MT Social - Media - Marketing 1-200

Social Media Marketing
Sub Code - 356
Developed by
Prof. Chinmay Kamat
On behalf of
Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research
Advisory Board
Chairman
Prof. Dr. V.S. Prasad
Former Director (NAAC)
Former Vice-Chancellor
(Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University)
Board Members
1. Prof. Dr. Uday Salunkhe  2. Dr. B.P. Sabale  3. Prof. Dr. Vijay Khole  4. Prof. Anuradha Deshmukh 
Group Director  Chancellor, D.Y. Patil University, Former Vice-Chancellor  Former Director 
Welingkar Institute of Navi Mumbai  (Mumbai University) (YCMOU)
Management Ex Vice-Chancellor (YCMOU)
Program Design and Advisory Team
Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Mr. Manish Pitke

Dean – Marketing Faculty – Travel and Tourism
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Management Consultant
Prof. Kanu Doshi Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Dean – Finance Dean – Marketing
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Prof. Dr. V.H. Iyer Mr. Smitesh Bhosale

Dean – Management Development Programs Faculty – Media and Advertising
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Founder of EVALUENZ
Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Prof. Vineel Bhurke

Dean – Marketing Faculty – Rural Management
Prof. Venkat lyer Dr. Pravin Kumar Agrawal

Director – Intraspect Development Faculty – Healthcare Management
Manager Medical – Air India Ltd.
Prof. Dr. Pradeep Pendse Mrs. Margaret Vas

Dean – IT/Business Design Faculty – Hospitality
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Former Manager-Catering Services – Air India Ltd.
Prof. Sandeep Kelkar Mr. Anuj Pandey

Faculty – IT Publisher
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Management Books Publishing, Mumbai
Prof. Dr. Swapna Pradhan Course Editor

Faculty – Retail Prof. Dr. P.S. Rao
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Dean – Quality Systems
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Prof. Bijoy B. Bhattacharyya Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Dean – Banking Dean – Marketing
Mr. P.M. Bendre Course Coordinators

Faculty – Operations Prof. Dr. Rajesh Aparnath
Former Quality Chief – Bosch Ltd. Head – PGDM (HB)
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Mr. Ajay Prabhu Ms. Kirti Sampat

Faculty – International Business Assistant Manager – PGDM (HB)
Corporate Consultant Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Mr. A.S. Pillai Mr. Kishor Tamhankar

Faculty – Services Excellence Manager (Diploma Division)
Ex Senior V.P. (Sify) Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
COPYRIGHT © by Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research.

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NOT FOR SALE. FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY.
1st Edition, May,2014) 2nd Edition (Mar-2016)

Contents
Chapter No. Chapter Name Page No.
Chapter 1 Basics of Social Media Marketing 3

Chapter 2 Blending Traditional Marketing with Social 34
Media
Chapter 3 Developing Strategies for Social Media 67

Marketing
Chapter 4 Leveraging The Power of Social Networking 120
Sites
Chapter 5 Creating Markets through Media Sharing Sites 200

Chapter 6 Acquiring Customers through Blogs and 272
Twitter
Chapter 7 Marketing through Social News and 333

Bookmarking Sites
Chapter 8 Quantifying Social Media Marketing Efforts 383
Chapter 9 Innovative Trends and Best Practices of the 409
Social Media Experts 
3
BASICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Chapter 1
Basics of Social Media Marketing
Objectives
After discussing this chapter, you will be able to:
• define and explain the concept of social media marketing

• discuss the benefits of social media marketing
• enlist and describe the categories of social media marketing
• describe in detail the social influence factors driving successful
social media marketing
Structure
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Basics of Social Media Marketing
1.3 The Benefits of Social Media Marketing
1.4 Categories of Social Media Marketing
1.5 Social Influence Factors Driving Successful Social Media
Marketing
1.6 Activities
1.7 Summary
1.8 Self Assessment Questions
4
1.1 INTRODUCTION
Social networks are communities of people who typically share a

common behaviour, idea, interest or activity. A social network
indicates a graph of relationships (social familiarities) within a group
of individuals (people, organisations). Social networking sites have
increased in the last decade. The most popular social networks
include Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. They facilitate
communication by providing a variety of ways for users to interact
with each other like e-mail or instant message.
Social networks provide a medium for people to interact with others

who are influential and make recommendations about products and
services. These sites can improve lots of business activities, including:
word-of-mouth marketing, market research, general marketing, idea
generation and new product development, co-innovation, customer
service, public relations, employee communications and reputation
management.
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Social Media Marketing is marketing that focuses on people, not

products. The products can be presented by the company with as
many qualitative features and promotional tools as possible, but what
really matters is the comments and appreciations left by the
customers. People provide the content, and this is the reason why
Social Media Marketing is so scary and challenging for marketers.
They do not control the marketing content anymore. Negative word-
of-mouth can be spread worldwide in a couple of minutes only. With
the explosion of Internet-based messages transmitted through the
Social Media, they are now a main factor in influencing many aspects
of consumer behaviour, such as awareness, considerations,
information gathering, opinions, attitudes, purchasing decisions and
post-purchase evaluations.
International marketers need to recognise the power and critical

nature of the conversations being held by consumers using social
media. Consequently, the ability of influencing the crowd effectively
is the main quality needed by the marketing team.
Also, what is important about Social Media Marketing is that

marketer can listen, track and measure what is shared on the Social
Media Sites in order to improve the offered message and adapt it
more to the customers’ needs. Thanks to the Social Media analytics
and metrics available, the impact of Social Media on a company’s
marketing strategy can be measured and evaluated relatively easily.
Over the last ten years, there has been a fundamental shift in how
people access information and news. Companies traditionally used
the media to get their messages out to their audiences via marketing,
advertising or public relations. Marketing and advertising push a
message out to the masses. Companies use public relations to supply
news to the media and expert sources to provide stories about their
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industry. The goal is to get media mentions of their company,

products or services.
These methods are a one-way communication, where a company

delivers a message through the media, but individuals have no real
way of responding. Today, this one-to-many mass media model has
given way to the social web and a new way of communicating with
people has emerged. Since people have tried receiving one-way
communications, they are looking more and more for news and
information in places other than the media. People no longer rely on
the media. New tools enable them to network, read blogs, post
comments and reviews, actively gather news and information, and
share this with others. People are engaging in conversations.
Conversation is the new marketing. Tapping into these conversations
shows where your audience is spending time online, and what
subjects and issues are of interest to them. As of 2010, over 80% of US
companies have started using some form of social media marketing,
and their biggest barrier to success in this new medium is lack of
knowledge. To reach the audience successfully, marketers need to
move their marketing activity from the traditional “push” method,
where they broadcast messages to thousands via the media, to a
“pull” strategy, where you make it easy for people to find
information, whenever and wherever they want it.
Let us make it clear at the very onset the difference between social
marketing and social media marketing. While the former deals with
marketing a cause for the common good, social media marketing is
about using platforms like Twitter or Facebook to promote products
and services. In this post, we are going to talk only about social
marketing and how you can spread out your word online. Because
you are selling an idea here through social marketing and not tangible
products and services, your approach has to be a little different from
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the run-of-the-mill online campaigns. Suppose you work for a charity

institution and want people to support your cause, financially and
otherwise. Now, there are others in this same arena as well! How will
you convince the global audience out there that your cause deserves
their attention, and money? You have to build up a campaign to
promote your idea in a way that grabs their eyeballs and also touches
the core of their hearts.
This is where social marketing blends with social media marketing.

Writing blog posts and articles about your cause and publishing them
online will only take you to a certain extent. The real power of social
marketing lies in unleashing your ideas on the social media platforms.
That is where you can go full-on in talking about your cause and
getting like-minded people on board. Social media networks,
especially Facebook, have avenues that will lead you to the correct
group of people who will do more for your cause than misdirected
marketing messages strewn across digital pathways.
To make your social marketing venture a success, you need sizzling

content. Ideas, if they need to be put across, must be wrapped in a
package of infotainment. Your content must have the power to cut
through the layers of cynicism in people today and make an impact. It
helps to address people who you know are sympathetic about the
cause that you are looking to uphold. You get that added advantage
on social media platforms where you know your target readers better.
1.2 BASICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media has been a buzz word from the last few years now in the
digital world. It has helped a number of online businesses to
constantly contact their users in a very effective way. In this age, if a
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business is not using right marketing strategies or not changing

strategies, it can extinct. So, it has become important to embrace
technology and enjoy the rewards.
It is possible for a business to have an online presence all on own but

it is much sensible idea to hire social media marketing consultants in
India to help get good visibility. This is because they know exactly
where to focus to bring in more traffic to create a win-win situation
for the business.
Nowadays, for any more or less important purchase, it has almost

become vital to learn about the brand, product or service, and
compare it with the equivalent of competing brands before
considering of purchasing it. While potential consumer do so, they
interact with friends, Google the products, search on Twitter and read
experiences of those who have used the brand, product or service
earlier. This section will analyse the Social Feedback Cycle, taking into
account the effects of Social Media on consumers’ buying behaviours,
comparing it to the classic purchase funnel for traditional media.
The Internet has now become the most common tool that consumers
use to find information on products and services that they are
considering buying. Besides opinions of friends and family, people
use the Internet as first source of information when making a major
purchase decision. Whether they like it or not, people are holding
conversations on the Internet about the products and services they
have used, sharing both good and bad experiences and feedbacks.
Actually, almost two out of every three conversations online refers to
a brand, product or service. These opinions have far more weight and
value, and are considered more trustworthy, than any information
provided by marketers.
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Indeed, word-of-mouth is considered to be the most trusted source of

information. Therefore, Social Media largely affects customers’
purchase decisions, because consumers usually seek other opinions
and recommendations. Indeed, 78% of global consumers declare that
they trust and believe other customers’ recommendations for
products and services more than any other medium. This is mainly
due to the fact that consumers are seen as more objective than the
companies’ own marketing message.
The effects of Social Media are really important as a social feedback

loop is created through the use of Social Media and will highly
influence the consideration stage of the purchase channel. For the past
fifty years, media was largely concentrating on awareness, because
awareness drives demand, and on point-of-sale, affirming pending
purchases or shifting them to a competing brand. The consideration
process through which consumers evaluate purchase options has been
under-utilised by too many marketers.
Social media marketing services in India and the world over can be
utilised to gain maximum visibility, improved sales and better brand
awareness. Companies offering different types of digital services use a
number of social media marketing platforms to help businesses
promote their business. Some of these social media sites include:
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• Facebook - Facebook is the most popular social media marketing

networking site on the Internet. Social media marketing consultants
in India help businesses share their business information along
with products details, photos, videos, and useful content with large
number of people. By using this platform, it becomes very easy for
a business to measure the demographics and interests of their
prospective customers. The brand page of a business will have
more and more friends and fans and will get more recognition in
the market.
• Twitter - Twitter allows businesses to broadcast short messages to

their followers, customers and prospects. Mainly, this social
networking site is used to publicise promotions and launch new
products and events. Professional digital agencies help businesses
to take help of this site in the best possible way to promote their
products and services.
• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is used by businesses to share business

information with others in the same target industry. It allows them
to join groups related to their industry and get relevant valuable
suggestions from other professionals in the same field.
Reaching out to so many people has never been so easy for businesses
before. Today, businesses can hire the services of social media
marketing services in India to promote their products and services to
large number of people who are interested in their services. These
professionals are experts in their field and have the appropriate
knowledge to implement the right marketing strategies. Social media
marketing services in India are no doubt, the most innovative way to
make one's business or presence visible in the market.
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1.3 THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Nowadays, Social Media Marketing is widely used by businesses

because it represents a cost-effective marketing solution. The social
media marketing tools can be used largely for free and very easily, in
comparison with other promotional tools. The main purposes of using
social media marketing are the amplification of word-of-mouth
marketing, market research, general marketing, idea generation and
new product development, co-innovation, customer service, public
relations, employee communications and reputation management.
Indeed, social networks can increase product and brand awareness,
web traffic, customer loyalty, but also improve the company’s Search
Engine Optimisation, and even increase the success of new product
launches.
Social Media Marketing can be using unconventional means to

achieve conventional goals, through the use of creativity, community,
and relationships instead of big budgets to achieve marketing
objectives. These methods are powerful guerrilla marketing strategies.
Every marketer is now armed with highly effective online
communications tools that enable him to garner the same level of
influence that many large corporations have. Therefore, social media
marketing is a great change in the world of marketing. Advertisement
and promotions can be sent to every corner of the world today using
social media marketing (SMM). This type of marketing can be used to
showcase, exchange information or even perform the company’s day
to day processes. Social media marketing is a new approach which is
widely used for the promotions and information exchange in the
business world.
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For every business using Social Media Marketing, the challenge is to

find on which social media channels its audience and customers
spend their time and hold conversations. Also, people usually visit
several social media sites instead of sticking to only one. By reading,
listening and analysing their target audience’s activities, marketers
will be able to determine where, when, who and how the consumers
are interacting in the social media universe. It will also help marketers
to define who the influencers are and which role they play in the
online community: Whether they are networkers, everyday users,
trendsetters, reporters or opinion leaders.
Whether it is concerning large multinationals or small and medium-

sized enterprises, Social media Marketing presents many significant
benefits for the companies’ success. Social Media platforms foster
communication around brands and products, enhancing positive as
well as negative word-of-mouth around a business and its products
and services. Any message or piece of information shared on the
social media channels can be seen by thousands of people in an
extremely short period of time.
With the social media, once a customer has purchased the brand,
product or service, he will use it, experience its advantages and
disadvantages and form his personal opinion. He will then obviously
talk about his personal experience with this brand, product and
service on the Internet, and more particularly the social media
platforms. He might leave a comment on the company’s website or
the company’s social media sites, but also on more general forums
that the company’s marketers might never see. This conversation that
the customer is holding on the social media channels will be seen by
other people already aware of the brand, product or service. These
people will be in the second stage of consideration in the purchase
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channel. They will look for information about the brand, product or
service on the Internet, and will quickly and easily find the content
generated by the customer. Social media marketing has indeed made
a real impact in the present day, it is safe to say that it has
revolutionised business completely. The alternatives offered are a
budget friendly way of communicating and disseminating
information. Here are some of the benefits that social media may
provide:
• Direct communication: Social media marketing facilitates one to

one communication between the company and its customers. At
any point, organisations are free to ask for feedback and
suggestions for ways to improve their services and products. This
factor brings about proper customer engagement.
• Brand exposure and awareness: The main benefit acquired by

businesses implementing social media strategies represents the
increase in brand exposure. Brand exposure occurs when the
customer becomes aware of a product, service or advertisement
through at least one of their five senses, whether or not they paid
attention to it. Thanks to the social media platforms, new brands
can establish themselves and foster awareness. For existing brands,
social media platforms also raise awareness. The brands’ visibility
is increased thanks to their presence on the large variety of social
media channels, but also thanks to the word of mouth that is
automatically expanded around the brand. Companies can heavily
use Social Media Marketing to build their brand’s reputation and
enhance their popularity. This is also called online reputation
management.
• Ability to advertise more effectively: Setting up pages and profiles

on social media channels offers many opportunities for advertising
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and for the brand to be seen and reached by its audience. Exposure
is the first step for new brands. Without any exposure, the company
will just fail its launch.Moreover, the marketer can use social media
channels to promote their products and services. The brand’s social
media pages provide the opportunity to present the products and
services in a more interactive way. Consumers will have the choice
of reading the products’ description, photos and videos, and read
reviews and comments about these products.
• Cost effective: One of the biggest advantages of Social Media

Marketing is that it is extremely cost effective. Social media
marketing is a promotional tool that does not need high advertising
costs or an extremely high amount of time. It is a strategy of doing
good and costless business marketing. If a company is aware of
where its target audience is interaction in the social media
landscape, a small investment is enough to get a social media
strategy started and the returns can be amazing. If compared to
other offline promotional activities. Social media is relatively
inexpensive because of its viral characteristics. By little investment
in generating content a lot can be achieved. Social media marketing
guarantees relatively low costs, effectiveness and measurability.
Besides, social media encourages short-term success when looking
at increasing exposure and targeted traffic for instance. However,
social media optimisation will also offer long-term results such as
building trusted relationships with the customers.
• Save up on time: Ever need to reach out to your customer round

the clock or vice versa? Social media marketing is that tool which is
available 24/7 for all 365 days. With various tools available most of  
the work can happen on a weekend or on the go using just a smart
phone.
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• Increasing organisational visibility: Social Media Marketing

increases brand awareness by extending the online presence of the
products and brand. When social media platforms are widely used
by a business, it becomes extremely important to measure the
impacts of social media marketing on brand awareness. This can be
done with social media metrics. Tap into the potential market on
sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to find you your right customer.
Make efforts to spread the word about your company and make the
best of the exposure. Building an optimised social media presence
to increase the brands’ online awareness has become an absolute
must for digital marketing. 
 
Besides, social media signals are beginning to play an important
role with organic rankings. With Social Media Optimisation(SMO),
businesses can get a hefty boost in Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO) initiatives. Therefore, it goes without saying that making sure
that brands receive the proper exposure is important to
companies.There are many social media sites out there where
marketers and their brand can receive the proper exposure in
order to build brand awareness.  
 
All the traffic generated from social media channels can improve
the consumer’s perception of the brand. People trusts company
more when they are being referred from people they know. Social
media is all about building trustworthy relationships. Businesses
can get traffic straight from the content they publish on their social  
media pages and from the people who have read the content, like it,
share it and talk about it online.
• Leads generation: Leads are defined as potential customers or sales

prospects. With the millions of users connecting everyday on the
different social media sites, every business is bound to have some
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prospective customers somewhere on these sites. But how are

businesses supposed to find these potential customers? 
 
It is quite simple, every person who likes the Facebook page of the
company or follow the Twitter profile is a potential customer.
Therefore, by gaining more and more followers online, brands can
raise their chances of generating new customers. The challenge is to
encourage people to visit the companies’ social media sites and
once they are there, companies need to create enough value for
them to hang around. In order to make the visitors hang around,
the company’s social media Sites need to present the company
efficiently and to make some connections with the users, sharing
valuable content, offering useful information and answering any
requests or critics. Also, the personality of the brand needs to
expressively highlightened on the social media sites. Once the
visitors feel interested by the brand, then only, they will become
valuable leads.
• Targeted traffic: With millions of users, social media sites makes a

convenient target base for people who are trying to market
products or services to people online. Actually, Social Media
Marketing has become a very effective way to drive targeted traffic
to companies’ website or blogs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
still plays a significant role in the website traffic, but social media
has opened many new doors, generated an extremely high amount  
of online traffic. Indeed, social media channels are now providing a
huge avenue for business owners, as they have millions of members
and make the scope of the reach unlimited.
Social media sites will drive targeted visitors back to the company’s
website. The more channels the company is using,the more back links
and interested referrals will point back to the website. In order to
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define targeted traffic, we should provide a definition of traffic first.

Traffic occurs whenever a person visits a website. There are lots of
techniques for getting traffic to websites and they can easily get
thousands of visitors everyday.However, unless this traffic is targeted,
the visitors will probably not be interested and purchase the product
or service.
In contrast, targeted traffic is traffic that reached a website thanks to

an interest in the product or service offered. Targeted traffic is when
the audience reads an ad for a product or service that a brand is
promoting on its website and they are actually interested in
purchasing that product, and so they click this link to go to the
company’s website. One of the biggest advantages that advertising
through social media can offer marketers is the ability to specifically
target customers based on a variety of different factors.Social media
sites are storing all kinds of data on their users, such as age, gender,
geographical location,interests, and many other pieces of information.
Consequently, these data can be used to reach the company’s target
audience. Therefore, marketers can deliver marketing messages
directly to the people who are the most likely to notice them and click
on them.
• Effective monitoring of competitors: Besides, Internet and Social

Media has completely transformed the way market research and
competitor monitoring is being accomplished. Thanks to the
amount of data left in the archive of the social media channels,
information about the target audience and the competitors is easily
accessible. Therefore, social media highly facilitates market insights.
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On the one hand, social media channels offer the opportunity to spy
on competition. Any brand can watch and read closely what is taking
place on its competitors’ website, blogs, and social media sites.
Competitive benchmarking is an important part of any social media
strategy. Each brand has its own strategies, goals, and execution
tactics. However, brands and their competitors are usually striving to
reach and engage with the same consumer database. Many tools exist
to help marketers analyse what their competitors are doing.
First, it is worth examining how active the competitors are on their

social media sites everyday: how many sites they have created, how
many sites they are updating, how they are posting, how often, and
more importantly, how the people are reacting to their posts. On
LinkedIn for instance, it is possible to see how many employees a
company has, how many followers they have, which products and
services they are offering, and even through which networks both
companies are linked together. Then, marketers can set up Google
Alerts in order to get a message every time a specific word is being
used on the Internet. This free service provided by Google, helps
monitoring the competitors by allowing marketers to see what their
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competitors are appreciated for, and what they receive complaints for.
This technique is a perfect way of discovering where the audience is
and which social media strategies are working. Marketers get
valuable information from setting up keywords such as the
competitors’ products, executives, brand name variations… Alerts
will provide insights into programs, tactics and strategies.
It will help the brand to differentiate itself and stay ahead from the
competitors. Many other tools are available for marketers such as
Hyper alerts, Twitter Search or Social Mention. The use of social
media to research competitors provides valuable information for any
business looking to implement a smart social media marketing
strategy.Understanding the competitors’ activities offers insight into
which strategies are successful and which strategies are not, and thus,
helps driving decision making without the expense and risk of trying
them first. Additionally, finding out how consumers feel about a
brand, it product and services when compared to its competitors that
are offering similar products and services help the business to
strengthen the features that customers like, and make alterations
where they feel that the company is lacking, when compared to the
competition.
• Target specific Information: The data available on the social media

channels also directly concerns the target audience. Indeed,
analysing the data of the people interaction on the social media
channels provide marketers with demographics and behaviour
characteristics of their consumers. Although marketers may not
have the ability to control what goes on in social media, they can
definitely learn from it. They can study what is taking place and
learn from it. Social media can thus, be compared to one big
ongoing focus group that provides constant insight into consumer  
perceptions on brands. It helps understanding the target audience,
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its characteristics, and its needs and expectations. This information

influences the social media marketing strategy of the
company, helping to improve it.  
 
