Content Marketing: How are JISA providers doing it?

Laura Ruaux

Evidence strongly suggests that content marketing can be very valuable in terms of building consumer trust and reputations of expertise (Kristen, 2013). This is particularly important in financial services as consumers now demand to see evidence before trusting in financial service providers since the 2008 financial crisis sent trust levels plummeting (Johnson and Peterson, 2014).

Kristen (2013) outlines a number of factors contributing to successful creation of valuable content, and applying this to the online blogs of major players in the JISA industry provides some useful insight into competitor behaviour.

The blogs of the following JISA providers were examined: Scottish Friendly, Family Investments, Engage Mutual, Alliance Trust Savings, Sheffield Mutual and Shepherd’s Mutual.

Make Regular Contributions

While it is essential that all content is valuable to readers, the more regularly organisations are able to share good quality content the greater the visibility of their brand (Kristen, 2013).

The rate of content production among major JISA providers in the UK ranges from approximately once a week (Scottish Friendly, 2015a), to less frequently than once a month (Family Investments, 2015a). None of the providers seemed to operate on a regular schedule, providing content at regular but uneven intervals at best, suggesting that a planned schedule for more frequent and regular releases could benefit all providers (Kristen, 2013).

Make it Informative

Kristen (2013) also claims that informative and functional pieces of content are most valuable to readers and Ashley and Tuten (2014) state that the majority of social media content from organisations is designed to be just that.

However, users go to social media for both entertainment and information (Whiting and Williams, 2013), and in contrast to Kristen’s (2013) claim that the highest value stems from informative and functional content, Berger and Milkman (2012) argue that content which is entertaining will gain further traction and reach greater volumes of readers.

Of all six of the financial service providers examined only two had produced entertainment pieces in their last five content releases, and only one of these did so regularly. While the majority of providers produced functional and informative pieces, Engage Mutual (2015a) produced pieces that contained information but were largely entertaining, such as the article in Figure One below, titled ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ (Engage Mutual, 2015b).

Figure One

Figure One: Engage Mutual ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ (Engage Mutual, 2015b)

This is consistent with the work of Ashley and Tuten (2014) suggesting that most financial service providers may be prioritising producing valuable content over content which is more likely to be shared.

Be Specific: Know Your Audience

Kristen (2013) claims that valuable content needs to be directly relevant to the reader, and not generalised. This involves creating life stage and financial status specific content, something which it is clear that all of the JISA providers aim to do, however different products have different customer demographics and this suggests that these organisations should be splitting content by customer segment in order to provide easy to find and relevant content only.

There is little evidence of this occurring on any of the blog sites examined. Engage Mutual are the only site to segment their blog articles by topic, however this reduces ease of which articles can be viewed as multiple segments may apply to multiple demographics as these do not seem to be designed for particular customer segments, as shown in Figure Two below (Engage Mutual, 2015c).

Figure Two

Figure Two: Engage Mutual split content by topic (Engage Mutual, 2015c)

While the articles of all the providers are clearly targeting their customers, it is often unclear which customers they are specifically addressing and there is no apparent method of targeting articles to specific customer segments, something which could improve the value of total content which consumers read (Kristen, 2013).

Be Where Your Audience Are

Ashley and Tuten (2014) claim that the majority of successful social media marketers use multiple appeals through multiple channels to reach their audience. Kristen (2013) supports this action, suggesting that spreading a message through multiple channels increases an organisation’s visibility and opportunity to connect with the intended audience. This may involve, not only using different channels of social media, but enabling an organisation’s content to grace partner websites, online community sites and even non-corporate blogs that the target audience often visit (Kristen, 2013).

All six providers were examined to determine whether they shared their own content on social networking sites, Twitter and Facebook, or through third party retailers and bloggers. It appears that none of the providers share content through third party channels while every provider except for Family Investments uses some form of social media to share and promote their content. Thus reach for content produced by Family Investments will be severely limited in comparison (Kristen, 2013).

Implications for Competitors

Within the JISA providers examined, content marketing strategy appears reasonably consistent. All providers agree that content marketing in financial services is important and at least offer occasional content pieces. Providers such as Engage Mutual and Scottish Friendly seem most engaged in producing and sharing regular content and interestingly these two providers also have the largest followings on both Twitter and Facebook giving their content the greatest reach. It seems struggling content producers could learn a from their example and incorporate entertainment pieces to boost brand awareness online, however according to Kristen (2013) even these providers could improve content marketing effectiveness using greater variety of media and more specific information.

For more information on how to create high quality content read:

Kristen, H. (2013) Content Marketing Strategies to Educate and Entertain, Journal of Financial Planning, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp 18-20

or visit http://bit.ly/15r8DKG to read Ashley and Tuten’s (2014) article on branded social content.

