Social media is undoubtedly an important and growing tool in the digital marketing framework, but it can be super tricky for businesses to use effectively. First we start with what it is.

Social media consists of websites and applications that create highly interactive platforms, enabling users to share, co-create, participate in or discuss user-generated content (Kietzmann et al., 2011). One of the defining elements of social media is the central role that consumers and users take, moving from passive receivers of traditional marketing to engaged, collaborative and expressive. Consumers no longer want to be talked at, but listened to by firms (Kietzmann et al., 2011 and Fisher, 2015).

Therefore it is not the place for your standard marketing messages. We’ve all seen so many businesses use social media to purely push sales messages and advertise their latest product and it just doesn’t work. Successful marketing via social media demands a different type of content, and businesses need to be subtle yet creative (Bîja & Balaş, 2014).

A great way to engage your audience is through a competition, be that getting followers to retweet a message on Twitter or share a post on Facebook.

According to Emery (2012) creating a photo competition is a really effective way of creating content that is both engaging and relevant for consumers without appearing too corporate. However there are some dos and don’ts to make it effective:

• It must tie in with the brand somehow – for example, a fashion shop could get their followers to take photos of themselves in their favourite outfits from that shop
• It must be simple and easy enough for the audience to do/produce – this will insure increased participation
• Giving a decent prize will encourage participation and create a call to action
• Content gained must be utilized across all social media and email campaigns, to make customers feel they are really part of your business
• Be active throughout the competition in commenting on or sharing the best entrants to encourage participants to keep entering and engaging

The example above from New York City FC twitter demonstrates some of these qualities; it gives a good prize, is easy for their audience to do and ties in with their brand incorporating their football colours.

The photo competition also ties in well with what is important to New York City FC’s audience, which Kuenn (2013) states as the most important part of creating effective social media content. Most people are unlikely to be passionate about a product or service being sold as such, however they may be passionate about the results it gives them or how it affects them. Most football fans are passionate about their team’s colours, so are likely to be eager to show their support and enter the competition.

One unique factor of social media is the capability of content to go viral. Whilst working for Disney on my placement year, out of the blue a video of the Australian cast of The Lion King (Full video can be viewed here) singing on a plane went viral – it has had over 22.8 million hits to date.

However, the key thing here was that the video was not created with the purpose of ‘going viral’. Many businesses try to create viral content but the unique aspect of it is that viral content cannot be simply created. Ultimately nobody really knows how and why content goes viral until it happens, it has to be organic and occur naturally (Kuenn, 2013 and Bîja & Balaş, 2014).

It is likely that The Lion King video went viral because it resonated with its target audience – they love musicals – and it appealed to a wider audience because it was in an unusual public space and gave a feel good factor which people wanted to share. The fact that it was filmed on a smartphone also added to its authenticity – viewers believed it was a genuinely impromptu moment and not pre-orchestrated by Disney.

Another key aspect of the video was that it was easy to share. Social media content should be just that – social – yet so many businesses create content that is difficult for its audience to quickly share. The share button should be easy to find and involve just one click, and companies should also ensure that Meta data is correct, as it provides the preview description that will appear alongside the link (Keunn, 2013 & Bîja & Balaş, 2014).

So we’ve established how to make the most effective content for your social media channels, but is social media really worth it? Bîja & Balaş (2014) discuss how one of the biggest disadvantages of social media marketing is the time and resources (mainly people) that it consumes. Whilst social media is generally viewed as a cost effective communication channel, ultimately content has to be created by an employee, therefore because it is difficult to gauge the monetary value in social media against the time and human resources it takes up, its usefulness is somewhat questionable. Bolotaeva (2011) also discusses the ethical considerations that can occur around the morality of whether marketing to customers through their personal social media accounts is an invasion of privacy. Whilst it can be argued that most businesses do so, and therefore it is socially acceptable, consideration must still be given as to what is a respectable level of invasion.