Marketers will use the best marketing techniques and design the
most adequate marketing message to reach directly their target
market. Finally, social media channels offer the opportunity to test
the marketing campaigns and gather feedbacks before spending the
money on trying to reach the target market as a whole. This will
help the company getting a better understanding of what will reach
the target audience more effectively. In summary, Social Media
Marketing does clearly offer many opportunities to businesses in
regards to their market research, whether it is aiming at
competition monitoring, marketing strategies testing or target
market understanding.
1.4 CATEGORIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
The social media domain is a huge medium that can be divided in

many different types of categories also called as channels. Every
marketer has his own way of distinguishing one social media from
another. Therefore, in this section, we will present the two most
famous models showing the different types of social media channels.
First, we will analyse the Social Media Starfish of Robert Scoble,
before taking a closer look into the Social Media Landscape by Fred
Cavazza.
According to Robert Scoble, the Social Media Starfish illustrates the

different social media channels that people are using to interact on the
Internet. It shows the evolving social media landscape. Although this
model is very famous in the social media marketing domain, it was
developed in 2007 and is thus, far out of date. Indeed, Robert Scoble
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put Conversions in the center of his starfish, which is nowadays

completely irrelevant, as it has been proven again and again that
Social Media Marketing is based on the people, and nothing else.
Also, the examples chosen are very limited and missing the latest
social media sites that have been launched and has developed
themselves lately, such as Pinterest or Google+ for instance.
Figure 1.1: The Social Media Starfish, by Robert Scoble
Fred Cavazza, a French web business consultant, has become famous

with his blog posts presenting his vision of the Social Media
Landscapes every year. He started in 2008, dividing the social media
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channels into ten main groups: publish, share, discuss, social

networks, micro blog, lifestream, livecast, virtual worlds, social games
and MMO. Through the years, he has been updating his model with
the changes in Social Media Marketing. In 2009, he started to put the
social platforms in the center of the Social Media Landscape, with
four main groups around: Expressing, Networking, Sharing and
Gaming. Then, in 2011, Cavazza gave the central position of his model
to Facebook and Google, which are both connected to the seven main
areas of Social Media: Publish, Share, Discuss, Commerce, Location,
Network and Games.
Figure 1.2: The Social Media Landscape 2008, by Fred Cavazza
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Figure 1.3: The Social Media Landscape 2012, by Fred Cavazza
In Fred Cavazza’s latest version of the Social Media Landscape 2012,

the central position of the figure is taken by Facebook, Twitter and
Google+, because he wants to emphasise the fact that they are
providing a large variety of functionalities, and that they are often
used as relays for what Internet users are doing on other platforms.
Also, he has added some new players, a generalisation of
conversations and interactions, and the addition of device types such
as laptops, smartphones, tablets and connected devices. This graph
illustrates greatly the very dense ecosystem which symbolises Social
Media, spreading the various services over families: 
 
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• Publishing: Blog engines (WordPress, Blogger…), wiki

platforms (Wikipedia, Wikia…), lifeblog services (Tumblr,
Posterous…) and social Q&A (Quora)
• Sharing: Dedicated online services for videos (YouTube,

Dailymotion, Vimeo…), pictures (Flickr, Instagram…), links
(Delicious, Digg…), products (Pinterest), music (Spotify…) and
documents (Slideshare, Scribd…)
• Playing: Major editors (Zynga, Playdompcap…), dedicated

platforms (Hi5…) and smaller but innovative editors (Digital
Chocolate, Kobojo…)Networking: Professional (LinkedIn,
Viadeo…), personal (MySpace, Badoo…) or for former
acquaintances (MyYearBook, Classmates…)
• Buying: Customer intelligence platforms (Bazaarvoice,

PowerReviews…), purchase sharing (Polyvore),
recommendation (Hunch) or social commerce offerings
(Boosket) 
• Localization: Mobile applications (Foursquare, Path…),

socialized city guides (Yelp, DisMoisOu…) or upcoming events
or venues (Plancast).
As we are focusing on the benefits of Social Media Marketing for

businesses, we will only analyse the social media channels that have
any utility or effects on businesses. Therefore, the report will not be
examining the group of ‘Buying’ and its customer reviews, and the
group of ‘Playing’, which includes Virtual Game and Social Worlds,
such as the famous sites, World of Warcraft and Second Life. Also,
from Cavazza’s ‘Localisation’ group, we will only be studying the
25
social events channels. However, the additional groups will be added.

Blogs and Microblogs are separated from Wikis, and from Social
Bookmarking and News sites as well. Besides, the discussion forums
are distinguished.
The seven types of Social Media channels affecting businesses will be

the following:
• Social Networks: e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+…
• Blogs and Microblogs: e.g., WordPress Blogger, Twitter…
• Content Communities or Media Sharing Sites (Video/Audio/

Photo/Presentations): e.g., Flickr, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo,
Picasa,Pinterest, Slideshare…
• Wikis or User Generated Content (UGC): e.g., Wikipedia,

WikiTravel, World66…
• Social Bookmarking and News Sites: e.g., Digg, Reddit, Diigo,

Delicious, Google Reader…
• Discussion Forums and Message Boards: e.g., Phorum, Yahoo

Groups, PHPbb…
• Social Events: e.g., Eventful, Meetup.
Blogs and microblogs will be regrouped in a same section, as well as

Social Bookmarking and Social News sites. A few examples for each
type of Social Media channel are shown through their logos.
26
1.5 Social Media Marketing: Factors influencing online marketing
Real Time Interaction
Social Media channels represent a wide interactive dialogue between

brands and their current and prospective customers. Through the
social media sites, consumers are able to leave feedbacks and share
their opinions, but they can also request help and support. The
communication is interactive and often fosters relationships between
companies and their customers. Marketers can have a direct
conversation with precisely the individuals who are purchasing their
products or services, or who are currently looking for what they have
to offer.
On the companies’ blogs, pages and profiles, customers can leave

feedbacks, expressing their true thoughts and feelings about a
company and its products and services. Thanks to this
communication, marketers get the opportunity to answer these
thoughts, but also to educate the customers. These opinions help
brands to improve their customers’ experience. Feedbacks may
include general opinions of the brand, experiences trying the products
and services, convenience with the buying process, and even the way
that consumers feel about the look and usability of the company’s
website. Through these feedbacks, marketers can find out if the
company is meeting or exceeding the expectations of its customers.
Of course, consumers can leave negative opinions. Negative word-of-

mouth can expand really quickly with the social media channels.
However, if the business has a real social media marketing strategy,
then it will see it as an ability to monitor public perception of its
27
brand, products and services in real time. If a negative opinion goes

viral through Social Media’s worldwide interconnected platforms,
marketers have the opportunity and responsibility to provide a quick
and effective response. The aim is to listen, discover and resolve
problems rapidly before they spin out of control.
Quality Customer Service
By offering a quick, efficient and personalised customer service,

consumers will appreciate it and feel different. Strengthening the
customer service online is also a way of presenting the brand,
products and services in a more human, interactive way. It offers a
human face in the form of a social spokesperson, with person-to-
person conversations which build trust in the company’s authenticity
and professionalism. Therefore, a personalised experience through the
solving of an issue will foster customer engagement, loyalty and trust.
Finally, this customer interaction on the social media platforms is also
indirectly reducing costs, as the online community might as well help
answering the problems, and the cost per interaction in customer
support is definitely cheaper through the social media sites than using
telephone or email support.
Benefits in PR and Human Relations
Another important benefit for businesses implementing a social

media strategy concerns the domains of Public Relations and Human
Resources. Public relations specialists were some of the first people to
embrace the power of social media. They use it every single day to get
the word out about clients, to communicate with customers and to
respond to questions or problems. Anybody can now connect with
people in their industry, impress them with their professionalism, and
28
gather information that can directly help them in their professional

career.
Using the social network LinkedIn, for example, is a valuable asset for
businesses aiming at building a professional network. Business-to-
business companies might easily find prospective customers, while
any type of business can use LinkedIn to look for employees, posting
job alerts and connecting with future potential employees. Other
examples of professional social networks are Video, Ryze,
Meettheboss or Focus.com. Social media supports the recruitment
system in many ways. It helps searching for new candidates, keeping
in contact with them, advertising specific jobs, advertising to build
company profiles, building talent pools, building employer brands,
graduate recruitments, but also providing an online application
process for selections. Therefore, the new term Social Recruiting has
been developed in order to define the process of recruiting candidates
through the use of social media platforms as promotional and
advertising channels by employers. Public relations and social media
are both about creating and fostering relationships. Professional
networking has been made exponentially easier with social media.
Nowadays networking represents the ability to tap into hundreds of
relevant connections with just the click of a button.
1.6 ACTIVITIES
1. Facebook is the most popular social media marketing networking

site – but in this chapter we have seen many other social
networking sites. Browse online and research two relatively
unknown sites similar to Facebook 
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————-
29
2. Browse the Internet and obtain more insight on social media

channels offering the opportunity to test the marketing campaigns
and gather feedbacks. 
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
1.7 SUMMARY
In this chapter, we have discussed about basics of social media. Social

networks are communities of people who typically share a common
behaviour, idea, interest or activity. A social network indicates a graph
of relationships within a group of individuals. Social networking sites
have increased in the last decade. The most popular social networks
include Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. They facilitate
communication by providing a variety of ways for users to interact
with each other like e-mail or instant message. Social Media
Marketing is marketing that focuses on people, not products. The
products can be presented by the company with as many qualitative
features and promotional tools as possible, but what really matters is
the comments and appreciations left by the customers. People provide
the content, and this is the reason why Social Media Marketing is so
scary and challenging for marketers. They do not control the
marketing content anymore. Negative word-of-mouth can spread
worldwide in a couple of minutes only. To make your social
marketing venture a success, you need sizzling content. Ideas, if they
need to be put across, must be wrapped in a package of infotainment.

Your content must have the power to cut through the layers of
cynicism in people today and make an impact. It helps to address
30
people who you know are sympathetic about the cause that you are
looking to uphold. You get that added advantage on social media
platforms where you know your target readers better.
Social media has been a buzz word from the last few years now in the
digital world. It has helped a number of online businesses to
constantly contact their users in a very effective way. In this age, if a
business is not using right marketing strategies or not changing
strategies, it can become extinct. So, it has become important to
embrace technology and enjoy the rewards. Social media marketing
services in India and the world over can be utilised to gain maximum
visibility, improved sales and better brand awareness. Companies
offering different types of digital services use a number of social
media marketing platforms to help businesses promote their business.
Some of these social media sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
We have discussed about benefits of social media, such as:
• Brand exposure and awareness

• Cost effective
• Increasing organisational visibility
• Targeted traffic
• Target specific information
The seven types of social media channels affecting businesses will be

the following:
• Social Networks: e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+…
• Blogs and Microblogs: e.g., WordPress Blogger, Twitter…  
31
• Content Communities or Media Sharing Sites (Video/Audio/

Photo/Presentations): e.g., Flickr, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo,
Picasa, Pinterest, Slideshare…
• Wikis or User Generated Content (UGC): e.g., Wikipedia,

WikiTravel, World66…
• Social Bookmarking and News Sites: e.g., Digg, Reddit, Diigo,

Delicious, Google Reader…
• Discussion Forums and Message Boards: e.g., Phorum, Yahoo

Groups, PHPbb…
• Social Events: e.g., Eventful, Meetup…
Social media channels represent a wide interactive dialogue between

brands and their current and prospective customers. Through the
social media sites, consumers are able to leave feedbacks and share
their opinions, but they can also request help and support. The
communication is interactive and often fosters relationships between
companies and their customers. Marketers can have a direct
conversation with precisely the individuals who are purchasing their
products or services, or who are currently looking for what they have
to offer.
Another important benefit for businesses implementing a social

media strategy concerns the domains of Public Relations and Human
Resources. Public relations specialists were some of the first people to
embrace the power of social media. They use it every single day to get
the word out about clients, to communicate with customers and to
respond to questions or problems. Anybody can now connect with
people in their industry, impress them with their professionalism, and
gather information that can directly help them in their professional
career.
32
1.8 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. Discuss in detail why the international marketers need to

recognise the power and critical nature of the conversations being
held by consumers using social media?
2. Describe why the effects of social media are really important?
3. Cite the reasons that social media platforms also raise awareness
for existing brands?
4. Explain in brief the effective monitoring of competitors.
5. Explain in brief the Fred Cavazza’s latest version of the Social Med
Landscape 2012.
6. Describe in detail the seven types of social media channels

affecting businesses.
7. Identify the factors that make communication an interactive

process by the use of social media.
8. What is the effect of Social Media Marketing in Quality Customer

Service?
9. Explain in what way social media supports the recruitment

system?
33
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Click on the links below to view additional reference material for this
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
Video Lecture - Part 1
34
BLENDING TRADITIONAL MARKETING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
Chapter 2
Blending Traditional Marketing with Social Media
Objectives
• After going through this chapter you will be able to:

• Understand the reasons behind moving to social media marketing
• Know about the five pillars of social media marketing
• Understand how to identify social media sites that appeal to your
target audience
• Describe the techniques to blend social media with traditional
marketing
Structure
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Reasons Behind Moving to Social Media Marketing
2.3 The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing
2.4 Identify Social Media Sites that Appeal to Your Target Audience
2.5 Scenarios: Special Blend of Social Media and Traditional
Marketing
2.6 Techniques to Blend Social Media with Traditional Marketing
2.7 Developing a Holistic Approach
2.8 Short Case Study
2.9 Activities
2.10 Summary
35
2.1 Introduction: Combining Social Media with Traditional

Advertising for better performance
Social media doesn’t have to mean writing a blog or creating a

widget. When a viewer repeats the tag line from a TV spot,
spontaneously sings a jingle they heard, tells a friend about their
experience with a certain brand or posts reviews online—they’re
engaging in a form of social media too. Whether a brand sets out to
create a social media campaign that starts people talking or
something else causes lots of people to begin chatting up the brand,
that public buzz, for better or worse, is social media.
Social Media cannot be Controlled
By integrating traditional advertising and marketing tactics where

you can control the message, with the influence and reach of social
media, marketers can guide the message instead of control it. Many
companies have shied away from social media marketing because
they’re concerned about losing control of the message and fear what
their brand message might become in the hands of the public.
Marketers remain in control of crafting the strategy and executing the
“official” version of the message; all of which sets the stage for
customers to base their opinions on opinions they may choose to
share.
!  
36
Defining what that brand experience ultimately means to the

customer is neither the job nor privilege of the marketer. It’s up to the
customers. The more the brand means to them, the more they connect
with it. That in turn determines their purchase decision, their loyalty,
and whether they feel strongly enough to advocate for the brand in
the future.
A lot of great ideas have given rise to innovative, effective, and

measurable social business programs. But these are still exceptions,
which is unfortunate as social technology is within the reach of nearly
everyone. The collaborative technologies that now define
contemporary marketplaces — technologies commonly called “social
media,” the “Social Web,” or “Web 2.0” — offer a viable approach to
driving changes in deeper business processes across a wide range of
applications. There is something here for most organisations,
something that extends very much beyond marketing and
communications.
When marketers control what is said about their product, as in the

case of an ad, people view it as biased and self-serving. When a third
party, like a customer writes an online review of a product, it’s
viewed as honest and credible, and that is the secret to the power of
social media. In a 2009 online survey by Forrester Research showed
that “people trusted the purchase advice of strangers online more
than TV or print ads.”
For a lot of organisations—including business, nonprofit and

governmental agencies—use of social media very often begins in
marketing, public communications, or a similar office or department
with a direct connection to customers and stakeholders. This makes
sense given that a typical driver for getting involved with social
media is a slew of negative comments, a need for “virality,” or a boost
37
to overall awareness in the marketplace and especially in the minds

and hearts of those customers increasingly out of reach of the
traditional media. In a word, many organisations are looking for
engagement, and they see social media as the way to get it.
Traditional Marketing Clarifies Social Media
While social media marketing can be great for spreading your

message, it has a significant shortfall: people don’t necessarily spread
the same message you would like them to. While its authentic and
honest, it may not be a message that fits your strategy and may even
be detrimental. Traditional marketing can help to create the
foundation of information and guide the brand message as it is
passed throughout the social community. By cross promoting the
contents of one marketing effort, for example, TV with another, like
social media you increase the “volume” of the message, focus the
accuracy and add frequency, thereby, maximising the effectiveness of
both efforts.
In a 2008 study by Yankelovich and Sequent Partners called “When

Advertising Works,” it was found that “ads that make an impression
in traditional media were more likely to stimulate word of mouth
than ads that make an impression in digital media. Social media
marketing — properly practiced — seeks to engage customers in the
online social locations where they naturally spend time. By
comparison, social business picks up on what they are talking about
and what they are interested in and connects this back into the
business where it can be processed and used to create the next round
of customer experiences and hence, the next round of conversations.
It’s important to understand the role of the customer — taken here to

include anyone “on the other side” of a business transaction: It might
38
be a retail consumer, a business customer, a donor for a nonprofit

organisation or a voter in an election. What’s common across all of
these archetypes — and what matters in the context of social business
— is that each of them has access to information, in addition to
whatever information you put into the marketplace, that can support
or refute the messages you’ve spent time and money creating.
Social Media Amplifies Traditional Marketing
Balancing the free-form messaging of social media with the control,

consistency and mass reach of traditional media can offer the best of
both worlds. Today, the focus needs to be on building an opt-in
audience in order to create community, foster loyalty and generate
conversations.
A great example of this is a recent promotion by Estée Lauder. They

took a free makeover promotion to an entirely new level when they
used social media to drive women to participate and later bring
awareness to this in-store event. In order to attract digitally savvy
women to the makeup counters at leading department stores, Estée
used social media and online PR to offer free makeovers and free
professional headshot. After each makeover, women would have a
glamour photo taken of them (including of course an Estée Lauder
logo in the background) and upload the image as their social profile
photo before ever leaving the counter. By uploading the glamorous
39
photo with the logo, the customer introduces her entire social
network to the brand, a personalised example of its benefits and
hopefully even spark a few conversations along the way.
2.2 Reasons behind moving to Social media marketing
Over 73% of small business owners are now using sites like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest to help grow their businesses. If you
are still standing on the social sidelines, there’s never been a better
time to get started, because it works. If you’re a business owner,
chances are you’ve already considered using social media to help get
the word out about your business. You’re not alone.
In a recent Survey, 95% of small business owners reported that not

only were they using Facebook to market their business, but 82% of
those people found it to be effective. Perhaps that’s why, in that same
survey, 81% of those currently using social media marketing to
connect with customers, members and prospects, said they expect to
increase their efforts in the coming year.
Consider an organisation like Freescale, a spin-off of Motorola.

Freescale uses YouTube for a variety of sanctioned purposes,
including as a place for current employees to publish videos about
their jobs as engineers: The purpose is the encouragement of
prospective employees — given the chance to see “inside Freescale”
— to more strongly consider working for Freescale. Or, look at an
organisation like Coca Cola: Coke is reducing its dependence on
branded microsite in favour of consumer-driven social sites like
Facebook for building connections with customers. Coke is also
directly tapping customer tastes through its Coca Cola Freestyle
vending machines that let consumers mix their own Coke flavours.
Comcast and may other firms now use Twitter as a customer-support
40
channel. The list of examples of the direct integration of collaborative

and shared publishing applications in business — beyond marketing
— is growing rapidly.
Here are 10 reasons why social media marketing could be right for
business:
• Social media does help to get the word out: First and foremost —
social media does in fact help to get the word out about business.
But even more important than the exposure it provides your
organisation is the opportunity it provides to grow the relationships
with that target audience. The Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and
LinkedIn connections are people who know your organisation,
have likely done business with you in the past, and will be most
likely to tell their friends about you. Social media allows you to
strengthen relationships with these connections through social
engagement. Thus, because that engagement is easily visible to the
connections of your current fans and followers, social media can
introduce your business to a whole new audience and enable you to
reach your next great customer.
• Social media is popular — really, really, popular: You don’t need

to be a dedicated reader of tech blogs or an expert in online
marketing to know that social media is really popular among
consumers. With over 1 billion people on Facebook, 200 million
people on Twitter, and 200 million more on LinkedIn — social
media will touch nearly every customer that walks through your
door. For most small businesses, Facebook is the jumping-off point
for getting started with social media marketing. With its extensive
reach and dynamic functionality — there are very few businesses
that couldn’t benefit from having a presence on Facebook. And
41
starting there will make it easier when you want to try something
new.
• Social media sites are free: Getting started on social media is

completely free. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all offer
free accounts to users and businesses and signing up will not
require anything more than an email address. Some sites—like
LinkedIn—do offer paid accounts with features that are targeted at
more advanced users, but for the purposes of getting started,
there’s no upfront cost for most of the social networks.
• Social media reaches all ages and demographics: Social media has
really broken down all of the age barriers that once accompanied
the way people thought about social media. In fact, according to a
2011 study conducted by IBM, Baby Boomers have demonstrated
the most growth on social media sites. In 2010, 72% were using
Facebook, Twitter, and other networks — up from 50% in 2009. So,
no matter how young or how old your target audience may be,
chances are most of them are already logging on and waiting for
you to get started.
• Social media users are active: One thing you have to know about
social media users is that when they say they are on social media,
they are really on social media. When it comes to Facebook, more
than half of its users log on to the network every single day and 60
per cent of those users say checking Facebook is one of the first
things they do every day. This level of activity isn’t unique to
Facebook either, today more than 400 million tweets are sent on
Twitter each day. While a customer may visit your store once a
week—they could see you on Facebook or Twitter every single day.
42
• Social media encourages two-way communication: There is no

marketing tool available to small businesses today that provides the
type of two-way communication that comes with using social
media. It has the power to take any of the feedback you may receive
from using a tool like email marketing and supercharge it — letting
customers share their thoughts, questions, and ideas quickly and
publicly without having to take the time to write an entire email.
And it allows you to respond just as fast, without having to pick up
the phone or worry the customer isn’t seeing your response.
• Social media is perfect for customer service: Providing stellar

customer service is likely already a top priority for your small
business. But along with the two-way communication that social
media provides, it also offers a unique opportunity to step up your
customer service game and provide instant gratification to your
target audience. This will allow you to showcase just how much
you care about providing a memorable experience and will ensure
that no customer inquiry goes unnoticed. And by monitoring social
media for customer feedback and offering a response, you can drive
real business results. According to a 2011 survey, 64% of
respondents said they would be more likely to shop with a business
after receiving a response via Twitter. Customer service through
social media is quickly becoming an expectation of consumers. If
customers are already searching for you on Facebook or Twitter and
not finding your business — you may already be missing
opportunities to win new customers
• Social media lets you share a lot of information about your

business: Social media sites are becoming the preferred places for
consumers who want to learn more about a business. That’s
because these sites allow businesses to offer the most up to date
information about anything from products, services, or upcoming
43
events. Also, much of your activity and profiles on social media

sites can be made “public,” meaning they can be indexed by search
engines — one more way to make sure your business or
organisation comes up as the answer when someone is searching
for a local solution to a problem.
• Social media can make a big difference for your email marketing:
Social media has completely changed the game when it comes to
how small businesses think of email marketing. Sharing your email
newsletter across your social networks can open your content up to
a whole new audience and finally generate the type of buzz you’ve
been looking for. Together, these two powerful tools have reshaped
the marketing landscape and have really levelled the playing field
for small businesses trying to better connect with current customers
and reach new audiences for their business
• Social media is everywhere: The benefit of the increased presence

of mobile activity in our daily lives is huge for small businesses.
Every major social network (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn,
etc.) offers free mobile apps that let business owner manage their
presence on-the-go. More importantly, the Smart applications let
customers connect to their favourite sites wherever they are. For a
site like Twitter, 60% of its entire user base is connected via their
smartphones, tablets, or other mobile devices. These users aren’t
just sharing updates from their own lives, they’re searching for
businesses, products, and services, and connecting with brands
through their social channels. If your business is running late when
it comes to making your content “mobile-friendly,” social media
can be an easy and cost-effective first step to marketing in the
digital age. Plus, it can improve the chances of your business
getting found when someone is searching for a place to eat or a
product to buy, while on-the-go.
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2.3 The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing
Any and all forms of Social Media Marketing tactics fall under at least
one of these five forms of action. Often the same channel will
incorporate two or more of these:
• Declaration of Identity
• Identity through Association
• User-initiated Conversation
• Provider-initiated Conversation
• In-person Interaction
1. Identity-based Interaction is your declaration of your value, who

you are, and where you can be found. Your customer happens
upon your online identity that you, as a provider, define and
declare. This is anything from your About Us pages on your blog
or website, to your MySpace profile, to your Twitter profile. Here,
there is very little interaction outside of your own declaration, but
this becomes critical in defining how you can benefit your
marketplace.
45
There has been a recent outcrop of websites created purely for this
function and behave like an expanded business card. Most also
include the opportunity to link to your other forms of presence online,
bringing together your presence in one place…well, kind-of. They
include:
• Naymz
• Ziki
• ClaimID
• SuprGlu
• LinkedIn
2. Association-based Interaction is the customers’ opportunity to

associate themselves with the customers and vice versa. Most
obviously, this is accomplished through things like becoming
“Friends” on MySpace, you and your customers’ BlogRoll, or through
their social bookmarking. This is your customer wearing your
company’s logo proudly.
The most explicit form of allowing for this ability is through social
bookmarking sites. I say this, and not social networking sites, because
this is the sole function of these sites. Make it easy for your customers
to bookmark your site, blog posts, etc., with their favourite tool.
• del.icio.us
• Furl
• blummy
• Magnolia
• StumbleUpon
• BlinkList
46
3. User-initiated Conversation is your users’ opportunity to create

their own declarations or questions, and your opportunity to respond.
This is your opportunity to be there and cater to them. Here, you
serve your customers. Perhaps the most cut-and-dry examples of this
lie in message boards, forums and “groups” sites such as Google
Groups, Yahoo! Groups, community sites, etc. So, how do you find
these conversations?
In order to get directly involved with your customers, the most well
known example of this is “GoogleGuy” on the Webmaster World
forums, is through users’ forums, and sites such as:
• Yahoo Groups
• Google Groups
• AOL Groups
47
• MSN Groups
• Topica email Lists
• Kaboodle Groups
• Eurekster
• tribe.net
• Ning
4. Provider-initiated Conversation is your chance to find out what

your customers think, feel, love and hate about your product. Ask
them. Challenge them. Present yourself to them, but do so
respectfully. As much as it’s an opportunity for them to tell you what
they love and hate about your product, it’s also their choice whether
to do so or not. Be kind, respectful and appreciate their time.
Market research has always been fundamental to marketing success.