References

Ashley, C. and Tuten, T. (2014) Creative Strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploration Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp 15-27

Berger, J. and Milkman, K. (2012) What Makes Online Content Viral?, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp 192-205

Engage Mutual (2015a) ‘Health and Wellbeing’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/hub/health-wellbeing/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Engage Mutual (2015b) ‘Top secrets to looking and feeling fabulous over 50’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/top-secrets-to-looking-and-feeling-fabulous-over-50/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Engage Mutual (2015c) ‘The Hub’ [Online] <https://www.engagemutual.com/the-hub/hub/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Family Investments (2015a) ‘From the Blog’ [Online] <www.familyinvestments.co.uk/family-nest/blogs/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Ho, J. and Dempsey, M. (2010) Viral marketing: Motivations to forward online content, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 63, No. 9-10, pp 1000-1006

Johnson, D. and Peterson, M. (2014) Consumer financial anxiety: US regional financial service firms’ trust building response to the financial crisis, International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 32, No. 6, pp 515-533

Kristen, H. (2013) Content Marketing Strategies to Educate and Entertain, Journal of Financial Planning, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp 18-20

Scottish Friendly (2015a) ‘Welcome to the community blog’ [Online] <www.scottishfriendly.co.uk/community/blog/> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013) Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 362-369

Measuring success of social media consumer engagement: A look at Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel using Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle

Laura Ruaux

With 15% of the UK’s 40 largest websites by traffic volume being attributed to social networking sites, companies are increasingly turning to social media for customer engagement (Alexa.com, 2015; Peters et al, 2013). This seems like a good idea as companies can get their message out to a large audience at a low cost (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011; Vernuccio, 2014), but is this really an effective way to build customer relations?

This article examines Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel’s effectiveness at generating customer engagement using Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle.

Customer Engagement Cycle

Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement cycle is built upon seven stages which aim to shape customer engagement. These are connection, interaction, satisfaction, retention, commitment, advocacy and engagement. Customer engagement is the end goal and is defined by Sashi (2012) as the state where customers feel high levels of emotional attachment and rational reasons for loyalty, resulting in behaviour exhibiting brand advocacy and unconditional loyalty.

Figure One

Figure One: Customer Engagement Cycle (Sashi, 2012)

Connection

Social media platforms facilitate the creation of one-click connections which can, in time, become relationships (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden, 2011). These connections allow organisations to direct messages to an audience of consumers who have registered interest through electing to ‘Like’ or ‘Follow’ (Aichner and Jacob, 2015). Engage Mutual have direct connections to 1,591 followers (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015a), however, many of these are organisations themselves and therefore unlikely to be the target audience of Engage Mutual’s marketing activities. Despite this, connections with other organisations can act as endorsements and improve trust and credibility (Burton and Soboleva, 2011), such as Engage Mutual’s follower APS Group who have 1,143 of their own followers (APS Group Twitter, 2015).

Interaction

Once connections are forged, interaction is required to communicate with the audience. Interaction via social media offers significant advantages over more traditional methods of customer communication, which are limited by multiple factors such as customer availability and location (Sashi, 2012). The reach of messages sent out via Twitter are not limited to the number of ‘followers’ that an account has, as ‘retweets’ and ‘favourites’ can extend to new follower circles and beyond. With 288 million active users per month, Twitter is a platform with the potential to allow for interaction on mass (Twitter, 2015a).

Interaction on Twitter can allow for organisations and their audience to be constantly connected and this encourages two-way communication between parties. This is particularly important for Engage Mutual who operate in the financial services industry, as two-way communication is essential for encouraging repeat custom in this industry (Dunn and Hoegg, 2014).

Engage Mutual interact with Twitter users in a number of ways including sharing timely informative articles, such as in Figure Two, interacting with associated organisations, such as in Figure Three, and interacting with consumers, such as in Figure Four.

Figure Two
Figure Two: Engage Mutual share timely news articles (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015a)

Figure Three
Figure Three: Engage Mutual interact with associated organisations (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015b)

Figure Four
Figure Four: Engage Mutual interact with consumers (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015c)

Satisfaction

Despite this evidence of interaction, the successful progression to customer engagement requires that consumers are satisfied with the interaction (Sashi, 2012). Without satisfaction a connection may end and therefore evidence that customers connected to Engage Mutual on twitter are feeling satisfied can be found in connections that still exist after an interaction is completed.

In the instance of the interaction shown in Figure Four above, the customer that interacted with Engage Mutual did not maintain a relationship with the company by electing to ‘follow’ their profile. In contrast, the customer interacting with Engage Mutual in Figure Five below has elected to ‘follow’ Engage Mutual and therefore the connection is maintained as future messages published by Engage Mutual’s Twitter account will reach this customer.

Figure Five

Figure Five: Engage Mutual satisfy a customer through interaction (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015d)

While Engage Mutual are successfully satisfying some users, it is clear that they are not providing satisfaction for all users who interact with the channel. Li, Berens and de Maertelaere (2013) claim that channels with clear and specific purposes have greater ability to satisfy users. The Engage Mutual Twitter channel is generic (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015e) and therefore the goal of interactions may be unclear. In the example of the unsatisfactory interaction in Figure Four, the organisation have responded to the user with gratitude, however had this interaction taken place on a channel specific for customer support Engage Mutual may have responded with reassurance of after product support, which may have resulted in satisfaction and a continued connection with that user.

