PART B: Explain the 6 fundamental pillars of social media:

Answer:

Content:
 It is extremely important to use and publish relevant content for the customer.
Whatever medium we chose to reach out to the customer, the content should be highly
relevant and useful otherwise it will be overlooked.
 It is highly important to understand the customer base to and target customers to
create relevant content on social media.
 The content should be customized for target groups and should increase the knowledge
of the customer in Awareness and consideration stage of the customer journey.
 Content creation is a very important step that will help in gaining Loyalty and rewards
from the customer.
 The content should be continuously refined based on the customer feedbacks and the
firms should follow the strategy of co creation while creating content.

Example:
 For a CRM firm, the content on its website will contain various services, testimonials
from the customers, latest technologies used by the company, clients that have been
served by the company.
 Apart from website, the company should publish content in the form of articles in
magazines and social media platforms so that when a user read those articles, his
knowledge will increase and the probability of choosing our company as vendor will
also increase.

Platform:
 The platform should be chosen based on the type of the product/services a firm is
offering. There can be multiple platforms which a firm uses to send its message and
engage with its customers.
 Various social media sites such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn can be chosen
as a platform to spread the awareness campaign
 The Television ads are a great medium to spread the awareness of the products/
services.
 Various print media platforms such as newspapers, magazines can also be used.
 It is of utmost importance to choose a platform wisely as it will help build a relationship
with customer and will help in future transactions.
 For Example:
 For a B2B service like CRM software provider websites, articles, blogs, LinkedIn, twitter,
Instagram will be great platforms.
 Example: Maersk used various platforms such as Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn to engage
with its customer.
 On these platforms a company can show its legacy of customer service and satisfaction.
 For a B2C service like Ola/Uber: the company should focus on TV ads. They can also
leverage the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and build a
community over there to engage with customers and take feedbacks from them.

Community:

 It is very important to build a community of customers of a product or a service.

 To build a community cross promotion with multiple social media websites and our own
website can be done.
 The communities help a firm to spread words about its product/services to other
people who are not a part of the community. It increases loyalty and advocacy in
customers.
 We should provide a reason to the customers to follow our community. We can provide
any type of incentive to be a part of the community.
Example:
 Various software services providers such as QlikView, tableau have communities
where users share their problems, any glitches about the software and engage with
one another. This gives a rea time and honest feedback to the software developers
about any shortcomings in the software and they can release the hotfixes after fixing
any bugs present.

Data Analytics:

 It is very important to use the analytics on the data generated from multiple social
media platforms. Various tools such as Tableau, QlikView, Power BI can be used to
monitor the customer perception about a marketing campaign or views about a
particular product or service.
 After getting the data related to customers purchase behaviour, firms can customize
products/ offerings as per the customer choice.

Example:
  American Express uses its data from to provide customized offering to its customers.
For a typical customer who has recently been married moves from one place to
another and has taken loan to buy a house, American Express offers discount on
buying furniture from one of its partners

Engagement Strategy/ co-creation:

 By engaging the customer, the companies increase the Life Time Value and loyalty of
the customer. It is very important to use right platforms to engage the customers.
 There can be various platforms to engage the customers such as communities, social
media sites etc.
 There can be various ways of customer engagement such as competitions,
challenges, tutorials, creating sense of belonging in customers.

Example:
 Many e-commerce companies such as Flipkart and Amazon engage the customers on
its website by offering competitive games in which if a customer wins, then they will
get some points which can be redeemed in their next purchase.
 Apple has its community where the users can share their problems, feedbacks and
engage with one another, They also share their photos using the latest technologies
such as night mode, slow motion effect etc.

Employee participation:

 Success companies keep their employees engaged and encourage them to

participate in the sales and marketing process. Various incentives an be provided to
the employees to increase the participation.
 Many companies track the employee engagement with the customers and take
feedback from the customers about the experience they had with their employees.
 It is very important the employees of a company proactively participate in
selling/marketing efforts as they have the face-to-face interaction with customer.
They have proper understanding of the customer pain points and they can leverage
their relationships with customers to up-sell/cross sell products.

Example:
Various B2C products use its employees to showcase their products to customers and
increase engagement.