The social web makes it much easier to find out what people are
saying about you, who you should be talking to, what they are
interested in, and what you should be talking to them about.
Tap into the online conversations to find out:
• Who is talking about you – find your “kind”
• What they are saying about you, your competitors, and your
industry in general
• Is it positive or negative
• Where are the conversations taking place
• What communities talk about you
48
• What are your competitors doing in social media and what’s the
buzz about them
• What content resonates with your audience
• Are there subjects of interest you could provide content for
• What social sites have the most conversation
• Who are the “fire-starters” you need to connect with
• Who are the influencers in these blogs or communities
• Where are the opportunities and threats
Once you have this information, you can allocate your resources
wisely. You’ll know where to start, and what social sites you should
be concentrating on. When you know the lay of the land, it’s much
easier to plot a path to your destination. A social media marketing
strategy is your roadmap.
Social networking strategies for connecting with your customers can

certainly be complex, tricky and cumbersome, so I’ll be writing up
strategies in the very near future to hopefully assist on those fronts. In
the meantime, find your customers and interact with them here:
• Myspace
• Bebo
• Friendster
• Consummating
49
5. In-person Interaction is the pinnacle form of interaction with your

customers. You’re interacting with them online, why not in person?
Does it get better than that? This is where relationships are built and
authentic conversation is had with so much more input, feedback,
collaboration and communication. Organisations can never have the
quality of a conversation online as much as a face-to-face
conversation.
It is advisable to meet customers and let them interact with other

customers. Build your community. Go to conferences…better yet,
organise your own gatherings.
To help this along, coordinating, managing attendee status, etc., there

have been several sites that can help in either finding local events or
coordinating your own:
• Meetup
• BarCamp
• Evite
• Upcoming
• Eventful
Final Thoughts
One thing about social media marketing: It’s complicated for two
reasons: no one has created a structure to work from, and there’s so
much overlap in functionality of different sites, that it can be quite
confusing as to a site’s single purpose because…well…there usually
isn’t a single purpose. Don’t let this hold you back. Get out there.
Spend time with these sites. Sign up, Use them, meet your customers,
talk to your customers, and cherish them.
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2.4 Identify social media sites that appeal to your target audience
With so many social media sites available for you to market to your
target audience, it can be difficult to know where to start. To make it
even more overwhelming, there seems to be new social networks
popping up everyday. It almost seems that if you’re not a social media
expert, you could be missing out on key marketing channels to reach
your target audience.
There are millions of online conversations daily. Once you have

collected the data, you can analyse the mentions of your brand, find
out what your share of voice is in a particular conversation, get the
ratio of positive to negative mentions, discover who talks about you
and on what platform, find fans and detractors, and identify threats
and opportunities. “Share of Voice” is defined as the percentage of the
mentions that are about your brand/company/organisation in the
particular niche or market you’re active in. Do people use a generic
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description of what you do, or do they talk about your products or

services specifically?
To aid you in your social media marketing efforts, Media Bistro an

online analytics company recently shared a helpful info graphic that
provides a detailed breakdown of user demographics on various
social networking sites. Check out some of these statistics below to
see which social networking sites you need to be active on to stay in
front of your target audience:
Facebook:
• According to updated information from the Pew Research Center,

67 per cent of Internet users are active on Facebook.
• This social networking site particularly appeals to women between

the ages of 18 and 29.
• Facebook has a higher percentage of active users in the 30 to 49, 50

to 64, and over 65 age brackets than any other social networking
site.
Twitter:

16 per cent of Internet users are active on Twitter (which has nearly
doubled since 2010).
• City dwellers are much more likely to be active on Twitter than the
rural population.
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• Twitter appeals most to the under 50 demographic, and most

specifically the 18 to 29 age bracket.
Pinterest:

15 per cent of Internet users are active on Pinterest.
• Women are 5 times more likely to be active on Pinterest than men.
Instagram:

13 per cent of all Internet users are active on Instagram.
• More women than men use Instagram.
• The majority of Instagram users are between the ages of 18 and 29.
2.5 Scenarios: Special blend of social media and traditional

marketing
Blending social media with your traditional marketing practices is

highly effective as well. Your potential customers are bombarded
with marketing in virtually all aspects of their life – it is important
that your business is noticed as a great choice when that prospect is
ready to make a decision.
Marketing encompasses multitudes of strategies and tactics. Putting

the right combination together requires careful consideration and
53
evaluation of your business goals to make sure the appropriate

marketing tools are utilised.
Here are a few scenarios to consider when looking for that special
blend of social media and traditional marketing:
• New website – Announce your new website through Facebook,

Twitter and also through a post card mailer to increase your website
traffic.
• Photography – The use of images is a long standing marketing

practice. By leveraging images in social media and creating
multimedia posts your photography investment can go much
further.
• Article “teaser” – Publish a brief article in your local newspaper or

trade magazine that discusses a particular problem that your
business can address. But do not give away “all” of the clues or
54
answers. Instead refer them to your social media accounts for more
information.
• Analytics and tradition – Social media analytics can tell you what
demographics are attracted to your brand. From there you can
tailor your print, radio and television ads to that audience.
• Contests and sweepstakes – A very effective blend of marketing is

to launch a contest on your social media site such as Facebook, and
reference that contest in all of your materials. Include in your sales
flyers, on your voice mail, with your customer service reps, and in
your email newsletters.
• Surveys – Leverage social media to get existing customer feedback

as well as acquire information about prospective customers. Also
include an offer to take the social media survey on your store
receipts or in your email newsletters.
Why is the combination of social media and traditional marketing so

effective? There are two primary reasons:
• Timing is everything and blending the methods increases your

likelihood of being available at the right time and place for your
target market.
• Ease of use – Not everyone reads everything that is on printed

paper, and many do not want to take the time to fill out an info card
then mail it.If they glance at the card, and then happen upon your
business through social media, you can have them fill out the form
online, which makes it easier for you as well as your target
customers.
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The right blend of traditional marketing with a social media approach

gives your business a delicious boost that will bring your target
audience to your door.
2.6 Techniques to blend social media with traditional marketing
Successfully marketing a small business today takes a multi pronged

approach. The latest studies show that most small business owners
still rely on traditional channels to produce effective, reliable results.
But other marketing methods – and social media marketing in
particular – are growing rapidly. If blended properly with traditional
ads, the combined effort can supercharge your sales.
It’s not a contest between different ways to market. You don’t have to
choose one or the other. Today’s customers cross easily between
online and offline worlds. Your goal is to reach them and reinforce
your message in both places, giving you greater control over your
message. How can you effectively divide your time and resources so
that you participate in the places that make the most sense for your
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business? Part of your research – listening to what’s being said online

– includes who is talking about you and where the conversations are
taking place.
It’s also important to blend channels because each one plays a

different role in influencing how customers discover you and make
their purchase decisions. For example, a print ad might stimulate a
customer to want to learn more about what you offer, causing them to
search social media for more information. The number of influencers
is growing as more and more people publish content online. It’s no
longer about how many people did we reach, it’s have we reached the
right people who want to engage and communicate with us.
This means that large networks are not always the best place to
concentrate on. There are many small social networks built around a
group that is passionate about a subject. Find the ones that are
relevant to your company or organisation.
Here are seven ways to blend social media with traditional marketing:
• Make print a social driver. If you are like many other small
businesses and your Facebook page is becoming your main online
hub, print and other traditional marketing tools can be used to help
drive people to your page. Promote your Facebook address on
counter cards, posters, invoices, receipts, brochures, napkins and
menus. Post your Twitter address in the window. Put your social
media listings on everything from cups to coupons.
• Showcase social mentions in print. Use your print ads to showcase

what others are saying about your business, products or services
through Facebook, review sites, Twitter or elsewhere. This helps
57
amplify the buzz about your business and can generate (or
reinforce) all-important word-of-mouth.
• Capture the cross-promotional power of QR codes. These handy

devices are an ideal tool for integrating print ads with your digital
presence. The website DexSocial.com has helpful articles on QR
code basics for small business.
• Create an offline promotion with an online benefit. For example, a

cosmetics store can offer a free makeover along with a photo of the
customer (with your brand or logo in the background) that the
customer and you can use on Facebook or other social media sites.
A photography business might do something similar.
• Build engagement and lists with email signup sheets or opt-in

cards.Customers are sometimes reluctant to provide an email
address, so this works best if combined with a promotion or when
they are enjoying a product or service you’ve just provided.
Remember that most customers – even your most loyal – will not
join your social media circle on their own. They need to be asked or
nudged by you. You can also use print to promote rewards for
customers who take certain actions online – such as liking you on
Facebook or sharing your posted content with others.
• Get everyone in your business involved. Every employee should

be trained to inform customers of your social media presence and
to recommend they visit you on Facebook. Think of it as pure one-
on-one offline marketing.
• Cross-sell continuously online and offline. Each time you use a

marketing channel, mention the other channels you are using and
what you are doing there. For example, your emails, direct mail
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promotions and yellow pages ads should all mention how to find
you on social media. On the flip side, your Facebook page and
Twitter tweets can tell people to be on the lookout for a special offer
that’s coming through another channel.
2.7 Developing a holistic approach
Social Networks foster collaboration, can replace intranets and

corporate directories, and can promote non-email conversation
channel, creating thus, a forum where conversation flourishes based
in part ,on experiences with the products and services that businesses
sell. Also, they amass like-minded people around shared interests
with little external force, no organisational center, and a group sense
of what is important and what comes next. Online communities
spread globally, while managing to retain regional culture and
behaviours. Social Networks contain lots of information about
prospective new hires, customers and competitors. Actually, they are
a valuable source of prospecting and lead-generation information for
sales and marketing. They can be whether personal-oriented, like
Facebook and Google+, or professionally-oriented, like LinkedIn.
Social Media Marketing is not always easy, quick or cheap. Social

media marketing involves research, strategy, implementation, team’s
implication, networking, conversing and measuring. For any type of
59
business, there exist at least one or several appropriated social media

channels to use. In general, social media networks and blogs are the
social media channels the most effective at generating real customers.
Many different types of social media channels exist. Each of them has
its own characteristics, its own advantages and disadvantages, and its
own powerful results for businesses. Marketers have to intelligently
utilise each type of social media channels: the Social Networks, the
Blogs and Micro blogs, the Media Sharing platforms, the Wikis, the
Social Bookmarking Sites, the Forums, and finally, the Social Events to
create marketing opportunities.
2.8 Short Case study: Genex Logistics
Overview
Genex offers a wide range of services likes International Freight

Management, Freight Forwarding, Contract Logistics, 3PL, 4PL,
Warehousing and Distribution, Project Logistics. Genex logistics has a
pan-India presence and has been at the forefront, setting benchmarks
for supply chain and logistics industry.
Objectives:
• To create awareness about Genex in international markets,which

would help us generate leads in near and long-term
• To remain connected with our employees, close stakeholders and

other distant stakeholders in the country
• To exhibit our thought leadership in the supply chain and logistics

management domain.
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How Turning Trends Helped Genex Logistics?
Facebook page was created to increase awareness about the brand to

national audience. Secondly, it has been a relevant platform to remain
connected with our employees who work from across the country.
Informative content in the form of images, videos, blogposts are
shared.
Twitter handle is used as an information aggregator and disseminator

of informative content and latest happenings in supply chain and
logistics industry on an international scale.
Slide share channel is used to share knowledge, i.e., insights from

brand’s projects in the form of case studies that would be helpful for
our stakeholders and supply chain community at large. Also, some
informative presentations are prepared and shared. As and when this
case study is been written the total views on this channel has been in
excess of 10,000.
Results:
• 500 followers on Twitter and growing steadily.
• More than 10,000 views on Slideshare and expected to increase fast

as more case studies are to be uploaded soon.
• Substantial number of leads from international markets through

Twitter.
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2.9 Activities
1. Browse online and research the difference between social

marketing and social media marketing. Research and note
down the five most important differences between them?
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
2. Browse the Internet and enlist and obtain more insight on the
recent outcrop of websites created purely for the function of
Identity-based Interaction and behave like an expanded business
card. 
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
2.10 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about blending traditional

marketing with social media. By integrating traditional advertising
and marketing tactics where you can control the message, with the
influence and reach of Social Media, marketers can guide the message
instead of control it. Many companies have shied away from social
media marketing because they’re concerned about losing control of
the message and fear what their brand message might become in the
hands of the public. Marketers remain in control of crafting the
strategy and executing the “official” version of the message; all of
which sets the stage for customers to base their opinions on opinions
they may choose to share.
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While social media marketing can be great for spreading your

message, it has a significant shortfall: people don’t necessarily spread
the same message you would like them to. While its authentic and
honest, it may not be a message that fits your strategy and may even
be detrimental. Traditional marketing can help to create the
foundation of information and guide the brand message as it is
passed throughout the social community. By cross promoting the
contents of one marketing effort, for example TV with another like
social media you increase the “volume” of the message, focus the
accuracy and add frequency, thereby, maximising the effectiveness of
both efforts.
Balancing the free-form messaging of social media with the control,

consistency and mass reach of traditional media can offer the best of
both worlds. Today, the focus needs to be on building an opt-in
audience in order to create community, foster loyalty and generate
conversations.
Over 73% of small business owners are now using sites like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest to help grow their businesses. If you
are still standing on the social sidelines, there’s never been a better
time to get started, because it works. If you’re a business owner,
chances are you’ve already considered using social media to help get
the word out about your business. In a recent Survey, 95% of small
business owners reported that not only were they using Facebook to
market their business, but 82% of those people found it to be effective.
Perhaps that’s why, in that same survey, 81% of those currently using
social media marketing to connect with customers, members, and
prospects, said they expect to increase their efforts in the coming year.
Some of the reasons why social media marketing could be right for
business are as below:
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• Social media does help get the word out

• Social media sites are free
• Social media users are active
• Social media is perfect for customer service
• Social media can make a big difference for your email
marketing
We have also discussed about five pillars of social media marketing.

Any and all forms of Social Media Marketing tactics fall under at least
one of these five forms of action.
• Declaration of Identity
• Identity through Association
• User-initiated Conversation
• Provider-initiated Conversation
• In-person Interaction
With so many social media sites available for you to market to your
target audience, it can be difficult to know where to start. To make it
even more overwhelming, there seem to be new social networks
popping up everyday. It almost seems that if you’re not a social media
expert, you could be missing out on key marketing channels to reach
your target audience. Blending social media with your traditional
marketing practices is highly effective as well. Your potential
customers are bombarded with marketing in virtually all aspects of
their life – it is important that your business is noticed as a great
choice when that prospect is ready to make a decision. Marketing
encompasses multitudes of strategies and tactics. Putting the right
combination together requires careful consideration and evaluation of
your business goals to make sure the appropriate marketing tools are
utilised.
64
Successfully marketing a small business today takes a multi pronged

approach. The latest studies show that most small business owners
still rely on traditional channels to produce effective, reliable results.
But other marketing methods – and social media marketing in
particular – are growing rapidly. If blended properly with traditional
ads, the combined effort can supercharge your sales.
Seven ways to blend social media with traditional marketing are:
• Make print a social driver

• Showcase social mentions in print
• Capture the cross-promotional power of QR codes
• Create an offline promotion with an online benefit
• Build engagement and lists with email signup sheets or opt-in cards
• Get everyone in your business involved
• Cross-sell continuously online and offline
Social Media Marketing is not always easy, quick or cheap. Social

media marketing involves research, strategy, implementation, team’s
implication, networking, conversing and measuring. For any type of
business, there exist at least one or several appropriated social media
channels to use. In general, social media networks and blogs are the
social media channels the most effective at generating real customers.
Many different types of Social media channels exist. Each of them has
its own characteristics, its own advantages and disadvantages, and its
own powerful results for businesses. Marketers have to intelligently
utilise each type of social media channels: the Social Networks, the
Blogs and Micro blogs, the Media Sharing platforms, the Wikis, the
Social Bookmarking Sites, the Forums, and finally, the Social Events to
create marketing opportunities.
65
2.11 Self assessment questions
1. Explain why the Social Media Marketing is marketing that

focuses on people, not products?
2. Social Media Marketing uses what means to achieve

conventional goals?
3. From the context of Social Media Marketing why is it

important to understand the role of the customer?
4. Explain in brief the manner of the social networking

strategies for connecting with the customers.
5. Enlist and discuss any three scenarios to consider when

looking for that special blend of social media and
traditional marketing?
6. From the context of Social Media Marketing why is it

important to cross-sell continuously online and offline?
7. Identify why it’s also important to blend channels when

marketing on social media?
8. What is the effect of Social Networks in fostering

collaboration?
9. Explain why Social Media Marketing is not always easy,

quick or cheap?
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
67
DEVELOPING STRATEGIES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Chapter 3
Developing Strategies for Social Media Marketing
Objectives
After going through this chapter, you will be able to:
• identify and overcome challenges associated with a social media

marketing strategy
• understand the issues in implementation of social media marketing
strategy
• understand the B2B and B2C marketing strategies on social media
• understand the key steps to successful social media strategy
Structure:
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Identifying Challenges Associated with a Social Media
Marketing Strategy
3.3 Overcoming Challenges Associated with a Social Media
Marketing Strategy
3.4 Issues in Implementation of Social Media Marketing
Strategy
3.5 B2B Marketing Strategies on Social Media

3.6 B2C Marketing Strategies on Social Media
3.7 Key Steps to Successful Social Media Strategy
3.8 Integrating Social Media Strategies
3.9 Monitoring Ongoing Strategy
3.10 Limitations and Risks of Social Media Marketing
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3.12 Activities
3.13 Summary
3.1 Introduction
Social media marketing success doesn’t take place over night. It’s a
cumulative process that produces success with persistent and
consistent execution. The first step in social media marketing is to
develop a strategy that defines the target audience and how they can
be reached. Once a social media marketing strategy has been
developed, the success of your efforts is dependent on your execution.
Over the decade, there has been a fundamental shift in how people
access information and news. Companies traditionally used the media
to get their messages out to their audiences via marketing, advertising
or public relations. Marketing and advertising push a message out to
the masses. Companies use public relations to supply news to the
media and expert sources to provide stories about their industry. The
goal is to get media mentions of their company, products, or services
as a primary strategy.
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These methods are a one-way communication, where a company

delivers a message through the media, but individuals have no real
way of responding. Today, this one-to-many mass media model has
given way to the social web and a new way of communicating with
people has emerged. Since people, tired of receiving one-way
communications, are looking more and more for news and
information in places other than the media. This trend is likely to
accelerate — Forrester Research predicts that by 2012, half of all US
newspapers will have ceased production. People no longer rely on the
media. New tools enable them to network, read blogs, post comments
and reviews, actively gather news and information, and share this
with others.
Here are some techniques for executing of social media marketing

strategies:
1. Spend time everyday executing your social media strategy: If

you’re not investing, at a minimum, the equivalent of 25% of a
full-time employee daily to execute your social media marketing
strategy, you likely will not get the results you need and expect.
Your social media manager should be measuring, communicating,
posting, responding and analysing your social media marketing
everyday.
2. Develop a 3-month editorial calendar: Now that you know who

you want to reach and where you plan to find them, you need to
develop an editorial calendar that identifies the content and
message you want to communicate over a 3-month period. Your
social media editorial calendar should be developed hand-in-hand
with your content calendar, promoting the blog posts and content
offers that you will be publishing. While you have a 3-month
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editorial calendar, it's important to execute it daily so that your

communications are timely and reflect the current news.
3. Use the 10:4:1 Rule: Your audience will quickly tune you out if all
you talk about is yourself. While it’s entirely appropriate to share
your blog posts and landing pages on social media, you need to be
helpful above all else. This can be done by posting interesting
content from other sources (trade journals, business press, etc.)
that your ideal customers would find valuable. 
 
A formula has been developed to optimise the social media
posting called the 10:4:1 rule. For every fifteen social media posts,
at least one should be a link to one of your landing pages, four
should be links to your blog posts and ten should be helpful
content from other sources. This is a good mix of content that lets
you sell and promote your solution without coming off like a used
car salesmen.
4. Involve your sales team in your social media marketing: While

focused on optimising the company’s social media marketing
channels, have the sales and management team amplify marketing
efforts with their personal accounts. For example, if you’re
publishing a new article on your company blog, encourage your
sales team to share it on their personal LinkedIn accounts. It’s a
win-win proposition – they’re trying to sell and the content you’re
producing should help them generate leads and develop a
reputation for thought leadership.
5. Make it easy to share your content and follow your company on

social media: Social media is all about sharing. Make sure to have
"follow" buttons on the website, email signatures and marketing
collateral. Make sure to include “share” buttons on all forms of
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email marketing, landing pages and blog articles. Most email

marketing and Internet marketing software products have share
and follow modules that make it easy for you to include them.
Take advantage of them!
6. Follow your customers and key prospects on social media and

monitor regularly: What better way to learn what’s important to
your prospects and customers than to see what they say on social
media? Follow your customers on their social media networks and
see what they have to say. This will give your insight into what’s
important for them in running their business. The new signal tools
from HubSpot, which gives sales professionals insight into their
top prospects, can be used for this purpose.
7. Review your analytics monthly and adjust tactics as necessary:

Look at your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) every month to
see what’s working well and what isn’t. Some of the KPIs to
monitor include
• leads generated by social media network

• customers produced by social media network
• new followers/likes by social media network
• social media mentions
• shares/retweets by social media network
• blog posts published and views/comments/shares by blog
article
8. People are engaging in conversations: Conversation is the new

marketing strategy: Tapping into social conversations, shows
where your audience is spending time online, and what subjects
and issues are of interest to them. As of 2010, over 80% of US
companies have started using some form of social media
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marketing, and their biggest barrier to success in this new medium

is a lack of knowledge. To reach your public successfully, you need
to move your marketing activity from the traditional “push”
method, where you broadcast your messages to thousands via the
media, to a “pull” strategy, where you make it easy for people to
find your information, whenever and wherever they want it. Start
telling your stories directly, and do it in a way that sparks
conversations.
3.2 Identifying challenges associated with a social media

marketing strategy
Social media is no longer “new media” and social media marketing is

now simply “marketing”. Promoting a business via social media has
become mainstream today. Not having a social media presence is
what sets your business apart from the rest, and not in a good way.
Millions of people check into social media accounts on a daily basis
sometimes on an hourly basis. It’s where the people are and it’s where
the customers are in order to capture their attention. While it may be
easy to use social media for personal use, there are challenges
involved when it comes to using it for business.
If you ask any business owner about social media, they will
either tell you that it is
• the best tool out there for marketing your business or

• the scariest venture they’ve ever had to undertake.
There is no question that social media marketing can be challenging.