Retention

Of those users that Engage Mutual can satisfy through interactions they are able to retain connections, as in the example in Figure Five. Retention can be developed over time as satisfaction may be cumulative (Sashi, 2012). Retention can also be achieved through creating strong positive emotions towards a brand, however with low levels of brand saliency in financial services it can be particularly difficult for organisations such as Engage Mutual to achieve this (Dunn and Hoegg, 2014; Baumann, Elliot and Hamin, 2011).

Commitment

The next stage of the cycle, commitment, can be achieved through affective customer loyalty, where consumers form an emotional attachment with the brand (Sashi, 2012). Alternatively, this can be achieved through cognitive loyalty, where rational consumers remain loyal due to lacking a better option (Fraering and Minor, 2013). While effective in the short run, commitment in the long run will require Engage Mutual to incite strong positive emotions in users, by going above and beyond customer expectations (Fraering and Minor, 2013).

Advocacy
While it is difficult to measure the commitment of Twitter users to Engage Mutual, it is possible to see demonstrations of brand advocacy for Engage Mutual’s social project, as in Figure Six below.

Figure Six

Figure Six: Engage Mutual social project advocates (Engage Mutual Twitter, 2015f)

Brand advocacy on Twitter is particularly visible as it becomes very straight forward for advocates to share their views and feel connected with a brand (Sashi, 2012). A large number of consumer interactions on Engage Mutual’s Twitter page are sending messages like these, allowing the Engage Mutual brand to be spread into new circles of users, thus improving brand awareness (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014). The popularity of sharing the social project content likely stems from it being likeable, easy to share, relevant to many people and accessible through multiple channels, both offline and online (Mills, 2012; Engage Mutual, 2015).

Engagement

The last stage of achieving customer engagement is turning advocates into fans who will remain unconditionally loyal to a brand (Sashi, 2012). To achieve this, Engage Mutual needs users to feel extremely high levels of satisfaction in interactions, a rational reason to commit to a brand and affective loyalty (Fraering and Minor, 2013; Sashi, 2012). Engaged customers add value to an organisation’s brand and act as advocates when interacting with other users thus creating a community within a brand (Sashi, 2012). There is no evidence of Engage Mutual customers engaging in this way and the topic ‘#engagemutual’ does not contain user to user discussion (Twitter, 2015b).

From this evaluation of Engage Mutual’s Twitter channel it is clear that Sashi’s (2012) customer engagement model can be useful in evaluating the success of a channel. It becomes apparent that a channel can have users at many stages at any one time and that one type of interaction and response does not suit all users. Engage Mutual’s Twitter account does add value to the brand, increasing reach of the brand name and allowing advocates of the brand to easily share their views with others. While there are clearly some issues to address in order to make progression through the cycle more successful, it appears that medium size financial services companies can benefit from using a Twitter channel to engage customers afterall.

For more information on the customer engagement cycle visit http://bit.ly/1ziG4NO to read Sashi’s (2012) full article.

References

Aichner, T. and Jacob, F. (2015) Measuring the degree of corporate social media use, International Journal of Market Research, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp 257-275

Alexa.com (2015) ‘Top Sites in United Kingdom’ [Online] <www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/GB> [accessed 27th April 2015]

APS Group Twitter (2015) ‘APS Group’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/aps_group> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Baumann, C., Elliot, G. and Hamin, H. (2011) Modelling customer loyalty in financial services: A hybrid of formative and reflective constructs, International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp 247-267

Burton, S. and Soboleva, A. (2011) Interactive or reactive? Marketing with Twitter, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 8, No. 7, pp 491-499

Dunn, L. and Hoegg, J. (2014) The Impact of Fear on Emotional Brand Attachment, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 41, No. 1, pp 152-168

Engage Mutual (2015) ‘OneFamily Foundation’ [Online] <https://foundation.onefamily.com> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015a) ‘The particular torture of primary school offer day’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/588622764833054720> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015b) ‘It will be sunny this weekend, we’re being optimistic!’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/583560345442213888> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015c) ‘Lovely to see our CTF leaflet on Twitter’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/580350020458844160> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015d) ‘It does – great shot’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/578871484426412033> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015e) ‘Engage Mutual’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Engage Mutual Twitter (2015f) ‘Thanks for spreading the word about this great opportunity’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/EngageMutual/status/588664092279341056> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Fraering, M. and Minor, M. (2013) Boyond loyalty: customer satisfaction, loyalty, and fortitude, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp 334-344

Hanna, R., Rohm, A. and Crittenden, V. (2011) We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem, Business Horizons, Vol. 54, No. 3, pp 265-273

Li, T., Berens, G. and de Maertelaere, M. (2013) Corporate Twitter Channels: The Impact of Engagement and Informedness on Corporate Reputation, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp 97-126

Mills, A. (2012) Virality in social media: the SPIN Framework, Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp 162-169

Peters, K., Chen, Y., Kaplan, A., Ognibeni, B. and Pauwels, K. (2013) Social Media Metrics – A Framework and Guidelines for Managing Social Media, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp 281-298

Sashi, C. (2012) Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media, Journal of Management History, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp 253-272

Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S. (2014) Brand strategies in social media, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp 328-344

Twitter (2015a) ‘Our mission’ [Online] <https://about.twitter.com/company> [accessed 27th April 2015]

Twitter (2015b) ‘#engagemutual’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/search?q=%23engagemutual&src=typd> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Vernuccio, M. (2004) Communicating Corporate Brands Through Social Media: An Exploratory Study, International Journal of Business Communication, Vol. 51, No. 3, pp 211-233

What factors determine the reach of your content?