Ultimately, creating content that is tailored to your audiences interests and is engaging and easy to share is the key to hitting the social media nail on the head. Digital and the growth of social media means that businesses cannot simply ignore it as a channel, however it must have different yet clear goals set in order to truly measure its effectiveness (Bîja & Balaş, 2014). These goals are likely to be different to traditional marketing or even digital marketing aims, such as how quickly the company responds to customers or how many times a week they want to post.

For more great examples of effective social media content, check out this article – https://econsultancy.com/blog/62047-five-examples-of-social-media-marketing-excellence/

Or looking at the bigger picture, for more insight into effective content creation across multiple channels, read this useful article – http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-content/the-right-content-for-the-right-channel/1863

REFERENCES

Bîja, R. & Balaş, R. (2014) Social Media Marketing to Increase Brand Awareness, Journal of Economics and Business Research. Vol 20, Issue 2, Page 155-164

[Available here: http://www.uav.ro/jour/index.php/jebr/article/view/381]

Bolotaeva, V. & Cata, T. (2011) Marketing Opportunities with Social Networks, Journal of Internet Social Networking and Virtual Communities. 2011.

[Available here: http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/JISNVC/2011/409860/409860.pdf]

Emery, M. (2012) How to Run a Successful Photo Contest on Social Media. Social Media Today, 13^th September 2012 [Online] <http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/how-run-successful-photo-contest-social-media> [Accessed 23^rd April 2015]

Fisher, E. (2015) ‘You Media’: audiencing as marketing in social media, Media, Culture & Society. Vol 37, Issue 1, Pages 50-67

[Available here: http://mcs.sagepub.com/content/37/1/50.short]

Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P. & Silvestre, B.S. (2011) Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, Business Horizons. Vol 54, Issue 3, Pages 241-251

[Available here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681311000061]

Kuenn, A. (2013) 4 Ways To Create Successful Social Media Content. Marketing Land, 29^th July 2013 [Online] < http://marketingland.com/4-ways-to-create-successful-social-media-content-52176> [Accessed 23^rd April 2015]

There’s no getting away from it, as the biggest social media network and with a monthly active user base of 1.43 billion, Facebook is booming (Kim, 2015). As the graph below shows, its miles ahead of other social networks and messenger apps, but with so many users and potential customers, how essential is it really for your business?

(Source: Kim, 2015)

According to Facebook (2015), its business pages can help to drive online sales, increase local sales and raise brand awareness, also enabling you to spread your message to a potentially new audience, make contact with customers and build relationships (Hansson et al., 2013).

The way businesses utilize Facebook can be split into two main areas – business pages and paid for banners and adverts – however this blog post focuses on business pages.

According to Hansson et al. (2013), one of the major benefits of utilizing Facebook is the relatively low cost, enabling companies of all sizes to use the site to achieve their branding and marketing goals, whilst potentially reaching millions of customers. However, whether this is actually feasible surely depends on the amount of people who ‘like’ your page, as the content created is only really seen by those who do so.

Creating product pages allows for customers to give their own feedback, and therefore knowledge sharing, increasing product awareness and enabling word of mouth (WOM) marketing. This is also useful as customers generally prefer reviews from customers who have already used the product rather than professional critics (Seung-A, 2012). Although, in the same way this can be beneficial, it can also be detrimental as customers could leave negative reviews and comments for your audience to see, potentially damaging your businesses reputation. As such, proper page management is needed, including dealing with negative responses correctly rather than ignoring or deleting (Palmer and Koenig-Lewis, 2009 and Champoux et al., 2012).

Then there is the question of whether marketing to customers on a ‘personal’ network is the right way to do business? There are great considerations to be made regarding the ethics of advertising and marketing to your customers through a ‘personal’ social network, some people may believe it is unethical and an invasion of their privacy, however many people believe that a marketing message is best hidden within social media as opposed to direct marketing, so maybe Facebook is the better option (Palmer & Koening-Lewis, 2009).