This is especially true when you don’t prepare yourself ahead of time
for the work that goes into launching a successful social media
strategy.
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Many business owners will tell you that using social networks to
market their business has been:
• Overwhelming
• Fickle
• Immeasurable
• Cut-throat
• Time consuming
We will take a look at each of these obstacles that business owners

face when they start out on a social media strategy and how you can
overcome them to get the results you want.
1. Social Media is too overwhelming: It is true that social networks

are growing daily. This new media can be a little intimidating,
especially if you’ve never been on a social network before in your
non-work life. The key to overcoming this overwhelming obstacle
is to start out slow. Don’t be afraid to wade in there and splash
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around in a few of the larger social networks like Facebook and

Twitter. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and can handle the
basics of social networking, then you can gradually add other
networks to your social media marketing arsenal.
2. Social Media is too fickle: This is very true. A social network that
is today’s darling can easily be tomorrow’s joke. Look at MySpace
and Orkut: A few years ago, everyone wanted to be a part of them
and then Facebook made them obsolete. Today, you will be hard-
pressed to find someone who is still using MySpace or Orkut.
Right now, Facebook is on top, but this is a fact that can easily
change a few years down the road. You have to be prepared for
these changes. To counteract this fickleness in social networking,
focus on creating a blog that your fans and followers can migrate
to. By turning it into a social hub, you don’t have to be too
concerned about the ups and downs of other sites.
3. Social Media results are immeasurable: If you spend all of your

time trying to determine the ‘Return On Investment’ (ROI) from
all of the effort you are putting into your social networking
strategy, then you are going to have a long and miserable time.
Instead, turn your attention to key performance indicators (KPI),
like how many new fans you have on each site, how many more
sales you have had since you started on social media, etc.
4. Social Media is a cut-throat world: This can be true. Businesses of

all sizes and industries have made their marks on social media.
The goal is to get yourself out there and build an online presence.
Even if you have a small local business, you can benefit from using
social networking to increase business. The first thing most people
do when they want to find out about a business is look it up
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online. By having a strong presence out there, you’re giving

yourself a lot of free advertising.
5. Social Media is too much time consuming: This is true only if

you don’t utilise the tools that are available to you. Social
networking can be very monotonous work when you spend hours
posting and tweeting. Thankfully, there have been a lot of
developments in creating tools that can help automate your social
networking. When you take a look around, you will find tools for
scheduling posts and tweets, scheduling newsletters, analytics and
brand monitoring. The tools are out there, you just have to know
where to find them. When you embark on a social networking
strategy to market your business, it’s important to have a clear
idea of your target audience. With so many distractions out there
on social networks, it is easy to get off track. When you have your
target lined up, though, it makes it easier to focus on what you
need to do.
6. Non-intuitive Social Media applications: When a tool is not

intuitive, it is not likely to be used. Salespeople do not have time
to read through manuals, attend training, or call a help desk. If it
takes more than a few seconds to enter data, a salesperson will
find little incentive to spend precious time tracking his or her
activities. Lower adoption results in less information in an
organisation’s CRM repository, consequently giving management
less insight into how the business is doing and what potential
opportunities and problems to pursue and address. As a result, the
cost of sales for an organisation is rising while sales effectiveness is
decreasing.
Traditional CRM is very good at managing transactional activities and

providing management insight into what is happening in the business
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– for example, what regions are underperforming, at what sales stage

deals are languishing, and what the health of the sales pipeline is. But
these features require salespeople to enter data without reaping any
direct reward. What sales representatives do use is email to gather
and share information.
While effective for one-on-one communications, email does not

leverage the collective intelligence or memory of a group to foster
ongoing collaboration or innovation. Sales representatives today do
not benefit from what other salespeople sold unless they know them
personally.
7. Gaps exist between what applications deliver vs. what

salespeople need: Very few, if any, tools exist to make an
individual salesperson more effective in their daily lives. CRM
takes a “top-down” approach to automate business processes,
collect information, and analyse data. Rather than conforming to
the way a sales representative works, the application makes the
sales representative change his or her activities to match the way
the application works.
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8. Selling has become harder: Companies are finding it more

expensive to reach prospects, effectively pursue deals, and close
business. Warm, well-qualified leads are difficult to unearth, and
salespeople are spending more time chasing any lead they can get
to make quota.
3.3 Overcoming challenges associated with a social media

marketing strategy
Social media marketing has probably never been more challenging for
marketers. Here’s why:
• Social marketers today have to ensure that their product or

company is present on multiple popular social platforms (which
changes ever so often).
• They have to keep their message consistent across platforms, while
simultaneously finding unique and personal ways to converse with
their global audience, who are increasingly more demanding and
complicated.
• They have to leverage social media such that it helps them gain an
edge over their competitors.
• They have to ensure that security and privacy issues remain their
highest priority.
• They find it really hard to accurately measure the ROI for social
media marketing.
Here are some key pointers to help marketers overcome the

challenges of using social media in today’s shifting business
environment:
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1. Develop a solid social media strategy, with well-defined and

realistic goals that are aligned to your business objectives. The
plan must clearly map out which social platforms you will target
to help you reach your end goal. Focus on those that your
audience frequent. It must also outline the analytics tools you will
use to gain the social insights you need to refine your strategy as
needed.
2. The importance of creating relevant and engaging content can

never be emphasised enough. This is the key to retaining your
audience on social media and widening your reach. Recognise that
you’re marketing to multiple demographics. Develop and
distribute content that addresses the individual needs of your
customers. Make it worth their while to hang out with you.
3. Try and involve your top management. They make ideal

spokespeople as they are respected leaders in the industry and are
considered as experts. However as with anybody who uses social
media, they too need to be educated about the proper use, timing
and types of messages.
4. Have a clear policy on how to address negative comments or

complaints on your social platforms. It’s important to respond
quickly. As embarrassing as it is, address the issue promptly and
honestly. Customers will appreciate your efforts and see you as a
company that accepts constructive criticism, cares and values
customer opinion and is willing to take steps to improve.
5. Though you need to dedicate time consistently to social media, it

is easy to get distracted and very often you will find yourself
spending too much time on it. Set a timer for the time you spend
on social platforms. This keeps you focused on the task at hand.
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6. Work together with your SEO team to drive more traffic to your
website. Build your credibility. This will not only help you make
and strengthen social partnerships and alliances with others in the
industry, but it will also prompt your audience to promote your
product and company. Nothing like word of mouth to spread the
word.
7. Make the audience’s experience on your social platforms as

interactive as possible. Images and photos will get you the most
likes, shares and comments, so use them as much as possible.
8. Develop and adhere to a sound and regularly updated set of best

practices with regard to protecting social media generated
information.Familiarise yourself with regulations that govern your
company and industry.
9. Finally measure your social media marketing success more by the

level of engagement of your audience, your reach and your
conversions and not so much by the number of fans or followers
you have.
3.4 Issues in implementation of social media marketing

strategy
The value of social business products and practices is becoming better

recognised by organisations, but many face cultural and
organisational issues that limit their ability to take advantage of those
new capabilities. That's the word from a new IBM Institute for
Business Value study, "The Business of Social Business," based on
responses from more than 1,100 individuals and interviews with more
than two dozen executives.
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According to survey respondents, social business tools are used for

promoting events/marketing campaigns (71%), generating sales leads
and revenue (51%), product and services support (46%) and direct
sales (35%). Respondents said they plan to increase their use of social
business in all of these areas in the next two years, with the most
significant jumps coming in the areas of lead and revenue generation.
Respondents also said that they plan to increase the application of
social business technologies and approaches into the day to day
activities of their workforces, as well as into collaboration with
outside customers, vendors and partners.
But all of this doesn't just happen by virtue of establishing presence

on external social networks or even by implementing an internal
social business platform, the respondents noted. According to the
report, organisations that have experienced the most success in social
business approaches have made fundamental changes in the way
employees work. Three key issues must be addressed, based on
interviews and survey responses.
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Companies need to consider how to incorporate social metrics into

their traditional enterprises and processes. IBM's research found that
only about 20% of organisations can identify the kinds of key
performance indicators that will help them determine the value of
social business efforts. The research also found that ROI in social
business circles might look different than traditional ROI measures.
Many of the companies interviewed did, at some level, try to quantify

their results, but also recognised that trying to justify social
approaches based solely on cost savings was not sufficient,” stated the
report. “Rather, they either undertook pilot projects to demonstrate
the hard and soft benefits of social projects and/or ran trials that
compared the performance of individuals or groups using social tools
against those that did not. Companies need to understand and
manage the risks associated with social business. Survey respondents
and executives interviewed by IBM noted a number of security
concerns with social business tools. These included attacks on their
brands, legal issues, data security privacy and the unintended
disclosure of company information. About a quarter of respondents
said their companies have processes in place to address these
concerns; about one-third said such efforts are under way; and one-
half said they do not have effective processes for dealing with these
issues in place.
Successful companies identify potential exposures, proactively

involve the right experts and develop risk management plans,
according to the IBM report. They think through their problems,
understand regulatory drivers and their impact on the organisation
and ask questions about why a behaviour is a risk and how to
mitigate it. But, most important, they engage the key functional
experts before problems occur, from areas such as HR, legal, IT,
communications, finance and risk.
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Change management is a critical requirement for embedding

successful social business practices in an organisation. To get all
stakeholders on board, the report suggests, the following activities are
the key to get people involved in using the tools, apply traditional
change management to support transitions and incorporate social
approaches to supporting the change. The report recommends a
number of activities for putting these actions into practice, including
training and creating opportunities to use social tools, publicly
applauding social successes, appointing social business champions/
experts, and providing support for employees, partners and
customers.
Some of the key issues are as provided below:
Lack of customisation
Companies around the globe can win on the social web by developing
a strategy, experiment and iterate. It is essential to forge relationships
with others and to put others in the spotlight. By personalising and
customising products and solutions on the social networking websites
even if you get lost, you can always get help. Use real team members
in your social media efforts. Don’t use some faceless person behind
“Brand X”. “Give to get” and be focused on serving and being useful.
Don’t send in legal right away as an initial reaction to social
dissension. Embrace personal brands; don’t worry about them getting
too popular because their allegiance is to the brand.
Digitally unsavvy team
Modern marketers need to understand social media. Companies don’t

“do social”, they “are social”. That means being savvy participants.
According to results of a Forrester Research:
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• 91% of business buyers read blogs, watching user generated

video, participate in other social media
• 55% of decision makers were in social networks
• 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles,

etc.)
B2B marketers need to use social technologies in marketing over

social media networking sites. They can learn through social media,
savvy through training, participation, listening and engagement.
Products Lacking Individuality or Confidence
Believing that people will listen to and find value in what you really
want to say requires confidence. Whether you’re right or wrong might
not matter as much as being passionate. Now, more than ever, is the
time to show leadership and conviction when it comes to social
participation and engagement.
Inconsistent Participation
Companies need to be consistent with their social participation.

Clients online prefer information and marketing from blogs which are
posting consistently and thus, become more successful. The solution
to more consistent participation is to lead from the top, get executive
buy-in. Establish goals and provide a feedback loop to contributors.
As they grow, the community will provide feedback. Set aside
resources, plan which will create content, monitor and engage. Tap
passionate community members and activate them to be brand
ambassadors. Create efficiencies through the repurposing of content.
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Onus of Social Media
As companies develop their social media programs, responsibilities

and resources need to be allocated and that leads to accountability
and “ownership”. For successful social media adoption within
organisations, it’s important to establish social media goals and
responsibilities in different parts of the organisation. As resources and
accountability are identified, the different departments can work to
cross pollinate efforts, and work together as a team. This helps
leverage combined efforts and from an implementation standpoint,
avoids conflicting representation of the brand.
3.5 B2B marketing strategies on social media
Digital marketing is gaining traction in a number of industries, and

business-to-business (B2B) marketers are in on that trend, too.
Increased spending on online marketing is driving companies to try
new and innovative means of getting the word out about their
products and services — one area that's getting a lot of buzz with B2B
marketers is social media.
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The following five case studies lend insight into how B2B marketers
can use social media to generate leads, create specialised
communities, improve SEO, become knowledge sources, and
strengthen marketing campaigns.
Five Proven Strategies for B2B Social Media Marketing:
The below provided factors are critical Let us know how your brand
uses social media for B2B marketing in the comments below.
1. Generate Leads
There are two types of marketing departments — those that are cost
centers and those that bring in leads and sales. Generally, the better
positioned marketing department is the one that can prove it's
bringing in money, not spending it without results. When adding
social media into the mix, marketing departments must be able to
prove success, and oftentimes lead generation and ROI are two
measurements that upper management wants to see.
Social media enables companies to engage directly with their target

audiences. In many instances, these audiences self-identify online as
interested in specific topics, themes, products and/or services and
congregate in groups, message boards or communities. This allows
companies to pinpoint their target audiences and engage with them in
a meaningful way — providing insights, information, education and
support. This type of focus is fertile ground for lead generation and
driving revenue for business-to-business marketing.
Social business is about participation with and by your customers and

stakeholders in pursuit of an organisation that is strongly connected
to them through participative and collaborative processes. As a result,
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a social business is often better able to respond to marketplace

dynamics and competitive opportunities than a traditionally
organised and managed firm. This may occur through participation in
a social community, a support or discussion forum, or any of a variety
of other social applications and contexts. The efforts leading to the
creation of a social business often begin with identifying or creating
an opportunity for participation with (or between) customers,
employees, or stakeholders within community or similar social
applications.
An important point to note here is that when social business practices

are approached and implemented correctly, everyone wins. By
bringing customers into the business, or directly involving
stakeholders in the design and operation of the organisations with
which they are associated, a steady flow of ultimately constructive
ideas emerges.
2. Create a Specialised Community
Building a social business starts with establishing a community or

other social presence around or in which your brand fits naturally —
whether through a casual presence on Twitter, a more involved
Facebook business presence, or your own community built for
suppliers, partners, or customers. Reaching the correct audience is
one of the most important tasks in marketing — otherwise, you're just
wasting resources on the wrong people. When you can't find the right
audience, sometimes the best idea is to create a place for them to
flock.
Regardless of who the community is intended to serve, strong

communities are best built around the things that matter deeply to the
members of the community; passions, lifestyles, causes, and similar
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fundamentally aligned needs. This applies whether the audience is

primarily business — B2B communities like the Top IT Companies,
communities or Dell’s “Take Your Path” small business owners
community form around very specific shared needs common to small
business owners or a personal interest
B2C or nonprofit or cause-related community. The core elements

powering a social business in any case need to be something to which
the community members (customers or potential customers, for
example) will spontaneously bond, and that as a result will encourage
them to invite others to join.
In the case of Dell’s “Take Your Own Path,” the common element is
the unique set of challenges faced by small businesses. If you’ve ever
met a small business owner, you know how passionate they are about
what they do. Dell has found a very effective way through the
practices of social business to tap this by identifying and serving the
needs of the small business owner, for example, by encouraging
discussion about finance and investments in business hardware.
Similarly, smaller communities, think here about the need to reach

highly defined groups of customers, where personal interests drive
strong relationships are prime opportunities for social business
initiatives. Again, take for example, Dell and their “Digital Nomads”
program, aimed at a specific segment of Dell’s customer base that
literally thrives on the availability of an online connection. Digital
nomads are productive in the office or outside it, staying in touch
with friends and updating colleagues on work in progress through
social applications as close as the nearest Wi-Fi enabled coffee shop or
hotel. One of the common factors identifying “Digital Nomads” is the
combination of lifestyle and digital tools, along with the wherewithal
to get connected in just about any situation. Dell hardware powers
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this and thereby, taps into the nomadic lifestyle of these on-the-go
professionals. It’s important here to recognise that communities like
“Digital Nomads” and “Take Your Own Path” are not defined by a
business or consumer or nonprofit motive — call this your point of
view or need — but rather by the needs and desires of the
participants within these communities.
Earlier this year Kinaxis won B2B Magazine's Social Media Award for
Best Integrated Campaign for its social media prowess. The company
started a blog, participated in LinkedIn and engaged on Twitter. But
to kick things up a notch, it built a community for supply chain
management specialists to congregate. The Supply Chain Expert
Community launched in August 2009 and is home to 3,620 members
and counting. For a niche community, that's a feat.
From 2008 to 2009, Kinaxis saw a 270% increase in web traffic to its
website and a 320% increase in conversions (customer leads), as a
direct result of introducing the community. From a business
momentum perspective, it achieved double-digit growth in its
software subscription revenue, and for the first half of 2010, as
compared to the second half of 2009, it saw the following results:
• 230% increase in community members
• 65.2% increase in web traffic to the community
• 26% increase in web traffic to Kinaxis.com, with the community

accounting for about 40% of all new visitors
This organisation believes that creating the community allowed them

to offer an online destination for professionals to bond over common
industry problems and facilitate discussion on ways to solve those
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problems, which resulted in strengthening customer relationships.

The community, along with the 21st Century Supply Chain blog, also
enabled the company to increase exposure through social media and
improve SEO, as content is shared through its social accounts.
3. Improve SEO
During the past year, a US based e-mail marketing service provider,

has invested in B2B social media marketing, including presences on
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a corporate blog. Since implementing
and maintaining these social mediums, the company has seen a 70%
increase in inbound leads, as compared to the prior year, and its SEO
rankings for major keywords have jumped over 20 pages in one year.
In this case, a blog full of useful and targeted content, enhanced by
syndication across various social sites and subsequent interactions
with its community, led to this organisation increasing SEO and
growing a reputation for trusted email marketing advice. Today
people in marketing, recommend that B2B marketers should be
realistic about their goals with social media and blogging — while
these outlets can and will drive leads, there are other intangible
benefits as well, like the SEO and brand awareness that make a
tremendous difference.
4. Be a Knowledge Source
Nowadays, for any more or less important purchase, it has almost

become vital to learn about the brand, product or service, and
compare it with the equivalent of competing brands before
considering purchasing it. While potential consumer do so, they
interact with friends, Google the products, search on Twitter and read
experiences of those who have used the brand, product or service
earlier. This section will analyse the Social Feedback Cycle, taking into
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account the effects of Social Media on consumers’ buying behaviours,

comparing it to the classic purchase funnel for traditional media.
The Internet has now become the most common tool that consumers
use to find information on products and services that they are
considering buying. Besides opinions of friends and family, people
use the Internet as first source of information when making a major
purchase decision. Whether they like it or not, people are holding
conversations on the Internet about the products and services they
have used, sharing both good and bad experiences and feedbacks.
Actually, almost two out of every three conversations online refers to
a brand, product or service. These opinions have far more weight and
value, and are considered more trustworthy, than any information
provided by marketers. Indeed, word-of-mouth is considered to be
the most trusted source of information. Therefore, Social Media
largely affects customers’ purchase decisions, because consumers
usually seek other opinions and recommendations. Indeed, 78% of
global consumers declare that they trust and believe other customers’
recommendations for products and services more than any other
medium. This is mainly due to the fact that consumers are seen as
more objective than the companies’ own marketing message.
Many global, mid-size market research and consulting firms, uses

social media to increase their reach within the market research
community, demonstrate thought leadership, and increase the
likelihood of being found via the Internet. In the past couple of years
alone a huge success has been witnessed through the combination of
blogging, Twitter, Facebook, online press releases, downloadable
reports/case studies and LinkedIn. The efforts have resulted in huge
increases to traffic on the different websites and blog resulting in a
phenomenal increase in leads coming into our sales team.
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Consistency in providing a source of useful resources has been the

key for the small sized and medium sized companies. Consistently
creating relevant content for corporate blogs, Twitter followers,
Facebook fans will help to grow the market size.
5. Strengthen a Campaign
In some recent cases, SMBs have been known to exclusively use social
media as a marketing tool, as costs are low and usually limited to the
time spent cultivating an involved community. But in most cases,
social media is being used as a supplement to existing marketing
efforts. While it's not advisable to tack on social media to an existing
marketing campaign, we recommend developing social media
strategies alongside other marketing and communication efforts. This
helps organisations maintain consistency in messaging to their
communities.
On the business perspective, user-generated content are based on the

degree to which the experience matches the expectations set. Indeed,
with the Social Media, once a customer has purchased the brand,
product or service, he will use it, experience its advantages and
disadvantages and form its personal opinion. He will then obviously
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talk about its personal experience with this brand, product and
service on the Internet, and more particularly the Social Media
platforms. He might leave a comment on the company’s website or
the company’s Social Media Sites, but also on more general forums
that the company’s marketers might never see. This conversation that
the customer is holding on the Social Media channels will be seen by
other people already aware of the brand, product or service. These
people will be in the second stage of consideration in the purchase
channel.
They will look for information about the brand, product or service on
the Internet, and will quickly and easily find the content generated by
the customer who has experienced it. As an objective source of
information, they will certainly trust the appreciation of the previous
customers and base their purchase decision on this user-generated
content. If it is recommended, they will consider buying it. If the
feedback is negative, they will certainly decide not to buy the product
and will look for an alternative.
"As a whole, marketing was asked to generate 50% of the new

business pipeline in terms of number of deals and revenue. We
exceeded that goal and viewed social as an integral part of our efforts,
although we do not feel that the success can be attributed to any one
particular activity... Every component of the strategy helped.”
The lesson here is that social media can be a venue for enhancing a
business's current marketing efforts, as long as the intention is to
create a harmony between the various arms of marketing. Coordinate
your marketing efforts so that each complements the others, and it
should be smooth sailing.
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These five case studies lend insight into how B2B marketers can use
social media to generate leads, create specialised communities,
improve SEO, become knowledge sources, and strengthen marketing
campaigns.
3.6 B2C marketing strategies on social media
Social media allows people to be more connected than ever before and
the mediums available for marketing are changing rapidly as new
technologies come available. Online users are communicating in real
time and every brand in the world is being caught up in the
conversation whether they are participating or not. Venturing into
social media means opening up your brand and company to the
world at large and giving up control over how your message is
spread. Find out how to take back some control (even as you give
some up) to make sure that your brand is being promoted in a
positive and effective way.
The Need for Strategy
For the past 100 years, companies have had the luxury of deciding
what they will produce and sell, what their brand message will be,
and how they will deliver it to their audience. The Internet has
changed that. We’re in the age of social media marketing. Strategy in
this new business environment is just as vital as it has ever been.
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Don’t get distracted from the importance of strategy by the slew of

new social media tools. Don’t get lured into spending money on
resources just because “everyone is doing it”. Social media offers you
the opportunity of doing in-depth research at virtually no cost. It is
possible to set goals and get ROI, but you have to know where you’re
going and what you want to achieve.
Planning the Social Media Strategy
PR practitioners have long known that it is important to map the

environment in which the company operates and to know who the
stakeholders are. Now social media has expanded that need. We have
to know where they are online and who they are connected to. You
have to figure out which stakeholders are most important to you –
customers, competitors, employees, the media and now a new group
– bloggers.
A key element in planning any strategy for business utilising Social