Laura Ruaux

While a full blown viral campaign may seem unachievable for many, studying what drives the most successful viral campaigns could provide valuable insight to content marketers in terms of creating communicable marketing content.

So what are the key factors for successful traction of marketing campaigns across the web?

Triggering an Emotion

Berger and Milkman (2012) claim that content that triggers an emotional reaction is more likely to gain peer-to-peer traction than functional content. Furthermore, triggering negative emotions, specifically anger or anxiety, increases the likelihood of sharing, although promotional marketing will not often aim to associate these feelings with their own brand (Berger and Milkman, 2012).

One campaign which made good use of this type of emotions was Always’ Like A Girl campaign, which to date has reached over 50 million views on their YouTube channel.

Always: Like A Girl Video Campaign (Always YouTube, 2014)

More commonly, content containing humour is shared between individuals and groups as even positive emotions such as this are contagious (Du, Fan and Feng, 2014). Despite dealing with a very serious topic, Metro communicated a public health message with humour and to date have over 100 million views on YouTube with the Dumb Ways to Die video.

Metro: Dumb Ways to Die Campaign (Metro YouTube, 2012)

Being Specific to the Viewer

Botha and Reyneke (2013) show that when content is specific to the viewer, and they perceive it to be relevant to themselves and their circle of connections, then they will be more likely to share content. This is satisfying the spreadabililty factor of the SPIN framework which Mills (2012) has created to model user content sharing.

For example, BuzzFeed article ’21 Things All Sisters with a Three-Year Age Gap Know’ already reached ‘trending’ status less than 24 hours after being published (Buzzfeed, 2015).

Figure One

Figure One: BuzzFeed’s specifically targeted content (BuzzFeed, 2015)

Influencer Involvement

Celebrities and high profile influencers can also increase the likelihood of something spreading, for example the No-Makeup Selfie campaign which aimed to raise money for Cancer Research was supported by large numbers of female celebrities who joined the campaign by sharing their own user created content of self-portraits via Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, reportedly raising £8 million for the charity (Guardian, 2014). Incentivising an appropriate influencer to share content can also significantly increase the reach of your content (Kumar and Mirchandani, 2012).

Network Characteristics

Social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook are designed to facilitate sharing by making the process as simple as possible. Mills (2012) claims that content is more likely to be shared if the channel that it is on makes sharing as simple as possible by placing the share tool close to the content and quick to complete, such as the single-click ‘retweet’ function on Twitter.

Furthermore, having content spanning multiple channels will increase the likelihood of it being shared as well as the size of the networks that it is on, which determines the number of people that the content can be shared to at once (Mills, 2012).

A strong example of a successful multimedia marketing campaign is John Lewis’ ‘Monty the Penguin’ campaign which spanned Youtube, television, paid search, email and Twitter (Ashford, 2015) and lead to a 19% increase in online purchases over the Christmas period on the previous year for John Lewis (Agg, 2015).

Figure Two

Figure Two: Monty The Penguin Twitter (Monty the Penguin Twitter, 2015)

Overall, these successful campaigns which gained high levels of traction online strongly support the work of Berger and Milkman (2012), Botha and Reyneke (2013), Du, Fan and Feng (2014) and Mills (2012). These common themes can be abstracted from viral campaigns and applied to the creation and sharing of content created to boost brand awareness and customer engagement so it’s important to incorporate network and content design specifics such as these into your content marketing strategy and planning processes for success.

For more information on what makes content go viral visit http://bit.ly/1J9NClW to read Mills’ (2012) SPIN framework and http://bit.ly/1zqiYov to read Botha and Reyneke’s (2013) article on motivation for sharing on social media.

References

Agg, S. (2015) Logistics industry this Christmas, Motor Transport, 26 January 2015, No. 1, pg 14

Ashford, Z. (2015) ‘Mobile Marketing’ [Lecture Notes] Brighton: University of Brighton Business School, Unpublished

Always YouTube (2014) ‘Like A Girl’ [Online] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJQBjWYDTs> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Berger, J. and Milkman, K. (2012) What Makes Online Content Viral?, Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. 49, No. 2, pp 192-205

Botha, E. and Reyneke, M. (2013) To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing, Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp 160-171

BuzzFeed (2015) ’21 Things All Sisters With A Three-Year Age Gap Know’ [Online] <http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/things-sisters-with-a-3-year-age-gap-just-know#.my5y5nQv3> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Du, J., Fan, X. and Feng, T. (2014) Group Emotional Contagion and Complaint Intentions in Group Service Failure,  Journal of Service Research, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp 326-338

