With the number of Social Networking users increasing, more companies are looking to find a way to display all their online activity in one unified location for consumers to easily access. Social Media Hubs are a unique way for companies to do this, allowing consumers to keep up to date with the latest news and events going on within the company. Companies that heavily rely on advertising through the medium of Social Media could really benefit in building Social Hubs.

Advantages of Social Media Hubs

Increases User Engagement

The era of SoLoMo has arrived. Online users are now more social, local and more mobile. Social Media is on the rampage. More people are on their laptops, tablets and smartphones. Social Media Hubs deliver this exact experience, allowing consumers to socially interact with the company through the website Hub.

Builds Social Trust

A Social Media Hub builds a companies brand image, meaning that consumers gain a feeling of confidence when interacting or purchasing from the company. With products in particular, consumers opinions and reviews have a huge influence on others.

Growing and Sustaining a Social Reach

Having a Social Media presence is huge, especially among the younger generations. Being unknown to the online world makes it difficult to sell your product, even if it is a ‘million dollar idea’. Social Media Hubs give companies the ability to set up a fanbase. If the content is great, users will follow you. If the product is great, consumers will follow you. Building and sustaining connections and followers is a key step in selling a product.

Guerilla Marketing

Through the integration of guerrilla marketing executions with the Social Media Hub, such as through pre or post-campaign promotions via the social media platform, a firm is ultimately able to multiply the effects of the guerrilla program (Castronovo and Huang, 2012).

This blog had some really helpful information on the advantages of Social Media Hubs. Check it out: https://www.contentplum.com/blog/top-5-advantages-of-a-social-media-hub/

Effective use of Social Media Hubs

Manchester United Football Club (MUFC)

MUFC’s recently created Social Media Hub has assisted in them being the most followed club on Social Media in the Premier League. The Hub page collates information from their Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Instagram accounts, allowing those that visit the site to interact and share the content.

One of the main reasons for MUFC’s Social Media Hub being so successful is due to the fact that they are so active in posting on all the Social Media platforms where they have a presence. As a result, worldwide they have around two million users visit the page a month (2.4 million for January 2017).

In addition to this, the Hub page has been built using responsive design, meaning that it is also optimised for mobile. Seeing as smartphones are now the most used method in browsing the internet, this feature makes MUFC’s Social Media Hub very effective.

Team Titleist

The golf brand Titleist use the term ‘Team’ on their Social Media Hub to show that it incorporates all users that visit the page, in order to get as many people as possible to ‘Join The Conversation’.

The Hub page collates information from Titleist Blogs and their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. With Titleist being less known than MUFC, they don’t have two million visitors to the page a month, instead they receive around 150,000. Despite this being a lot less, it still shows the site is successful as they still receive a large amount of traffic.

The Team Titleist Social Media Hub is powered by the Telligent platform, a software company who pride themselves on creating platforms for companies who want to build a community. The Team Titleist community is a fantastic example of an all-encompassing customer content Hub.

When visiting the Social Hub page, the content users view is default sorted by what is currently trending in the world of golf. Through the page, users are able to interact with Titleist by commenting on their blog posts and tweeting them, with it also offering links to the companies Social Media pages. In addition to this, users can generate their own content through forums, sweepstakes and games.

For more examples of some effective Social Media Hubs, check out this blog: http://www.toprankblog.com/2013/06/brand-social-media-hubs/

Critique of Social Media Hubs

Translations

When creating a Social Media Hub page it would be wise to allow those who visit the site to be able to translate the Social Media activity in to other languages. The five most spoken languages in the world are English, Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish and Hindi. Even if companies gave visitors to the site the option to translate the content in to these five languages, they would immediately reap the benefits.

Social Media Content

Companies need to ensure that the content they are publishing on their Social Media will attract users to follow them. A Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) study found that a lot of organisations are using Twitter as an extension of information-heavy websites and are not using the platform to its full potential as a community-building and mobilisation tool.

Negative Feedback

As with any Social Media Marketing, companies will need to be prepared to receive bad feedback. Having a Social Media Hub page will make it easier for consumers of products to leave negative feedback on the companies Social Media pages. As the Hub collates all the information on to one page it allows those leaving the feedback to easily post on all the platforms.

References

Castronovo, C. and Huang, L., 2012. Social media in an alternative marketing communication model. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 6(1), p.117.

Lovejoy, K. and Saxton, G.D., 2012. Information, community, and action: How nonprofit organizations use social media. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 17(3), pp.337-353.