Media Marketing is the comprehension of the challenges of finding
which social Media channels its audience and customers spend their
time and hold conversations. Also, people usually visit several social
media sites instead of sticking to only one. By reading, listening and
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analysing their target audience’s activities, marketers will be able to

determine where, when, who and how the consumers are interacting
in the Social Media Universe. It will also help marketers to define who
the influencers are and which role they play in the online community;
whether they are networkers, everyday users, trendsetters, reporters
or opinion leaders. There are tools that can be used to find the people
and figure where they are online so you can begin to evaluate who the
most important stakeholders are. Market research has always been
fundamental to marketing success. The social web makes it much
easier to find out what people are saying about you, who you should
be talking to, what they are interested in, and what you should be
talking to them about.
Crisis Management
No one likes to think about it, but it is important to have a crisis

management policy in place from the beginning. Bad press spreads
fast, but if your company is active in social media, you can take
control, contain it and counter it. By having a clear point person who
is actively monitoring the social web, you will be able to execute a
clear chain of response. The response should be same from everyone
in your company who is participating. Each crisis is unique. They can
stem from non-social media channels and you should look for
opportunity in the crisis. Very often, based on your company’s
response, you can turn detractors into fans and also use it to refine
your message to prevent future occurrences. Respond quickly and
engage your audience as soon as possible, with a well thought out
answer. Response time has to be measured in hours, not days, and
early action will help nip a crisis in the bud before it explodes into
something larger. No action or ignoring it will only inflate the issue
and if you are already active in social media, you will carry more
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credibility. The social proof you have already established will rally
more supporters to come to your company’s defence.
Link Building vs. Brand Building
The two broad goals (and, admittedly, they are related) of building a
social media presence are link building and brand building. The
purpose of link building is to drive traffic to your Website by
promoting links to it on the Web. This not only increases the number
of visitors to your site, but also builds SEO (the number of links back
to your site is one of many things that search engines look at to
determine ranking in search engine results). In addition to the core
social media presence, you should focus on link building sites like
Digg, Squidoo, Propeller, Del.icio.us and Weebly.
Brand building focuses on creating consumer awareness and is

primarily about building social proof. Attacking social media from
this angle captures mindshare and does more to encourage discussion
about your company, rather than redirecting readers to other content.
Brand building occurs on every social network (like Facebook,
MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn) and you can also find more industry
focused spaces (like the Ning network and other specialised sites).
There is absolutely no reason that you cannot do both. That requires
dedication to the goals and Web communities that your company is
building a presence through and will depend on the size and
composition of the team that is managing your social media efforts.
Should you choose to focus on one over the other, you should at least
maintain a presence with the secondary strategy as well. Both build
social proof; link building by spreading links to other networks and
brand building by growing the buzz around the company and
establishing expertise.
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Determining the Best Style of Campaign for Your Purpose
There are two primary types of social media campaigns, one with a
finite end and the other more open-ended. Social media can be used
as part of a specific, targeted campaign revolving around a singular
product, service, event or other aspect of the company or it can be put
to use as part of your company’s ongoing exposure to the Web,
covering brand building, customer service, public relations and
specific promotions. As part of an integrated marketing campaign, it
mixes with aspects of more traditional marketing. It may include
video on YouTube, promotion on Twitter, podcasts, dedicated
Facebook or MySpace groups and even a social portion on your
company’s site or a micro site. The key is to have the social media
aspect of your campaign build-up to a clear conclusion, one that your
“followers” will look forward to. Too often, integrated campaigns
assume that the event or product is enough, but with social media, the
public plays a much bigger role in determining the success of the
marketing. An anti-climactic social media campaign results in an
audience who is left with a bad taste in their mouths and may spread
word of their disappointment to other networks.
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On the other hand, social media can be a long-term aspect of your

marketing strategy in its own right. This is an ongoing effort with no
definitive climax and is built on a brand (or brands) as a whole.
Activity occurs across different aspects of social media as resources
allow and as appropriate. YouTube videos, Twitter accounts, Facebook
groups, company blogs and activity in on and off-site threaded
discussions are all positive places to participate in the larger
conversation in your industry and with consumers. Your company
can build on previous successes, crossover with and launch integrated
campaigns, run A/B campaign tests, address customer service issues
and answer questions as they come up. This kind of social media plan
can be rolled out around a single product or brand to “test the
waters” and test your approach before adding to it, or it can be
launched in one shot under a main brand, letting public participants
in the conversation determine which products and services they want
to talk about.
The integrated marketing campaign is more directed, with a clear

beginning and end. The social media plan will evolve over time, with
input from the participants on both sides. It needs to remain flexible,
allowing user-generated content to spread your company’s brand and
allowing you to introduce and remove elements to your social media
marketing strategy. Having a team that has the agility to respond to
this ever changing environment is essential to a successful social
media presence.
3.7 Key steps to successful social media strategy
The number of influencers is growing as more and more people

publish content online. It’s no longer about how many people did we
reach, it’s have we reached the right people who want to engage and
communicate with us? This means that large networks are not always
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the best place to concentrate on. There are many small social networks
built around a group that is passionate about a subject. Find the ones
that are relevant to your company or organisation.
1. Develop a Content Strategy
In a research done for ‘Social Media,’ people where asked why they
returned to a website. The overwhelming answer was “content”. This
holds true even today. Success in social media depends on the quality
of the content which is a prime factor in engaging people. In social
media, people are creating, reading, saving, tagging, and sharing
quality content. If you don’t produce the kind of content they value, it
won’t be re-published or shared. How do you know what kind of
content to create? Listen and observe. In the past, we had to rely on
agencies to have a “bright idea”. However, when you really listen to
your audience, you will discover the core content that will elicit a
response. Opportunities easily spring to mind.
❖ Practical Example
Prominent private Indian banks discovered that newly married

couples in their first home were very concerned about the housing
market and the housing loans. They were looking for information in
language they could understand. The banks realized an opportunity
to connect with these couples through the use of informative articles
and video interviews with their experts and were able to enhance the
sales of housing loans. Thus, we can understand that telling your
story online in the right place to the right people gets results.
However, you need a well thought-out content strategy based on
solid research to get those results
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2. Creating Milestones by Stating Metrics
Like in any other type of marketing the social media marketing also
requires the planners to set measurable goals. If you can’t measure it,
you can’t manage it. Work out what metrics will enable you to
measure your goals. Do not make vague goals such as “we want to
have more brand awareness.” More than what, How much and in
what time period?
In order to measure progress towards goals, you have to have a

starting place. This is your baseline. You need to take a snapshot of
where you are now with regard to the goals you have set so that you
can track your progress over time.
❖ Practical Example
A. Through interaction with its customers and hearing them, a

cosmetics company starting on a social media strategy might
discover that one of the groups that talks about hair fall is medical
workers. They listen to these conversations for two weeks,
initially.
B. Through analysing these conversations, they establish that their

leading competitor has a better influence on customer interaction.
C. Through brainstorming, they come up with an idea that will

improve this scene.
D. They set their competition’s influence on the web platform as their

benchmark and set a goal: “To increase their own influence on the
social sites by the next year”.
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E. The metric for this is “brand mentions in a desired

conversation” (in this case, “medical workers talking about hair
fall”). They can record this by using the various statistics tool
which plot the metric over time. They measure this weekly and
track their progress.
Examples of Statistics
• Number of positive brand mentions per week

• Number of comments on blog posts
• Number of retweets
• Number of clicks on links posted on Twitter
• Number of visitors to the website
• Number of followers on Twitter
• Number of coupon downloads
• Number of video views
In this process the marketers need to determine the benchmarks so

that you know what you’re potentially aiming for and measuring
yourself against. Looking at what others in your industry are doing
helps you to establish benchmarks and set realistic goals for your
business. Important questions to be asked in this context are - Are you
going to try to beat your competition outright? Or perhaps beat them
only locally, for now?
Once you have figured out where you’d like to be in the future, you
can express these ideas as goals. So long as your goals are measurable,
i.e., expressed as quantity and usually vs. time, you will be able to
move forwards and track your progress easily. Below are examples of
types of social media goals. The next section gives specific goal
examples.
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3.8 Integrating social media strategies
There’s a wide array of social media tools to choose from and the task
can be confusing. Not to mention that new tools pop up all the time.
Thus, there is a vital need to integrating social media strategies.
Nevertheless, if you have all your data analysed, and your content
strategy in place, it’s easy to pick the right tools. Your research will
tell you where to start. Every social media success case study has
excellent content that perfectly meets the needs of the people for
whom it was intended. Just as in any conversation, the right content
gets people’s interest and attention. If you are off topic or boring, you
get no positive results. Social Media has matured and most companies
are expected to have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and
LinkedIn. However, there may be other social sites you need to
include for your business.
Bear in mind that each platform requires its own strategy and you
need to know where to allocate resources. If the majority of the
conversation about your product is on Twitter, you’ll need to spend
more time connecting with the people who talk about you there. The
same is true for any of the other social networks. You need to decide
why you are using that channel, who to connect with and why, and
what content you need to produce in order to get the attention of the
right people on that network. You will need someone with technical
skills to help you get your tools in place. You will probably need a
blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account, and a
YouTube Channel for starters.
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Here’s the list of categories of social media tools:
• News Feeds (RSS) to syndicate all your content
• “Share this” buttons, tagging, and bookmarking applications, to

make it easy to share and forward your content
• Blogs – platforms and plug-ins
• Micro blogging (Twitter)
• Podcasts
• mages – and image sharing networks
• Video – and video sharing sites
• Social Networks – Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, niche

networks
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• Social Media News Sites – Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
• Social Media News Releases, with multimedia and social

bookmarks
• Search optimised articles, with feeds and commenting
• Widgets and Apps
• Social Media News Room – create a social media content hub on

your website
3.9 Monitoring ongoing strategy
Monitoring of the social media is as critical a job as implementing the

strategy online. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. It’s that
simple. You need to know where you are when you start, what needs
to be achieved, and as you move along the path, you have to have
tools to measure your progress. That way you can see if you are on
track and adapt fast if things go awry. Your measurement has to be
based on business objectives, and those objectives have to be set as
measurable goals. Just setting up attributes to track on a dashboard is
not enough. What you are going to monitor will depend on what
goals you have set in the initial part of your strategy. Based on
listening and research, you should have determined what actions you
need to focus on in social media. Measure what you did and what
impact it had, and then you can see what result it had. Being able to
evaluate the data and come to a conclusion you can use to tweak or
expand your program is the point.
There are many tools available today to track engagement and

effectively monitor the online social media content. In the context of
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social media, a new metric called engagement has come into existence
which includes four components:
• Involvement
• Interaction
• Intimacy
• Influence
Each of these is built from data collected from online and offline data
sources. Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of
your customers’ actions, recognising that value comes not just from
transactions, but also from actions people take to influence others.
Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will
become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to
customer understanding.
3.10 Limitations and risks of Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing offers to businesses a large variety of

resources in terms of social media channels available, and a large
variety of benefits, such as brand exposure, targeted traffic and leads
generation. However, social media marketing for businesses also
demands efforts and hard work, and has its own limitations and risks
before achieving notable success. Indeed, social media marketing is
not always easy, quick or cheap. In some cases, depending on the
business type, size and age, hard efforts need to be made in various
areas.
First, companies need to commit human and time resources to

managing their social media presence. An employee, and sometimes
even a complete social media team, needs to be able to respond to
customers’ feedbacks and complaints at least everyday. The social
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media staff needs to be extremely trained and qualified in order to

have answers to every questions and to be able to react when negative
comments are made before they get too viral and uncontrollable. Also,
this team has to produce new content regularly in order to post at
least a few times a week for small businesses, and at least once a day
for big multinationals. It is extremely important to always stay active
on the social media sites.
Besides, the results of the social media marketing strategy needs to be

controlled and measured regularly in order to understand what is
working and what is not. Some social media channels might be more
efficient than others for a business, and some might be too time-
consuming comparing to its benefits. Specific campaigns need to be
measured as well, and the impacts of each post need to be analysed.
However, it is usually quite difficult to measure the return on
investment, or should we say the return on conversation, of such a
strategy. Measuring social media return on investment is not
impossible, but it can be very complex because many of the pieces
that needs to be evaluated are difficult to track. Having specific goals
and concrete baselines is crucial to calculating the business’ return on
investment. Therefore, companies must have defined clear goals and
evaluated the baselines before measuring the results, then only,
metrics tools can be considered.
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Quantifying the value of one channel over another can be hard to

evaluate, as the measurement and analytics tools available for free are
often different from one social media channel to another. However,
some metrics for measuring web traffic have become valuable tools,
such as Google Analytics, TweetMeme Analytics or Hoot Suite. Also,
sentiment analysis using Viral Heat, Tweet Feel or Sentiment Metrics
for instance, can be relevant when positive and negative comments
cannot be distinguished.
We have seen that, while implementing their social media marketing

strategy, businesses might encounter marketing limitations affecting
the final success of their strategy. Furthermore, businesses are also
confronted to major risks in domains such as reputational, legal and
operational.
One of the main risks for businesses using social media marketing
will be to damage their reputation by using their social media sites
ineffectively. Too much advertising, presenting products and services
in a commercial way and pushing for sales without really engaging
with the audience are often very badly seen by the audience, which
might decide to turn their back on the business and its social media
presence. Moreover, employees can harm a company’s image really
quickly and easily, by showing bad behaviours on social media
channels or posting embarrassing information. Therefore,
reputational risks can easily equal or exceed the reputational benefits
of Social Media Marketing.
Secondly, social media makes a whole new world of privacy, security,

intellectual property, employment practices, and other legal risks
possible. The social media team needs to understand information
technology law before creating a social media legal strategy.
Monitoring future or existing employees using social media sites has
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legal dangers. A business can get problems from rejecting candidates

to a job based on information found online, or by monitoring their
employees’ activities when using company computers. Security and
operational risks are also high, as security breaches might occur when
malware, viruses or spyware are downloaded involuntary by the
employees through the social media sites. Also, there are some
intellectual property and media risks concerning the protection of
third-parties or the publication of fake positive reviews. The privacy
of the audience needs always to be protected.
3.11 Short Case study
Key to create Social Media Marketing Strategy for a B2B context
A B2B Social Media Plan of Action
I. Website Analytics: Any type of inbound-marketing campaign is

useless without good data analysis. So, the first thing to do is to set-
up a tracking mechanism on your website that incorporates a
platform such as Google Analytics. We will use the common goal of
many B2B-marketing efforts, a contact-form submission to sales via
the company’s website. In this case, we want to send social media
traffic to the website with the goal of maximising completions of
the website form.
II. Audience and Influencer Research: Whether you have a specific

sales list or just a general buyer persona in mind, it is crucial to
know where the relevant individuals are active on social media, in
a professional context. If your business sells to companies in the
“widget” industry, then look for populated LinkedIn groups that
focus on that sector. Maybe people discuss the topic in a Google+
community, or on a large online forum. In addition, it is possible
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that the recognised authorities on “widgets” are talking on Twitter,

answering questions on Quora, or engaging with people on their
professional Facebook pages.
In short, you want to narrow your social media focus so you know
where your efforts will effectively reach your audience.
III.Channel Optimisation: Once you know what social-media

networks will be your targets, you need to create and optimise
your company’s profiles on those outlets in line with your
messaging and positioning as well as your marketing goals. Here
are some examples:
• Facebook – Create an attractive Timeline header image and include

a page tab that, when clicked, takes the user to the form-submission
page on the website
• Twitter – Post a background image that highlights your branding

and use profile text that entices people to follow you
• LinkedIn – Create a fully fleshed-out company page that pitches

your product or service and includes links to the place where
people can submit the website form
❖ Note: Some networks – LinkedIn and Quora, most notably – allow

only individuals, and not companies themselves, to engage on the
channels. As a result, it is important that the specific person’s
profile that will be used to interact on the outlets be optimized as
well.
IV.Content Creation and Engagement: Quality, original content is the

fuel of social media. People share visual content that affects them in
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some emotional way. But long before you even begin to publish,
you want to engage on social media to build a following. For
example:
• Reply to and interact with prospects and influencers with large

followings on Twitter
• Participate in Google+ Communities, Facebook Groups, and online

forums devoted to “widgets”
• Share news on “widgets” on LinkedIn to become known as a

resource hub of information
• People will be much more likely to share your future content if they
already know you.
So, once you have a following, here are three questions to answer:
• What authoritative blog posts can you write on “widgets”?
• What graphics and videos can you produce that will interest people
in the “widgets” sector?
• How will the content be used to get people to click to our website?
Once you have a content-creation plan, it is important to place the

items on your company’s blog with a call-to-action so that people will
see the content when it is shared on social media, click the links to
your website, go to the form-submission page, and “convert.”
V. Campaign Planning: Just as campaigns are used in traditional

advertising, so can such long-term efforts be successful in social
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media – especially if your company is unable to create a lot of

original content. Here are a few examples:
• Running a contest in which Facebook fans submit their own photos

and graphics relating to “widgets” – and the post that gets the most
“likes” will win a prize
• The person who writes the tweet mentioning your company that
gets the most retweets will get your product or service for free
• A series of cryptic images to generate buzz for a future release just

like pop-stars did for a new album release
VI.Analysis: The conversion rate of various online channels is very

important to know. If it turns out that traffic from LinkedIn
“converts” (by submitting the form) 6 per cent of the time and
Facebook traffic converts at only 4 per cent, then you know to focus
more on LinkedIn and less on Facebook.
But it’s a little more complicated than that. It is also important to

know the metrics of each type of action on a given network. Facebook
as a whole may have only a 4 per cent conversion rate, but it may turn
out that posting a certain type of content at a certain time leads to a 7
per cent conversion rate. So, it is important to focus both on the best
mediums in general and the best practices of each medium
specifically.
Conclusion
Social media marketing can clearly deliver results – as long as one

proceeds in this strategic, logical way. For example, we went through
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this very process when doing social media work for a recent B2B
client. Here is just a summary of the results from the case study:
• We used social media to increase visits to the website by 894% in six

months
• The total number of website conversions and direct leads from
social media combined increased by 217% in the same period of
time
3.12 Activities
1. Apart from the five challenges discussed in this chapter, research

and write a detailed note on three other important challenges
associated with a social media marketing strategy
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—————————————————————————————
2. Browse the websites online and research on the topic of ‘Crisis

management’ in B2C marketing strategies on social media.
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3.13 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about, how to develop strategies

for social media marketing. Social media marketing success doesn’t
take place over night. It’s a cumulative process that produces success
with persistent and consistent execution. The first step in social media
marketing is to develop a strategy that defines the target audience
and how they can be reached. Once a social media marketing strategy
has been developed, the success of your efforts is dependent on your
execution. Over the decade, there has been a fundamental shift in
how people access information and news. Companies traditionally
used the media to get their messages out to their audiences via
marketing, advertising, or public relations. Marketing and advertising
push a message out to the masses. Companies use public relations to
supply news to the media and expert sources to provide stories about
their industry. The goal is to get media mentions of their company,
products, or services as a primary strategy. Some techniques for
executing of social media marketing strategies:
• Spend time every day executing your social media strategy
• Develop a 3-month editorial calendar
• Make it easy to share your content and follow your company on

social media
• Follow your customers and key prospects on social media and

monitor regularly
• People are engaging in conversations - Conversation is the new

marketing strategy
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Social media is no longer “new media” and social media marketing is

now simply “marketing”. Promoting a business via social media has
become mainstream today. Not having a social media presence is
what sets your business apart from the rest, and not in a good way.
Millions of people check into social media accounts on a daily basis
sometimes on an hourly basis. It’s where the people are and it’s where
the customers are in order to capture their attention. While it may be
easy to use social media for personal use, there are challenges
involved when it comes to using it for business. Many business
owners will tell you that using social networks to market their
business has been:
• Overwhelming
• Fickle
• Immeasurable
• Cut-throat
• Time consuming
Traditional CRM is very good at managing transactional activities and

providing management insight into what is happening in the
business, for example, what regions are underperforming, at what
sales stage deals are languishing, and what the health of the sales
pipeline is. But these features require salespeople to enter data
without reaping any direct reward. What sales representatives do use
is email to gather and share information. The reasons behind social
media marketing has probably never been more challenging for
marketers.
• Social marketers today have to ensure that their product or

company is present on multiple popular social platforms (which
changes ever so often).
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• They have to keep their message consistent across platforms, while

simultaneously finding unique and personal ways to converse with
their global audience, who are increasingly more demanding and
complicated.
• They have to leverage social media such that it helps them gain an
edge over their competitors.
The value of social business products and practices is becoming better

recognised by organisations, but many face cultural and
organisational issues that limit their ability to take advantage of those
new capabilities. That's the word from a new IBM Institute for
Business Value study, "The Business of Social Business," based on
responses from more than 1,100 individuals and interviews with more
than two dozen executives. Change management is a critical
requirement for embedding successful social business practices in an
organisation. To get all stakeholders on board, the report suggests, the
following activities are key: get people involved in using the tools,
apply traditional change management to support transitions and
incorporate social approaches to supporting the change. The report
recommends a number of activities for putting these actions into
practice, including training and creating opportunities to use social
tools, publicly applauding social successes, appointing social business
champions/experts, and providing support for employees, partners
and customers. Some of the key issues are as provided below:
• Lack of customisation
• Digitally unsavvy team
• Products lacking individuality or confidence
• Inconsistent participation
• Onus of social media
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Digital marketing is gaining traction in a number of industries, and

business-to-business (B2B) marketers are in on that trend, too.
Increased spending on online marketing is driving companies to try
new and innovative means of getting the word out about their
products and services — one area that's getting a lot of buzz with B2B
marketers is social media.
Social media allows people to be more connected than ever before and
the mediums available for marketing are changing rapidly as new
technologies come available. Online users are communicating in real
time and every brand in the world is being caught up in the
conversation whether they are participating or not. Venturing into
social media means opening up your brand and company to the
world at large and giving up control over how your message is
spread. Find out how to take back some control to make sure that
your brand is being promoted in a positive and effective way.
The integrated marketing campaign is more directed, with a clear

beginning and end. The social media plan will evolve over time, with
input from the participants on both sides. It needs to remain flexible,
allowing user generated content to spread your company’s brand and
allowing you to introduce and remove elements to your social media
marketing strategy. Having a team that has the agility to respond to
this ever changing environment is essential to a successful social
media presence.
The list of categories of social media tools:
• News Feeds (RSS) to syndicate all your content

• Blogs – platforms and plug-ins
• Podcasts
• Video – and video sharing sites
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• Social Media News Sites – Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg

• Search optimized articles, with feeds and commenting
• Social Media News Room – create a social media content hub on
your website
Monitoring of the social media is as critical a job as implementing the

strategy online. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. It’s that
simple. You need to know where you are when you start, what needs
to be achieved, and as you move along the path, you have to have
tools to measure your progress. There are many tools available today
to track engagement and effectively monitor the online social media
content. In the context of social media a new metric called
engagement has come into existence which includes four components:
• Involvement
• Interaction
• Intimacy
• Influence
Social media marketing offers to businesses a large variety of

resources in terms of social media channels available, and a large
variety of benefits, such as brand exposure, targeted traffic and leads
generation. However, social media marketing for businesses also
demands efforts and hard work, and has its own limitations and risks
before achieving notable success. Indeed, social media marketing is
not always easy, quick or cheap. In some cases, depending on the
business type, size and age, hard efforts need to be made in various
areas.
118
3.14 Self assessment questions:
1. Explain why the social media marketing success doesn’t take place
overnight?
2. Enlist and discuss any three important techniques for executing of

social media marketing strategies?
3. From the context of social media marketing explain in detail why

people are engaging in conversations?
4. Explain in brief the logic behind the statement – ‘Social media

results are immeasurable’.
5. What are the problems associated with Non-intuitive Social Media

Applications?
6. Why is change management a critical requirement for embedding

successful social business practices in an organization?
7. Identify how social media enables companies to engage directly

with their target audiences?
8. What is the key element in planning any strategy for business

utilizing Social Media Marketing?
9. Explain the process of creating milestones by stating metrics?
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
120
LEVERAGING THE POWER OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
Chapter 4
Leveraging the Power of Social Networking Sites 
Objectives
After going through this chapter, you will be able to understand:
• The key features of social network sites