Guardian (2014) No-makeup selfies raise £8m for Cancer Research UK in six days, Guardian 25th March 2014 [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/25/no-makeup-selfies-cancer-charity> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Ho, J. and Dempsey, M. (2010) Viral marketing: motivations to forward online content, Hournal of Business Research, Vol. 63, No. 9-10, pp 1000-1006

Kumar, V. and Mirchandani, R. (2012) Increasing the ROI of Social Media Marketing, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp 55-61

Metro YouTube (2012) ‘Dumb Ways to Die’ [Online] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Mills, A. (2012) Virality in social media: the SPIN framework; Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp 162-169

Monty The Penguin Twitter (2015) ‘Monty the Penguin’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/MontyThePenguin> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Minimising the risks of social media: Considerations for corporate social media policies

Laura Ruaux

With many attractive attributes, such as vast reach and low costs, it’s not surprising that experts estimate that over 80% of marketers use social media (Whiting and Williams, 2013). However, not all corporate social media is successful and some activities can even be damaging as companies have very little control over messages once they are published (Aula, 2010; Xia, 2013).

Despite this, risks to reputation cannot be eliminated by abstaining from social media, as it is also a powerful tool for consumers and organisations alike to raise their concerns and campaign against practices they disagree with (Aula, 2010; Mills, 2012), such as the video below which Greenpeace created to encourage Lego not to renew their contract with Shell.

Greenpeace Youtube (2014)

Careful social media management is essential, not only for promoting brand reputation, but also for protecting it. So how can organisations ensure that they don’t fall foul of social media?

Chelliah and Field (2014) claim that these risks can be minimised simply by designing and implementing a corporate social media policy which covers a number of topics.

Who Publishes Content

While conversations about an organisation cannot be controlled, an organisation is still in control of the messages it communicates. However, once a message is out there it can be difficult to retract so it’s important that an organisation is sending out the right messages.

This leads to the key point made by Chelliah and Field (2014) that controlling who publishes content is an essential item to outline in a social media policy. Different types of social media channels may require different skills, have different purposes and therefore different messages (Chelliah and Field, 2014). Organisation’s need to ensure that the team controlling these channels are correctly trained and accountable (Chelliah and Field, 2014).

Failing to control access to publishing can result in some high profile mistakes, such as Chrysler’s tweet containing an expletive (Rigby, 2015).

Privacy and Confidentiality Policy

The Data Protection Act (1989) states that data relating to an individual, including both customers and staff, is kept safe and secure, so it’s imperative that information of this kind does not reach social media. Furthermore, there will be internal information in any organisation that may not be ready for the general public and it is important that publishers know what kind of information they can share and what should be avoided.

Style Guidelines

Trust is an important aspect of successful electronic commerce (Eastlick and Lotz, 2011), and can be developed through consistent branding of all touch points of an online presence (Chen and Dibb, 2010). Style encompasses multiple aspects including tone of voice, issues discussed and visible branding and guidelines for each of these should be outlined (Chelliah and Field, 2014).

Brand Promotion and Protection

To minimise risk of reputation damage it is important for an organisation to keep their reputation realistic (Aula, 2010). This requires managing expectations of customers, something that can be managed through policy guidelines regarding responding to and interacting with social media users (Aula, 2010; Chelliah and Field, 2014).

For example, research suggests that consumers respond more positively to organisations that meet criticism apologetically than defensively (Xia, 2013). This is the approach which Malaysia Airlines took to handling complaints that their tweet

“Want to go somewhere but don’t know where?” (Malaysia Airlines, 2014; cited in Smith, 2014)

was both inappropriate and insensitive in the light of the MH370 flight disappearance. This also raises the final issue to consider for social media policies.

Be Proactive and Aware

Not only is it important than organisations are seen to be proactive and responsive to topical issues to reduce risk of reputation damage (Aula, 2010) but monitoring internal and external environments and adjusting social media plans in real time can help to prevent innocuous messages being misinterpreted as inappropriate or insensitive (Zhang and Vos, 2014). This is definitely something that Malaysia Airlines may be able to implement in order to prevent such offense and reputation damage in the future.

For more guidance on creating a social media policy for your organisation read Zhang and Vos’ (2014) article on challenges of social media monitoring at http://bit.ly/1zfZTVV.

References

Act of Parliament (1989) Great Britain Parliament. The Data Protection Act 1998. London: HMSO

Aula, P. (2010) Social media, reputation risk and ambient publicity management, Strategy and Leadership, Vol. 38, No. 6, pp 43-49

Chelliah, J. and Field, J. (2014) Managing the risks of social media: Ways to ensure that online behaviour is always appropriate, Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 22, No. 5, pp 39-41

Chen, J. and Dibb, S. (2010) Consumer trust in the online retail context: Exploring the antecedents and consequences, Psychology and Marketing, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp 323-346

Greenpeace Youtube (2014) ‘LEGO: Everything is NOT awesome’ [Online] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhbliUq0_r4> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Mills, A. (2012) Virality in social media: the SPIN framework, Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp 162-169

Rigby, R. (2015) ‘What exactly constitutes a sackable offence?’ The Telegraph, 26th March 2015 [Online] <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11495113/What-exactly-constitutes-a-sackable-offence.html> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Smith, O. (2014) Malaysia Airlines asks fliers: ‘Want to go somewhere but don’t know where?’

Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013) Why people user social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 362-369

Xia, L. (2013) Effects of companies’ responses to consumer criticism in social media, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp 73-99

Zhang, B. and Vos. M. (2014) Social media monitoring: aims, methods, and challenges for international companies, Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp 371-383

What are organisations using social media for?

Laura Ruaux

Research shows that 88% of marketers are using social media (Whiting and Williams, 2013), but without strategic marketing planning and specific goals in the long run, over-extension and lack of vision can lead to the failure of any marketing activity (Abdallah and Langley, 2014). So what is the purpose of having a corporate social media account?

Changing Consumer Preferences

Technological advances over time have led to a revolution in typical consumer profile and many customers are now constantly connected through mobile devices (Spaid and Flint, 2014). Social media sites Facebook and Twitter both sit in the estimated top 10 largest websites worldwide by traffic volume (Alexa.com) and users actively seek both entertainment and information via these channels as it is so easily accessible and convenient (Whiting and Williams, 2013).

An example of a company well aware of where their audience are is Nike, who use their Facebook and Twitter accounts to join in and lead real time topical discussions during sporting events.

To boost Brand Awareness

In line with the strategic goals of many companies, growth through acquisition of new clients requires getting the brand and marketing messages out into the world and in front of the right people (Reibe et al, 2014). Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have the potential to reach extremely high volumes of consumers at relatively low costs (Tsimonis and Dimitriadis, 2014), however it is important that a social media message is reaching the right consumers in order for the messages a channel sends to reach the target demographic (Budeva and Mullen, 2014). Despite this it is estimated that only 36% of Facebook campaigns are targeted to specific individuals (Schulze, Scholer and Skiera, 2015).

Nike also demonstrate their ability to reach large audiences with their Twitter channel by broadcasting their marketing messages to 4.85 million ‘followers’ and reaching high levels of audience interaction with 25,000 ‘retweets’ on their latest marketing video in approximately three weeks alone (as shown in Figure One below).

Figure One
Figure One: Nike Twitter channel showing 4.85 million followers and 25,000 retweets on latest video post (Nike Twitter, 2015a)

To Boost Customer Engagement

Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2014) claim that many marketers are outlining boosting customer engagement as a key objective in marketing strategies and are turning to social media to achieve this. Social media can allow for two-way communication between customers and organisations in real time (Sashi, 2012), which allows consumers to feel more valuable and is essential for customer loyalty, particularly in markets with homogenous and undifferentiated products, such as financial services (Seigyoung et al, 2007). Furthermore, customer engagement goes beyond invoking customer loyalty and may even encourage customers to act as advocates for a brand (Sashi, 2012)

Tens of Twitter users share messages with their circles of connections on a daily basis using the Nike ‘#justdoit’ slogan and Nike replies to each one with an individual message on a daily basis, as shown in Figure Two below.

Figure Two

Figure Two: Nike responds to users on a daily basis (Nike Twitter, 2015b)

This high level of interaction on Twitter, instigated by users demonstrates good consumer engagement as many users are repeatedly interacting with the brand.

To Promote Products and Boost Sales

Lastly, Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2014) claim that many social media marketing accounts aim to promote products and services to new and existing customers, in line with core marketing goals.

Nike communicate promotional information for their products through their social media channels, such as the Facebook example in Figure Three below and direct users to their Instagram shopping channel, shown in Figure Four.

Figure Three

Figure Three: Nike Facebook (Nike Facebook, 2015)

 

Figure Four

Figure Four: Nike Instagram Shop (Nike Instagram, 2015)

This brief look at Nike’s social media activities supports the work of Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2012) in suggesting that companies are using social media to boost brand awareness, engage customers and promote products while meeting convenience demands of consumers and reducing marketing costs. The success of these actions for Nike, Inc. can be seen in their 2014 annual report which shows that revenues have increased 51.71% since 2010 and return on investment has reached a five year peak in efficiency (Nike, 2015).

So it would seem that social media really is an effective marketing tool for reaching these revolutionised consumers.

To read more about what organisations are using social media for visit http://bit.ly/1DErcUX to read the Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2014) article.

