing? What could you apply elsewhere?

Ikea is trying to implement an online system called a ‘Listening Hub’ which voices customer opinions worldwide from all social media platforms and transforming this infomation into a database that can be accessed from all over the world. This will be hugely benefical to the heads of Ikea, which may be based in different international locations.

This software is being monitored by individual companies employed by Ikea. Brandwatch will gather all of this data together into the ‘Listening Hub’ and then will transfer in over to Ikea and the data will be avalible globaly.

This will be Ikea’s first step into becoming a a socially intelligent business. Ikea is showing the growing importance of social media in an ever expanding online age. Also trying to intergrate a full digital marketing package.

The listening hub ultimately helped prove to the organisation social  data can have myraid beneficial applications and encourage positive changes in the organisation. The infomation data sharing can be directed to the apropriate department for action and used as a ‘tangible culture of wisdom.

Overall, this article as a whole shows that data has a very strong impact on marketing and on business generally. With the huge impact that social media can have on a business, having an engine to see what consumers are posting and their thoughts is a important tool. Being able to highlight trends in data and where Ikea is going wrong, could be critical to changing their marketing.

My Opinion

In my opinion this is a great step forward for Ikea and will provide positive change for the future of their business. Not only providing a great tool for marketing but also giving great analysis to all departments. I think that in an ever growing social media age, more and more conglomerates should be trying to use social media to their advantage. It can give the greatest insight to consumer satifaction and can even be more honest than a survey where people tend to fabricate their views.

 

https://studentcentral.brighton.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-3029519-dt-content-rid-5621925_1/courses/IT382_2017/Ikea%20Case%20Study.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA

IKEA & The Socializers: Building Social into the Heart of a Global Business

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Welcome Post

Hello my friends!

This is the entry post to my blog for Digital Marketing.  My name is George Day and this academic year I will be posting a wide variety of posts, which will be personal and for coursework. I hope you find this blog enjoyable and if you have any feedback to give, feel free to comment on the blog or message me via avalible social media sites.

-George Day