• social media as a powerful customer relations management tool
• social media influence in business generation through ‘word-of-
mouth marketing’
• innovation and leveraging the power of social media through
social applications
• marketing on Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn
Structure:
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Key Features of Social Networking Sites
4.3 Social Media as a Powerful Customer Relations
Management Tool
4.4 Social Media Influence in Business Generation through
‘Word-of-mouth Marketing’
4.5 Innovation and Leveraging the Power of Social Media
through Social Applications
4.6 Benefits and Advantages of Marketing on Social
Networking Sites
4.7 Marketing on Facebook
4.8 Marketing on MySpace
4.9 Marketing on LinkedIn
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4.11 Activities
4.12 Summary
4.1 Introduction
Social networking provides an effective channel for introducing new

products and services to customers while gathering real time
feedback. Social networking also provides an effective channel for
introducing new products and services to customers while gathering
real time feedback. The reach and influence of social media is still
in its infancy today is steadily growing to become a global force.
Many enterprises, large and small are actively experimenting with
using a social media mindset and capabilities in their business
processes will transform their relationships with customers and create
high value in a multitude of ways.
To leverage social media to its fullest, organizations need to become

more nimble and entrepreneurial. Social media creates the
opportunity for much greater collaboration between departments,
engendering more experimentation, faster decision making and more
precisely tuned responses. Today, organizations have asked
employees to begin using a variety of social media applications such
as social networks, blogs, project-focused wikis and podcasts to
collaborate better across different time zones and locations. Today, the
organization routinely shares knowledge through company specific
blogs, for example, and provides tools that enable employees to
search all of the intranet’s content from one place. As a result, people
have boosted their innovation productivity, developing products and
getting them to market faster.
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Many campaigns take advantage of the real time nature of social

media to create a sense of urgency regarding limited-time offers.
Travel booking companies like Yatra and ClearTrip have begun using
Facebook and Twitter to promote fixed availability or last-minute
hotel/flight deals — tasks ideally suited to the real time environment.
Even small brands can benefit from viral marketing campaigns that
capitalize on user willingness to pass on relevant or entertaining
content.
Social media creates opportunities for companies to supplement

traditional sources of customer insight with a wealth of information
gathered by listening into community sites such as Facebook,
LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as customer forums and product review
services. Social media monitoring gives companies unique access to
unfiltered feedback from customers—and at a scale unavailable via
other means such as focus groups and surveys. There are plenty of
technical challenges, however, such as the need to understand the
context in which comments are being made and to distill key themes
and sentiments from unstructured text. To help companies take
advantage of this growing data source, new players have emerged,
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offering technologies and services such as web crawling, web

scraping (or extracting data from websites), text mining and
sentiment analysis.
Companies that want to experiment with monitoring the Web can

outsource the entire process to third parties, or build the capabilities
internally. However, the technologies are evolving rapidly, so firms
need to choose carefully and avoid locking themselves into a solution
that constrains their future capabilities. Social media also opens ways
to conduct market research more quickly and cheaply than ever
before, and to engage in a real time dialogue with a wide range of
customers, replicating the insights traditionally provided from direct
customer feedback or expensive and time-consuming focus groups.
This direct interaction with customers in social media sites can also
help companies benchmark themselves against the competition and
gather valuable input on what shoppers like about them — and what
they don’t.
The once clear-cut boundary between marketing and sales continues

to blur as online advertising and links to third-party comparison sites
allow companies to drive traffic to their retail websites. As a result,
firms can rapidly convert shoppers into buyers, and those buyers into
salespeople. Customer expectations regarding the online purchase
experience continue to climb, as leading retailers such as
Amazon.com continue to raise the bar by customizing
recommendations, providing intuitive, straightforward online
navigation and minimizing the number of clicks needed to complete a
purchase. Social media has an increasingly important role to play in
helping companies identify and address unmet customer needs.
Firms can engage employees, customers, suppliers and other third
parties as active participants in the innovation process, expanding the
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range of ideas and gathering real time feedback on their potential

take-up.
For example, Nokia operates an online lab that allows users around
the world to download beta applications and provide feedback to its
product development teams. This provides an early opportunity to
identify potential problems and alerts the developers to customer
differences across geographic markets that needs to be addressed.
4.2 Key features of Social Networking Sites
Interactive Customer Service
At the same time, one of the largest opportunities to tap the potential
of social media is in customer service. Innovative companies are using
social media to be more proactive in seeking customer feedback and
engaging customers to diagnose and resolve problems. From
Microsoft to eBay and from Wipro to Infosys, companies are using
social media to enable customers to get answers directly from other
customers or specially trained employees—empowering their most
knowledgeable customers to serve as an informal ecosystem of
answer centers. Other innovations include cloud monitoring services
such as those offered by Salesforce.com, which provide the ability to
track and respond to Twitter-borne and other online complaints
customers make.
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Companies can use social media to tap into the power and wisdom of
virtual crowds, enlisting them in support of other users and
empowering employees to act as agents for the company. Doing so
can generate a huge customer service multiplier effect, allowing
organizations to more rapidly identify, diagnose and resolve problems
while simultaneously delivering exceptional value.
Companies need to adopt new attitudes and behaviours, and to

unlearn many of the lessons of the past 20 years. Take customer
service interactions. In pursuit of efficiency, companies have made
them increasingly structured and scripted, allowing relatively low-
skilled, low-cost personnel to perform these roles. Agents follow strict
escalation rules, and the resolution of problems can take days, weeks
or even months. While this was perhaps acceptable in a world where
customer support was the first, last and only place to get help, today’s
customers will instead bypass the official systems, connect with one
another and take their problems public in a flash.
This high-speed environment clearly requires a much faster, more

flexible response from companies that want to avoid disaster. Many
MNCs worldwide curb bad publicity hoping to ground any social
media problems before they gain altitude, rigorously monitors its
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Twitter and Facebook pages, enabling the company to respond

promptly to customer complaints. With more than a million Twitter
fans and close to the same number of Facebook followers, companies
actively uses social media to interact with customers, drive sales and
build brand loyalty.
Furthermore, companies no longer have a monopoly on information.

Customers are much better informed than in the past, and in many
cases, better informed than even companies and their agents.
Conversations and situations that once took place in private, with the
company in full control of information, can now take place in the
public eye, with highly damaging consequences if the company gets it
wrong. One passenger, trapped aboard a grounded airliner at John F.
Kennedy International Airport, decided to record the saga of his flight
from London to New York, which took 16 hours rather than eight, and
post it on YouTube. After viewing the excruciating documentary, the
company’s CEO personally called the passenger to apologise, and
then refunded every passenger’s money for the flight and gave each
$100 off their next one. Integrating social media will compel
companies to make dramatic cultural changes, shifts that will
ultimately become essential for any organization hoping to thrive in
this new interactive environment.
Social media provides the information companies can use to segment

customer groups more finely than in the past, along with the tools to
tailor products, services and communication campaigns to suit the
needs and expectations of individual segments. This spells the end for
standard responses and one-size-fits-all offerings. Customers
increasingly demand to be treated as individuals and will give their
business to suppliers that provide either unique experiences or
superior value.
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4.3 Social Media as a powerful Customer Relations  

Management Tool
Customer Relations Management through the application of social

media is an approach to business that formally recognizes the role of
the customer and external influencers as a key in understanding and
managing conversations around the brand, product, or service. If the
reference to “conversations” seems to narrow the definition, consider
this: The conversation in the contemporary business context is
nothing short of a holistic, digital artifact that captures and conveys
the sum total of what your firm or organization has delivered.
Traditional CRM manages a customer relationship in a passive sense

from the customer’s point of view. The attributes defining the
relationship are all based on past transactional data — purchases,
calls, and other past-tense events. From the customer’s point of view,
the events have happened and are done, there is no ongoing role for
the individual as a customer. By comparison, Social CRM invites the
customer into your business or organization through the future-
oriented process of collaboration. It recognizes what has happened,
just as traditional CRM does, but then takes the added step of inviting
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the customer into the processes that govern what is about to happen
or may potentially happen or should never happen again by asking
“How can this product or service be made better?”
This kind of forward-looking collaboration involves the entire set of

stakeholders in the business or organization, including its employees,
partners, and suppliers. It is a whole-business, future-oriented
process, and it is core to an overall methodology and strategy that is
designed and implemented to delight customers. As an integral part
of improving the customer relationship process, following are the
steps that clearly place the customer and the conversations they are
having at the center of the Social CRM effort:
• Map the customers’ end-to-end experiences: Understand in detail

each step that a customer undertakes when doing specific tasks
that relate to your product or service. Create cross-functional teams
to relate what you learn to each point in your process that impacts
the customer experience at that point.
• Overlay the moments of truth with a feedback channel audit:

Where are the gaps? Where do the channels overlap? What
feedback do you have that shows how you are performing at these
points?
• Establish a baseline of customer experience and priorities to

improve: Based on the above, align efforts with your business
objectives and set out a plan.
• Establish a regular process for reporting: Use the associated

metrics for each step in the process along with your plan to keep
your larger (cross functional) team updated. “No surprises” is the
best surprise.
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Put these ideas together and you have the basic value proposition for
Social CRM, in the context of a new role for the customer, in a
participant-driven business:
By understanding who among your customers is influential, by

noting who is at the center of a specific conversation, and by
developing relationships with these people, you create the
opportunity to more deeply understand why they feel—positively or
negatively—the way they do. You can use this information in a
forward-looking (proactive) rather than reactive manner to drive
innovation and to ultimately shape the conversations in ways that
benefit rather than hinder your business.
You can track customers and other influencers through that same
relationship as they create content and converse on the Social Web.
This can be very enlightening and is really useful when pulled into
the product design process. Social CRM helps you understand and
apply the significant points in the conversations happening around
you. It helps you tie this information into your business, where you
can use it to build relationships with influential customers and with
influential bloggers, critics, and others who follow your firm or track
your business or industry.
You can apply this same discipline internally, too, and connect
customers and external influencers to your employees, to the
customer service manager, to brand managers, and to others. Once
connected in this way, your customers and employees can bond
further, moving toward collaboration. It’s collaboration that drives
customer centric product and service innovation, and collaboration
that leads to the highest forms of engagement with your customers. If
you now add to this your data around customer registration or
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similar information that you may have collected separately,

remember, like any other form of CRM.
Social CRM tracks specific profiles and contacts, so it can be synched

with existing customer data sets—you can begin to track what the
people who matter to you, your current and prior customers, are
saying about your product or service, or about your brand, firm, or
organization in the context of actual purchases and experiences. You
can use this same process to bring other influencers—bloggers, for
example, who may not be customers—into the Social CRM pool as
well. BuzzStream and similar tools include “influencer” dashboards
that allow the easy monitoring of conversations based on keywords
and the conversion of source data in much the same way as basic
social web listening tools works. With the influencer monitoring tools
like Buzzstream, the profiles and links of people directly contributing
to the conversation you are following are converted into contacts in
an influencer’s database that can be managed alongside your other
customer data. Note that BuzzStream provides one component of a
larger Social CRM effort: Combined with your business data, deeper
social analytics and an internal collaboration platform, BuzzStream’s
contact information provides an easy way to manage subsequent
conversations with the influencers around your brand, product or
service as you track issues, look for opportunities and introduce
innovations driven in part by these same conversations.
Profiles for Social Media Sites
At the center of the Social Web and the shared activities that define it
are the online personas of participants: More than with prior
anonymous discussion boards or cloaked personas, it’s an actual
identity that is of value in a business context, since it is generally the
motivation of an individual to be noticed as such that drives social
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participation in the first place. Though detailed personal information

is (still) generally not available except to “trusted friends” or
colleagues, the use of a real name or photo in one’s social profile is
becoming common. Along with any optionally provided information,
the result is a basis for understanding who it is that is actually
participating.
The profile is, therefore, the starting point of social interaction,

because without it the interaction that would otherwise occur is
purely transactional, between the participant and the online
application or other unknown party. The existence of a profile or
equivalent is, in this sense, what differentiates social platforms and
applications from (online) interactive applications. In an interactive
application—consider a typical website—the interaction is between
the application and the user: navigate to a help file, download a PDF,
or place an item in a shopping cart. In each of these, the primary
activity occurs between a user and an application designed to
facilitate a specific task.
Identity — beyond basic security or commerce validation

requirements — in this context is of relatively little importance.
Because the individual participant is steering the entire process, and
because this is typically a task-oriented transaction, the identity of the
participant matters little beyond the requirements of the task at hand.
In a social context, by comparison, the interaction occurs between the
participants as much or more than it does (overtly) between a specific
participant and the application or platform. It’s not just that someone
is doing something as with a transaction site: On the social web, that
person wants to be noticed (talked about) or joined with while doing
it. Basic tasks aside — uploading a photo, for example, the majority of
the interactions involve profile-based connections or exchanges:
curating a photo, extending and confirming a friend request,
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modifying a wiki document, or sharing a review. Each of these

requires a certain degree of assurance that the identity of the other
person(s) involved is reasonably well understood, and at least partly
so that the person committing the action will be noticed by someone
for having done that particular thing.
So it follows that in an online network, without a robust profile — the

central carrier of visible identity — the act of sharing is relatively
shallow. Participants in older forums and discussion boards, often
lacking a more formal or detailed description of who was who, based
identity on little more than a signature and then augmented that by
studying writing style or specific interests of various members, and
by doing so slowly pieced together an understanding of who the
other participants were. People are social, and they will seek to sort
out social order in nearly any situation. Ultimately, it is the
relationships and the interactions they facilitate that drive successful
social business applications.
By fundamentally enabling relationships, profiles dramatically speed

the process of social bonding within a network and so are very
important elements of modern forums, discussion boards, support
communities, or other online social spaces. Profiles provide human
starting points for bonding with other participants, including the
profile(s) associated with a brand, business or organization. Readily
identifiable participants are beneficial on the social web: Consider
what happens when identity is introduced into an otherwise
anonymous online application.
Among other things, with identity comes an increase in the overall

sense of individual accountability: If participants know who the
others around them are, and understand as well that their own
identity (as least as far as it exists via their profile) is equally known,
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there is a more tempered behavior than exists absent this sense of

identity and individual accountability. Flame wars, for example, are
less likely — all other things being equal — in communities with a
strong implementation of identity. It’s a lot like driving in traffic: In
the relative anonymity of a sound proof, air-conditioned cabin, it’s not
uncommon for one driver to become visibly frustrated with other
drivers. When that same driver realizes that the object of such
frustration happens to be a friend, co-worker or neighbor in the car
ahead, that knowledge often alters that driver’s attitude, for the
better. Visible identity makes a difference within an online social
community for exactly the same reason.
Opinion Leaders
It is a central idea in marketing and diffusion research that influential

people - a minimum number of individuals, which influence on a
significant number of their neighbors, play a vital role on the
formation of public opinion. The study of Lazarsfeld et al., is the
starting point for opinion leadership theory: they discovered that
voting decisions were heavily influenced by relatives, friends and co-
workers. Opinion leadership is defined by different authors. Rogers
defines opinion leadership as “degree to which an individual is able
to informally influence other individuals’ attitudes or overt behaviors
in a desired way with relative frequency” and opinion leaders as
“individuals who lead in influencing others’ options”.
Opinion leaders have a large amount of information about a variety
of products, categories, retails concepts, and markets. Experts have
been able to identify five characteristics for opinion leaders as shown
in the diagram below:
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Opinion leaders can be described as “people whose conversations

make innovations contagious for the people with whom they speak”.
Opinion leaders can be seen as consumers frequently rely upon other
people as sources of information, in addition to advertisements and
media, opinion leaders exert a disproportionate amount of influence
on the decisions of other consumers.” The base of all definitions is
people who are able to influence others. In recent years, many
research in word-of-mouth marketing investigate discovering
influential nodes in a social network.
The Profile as a Social Connector
The role of the social profile as a connector cannot be understated in

business applications of social media. Following on the prior
discussion, the social profile provides two central social elements,
both of which are essential:
• A tangible personal identifier around which a relationship can be

formed
• A framework for accountability for one’s actions, postings, and
roles taken in the relationship that forms
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Taken together, the significance of the profile is its central role in

establishing who is participating. When people have that basic
information, they will more readily enter into functional relationships
and share or transfer useful knowledge. This is, of course, the primary
objective in building a social business or supporting application.
By connecting the organization with its stakeholders — whether a

business and its customers or a nonprofit and its members — social
profiles form the basis for an accountable, productive relationship.
4.4 Social media influence in business generation through  

‘word-of-mouth marketing’
Word-of-mouth marketing which is a type of viral marketing is an

informal way of passing information among people about the
characteristics, usage, and ownership of particular products or
services. Viral marketing can be defined as the use of network value
of customers. Customer’s network value is defined as the expected
profits from sales to other customers whom he/she may influence to
buy, the customers those may influence. Word-of-mouth is a new
marketing method that uses electronic communications among a
widespread network of buyers (e.g. email) to trigger brand messages.
Social networking sites have become increasingly important in
consumer’s purchasing decisions. This is so because, they are a
powerful force in word-of-mouth marketing and they can shape the
public opinion.
The key point in word-of-mouth marketing is to identify the

influential nodes. Valente and Davis (1999) showed that diffusion is
faster when it initiates by opinion leaders instead of random people.
Social network theory links with the opinion leadership and word-of-
mouth concept can be used to identify the opinion leaders in a
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network and help the diffusion of any behavior. A three step process
can be used to help firms use social network for their marketing
activities.
In step 1, firms should first find a proper social network or build their
own social network to establish their relationship with consumers.
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Figure 4.1: A three step process for firms to use social networks for marketing
Then, step 2 includes identifying and selecting opinion leaders that

firms think they are influential among consumers. An influential node
has more links to others and can pass a message to the most of the
people in the network. Many studies on finding the most influential
nodes consider how many other influential people point to them.
They are based on the pioneering study of hubs and authorities, and
the study of Google’s PageRank algorithm. Both studies are based on
social network analysis. So, related notions of social network analysis,
like centrality and prestige can be used to indicate how opinion
leaders become influential through their relationships.
Finally, in step 3, these influential people can be considered as

initiative nodes to help diffusion of innovation, new product adoption
and spread of any behavior in the whole community. In addition,
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companies need to identify opinion leaders among customers to

advertise their products.
It has stronger creditability than other forms of marketing and
changes communication from a company-to-customer mode to a
customer-to-customer mode. Marketing techniques that apply the
social networks of consumers to increase brand awareness are called
word-of-mouth marketing. The existence of rating websites such as
Epinions, which can distribute negative or positive about products
among people in the network, reveals that marketers need to consider
the prominent effect of word-of-mouth phenomenon on their brand’s
position. In general, word-of-mouth marketing is a significant market
force that influences consumer decision making.
4.5 Innovation and Leveraging the Power of Social Media

through Social Applications
Taking the four basic building blocks together — consumption,

curation, creation, and collaboration — one possible model (there are
many) for driving engagement emerges. Engagement can be tapped
for marketing purposes by anchoring it within the context of the basic
social structures — communities, social applications, and similar and
then connecting these back to your brand, product, or service. In this
section, social applications are the focus.
The basic process of engagement begins with content consumption

and builds up to collaboration between participants in the creative
process. This is the kind of activity that binds community members
together. Taking off on this, there are specific social applications —
forums, collaborative tools, contests and games among them — that
you can implement under your own brand to lead your participants
through the steps of engagement that drive your business.
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Importantly, the social applications are not necessarily communities,

though some amounts to as much; they are more generally enablers of
an activity or outcome that is useful to the members of a community
with which an application is associated. Simply put, and critical to
understanding how to build an effective social presence, is
recognizing that most brands, products, or services will not support a
“community” by themselves. Why not? Think about the products that
you use, the organizations you support, and the real-world
community around you. What among them constitute the things you
think about daily, regularly, that you obsess over? These — and only
these — are the things that are candidates for long-lived, organically
developed “communities.”
Despite a lot of time and effort spent to the contrary, most brands,
products, and services do not command sufficient daily mindshare to
sustain a community of their own. To see why this is so, make a quick
mental list for yourself of the real-world organizations of which you
are a member. The typical individual has one, three, perhaps five or
even a few more organizations. After that, most people literally run
out of bandwidth, the combination of an individual’s time, and
attention. There are only so many social organizations one person can
effectively participate in. Online it’s no different: How many social
communities can you really belong to? More importantly, how many
will you actively participate in? For most, the answer is surprisingly
similar (or perhaps not surprising at all) to the capacity for
participation in real life.
Against that, ask yourself: “How likely are you to join a deodorant,
toothpaste, or laundry soap community?” Yet, more than a few CPG/
FMCG brand managers have undertaken to build just these types of
communities. Make no mistake: As long as the advertising spending
is happening, people join, take advantage of offers, and maybe even
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engage in light social activities. But understand that membership is

being driven by ad spending and not organic social interaction.
Organic growth — versus ad spending and incentive driven growth
— is what you need to build long-term participation in a community.
This is not to knock “awareness” communities or the application of

social media channels in awareness plays: These communities may
well be important parts of overall marketing programs and often do
deliver on some of the surface promises of the Social Web. Content
consumption certainly happens, and to an extent curation — people
voting or ranking what they see or do in these communities — may
also be happening. But above that, in the more important behaviors of
content creation and collaboration, activity generally starts to drop
off. Also as noted, when the ad spending stops, the community
generally stops growing as well.
Now, consider social applications. Social applications are designed to

facilitate accomplishing something in the context of a shared or
collaborative goal — “Look at us!” — and thereby, to provide a
specific value to a given group of participants. Social applications are
rooted in the task-orientation of many Internet activities, but then
extend beyond that, into social activities. By delivering a service and
then encouraging the sharing of results, interpersonal relationships
are created. In this way, social applications drive their own longevity
and usefulness. This is a very beneficial attribute when you are trying
to encourage repeat visits and you don’t have an unlimited supply of
funds to make up for organic interest and participation.
There is another aspect of social business and social application

design that warrants attention. A utility-oriented application by itself
is not social. This means that unless you design your social
application to be a part of the larger social framework — the
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ecosystem — in which your audience spends time, you’ll end up with

an island. What makes the “social application” social is its
connectedness to the communities in which participants are also
members. For example, if someone is a member of Facebook, Orkut,
or LinkedIn, or uses Twitter regularly and has built up 100, 1,000, or
more real connections, the larger value of your social application
comes when the application itself, or whatever it is that it produces or
does, is shared and pushed out through that person’s social graph.
4.6 Benefits and advantages of Marketing on Social  