References

Abdallah, C. and Langley, A. (2014) The Double Edge of Ambiguity in Strategic Planning, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp 235-264

Budeva, D. and Mullen, M. (2014) International market segmentation: Economics, national culture and time, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 48, No. 7, pp 1209-1238

Nike (2015) ‘Annual Report 2014’ [Online] <http://investors.nike.com/files/doc_financials/2014/index.html#select_financials> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Nike Facebook (2015) ‘Nike’ [Online] <https://www.facebook.com/nike> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Nike Instagram (2015) ‘@NikeWomen Instagram Shop’ [Online] <http://www.nike.com/gb/en_gb/c/women/instagram?cp=usnw_brs_031115_fb_IGcommerceplt&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2F> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Nike Twitter (2015a) ‘Nike’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/Nike> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Nike Twitter (2015b) ‘Tweets and replies’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/Nike/with_replies> [accessed 28th April 2015]

Reibe, E., Wright, M., Stern, P. and Sharp, B. (2014) How to grow a brand: Retain or acquire customers?, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 67, No. 5, pp 990-997

Schulze, C., Scholer, L. and Skiera, B. (2015) Customizing Social Media Marketing, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 56, No. 2, pp 8-10

Seigyoung, A., Bell, S., McLeod, C. and Shih, E. (2007) Co-production and customer loyalty in financial services, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 83, No. 3, pp 359-370

Spaid, B. and Flint, D. (2014) The Meaning of Shopping Experiences Augmented by Mobile Internet Devices, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp 73-90

Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S. (2014) Brand strategies in social media, Marketing Intelligence and Planning, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp 328-344

Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013) Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 362-369

Five reasons why SMEs should adopt a content marketing strategy

Laura Ruaux

Content marketing is marketing through the creation and distribution of content that is valuable for readers (Kristen, 2013). It aims to create a conversation with consumers by providing informational or entertaining content (Wu, Kao and Lin, 2013). But with so many different marketing strategies available to SMEs, why should content marketing be adopted?

Builds Brand Awareness

Ho et al (2015) define brand awareness as a consumer’s level of readiness to recall attributes related to a particular product or brand. While brand awareness is not an end goal, it facilitates SMEs in positioning themselves as viable options for potential customers (Ho et al, 2015). Increased brand awareness improves an organisation’s likelihood of being selected by a potential customer and leads consumers to actively seek out product or service information from them.

Good content is often shared via social media, news websites, bloggers and sellers, carrying your brand name to new circles of consumers and linking back to your website and other items of content (Whiting and Williams, 2013). For example, IBM shared their blog article about their research scientists’ progress towards building the first practical quantum computer and 28 people had shared this article with their own circles within an hour (IBM Twitter, 2015), while multiple bloggers and news sites shared the information and linked back to the IBM website.

Figure One

 

Figure One: IBM share their blog article on Twitter (IBM Twitter, 2015)

Figure Two

Figure Two: Market Business News share blog with link back to site (Nordqvist, 2015)

Integrates Multiple Channels

This example with IBM also demonstrates that content can span multiple channels, which improves the likelihood of content being shared (Mills, 2012). With the rise of social media and web 2.0 the barriers to entry for content creation and sharing are gone, and anyone with internet can contribute (Pulizzi, 2012). This means that the costs of content creation are lower than ever and consumers are more capable and willing to participate in two-way communication with brands (Pulizzi, 2012).

IBM also shared their content on Facebook, where it gained 27 ‘shares’, 162 ‘likes’ and 3 comments within the first hour.

Figure Three

Figure Three: IBM share their content on Facebook (IBM Facebook, 2015)

Retains customers

Social media users seek information and content that they can share to increase their feeling of belonging (Whiting and Williams, 2013). Providing conversational content that is either informational or entertaining encourages existing customers to engage with the organisation, something which is key to customer retention, particularly in financial services (Seigyoung et al, 2007). However Sashi (2012) highlights that interaction is not sufficient and customers must feel satisfied by the interaction in order to become loyal customers.

Increases customer engagement

The interaction and satisfaction that Sashi (2012) describes can be managed long term to create brand advocates, who will not only share the organisation’s content but also actively promote a brand to their circles. The more influence a customer has the greater the value of their advocacy and influencers can also be targeted to share and co-create content in order to increase return on investment (Kumar, and Mirchandani, 2012).

Facilitates acquiring new customers

Boosting brand awareness and producing positive peer reviews and brand advocates decreases the consumer’s perceived risk of engaging in transactional business, particularly for online retailers (Easlick and Lotz, 2014, Hajli, 2013). Functional and informational content boost trust in an organisation by allowing consumers to see demonstrations of expertise (Ho et al, 2015; Kristen, 2013). As growth through retention alone is limited by existing customer base factors such as size and need for repeat custom, acquisition can be a valuable source of business growth for SMEs (Reibe et al, 2013).

Limitations

As with any marketing approach, content marketing has its limitations. Many SMEs struggle to find the time and resources to create bespoke and valuable content and outsourcing this can be expensive. However, using social media to create microblog content can be an effective and inexpensive method of content creation allowing for easy consumer participation on a low budget (Okazaki and Taylor, 2013).

Overall, the case for content marketing with support from social media is highly compelling for organisations of all budget sizes. Acquiring new customers and retaining existing customers can both be achieved with good quality content sparking two-way communication and sharing of your organisation’s messages to new consumer circles. So if your organisation relies on word of mouth and customer engagement, you’d better get together a content creation plan.

For more information on content creation as a marketing strategy read Ho et al (2015) at http://bit.ly/1eWwA0F.