So with such a large user base, how can you be sure your target audience is on Facebook? Well if your business is aimed at young people then using the social network may be a waste of time. It was widely reported that it lost 11million of its users aged 13-17 between 2011 and 2014, thought mainly to be because of the trend in their older relatives joining the site (Olson, 2013 and Matthews, 2014). However Griffin (2015) says that 71% of teens aged 13-17 say they continue to use the site, so perhaps it’s not all bad.

So should your business be on it?

I actually have some experience of using Facebook business pages myself, having created one for an amateur theatre group during my time as publicity manager, as seen below.

For us it worked well as a source of free advertising, but with virtually no marketing budget, we were restricted in terms of promoting the page. Even today it has a relatively poor 133 likes, and run by volunteers, the group struggle to post relevant, engaging content on a regular basis.

But should that really be a barrier? One of the most successful brands using Facebook is McDonalds, but they use it in a different way to some of the advice offered here.

The brand has over 56million likes on its site, yet despite this blog and most agreeing that frequent, engaging content is key to engaging customers; McDonald’s seemingly posts very little yet still has high customer engagement with several thousand likes when they do post (Moth, 2013). However, this is likely because of the strong global brand that already exists, whereas smaller businesses (such as my amateur theatre group) are likely to struggle.

McDonald’s clearly sees the value in sticking to product focused sales messages and wants to increase this, looking to roll out 14,500 Facebook pages by 2015 for each of its US outlets, with the goal of being able to connect to its customers in real time and deliver relevant, local content for them (Ghosh, 2014).

So how do you get it right? Hansson et al. (2013) found that generally the best way to utilize Facebook for your business is to have an active profile that is in keeping with your company and brand overall and that provides users with up-to-date content and information with a clear purpose.

Still unsure? For more on the benefits and drawbacks of using Facebook for your business, check out this article.

REFERENCES

Champoux, V., Durgee, J. & McGlynn, L. (2012) Corporate Facebook pages: when ‘fans’ attack, Journal of Business Strategy. Vol 33, Issue 2, Pages 22-30

Facebook (2015) Facebook for business [Online] <https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Ghosh, S. (2014) McDonald’s to roll out 14,500 Facebook pages by 2015. Marketing Magazine, 16^th October 2014 [Online] <http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/article/1317413/mcdonalds-roll-14500-facebook-pages-2015> [Accessed 15^th April 2015]

Griffin, A. (2015) Teen social media use: death of Facebook and Google Plus greatly exaggerated. The Independent, 10^th April 2015 [Online] <http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/teen-social-media-use-death-of-facebook-and-google-plus-greatly-exaggerated-10168248.html> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Hansson, L., Wrangmo, A. & Solberg Søilen, K. (2013) Optimal ways for companies to use Facebook as a marketing channel, Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society. Vol 11, Issue 2, Pages 112-126

Kim, E. (2015) This one chart shows how Facebook dominates online communication. Business Insider, 13^th April 2015 [Online] <http://uk.businessinsider.com/facebook-dominates-online-communication-2015-4?r=US> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Matthews, C. (2014) More than 11 million young people have fled Facebook since 2011. Time, 15^th January 2014 [Online]<http://business.time.com/2014/01/15/more-than-11-million-young-people-have-fled-facebook-since-2011/> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Moth, D. (2013) How McDonald’s uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. Econsultancy, 13^th March 2013 [Online] <https://econsultancy.com/blog/62329-how-mcdonald-s-uses-facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google/> [Accessed 15^th April 2015]

Olson, P. (2013) Teenagers say goodbye to Facebook and hello to messenger apps. The Guardian, 10^th November 2013 [Online] <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/10/teenagers-messenger-apps-facebook-exodus> [Accessed 14^th April 2015]

Palmer, A. & Koenig-Lewis, N. (2009) An experimental, social network-based approach to direct marketing, Direct Marketing: An International Journal. Vol 3, Issue 3, Pages 162-176

Seung-A, A.J. (2012) The potential of social media for luxury brand management, Marketing Intelligence & Planning. Vol 30, Issue 7, Pages 687-699