Networking Sites

consumer’s purchasing decisions because they can shape the public
opinion. Nowadays, customers do not have access to all information;
also they do not have enough ability to process and evaluate every
alternative available for them and choosing the best one. So, an easy
way which is economical and intellectual would be trust other people
who they know and are in relation with them in different social
networks. These trustworthy people called opinion leaders,
individuals that lead in influencing others’ options. Social network
theory joining the opinion leadership and word-of-mouth concept can
be used to identify opinion leaders in a network. Utilizing
interpersonal relationships in a social network is a powerful force in
word-of-mouth marketing. Firms and marketers through using social
networks for marketing can increase product and brand awareness.
Furthermore, they have increased access to customer service and
feedback, as well as they can find the customer needs better.
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Social networks are a very valuable marketing tool. With the recent
growth in popularity of many of the networking websites, marketers
are better able to market their brands to a mass market without
having to invest the time and money that they would by marketing
through other means. These sites are beneficial to companies both big
and small, and allow companies to market themselves in new and
creative ways. Social networks are used as a marketing tool for many
different purposes. Those marketing large companies use these sites
to gain information on their target market, and how people feel about
their products. They can also use these sites to gain information on
their competition. Small businesses may also use these sites to
promote their brand.
These networks allow thousands of people to network with each

other, meeting new people that may benefit their business or services
being offered. Networking with different people through these sites is
an excellent way to create new contacts, and potentially create new
customers or business associates. The most valuable part of marketing
using social networks is that it allows people to market their services
to a large market at no cost. Thousands of people enter these sites
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daily. Therefore, they are able reach a mass market free of charge. The
popular network Facebook offers a free classifieds section where
people are able to post things such as job listings, items for sale or
services available. Companies of all sorts are able to place
advertisements for their products or services, as well as post job
opportunities. People are also able to market themselves by listing
their skills and abilities for employers to view.
Another popular social network, MySpace, is widely used by its

members as a way of promoting themselves. Many musicians or
actors wishing to gain some free recognition will place videos and
songs on their pages for others to view. This site also allows members
to send their videos to other members, and gain more recognition and
feedback. One large benefit to marketing on social networks is the
pass along factor. Users of these networks tend to pass along items
that are of interest to them, or that they believe their friends will find
interesting. Members are also able to pass along their own postings to
other site members, whether they know them or not.
Consumers do not make their decision by evaluating every

alternative available to them and choosing the best one. Because
regarding the range of alternatives, only limited information is
available for them. Also, people do not have enough ability to process
and evaluate all that information. Moreover, the success of social
network sites like Facebook and MySpace reveals that in recent times
interaction with others plays an important role in our lives. Instead of
spending lots of time and money to analyze every option, people
usually make their decision based on trust to others who are close to
them and have common interests with. These trustworthy people are
called opinion leaders, influential people or key players in literature.
Opinion leaders can help the spread of any idea, behavior, innovation
or advertisement among the people on the community.
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Companies by using these sites or making their own social

networking sites can identify influential people, understanding
consumer’s need and employ them to promote their product.
Utilizing social networks and the relationship between people for
marketing have received more attention in recent years.
Social networks are also beneficial to companies who are wishing to

create e-mail lists to send coupons or advertisements through the
mail. Companies may post bulletins on websites encouraging people
to sign up for their daily newsletters, etc. In doing this many
companies are able to greatly increase their mailing lists. Placing paid
advertisements, such as banners, on these sites can also benefit a
company greatly based on the amount of hits the sites receive each
day. Thousands of members view these pages daily which means ads
placed on these sites will reach a mass audience. Marketers are also
able to monitor social networking sites, to read up on how people are
viewing their brands. These sites allow them to see what their
competitors are doing, and how customers view the competition.
Receiving this feedback from customers allows marketers to
understand what the target market is looking for, what people like
about their products or services, and what needs to be improved.
Social networks also allow marketers to gain information on their

potential customers. By viewing user profiles, marketers are able to
gather information regarding the demographics and psychographics
of potential customers, making them better able to identify those that
fit into their target market. This information can often be time
consuming and costly. Having social networks to help them find this
information is quite beneficial to marketers. Many of the social
networking sites allow users to create groups regarding specific
topics. This makes it much easier for marketers to find much of the
information regarding their target market and their competitors.
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The role of social networks as an important medium for the spread of

ideas, behaviors, information and diseases has been largely studied.
Many studies related to marketing explore the effect of word-of-
mouth and viral marketing in the success of new products. Moreover,
the advancement of IT technology and the Internet reduces the cost of
marketing activities such as advertising. In fact, online social
networks and virtual communities provide lots of opportunities for
marketers, managers, and researchers because they influence
individuals’ decision making process. The decisions of people can be
influenced by opinion leaders in several ways. Opinion leaders are :
1. Acting as role models who inspire imitation;
2. Spreading information via word-of -mouth; and
3. Giving advice and verbal direction for search, purchase,and use.
Word-of-mouth marketing raises brand awareness through self-

replication and message diffusion and it has more creditability than
other forms of marketing. In general, according to above studies
advantages of using social networks for marketing can be organized
as follows:
• Lower cost: Almost all social networking sites are free to use and
put you in direct contact with potential customers without you
having to pay a penny. You may only need to send an email to
current customers, asking them to join, follow, like or be friend you,
to get things under way. If you have a small budget for advertising,
you may wish to purchase an advertisement that appears on the
social networking site. The advertisement will appear on the pages
of those whose profiles fit in with your company’s style or goals.
Usually, the cost of an online advertisement is less than an
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advertisement in print or television. Regarding that consumers pay

more attention to other’s recommendations and by new
advancement of Internet and IT technology, employing social
networks for marketing activities is significantly cheaper than
paying for advertising on the media.
• Trust and credibility: Word-of-mouth and customer-to-customer

communication have stronger creditability than other forms of
marketing. As a general rule of thumb companies always think
about their own profits. So consumers seek opinions of people
whom they trust. Marketing via social networks will increase
customers’ loyalty.
• Facilitate the diffusion of information: The most striking benefit is

that social networks via relationships on the personal level can
easily facilitate the spread of any idea, information, behavior and
opinion among people. Furthermore, online social networks are
dynamic, and information can be appended and revised at any
point.
• Gain competitive advantage: Many marketers in this competitive

market have joined the social networking community. Companies
by using these sites can easily expand their market niche, advertise
their businesses, increase brand awareness and gain loyal
customers in the future.
• Understanding consumer’s needs: As a firm investigates the social

network of its consumers, it is easier to find their interest, what the
online visitors want, identifying loyal consumers, and creating a
personal relationship with them.
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• Connecting with Current Customers: Using a social network

allows you to connect with or “friend” those who already make use
of your services. Convince current customers to join your network
by posting a flier about it at your place of business. Print the web
address of your preferred network on your next batch of business
cards. If you run a store, slip small postcards in shopping bags
when customers purchase something, encouraging them to find
your business on your network of choice. Depending on the
network you use, current customers can “check in” at your
business whenever they visit, letting others know that they are
there and spreading the word about your company.
• Finding New Customers: A social network gives you the chance to

reach out to new customers. One way to use your social network to
find new customers is to reach out to current ones. Tweet or post on
your wall, offering a special discount to current customers for
every new person who follows or likes your business. Also offer
new friends or followers a discount on your services if they join
your network.
• Open Communication: A social network lets you inform friends or

followers of secret sales or special offers quickly and simply. It also
allows customers to contact you easily. If a customer has an issue,
she can post on your wall or write a short message explaining the
problem. This allows you to respond quickly and attempt to
ameliorate the situation. Customers also can post positive
experiences with your company on your page, which is one of the
best types of advertising. You also can use the site to ask your
customers what they like and dislike about your company or about
the world in general.
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Benefits of the Top Social Media Websites
Social media is a powerful tool that people use to share and connect
with one another anywhere in the world at any time. Companies have
the unique opportunity to join in this conversation by connecting
with customers through their own social media accounts. Following
are four of the biggest social media sites on the web and how each of
them can benefit your company differently.
Facebook
• Facebook is a low-cost marketing strategy
• Share basic information about your business
• Share photos and videos of your business
• Talk to existing and potential customers
• Raise brand awareness and promote word of mouth
• Target advertising/Insights
• Offer Deals
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Twitter
• Monitor real time conversations
• Extend customer service
• Offer helpful links and headlines
• Break through communication barriers with tweets
• Run special deals and promotions
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• Build your personal brand
• Keep up on news and trends
LinkedIn
• Find business partners, clients and service providers
• Get advice from industry experts
• Add your website or blog for increased exposure
• “Recommendations” increase your credibility
• “Profile” makes for better SEO opportunities
• Join groups with like-minded people
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Google+
• Improving your results in Google Search
• Your Google+ posts get indexed quickly
• Your customers and potential customers are already on
• Google+ allows for more direct and personal relationships
• Future integration with other Google products
• Growing rapidly with 500 million users
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4.7 Marketing on Facebook
Facebook is a social network for connecting people with those around

them – friends, family, coworkers, or simply others with similar
interests. Facebook started in 2004 as a closed community for college
students (requiring users to sign up with a valid university email
address) but has since expanded beyond that to schools, corporations,
and any user across the world. Facebook allows users to connect and
share information in a variety of ways.
Facebook currently has over 750 million active users, and that number
continues to grow steadily. According to Compete.com, it is currently
the second most popular website in the world (behind Google) in
terms of unique visitors, and according to ComScore, the most
popular social network overall. There are a number of good reasons
for businesses to participate in and maintain a presence on Facebook.
Here are a few:
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Generate leads for

your business
Promote other
content you create,
including webinars,
blog articles, or
Create a other resources
community
around your
business
Connect and
engage with
current and
potential
Get found by customers
people who
are searching
for your
products or
services
!
Facebook is a tool for connecting people with those around them. As
with any social media tool, marketers have an opportunity to use
Facebook to expand their online footprint and directly engage with
customers and prospects.
Think your customers are not on Facebook? There are tens of

thousands of work-related, collegiate, and high school networks.
According to InsideFacebook.com, approximately two thirds of U.S.
Facebook users are outside of the college demographic, and users age
26 to 64 make up more than half of Facebook’s U.S. user base.
Personal vs. Business Accounts
On Facebook, Profiles are meant for people, and Pages are meant for
businesses. To fully engage and leverage Facebook’s features, you
should create a personal profile. Do not create a personal Profile for
your business. Profiles are for people; Pages are for businesses.
Facebook has built significant functionality specifically for businesses,
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and all of this functionality is only available for Pages. We’ll talk
about Pages more in a later section.
There are a few key differences between Business Pages and Personal
Profiles:
• Pages allow you to designate multiple administrators so you can

have more than one person help manage the account. In addition, if
one of your administrators leaves the company, you can still have
control over the Page.
• Pages are, by default, public, and are starting to rank in Facebook

and public search results.
• Pages are split into different categories (local businesses, brands,

musicians) that help you get listed in more relevant search results.
• Personal profiles have friends, which require mutual acceptance,

whereas anyone can become a fan of your Page without needing
administrator approval.
Social media is about establishing and building relationships, whether

they are personal or business connections. In many cases, you may
find that some connections will blur the lines between the personal
and business realms. It is also important to be transparent and
authentic when using social media to market a business. People like
to connect with people, not faceless brands. Furthermore, it is these
personal connections that will lead to business, referrals, and word of
mouth marketing for your company.
If you are concerned about exposing portions of your profile to these
different connections – perhaps you still don’t want your business
connections to see your personal photos – fortunately, Facebook
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allows you to customize your privacy settings to control who sees

which portions of your profile. Facebook also recommends the setting
you should use depending on who is viewing your profile. To edit
your privacy settings, click on “Account”, then “Privacy Settings.”
Visibility of every aspect of your profile (photos, contact information,

education information) can be controlled via the Profile privacy
settings. You can set each section to be viewable by:
• Everyone
• Friends of Friends
• Friends Only
• Custom: Customize who (which networks, friend lists, or specific
friends) can or cannot access a portion of your profile.
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A great (advanced) way for customizing your privacy settings is to set

up Friend Lists. Friend Lists are a way of organizing your friends into
relevant groups. There are a few benefits of creating Friend Lists:
• Customize privacy settings by Friend List
• View News Feed updates by Friend List filters
• Invite Friend Lists to events (must be list of max 100 people)
• Send messages to Friend Lists (must be list of max 20 people)
• More to come – Friend Lists are an under-used feature that is

coming into play more across Facebook
How to Set Up a Business Page
1.Choose a Classification -: you will likely choose One of the first 3 options
highlighted to the left the category you choose will help you rank in more
relevant searches and provide relevant information field on your page.
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A Page is similar to a Profile except that it is, by default, public, and

users can Like and become a “fan” of your Page without first
requiring approval from the Page’s administrators. Creating a Page is
completely free but will require your time to build and maintain. To
get started, visit www.facebook.com/pages/create.php (Note: you
must be logged in to create a Page). Facebook will then walk you
through a simple wizard to create your Page.
Follow the next setup wizard, which will ask you to upload a photo
(use your company or brand logo), give you an opportunity to
suggest your page to friends in order to generate fans, and add some
basic info. (Note: You can always skip these steps and add these items
later.)
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Next, complete your Page like you would a Profile. Click on “Edit
Page” or “Edit Info” on your Page’s homepage to add information
about your business like your website, a short description, products,
and so on.
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!
Take advantage of some of the features of business Pages such as the
discussion board to engage your fans.
As the administrator, by default, your name and profile will not show
up anywhere on your Page. You are the behind-the-scenes manager.
When you post new information or respond to a discussion thread, it
will appear to be posted by your company rather than you personally,
even though you’ll be logged in as yourself (this can be changed in
your Pages settings). You can designate multiple administrators as
well to help with the maintenance of your Page.
In addition to being the administrator of your Page, you will want to

become a fan. Click the “Like” button on your Page to become a fan.
Once you become a fan, you will be listed among all the other fans on
your Page and all the Pages of which you are a fan will show up on
your profile, giving your business more visibility to your network.
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How to Promote Your Page
Now that you’ve built your Page, you need to focus on attracting
some fans. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
• Create an engaging Page. Use applications like the discussion board
and YouTube video box to add more interesting and engaging
content to your Page. Give users a reason to become a fan of your
Page and engage with you. More advanced Facebook users can add
custom pages to their Page using iFrames.
• Leverage the viral nature of Facebook – the News Feed. The added
benefit of creating an engaging page is that every time a fan
engages with your page – from becoming a fan to posting a
comment to attending an event – that activity is published to their
“News Feed” which can be seen by their friends on Facebook.
When a user first logs into Facebook, they see a feed of their
friends‟ recent activity, so the activity of your fans on your Page
gets shared with a greater network, giving your business more
visibility.
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• Draw on your existing network. You most likely already have email
subscribers and blog readers – so make sure they know they can
now become a fan of your business on Facebook. Consider emailing
your opt-in mailing list, including a link to your page in your email
signature, blogging about your Facebook page, and posting a link
or badge to your Page on your website or blog.
• Make your Page publicly searchable. By default, your Page will be

public so it can get indexed by search engines and give you the
opportunity to drive organic search traffic to your Page. If you
don’t notice your Page showing up in searches, make sure you have
set it to be publicly indexed and searchable. Go to “Edit Page,” click
“Manage Permissions” and make sure “Page Visibility” box is un-
checked. This will make it publicly visible.
• Use Facebook Ads for an extra push. Facebook ads allow you to
advertise a website or other properties on Facebook, including
Pages, Groups, and Events. If you’re familiar with Google
AdWords, the system for building and running ads on Facebook is
very similar. A later section will dive deeper into how to set up and
optimize Facebook Ads.
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Facebook Groups vs. Pages
In most cases, businesses should create a Page to represent their

company on Facebook. In a few cases, however, it may make sense to
create a Facebook Group instead (or in addition). The key distinction
between Groups and Pages is that a Group is for a community of
people with a common interest, while a Page represents a brand or
entity of which there are “fans.” Here are some of the differences in
functionality:
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How to Advertise on Facebook
Facebook Ads allow you to promote your business, get more fans for
your business Page, and drive more leads for your sales team.
Facebook Ads allow you to advertise a website or content you
manage on Facebook (like a Group, Page, or Event). The ad creation
and management tools are very similar to the Google AdWords
interface.
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To get started, visit http://www.facebook.com/advertising, and click

“Create an Ad”. (Note: You must be logged in to create an ad.) Follow
the step-by-step instructions to create your ad.
 
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For Facebook Ads
1. Choose your destination tab. This is the landing page that your ad
will point to.
2. Choose your ad’s title. Choose an eye-catching, concise title.
3. Create ad copy for the body. Create compelling copy to promote

your ad.
4. Choose an image. Images are highly recommended, as they

increase your ad’s click-through rate.
5. Preview your ad. Then make changes as you see fit.
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For Sponsored Stories
1. Choose your story type. You can select a “Page Like Story,” a
“Page Post Story,” or a “Page Post Like Story.” Click the question
mark icons on Facebook next to each option for further
clarification.
2. Preview your story.
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Ad Targeting Options
The second step is to choose your targeting options. Your ad is more

likely to perform better and continue running successfully if it’s being
displayed to users who are most likely to be interested in your
product or service. Select the country you would like your ad to be
displayed in.
You can choose up to 25 countries, but note that if you target more
than one country, you won't be able to refine your targeting to specific
cities. Next, choose the demographics you would like to target. You
can also target people by likes/interests, and connections on
Facebook.
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For the last step, select a payment type and budget for your ad
campaign. Scroll down to the “Pricing” section and click on the “Set a
Different Bid (Advanced Mode)” link. This will show you a suggested
range of bids that are currently winning the auction among ads
similar to yours. If you would like to set a different bid, you can do so
here as well.
Click “Review Ad” and see a preview of your ad before you publish
it.
Facebook has built-in analytics to help track ad performance in terms

of number of impressions, clicks, and click-through rate. Run multiple
ad variations at the same time and use the Ads Manager to determine
which ones deliver the best results for your business.
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Business Best Practices by Facebook
Facebook started as a hangout for college students, but now it is a

representative sample of the population. As we’ve said, Facebook
provides many business opportunities. Start implementing this list of
10 best practices, and you will be well on your way to Facebook
marketing success.
10 Facebook for Business Best Practices:
1. Be interactive, fun and helpful. When people reach your

Facebook page, they are looking for some kind of interaction.
Don’t disappoint them. As an example, a hardware company
offered their Facebook fans links, applications, and engaging
information, and within a short time, they added 26,000 fans.
2. Embed videos on your Facebook page. There is no reason why

you should send people to YouTube to watch your videos. Keep
them right on your page with embedded videos.
3. Create a connection between Facebook and the outside world. I

recently read a case study about how sales reps worked with local
retailers to promote their events through Facebook updates and
photos. Consider something similar.
4. Create contests on Facebook. Contests are a fun and engaging

way to encourage participation from fans and even generate new
fans. For example, in order to enter a contest, one company asked
people to comment on a thread announcing a giveaway in
Facebook.
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5. Integrate traditional advertising with Facebook. The Facebook

icon/logo is well known. Add it to your print ads to promote your
Facebook presence. Another great idea is to use traditional ads to
promote contests that encourage people to sign up on your fan
page.
6. Use Facebook to grow your email list, and vice versa. Use your
email newsletter to boost awareness of your Facebook page. In
addition, promote your email newsletter to your existing Facebook
fans. The end result will be growth in your email list and your
Facebook fan base.
7. Introduce new products on Facebook first. People who sign up to

be fans of your Facebook page are likely your most loyal
evangelists and customers. Reward them by giving them
information about a new product/service/feature before everyone
else. If you do it right, they will help you promote it to others.
8. Welcome new page visitors. When thinking about Facebook, a

new metric comes to mind: visitor-to-like. As a B2B company, you
ultimately want to maximize the percentage of people who visit
your Facebook Page and click the "Like" button. One important
way to achieve this goal and establish expectations with new fans
is to implement a 'welcome' landing page that invites new visitors
to Like your Page. Technically, there are many ways to execute
this.
9. Integrate social content on your Facebook Page. Facebook is the

gateway to the internet for many people. They use it as a home
base. In fact, one in eight minutes on the internet is spent on
Facebook. Because Facebook has become such an online home for
people, it is important to incorporate content from other social
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channels like YouTube and SlideShare to extend the life and reach
of that content.
10. 'Like' other businesses’ Facebook Pages. Remember that social

media is, well, social. By Liking the Pages of business partners,
valued vendors, and customers, Facebook will notify the
administrators of those Pages. In return, some of them may also
decide to Like your Page, which will also expose it to the
individual fans of their Pages. Think of this as leveraging
Facebook for co-marketing efforts.
How to Measure and Analyze Your Facebook Presence
Measuring results is a key part of any marketing strategy, and

Facebook is no different. A useful Tool like Google Analytics can be
used to measure the traffic, leads, and customers driven from
Facebook, it is important to understand that Facebook also provides
its own analytics data. Facebook Insights provides Facebook Page
administrators with analytics data about Page visits and engagement.
In the page overview section of Insights, you can take a quick look at
how many new Likes your page has received as well as the number of
your Page’s fans who are actively engaging with your content. A key
metric to note here is the per cent change of active users. Increasing
your number of active users can help drive traffic and leads to your
business.
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4.8 Marketing on MySpace
When it comes to conducting business on MySpace, organizations

have to make sure they constantly stay abreast of the rules and
regulations on MySpace. The more education they receive on how to
conduct business on MySpace, and how to solve the problems with
MySpace, the more will be the profit margins. Businesses should take
time each day to look at any changes in the MySpace format, and
consequent rules of the site. The more they know about this, the better
it will be for the bottom line.
MySpace is starting to institute a quality control system that will

frown upon commercially drawn pages, and thus you want to try to
create a MySpace page this is at least in some part not entirely
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commercial. This means toning down the offerings, and at least

pretending like you are trying to contribute something to the
MySpace community beyond attempting to sell people on goods, and
services.
Part of marketing on MySpace is, understanding the different roles of

each member, and guest on the site. For example, if you are placing a
viral video on MySpace, and you want everyone to see it, it must be
part of a friend post, not under your videos section, because your
videos section is for members viewing only. This means nobody else
will be able to see the video but members, and friends of your space.
This is one little example of how important it is to keep up with the
rules, to make sure you know how to maximize the effectiveness of
your site. The more businesses learn about MySpace the more
powerful the marketing efforts will be. Therefore, it is imperative that
marketers learn as much about MySpace as possible, from the rules to
the regulations, to the little nuances that make it such a powerful
marketing tool. Once you have a clear understanding of these rules,
you will be ready to take a step in the right direction towards making
money with MySpace.
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Conducting business on Myspace is about the profile - There are

different approaches to conduct business it through affiliate
marketing? Or is it through custom templates and additions instead?
Whatever the answer, you must realize that the main focus of
MySpace is the user profile, and no matter what the method you use
for making money on MySpace the user profile is an intricate part of
any MySpace money making scheme. Therefore, it is important that
you master the MySpace profile before truly harnessing the wealth
that is out there for those wanting to make money on MySpace.
Mastering a MySpace profile can be as easy as creating a killer profile
yourself, and then looking at what you did that was good, what
wasn’t good, and what services, or market needs are available. This
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will surely help further your understanding of MySpace, and where

the money making niches are within the system.
The first part of any MySpace profile should be the picture. While you
can upload many pictures, the one most people see is your homepage
picture. This is the picture that sits on your page for everyone else to
see, and it is imperative that this picture is not only catchy, but
intriguing. A picture of nature on MySpace might be catchy, but it
wouldn’t intrigue people to click the profile. Conversely, a picture of a
celebrity would. So think about what picture works best for you.
Maybe it’s one in an exotic place, or maybe it’s something more
relevant to your business, like a picture of a big stack of money, or a
fancy car. Whatever the MySpace main page picture is, it should be
intriguing enough for users to click.
Next make sure you have a quality group of multimedia on the site to
keep users interested, without freezing up their computers. Many
MySpace money makers have a rule of not putting any video, and
audio on the site that would compete with one and other. Also make
sure there is nothing on your page that is obscene, or would cause
users to turn away from your page.
Doing these simple steps, along with adding a lot of friends, and
giving some valuable content will help users warm up to your site,
and keep them coming back for whatever money making endeavor
you have going. This will surely be one of your secret weapons to
making more money than anyone else on MySpace in the future as
your business grows.
The Wonder of MySpace for Affiliates
What makes MySpace so ripe for affiliate related promotions is the

social networking aspect of the site. Essentially everyone is connected
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to one, and others through some type of associative group, or crew.