References

Eastlick, M. and Lotz, S. (2011) Cognitive and institutional predictors of trust toward an online retailer, International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp 234-255

Hajli, M. (2013) A research framework for social commerce adoption, Information Management and Computer Security, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp 144-154

Ho, C., Chiu, K., Chen, H. and Papazafeiropoulou, A. (2015) Can internet blogs be used as an effective advertising tool? The role of product blog type and brand awareness, Journal of Enterprise Information Management, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp 346-362

IBM Facebook (2015) ‘IBM’ [Online] <https://www.facebook.com/IBM?fref=ts> [accessed 29th April 2015]

IBM Twitter (2015) ‘@IBMResearch scientists achieve critical steps to building first practical quantum computer’ [Online] <https://twitter.com/IBM/status/593457347495927808> [accessed 29th April 2014]

Kristen, H. (2013) Content Marketing Strategies to Educate and Entertain, Journal of Financial Planning, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp 18-20

Kumar, V. and Mirchandani, R. (2012) Increasing the ROI of Social Media Marketing, MIT Sloan Management Review, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp 55-61

Mills, A. (2012) Virality in social media: the SPIN framework; Journal of Public Affairs, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp 162-169

Nordqvist, C. (2015) ‘Practical quantum computer a step closer, say IBM scientists’, Market Business News, 29th April 2015 [Online] <https://marketbusinessnews.com/practical-quantum-computer-a-step-closer-say-ibm-scientists/58585> [accessed 29th April 2015]

Okazaki, S. and Taylor, C. (2013) Social media and international advertising: theoretical challenges and future directions, International Marketing Review, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp 56-71

Pulizzi, J. (2012) The Rise of Storytelling as the New Marketing, Publishing Research Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp 116-123

Reibe, E., Wright, M., Stern, P. and Sharp, B. (2013) How to grow a brand: Retain or acquire customers?, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 67, No. 5, pp 990-997

Sashi, C. (2012) Customer engagement, buyer-seller relationships, and social media, Journal of Management History, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp 253-272

Seigyoung, A., Bell, S., McLeod, C. and Shih, E. (2007) Co-production and customer loyalty in financial services, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 83, No. 3, pp 359-370

Whiting, A. and Williams, D. (2013) Why people use social media: a uses and gratifications approach, Qualitative Market Research, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp 362-369

Costa Coffee: An Email Invitation Review

Laura Ruaux

With an eye-catching subject line containing a triple points offer, this email is somewhat compelling to open, however a lack of  personalisation and call to action in the subject line did leave it at risk of being overlooked.

Upon opening this email it becomes clear that the call to action is in fact to invite existing customers to an event in Costa Coffee shops nationwide, launching the Christmas range of food and drink, which is considerably more interesting than the subject line initially suggests. The call to action is made clear as immediate RSVP is possible for readers after the introductory paragraph by clicking on lozenges which take you directly to the appropriate landing page. Hernandez and Resnik (2013) describe the path of the eye of a reader as following the hierarchical structure of the page, thus having the call to action very clearly at the top is recommended and in this case has very effectively communicated this message to the reader.

However, this request for a response felt premature for myself, as the email contained little personalisation beyond identifying me as the reader and could have benefited from using more personalisation. I would like to see geographical personalisation based upon the location of stores I frequently visit, information which I am confident is available to them as I frequently receive emails asking me to review specific stores I have visited using my loyalty card.

Overall, the email is very pleasing to look at, the Christmas theme and Costa branding are consistent throughout. The email structure allows readers to scroll through and quickly scan for content of interest, even when browsing via mobile phone. The pattern outlined by Hernandez and Resnik (2013) which best matched the path of my own eyes when reading this email is the zig-zag pattern as I scanned from side to side to quickly search for key words of interest.

 

Big Data and Change Management

Laura Ruaux

Managers not embracing changes towards making data driven decisions must act fast or be replaced according to McAfee and Brynjolfsson in their 2012 article on big data.

Organisations describing themselves as data driven have been shown to out perform others in both financial and organisational KPIs. With such obvious evidence of the performance benefits of becoming big data enabled, McAfee and Brynjolfsson expect managers making decisions based on experience and intuition to need to take a back seat and let the data do the talking for future success.

Of course, successful decision making is already based on analytics in many organisations, but McAfee and Brynjolfsson describe a change towards big data as an expansion in all dimensions. Big data is increasing in volume, ever nearing real time and in a vast variety of media, which can make it extremely difficult to manage.

For many organisations a move towards big data represents a substantial change in decision making processes and as with any change, it is important that such a transition is managed effectively. McAfee and Brynjolfsson devised their own list of management challenges in this change process; leadership, talent management, technology, decision making and company culture

McAfee and Brynjolfsson claim that Sears Holdings have sucessfully reduced the time it takes to plan promotions, making them more timely, granular and personalised, all with the use of big data.

Moving forward it would be really interesting to find out how firms adopting big data have dealt with these challenges. In this article, Phil Shelley, CTO of Sears Holdings says he is surprised at how easy the transition was for them.

For more information please read the article:

McAfee, A. & Brynjolfsson, E. (2012) Big Data: the management revolution, Harvard Business Review Vol. 90, No. 10, pp 60-66