The more friends you get, the better you look, and thus, people strive
to accumulate massive amounts of friends and others spend hours
online doing the same. By understanding the above facts, one can
turn these networks of groups and friends into selling machines and
end up with a fat pocket full of MySpace cash in the process.
Affiliate marketing is all about selling someone else’s product for

them in exchange for a piece of the sale price. What better way is
there to sell a product then on a sight that is full of literally thousands
of people at any given time? The answer is there is no better way, and
that is why MySpace is such a powerful sales tool, because of the
sheer number of visitors per day, and the amount of time those
visitors spend each day on the site. Capturing these visitors to check
out your affiliate product page is an entirely different ball of wax all
together.
The key to affiliate marketing on MySpace is the profile. You want to

create a profile, and a mini-page that is both sales driven, and
interesting. For example if you are selling sporting goods as an
affiliate, create a profile that is intriguing to sports fans, not just a
sales page disguised as a profile. Put a good bit of sports statistics on
there, pictures, maybe a few interviews with athletes, etc. This will
help entice visitors, and then when you start to make more friends,
the process begins to take on a life of its own.
Finally, when affiliate marketing on MySpace for money, make sure to

diversify what you are offering. Create several profiles, and don’t be
afraid to be several different personas, or people. If you are selling a
cooking product, it might make sense to bill yourself as a top chef.
Creating some type of image will help increase affiliate sales, and
keep the money coming in all day long. After this process starts to
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work for you, make sure to share with others what you have learned
so they can help you market your affiliate products as well.
Selling Your Own Products on MySpace
There are hundreds of ways to make money with MySpace, and not
all of them involve doing a lot of work, one of these is selling your
own products on MySpace. If you have a band, or if you are an actor,
or a musician, or anyone that creates something, it is very possible to
create a MySpace page that sells your goods. Many people fail to
realize how many MySpace members are only on MySpace to sell
their own products, and market themselves to an entire community.
While you might think this is normal for others, but not you, the truth
is it’s worth a second look.
Selling your own products on MySpace is all about creating a large

group of responsive friends that would be interested in buying your
product, or service online. Doing this means that you should not only
try to collect large groups of friends on MySpace, but also contacting
them on a regular basis to make sure they are keeping abreast with
what you are doing, and continue to frequent your page.
Try giving away something free to spice up the visitor numbers to

your page, and get some more people on your bandwagon. This can
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mean simply having a contest on your MySpace page every once and
a while, where you give away whatever it is you are selling, or you
can do it on a weekly basis for even more attraction. The concept is to
get more people checking out your page by giving them a big
incentive to visit your MySpace page each day.
Selling your own products on MySpace is as much about you, as it is

about your product. It is imperative to brand yourself as a guru to
whatever it is you are selling, and this means building trust with your
friends. Whatever product you are selling, you should also offer free
information, and question and answer sessions with your friends on
your MySpace page as often as possible to show that your product is
full of the same useful information you are sharing with your friends.
As MySpace becomes more, and more popular amongst visitors from
all over the world, there will be limitless possibilities to sell goods on
the site, and to make a lot of money in the process by following the
steps provided above to make serious cash on a daily basis.
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One great way to market outside of MySpace is to reach out through a

note worthy blog. This will provide you with a one stop area that you
can keep people updated on what you are doing. This means your
past customers, your friends, and your co-workers will all be able to
check out this blog on a regular basis. When you start to include your
MySpace address in your blog posts, you will start to gain more
targeted traffic to your MySpace page. Further, when people are
reading your blog that you have not met, but share the same interests
you do in business, they too will be able to check out your MySpace
page, and be much more likely to make a purchase on your page than
just any old random person.
Another great way to market your MySpace page is through signature

marketing. Most people liken signature marketing to forums,
however, this can be done on any number of sites. Most websites
require users to set up a profile, and in that profile they ask for any
special links you might want to share with people that view your
profile, or see your posts, these links are called signature links. By
adding your MySpace page to the signature links of any forum you
frequent or any other social networking site you might use, will add a
good amount of free traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Marketing your MySpace page off of the site itself is a great way to
increase traffic, and get more targeted leads that are more willing, and
likely to purchase your products to your site.
Creating a Site Selling MySpace Products
Having a site that sells MySpace related products can be a big way to
profit off of the current MySpace craze online. There are literally
thousands of additions, templates, gadgets, and other things that
people use for their MySpace page on a daily basis. Similar to a
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virtual locker, users are dressing up their pages to fit their unique

personalities, while constantly trying to out show their friends. This
means that a huge willing market exists for people that want to make
money with MySpace.
What should you sell to those wanting to update their MySpace page?
The answer should be right in front of you, simply go to MySpace,
and look at what people are using, and what people are digging.
Simply look for groups of people that are using the same product, and
find out how much the product is being sold for, then simply emulate
the product, or buy the rights to resell the product, and get into the
game.
Another way to sell MySpace products to those wanting to update the

look of their sites is to create your own additions. This can be much
easier than one might think it would be to do. First, you must identify
what it is that people might enjoy for their MySpace page. This might
be an advanced jukebox or maybe some unique video hosting
services, and then create the product and build a website to sell it.
Finally, there is the ever profitable advertising one can sell for their
MySpace page. The best way to do this is to create a page, and build a
network of friends as large as humanly possible of active friends.
Once you do this, you want to utilize software that will allow you to
post to as many friends, boards as possible, and create an active
relationship with the friend group. Once this is done you will be able
to sell the top slot on your MySpace page for a pretty penny each
month, and sell subsequent spots for more money.
By servicing the MySpace community you are not only entering a

robust market, you are getting free promotion from everyone that
uses your goods, and services. This is the key to more sales, and more
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income in the future. Simply by seizing the moment by providing

MySpace users with useful additions for their site, you will be
handsomely rewarded.
4.9 Marketing on LinkedIn
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site.

Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly
used for professional networking. As of 2nd August 2012, LinkedIn
reported it had 175 million+ professionals members in over 200
countries and territories around the world. They surpassed 5.3 billion
professional-oriented searches in 2012. That alone should be enough
to get you thinking about adding LinkedIn to your marketing
strategy. But more than that, LinkedIn has some unique features to get
you and your business/brand seen by your target market.
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This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:
• A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections,

the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree
connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections
(termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an
introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a
mutual contact.
• It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities

recommended by someone in one's contact network.
• Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
• Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover
which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
• Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in
identification.
• Users can now follow different companies and can get notification
about the new joining and offers available.
• Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply
for.
The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional

requires either a preexisting relationship, or the intervention of a
contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users.
LinkedIn participates in EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy
Principles.
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LinkedIn also allows users to research companies with which they

may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given
company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided.
These may include the ratio of female to male employees, the
percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the
company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a
list of present and former employees.
The feature LinkedIn Answers, similar to Yahoo! Answers, allows

users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature is
free and the main difference from the latter is that questions are
potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people
asking and answering questions is known.
LinkedIn is very SEO friendly. Make your profile nice and keyword
rich and you could very well find your LinkedIn profile at the top of
google! Secondly it is a great lead generation tool. Join or start groups
to tap into the huge community of users who are looking for
professional advice.
It increases your brand visibility and won’t eat up half the time you
spend on Facebook or twitter. An hour a day making connections,
commenting in your groups and posting interesting updates will be
enough for you to grow a huge base of connections and catapult your
business.
There are many more reasons, including the very visible social proof
on your profile page in the form of endorsements and
recommendations, the fantastic facility to showcase your experience,
talents and expertise, the ability to add business pages with featured
products, create huge targeted groups and loads more.
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Business Generation by Setting Up of a Correct Profile
The whole point of LinkedIn is to make connections and engage with

those connections in a meaningful way. Unlike Facebook and Twitter
where your profiles are based on the content you’ve been sharing,
LinkedIn is very much more focused on who you are, what you do,
what you can do for others and your experience and expertise.
Remember LinkedIn was originally setup as a recruitment network

and still is the top recruitment network on the web. Therefore your
profile is like your resume. You are in effect telling people why you
are the ideal candidate for them.
Now transfer that into the B2B world and the effect is just as
powerful. Someone types my name or does a search for Social Media
experts and the first thing they land on is my ‘resume’. A full page
telling them, why I’m the ideal person to teach them how to run their
social media campaigns.
Leveraging the SEO Friendly Nature of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is very SEO friendly, so utilizing your profile to add relevant

keywords may well get you found on the first page of Google. You
must remember though that Google is changing its algorithms all the
time and moving much more towards social proof. So you need to
add to your keyword rich profile; great engagement, lots of likes,
endorsements, recommendations and connections. Keyword stuffing
may work in the LinkedIn search (and it does), but it won’t hold
much weight on its own in Google rankings anymore.
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Positioning
Creating a benefit driven summary, showcasing your experience and

expertise, plus adding your specialties and skills (plus a few more
great tips I’m going to be giving you), will begin to position you with
credibility and authority in your industry or niche. Add to that the all-
important social proof element and it won’t be long before you will
have positioned yourself as the go to expert in your particular arena.
Now before you start thinking this is beyond your reach or sounds
too much like hard work, LinkedIn lends itself beautifully to building
up connections and getting that social proof quickly and easily and it
all starts with an awesome profile.
Step-by-step guide to writing an effective summary:
1. Begin with a brief introduction to you and what you currently do/
offer
2. Follow up immediately with how you can help the visitor (always
write as if you’re speaking to one person - the person visiting your
profile)
3. Add some credentials. Why you’re the best person to help them
with this particular issue. What others have said, etc.
4. Offer a free gift - this link will lead to an option form
5. Add a personal paragraph, so they can get to know the person

behind the business
6. Add a list of your specialties - add some great keywords here!
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As you’re writing your summary please remember your objective at

all times. You are trying to compel people to connect with you, contact
you and/or engage with you. Introspect and ask yourself these key
questions:
• Is your summary compelling enough?
• Have you looked at other profiles in your niche and surveyed their
summaries?
• How can you make yours better, more benefit driven, more
compelling?
LinkedIn Projects
The Projects provide an opportunity for the marketers to open up and

tell people what they are working on. Marketers can write about a
new sales plan or organizing a webinar or event, building some new
software, launching a new product line. Whatever it is, add it to
projects, add some great and relevant keywords and lots of
anticipation and excitement. This is a chance to get people excited
about your business and showcase your innovation. Here’s how to
add projects.
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Skills and Expertise
What’s great about adding your skills and expertise is, once again it’s
a fantastic opportunity for you to use relevant keywords. Some time
back LinkedIn introduced endorsements. You may have seen them if
you have a LinkedIn account already.
188
When you add skills and expertise now, people get the opportunity to
endorse you for each or every one. So if someone truly believes you
are an expert in one or more of your skills all they have to do is click a
button and their face will pop up next to your keyword giving you
that all important social proof. Here’s the best bit, all you have to do
to start getting endorsements is get out there and endorse others. It’s
the law of reciprocation. As soon as you endorse someone they will
get a notification and they will be asked if they want to endorse you.
Now, please note, if you are not an expert in any of the areas you have
included and have absolutely nothing to back it up, this isn’t going to
work.
Groups
LinkedIn supports the formation of interest groups, and as of 2012

there are 870,612 such groups whose membership varies from 1 to
377,000. The majority of the largest groups are employment related,
although a very wide range of topics are covered mainly around
professional and career issues, and there are currently 128,000 groups
for both academic and corporate alumni.
Groups support a limited form of discussion area, moderated by the

group owners and managers. Since groups offer the ability to reach a
wide audience without so easily falling foul of anti-spam solutions,
there is a constant stream of spam postings, and there now exist a
range of firms who offer a spamming service for this very purpose.
LinkedIn has devised a few mechanisms to reduce the volume of
spam, but recently took the decision to remove the ability of group
owners to inspect the email address of new members in order to
determine if they were spammers. Groups may be private, accessible
189
to members only or may be open to Internet users in general to read,

though they must join in order to post messages.
Recommendations
Recommendations on LinkedIn are the most important testimonials

and work really well for Social Marketing purposes. Testimonials
from people who have worked with you, for you, have bought your
products/courses, are a customer or even a subscriber of yours.
Anyway that someone is positively associated with you is an
opportunity for a recommendation. Just like endorsements, the best
way to get recommendations is to give them. However, don’t expect
someone you have recommended to come back and do the same for
you. I know I will only ever recommend someone who I have actually
worked with or who I have first-hand experience of their work or
190
services. Social Marketing won’t get anywhere if you don’t get out
there and altruistically start recommending others.
4.10 Short Case study
The high-end hotel website uses Facebook Ads to reach more

customers and offer them exotic trips, seeing a 100 per cent increase in
travel package purchases from Facebookers. Luxury Link is a luxury
hotel website that engages with people who love traveling, enjoy
luxury and appreciate the experience that Luxury Link offers.
Travelers can visit the site to learn more about travel destinations,
discover new places to stay and find packages that fit their desires.
Luxury Link offers Live Auction and Buy Now deals that customers
can purchase for up to 65 per cent off. The website provides hotels
and resorts to fit people’s standards.
Goals
Luxury Link wanted to drive engagement and increase brand

visibility for the well-traveled luxury customer to:
• Offer a way for people to share luxury travel experiences and new
featured destinations
• Continue to grow revenue by offering relevant deals to its
community
Approach
To create a place where people could engage in a conversation about

luxury travel, Luxury Link first created a Page:
191
• Chose its logo as its profile picture and a cover photo featuring a
couple in a pool on an exotic getaway
• Added photos of getaway hotspots to its timeline to encourage
people to connect with the Page
The company also ran Facebook Ads to drive likes by offering travel
packages for people interested in upscale getaways:
• Targeted married people and words such as “Chanel,” “Fendi

official Page,” “Prada” and “Starbucks.”
• Used promotions in the ad text, such as “Get 65% off a luxury
vacation. Book your dream getaway today!”
Mindful that travel is inherently social, Luxury Link encouraged

engagement in a variety of ways, including:
• Frequent status updates offered people the chance to win getaways,

such as a beach vacation
• Live chats on the Page let people post questions and receive
answers from a travel expert
• A Photo Contest tab included posts on a weekly picture of a travel
destination, encouraging people to comment and guess its location
To reach friends of fans of its page, Luxury Link ran sponsored

stories:
• Used a sponsored story to increase distribution of a Page post by

featuring eye-catching images of a high-end hotel on Moorea Island
• Determined that tropical destinations such as Fiji and Tahiti were
generating the most engagement and featured those destinations to
its community
192
Results
• 100% increase in sales for travel packages coming from Facebook

• 30% increase in site visits month over month from Facebook
• 90% of the Facebook community who purchased travel packages
were new Luxury Link customers
4.11 Activities
1. Browse online to find two current campaigns by Indian

Companies that are taking advantage of the real time nature of
social media to create a sense of urgency regarding limited-time
offers? 
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————-
2. Use your LinkedIn profile to create any two ‘Projects’ in your field
and invite connections to jointly work on these projects.
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
————————-—————————————————————
4.12 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about, leveraging the power of

Social Networking Sites. Here we have seen that, to leverage social
media to its fullest, organizations need to become more nimble and
entrepreneurial. Social media creates the opportunity for much
greater collaboration between departments, engendering more
193
experimentation, faster decision making and more precisely tuned

responses. Today, Organizations have asked employees to begin using
a variety of social media applications such as social networks, blogs,
project-focused wikis and podcasts to collaborate better across
different time zones and locations. Today, the organization routinely
shares knowledge through company specific blogs. The once clear-cut
boundary between marketing and sales continues to blur as online
advertising and links to third-party comparison sites allow companies
to drive traffic to their retail websites. As a result, firms can rapidly
convert shoppers into buyers, and those buyers into salespeople.
Customer expectations regarding the online purchase experience
continue to climb, as leading retailers such as Amazon.com continue
to raise the bar by customizing recommendations, providing intuitive,
straightforward online navigation and minimizing the number of
clicks needed to complete a purchase. Social media has an
increasingly important role to play in helping companies identify and
address unmet customer needs.
Some of the key features of Social Networking Sites discussed in this

chapter is Interactive Customer Service. In this we have seen that,
companies can use social media to tap into the power and wisdom of
virtual crowds, enlisting them in support of other users and
empowering employees to act as agents for the company. Doing so
can generate a huge customer service multiplier effect, allowing
organizations to more rapidly identify, diagnose and resolve problems
while simultaneously delivering exceptional value. Social media
provides the information companies can use to segment customer
groups more finely than in the past, along with the tools to tailor
products, services and communication campaigns to suit the needs
and expectations of individual segments. This spells the end for
standard responses and one-size-fits-all offerings. Customers
increasingly demand to be treated as individuals—and will give their
194
business to suppliers that provide either unique experiences or

superior value.
Customer Relations Management through the application of Social

Media is an approach to business that formally recognizes the role of
the customer and external influencers as a key in understanding and
managing conversations around the brand, product, or service. If the
reference to “conversations” seems to narrow the definition, consider
this: The conversation in the contemporary business context is
nothing short of a holistic, digital artefact that captures and conveys
the sum total of what your firm or organization has delivered. Social
CRM invites the customer into your business or organization through
the future-oriented process of collaboration. It recognizes what has
happened, just as traditional CRM does, but then takes the added step
of inviting the customer into the processes that govern what is about
to happen or may potentially happen or should never happen again.
As an integral part of improving the customer relationship process
following are the steps that clearly place the customer and the
conversations they are having at the center of the Social CRM effort:
• Map the customers’ end-to-end experiences

• Overlay the moments of truth with a feedback channel audit
• Establish a baseline of customer experience and priorities to
improve
• Establish a regular process for reporting
At the center of the Social Web and the shared activities that define it
are the online personas of participants: More than with prior
anonymous discussion boards or cloaked personas, it’s an actual
identity that is of value in a business context, since it is generally the
motivation of an individual to be noticed as such that drives social
participation in the first place. Though detailed personal information
195
is (still) generally not available except to “trusted friends” or

colleagues, the use of a real name or photo in one’s social profile is
becoming common. Along with any optionally provided information,
the result is a a basis for understanding who it is that is actually
participating.
Opinion leaders have a large amount of information about a variety

of products, categories, retails concepts, and markets. Experts have
been able to identify five characteristics for opinion leaders are
Influential, Knowledgeable, Communicable, Receptive, and
Innovative
The key point in word-of-mouth marketing is to identify the

influential nodes. Valente and Davis (1999) showed that diffusion is
faster when it initiates by opinion leaders instead of random people.
Social network theory links with the opinion leadership and word-of-
mouth concept can be used to identify the opinion leaders in a
network and help to the diffusion of any behaviour. A three step
process can be used to help firms use social network for their
marketing activities. In step 1, firms should first find a proper social
network or build their own social network to establish their
relationship with consumers. Then, step 2, includes identifying and
selecting opinion leaders that firms think they are influential among
consumers. Finally, in step 3, these influential people can be
considered as initiative nodes to help diffusion of innovation, new
product adoption and spread of any behaviour in the whole
community.
The basic process of engagement begins with content consumption

and builds up to collaboration between participants in the creative
process. This is the kind of activity that binds community members
together. Taking off on this, there are specific social applications —
196
forums, collaborative tools, contests, and games among them — that

you can implement under your own brand to lead your participants
through the steps of engagement that drive your business.

consumer’s purchasing decisions because they can shape the public
opinion. Nowadays, customers do not have access to all information;
also they do not have enough ability to process and evaluate every
alternative available for them and choosing the best one. So, an easy
way which is economical and intellectual would be trust other people
who they know and are in relation with them in different social
networks. These trustworthy people are called opinion leaders,
individuals that lead in influencing others’ options. Social network
theory joining the opinion leadership and word-of-mouth concept can
be used to identify opinion leaders in a network. Utilizing
interpersonal relationships in a social network is a powerful force in
word-of-mouth marketing. Firms and marketers through using social
networks for marketing can increase product and brand awareness.
Furthermore, they have increased access to customer service and
feedback, as well as they can find the customer needs better.
Social networks are also beneficial to companies who are wishing to

create e-mail lists to send coupons or advertisements through the
mail. Companies may post bulletins on websites encouraging people
to sign up for their daily newsletters, etc. In doing this many
companies are able to greatly increase their mailing lists. Placing paid
advertisements, such as banners, on these sites can also benefit a
company greatly based on the amount of hits the sites receive each
day.
Social media is a powerful tool that people use to share and connect
with one another anywhere in the world at any time. Companies have
197
the unique opportunity to join in this conversation by connecting

with customers through their own social media accounts. Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ are four of the biggest social media
sites on the web and how each of them can benefit your company
differently.
Facebook is a tool for connecting people with those around them. As

with any social media tool, marketers have an opportunity to use
Facebook to expand their online footprint and directly engage with
customers and prospects.
When it comes to conducting business on MySpace, organizations

have to make sure they constantly stay abreast of the rules, and
regulations on MySpace. The more education they receive on how to
conduct business on MySpace, and how to solve the problems with
MySpace, the more will be the profit margins. Businesses should take
time each day to look at any changes in the MySpace format, and
consequent rules of the site. The more they know about this, the better
it will be for the bottom line.
LinkedIn also allows users to research companies with which they

may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given
company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided.
These may include the ratio of female to male employees, the
percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the
company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a
list of present and former employees.
198
4.13 Self assessment questions
1. To leverage social media to its fullest, organizations need to evolve

in which ways?
2. What is an approach to business that formally recognizes the role

of the customer and external influencers?
3. State the importance of ‘Word-of-mouth marketing’ from the

context of Social Media Marketing’.
4. Explain in brief how social networks also allow marketers to gain

information on their potential customers?
5. Cite some reasons for businesses to participate in and maintain a

presence on Facebook?
6. Describe the steps involved in the setting up a Business Page on

Facebook.
7. Enlist and discuss any five Business Best Practices followed by

Facebook.
8. Discuss in detail the process of selling your own products on

MySpace.
9. Explain the process of leveraging the SEO friendly nature of

LinkedIn.
10. Explain the statement ‘LinkedIn supports the formation of interest

groups.’
199
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Program Design and Advisory Team

Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Mr. Manish Pitke

Prof. Kanu Doshi Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Prof. Dr. V.H. Iyer Mr. Smitesh Bhosale

Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Prof. Vineel Bhurke

Prof. Venkat lyer Dr. Pravin Kumar Agrawal

Prof. Dr. Pradeep Pendse Mrs. Margaret Vas

Prof. Sandeep Kelkar Mr. Anuj Pandey

Prof. Dr. Swapna Pradhan Course Editor

Prof. Bijoy B. Bhattacharyya Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Mr. P.M. Bendre Course Coordinators

Mr. Ajay Prabhu Ms. Kirti Sampat

Mr. A.S. Pillai Mr. Kishor Tamhankar

COPYRIGHT © by Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research.

NOT FOR SALE. FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY.

1st Edition, May,2014) 2nd Edition (Mar-2016)

Chapter No. Chapter Name Page No.

Chapter 1 Basics of Social Media Marketing 3

Chapter 3 Developing Strategies for Social Media 67

Chapter 5 Creating Markets through Media Sharing Sites 200

Chapter 7 Marketing through Social News and 333

After discussing this chapter, you will be able to:

• deﬁne and explain the concept of social media marketing

Social networks are communities of people who typically share a

Social networks provide a medium for people to interact with others

Social Media Marketing is marketing that focuses on people, not

International marketers need to recognise the power and critical

Also, what is important about Social Media Marketing is that

industry. The goal is to get media mentions of their company,

These methods are a one-way communication, where a company

the run-of-the-mill online campaigns. Suppose you work for a charity

This is where social marketing blends with social media marketing.

To make your social marketing venture a success, you need sizzling

1.2 BASICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

business is not using right marketing strategies or not changing

It is possible for a business to have an online presence all on own but

Nowadays, for any more or less important purchase, it has almost

Indeed, word-of-mouth is considered to be the most trusted source of

The effects of Social Media are really important as a social feedback

• Facebook - Facebook is the most popular social media marketing

• Twitter - Twitter allows businesses to broadcast short messages to

• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is used by businesses to share business

1.3 THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Nowadays, Social Media Marketing is widely used by businesses

Social Media Marketing can be using unconventional means to

For every business using Social Media Marketing, the challenge is to

Whether it is concerning large multinationals or small and medium-

• Direct communication: Social media marketing facilitates one to

• Brand exposure and awareness: The main beneﬁt acquired by

• Ability to advertise more effectively: Setting up pages and proﬁles

• Cost effective: One of the biggest advantages of Social Media

• Save up on time: Ever need to reach out to your customer round

• Increasing organisational visibility: Social Media Marketing

• Leads generation: Leads are deﬁned as potential customers or sales

prospective customers somewhere on these sites. But how are

• Targeted trafﬁc: With millions of users, social media sites makes a

define targeted traffic, we should provide a definition of traffic first.

In contrast, targeted trafﬁc is trafﬁc that reached a website thanks to

• Effective monitoring of competitors: Besides, Internet and Social

First, it is worth examining how active the competitors are on their

• Target speciﬁc Information: The data available on the social media

• Blogs and Microblogs: e.g., WordPress Blogger, Twitter…  