Social Media Marketing

Chapter 3-Social Consumers

Learning objectives
• How are our lives reflected online? In what ways individuals involved
in the four zones of social media?
• How and why does digital culture play a role in consumer behavior?
• Why are consumers drawn to social media activities?
• Which bases of segmentation are relevant to target wired consumers
in a social media context?
• What are the most important segments of social media consumers?
What do they tell us about targeting users of the social web?
Digital Identity: You are what you post
• Facebook? YouTube, Flicker? Twitter? WhatsApp? Which of these
social media sites/apps are a part of your digital life?

• What are you sharing? Thoughts, opinions, activities, photos, videos?

When and from where? On the go with a mobile device? From a fixed
location using a stationary computer?
Digital Identity: You are what you post
• Our online activities and the information we post document our
digital identity.
• The way we present ourselves via, texts, images, sounds, and video to
others who access the Web.
Social touchpoints in a Wired Life
• Social Footprint: Is a mark a person makes when he or she occupies
digital space.
• For example: When you visit your friend’s Facebook profile and learn
that she is a fan of Sachin Tendulkar, you learn something about what
matters to him/her. This information is one aspect of his/her social
footprint.
One consumer’s Social Footprint
Social touchpoints in a Wired Life
• Lifestreams: Lifestreaming is an act of documenting and sharing
aspects of one's daily social experiences online, via a lifestream
website that collects the things person chooses to publish (e.g.
photos, tweets, videos) and presents them in reverse-chronological
order.
• Because our lives are tied to social communities, lifestreams are
sometimes called social activity streams or social streams.
• Examples of lifestream aggregators:
• Tumblr, Posterous, HootSuite etc.
A social Life
What do your social profile say
about you?
Social touchpoints in a Wired Life
• Your social brand:
 Your handle is your username in social communities
 Your handle is your digital brand name
• These handles heighten the meaning associated with one’s name. For example: Jennifer Leggio, a
prominent for ZDNet, uses the handle “mediaphyter” to represent her social digital footprint.
• Handle-squatting: This term refers to the use of a digital brand name by someone who does not
have the legitimate claim to the brand name.

Step 1: Choose your digital brand name.

Step 2: Ensure you aren’t handle squatting
Step 3: Ensure your digital brand name is available in
many social communities (www.namechk.com)
Selfies, Selfies Everywhere
• Dallas Pets Alive used the selfie phenomenon
to help homeless pets get adopted!

• The #muttbombing campaign augmented

selfies with additions of homeless pets.
The Self-Audit in Social Media
Vision

Validation

Vindication

Vulnerabilit
y

Vanity
The Self-Audit in Social Media
• A personal audit should categorize social media activity according to the values
expressed in the social engagement.
• Vision: A vision post answers the questions, “Did I learn something? Was I
inspired?”
• Validation: A validation activity answers the question, “Am I accepted by a
group?”
• Vindication: A vindication post informs others, “I am right.”
• Vulnerability: A vulnerability post opens one’s self to others, “I am
approachable.”
• Vanity: A vanity post reveals a tendency to narcissism, “Look at me. I am all that.”
The life of a Digital Consumer
• The life of a digital consumer has changed from spending hours on e-
mails and phones to Instant messaging (WhatsApp, Hike etc.)
• The change in culture of wired individuals who turn first to digital
channels for communication, information, and entertainment. This
shift is called digital primacy.
The life of a Digital Consumer
When PBS Frontline set out to make a documentary about life in digital
age the network partnered with Smith, an online magazine known for
its memories in six words, to challenge visitors to pose six-word insights
on their digital lives.

What did people write?

The life of a Digital Consumer
Diffusion of digital innovation
• How can we encourage digital immigrants to embrace the brand new
world of social media?
• How likely is it that different types of consumers will change their
stripes as new technologies become more commonplace?
• To answer these questions let’s review a classic (pre-digital)
perspective on how people deal with new products and new ways of
doing things.
Diffusion of digital innovation
• Roger’s diffusion of innovation theory presents characteristics of
innovative products that explain the rate at which people are likely to
adopt these new options:
• The relative advantage of innovation (i.e., does it provide a greater
benefit than the existing alternatives?)
• The ability to observe and try the innovation
• The innovation’s compatibility (How easily it can be assimilated into
the person’s life)
• The innovation’s simplicity/ease of use
Diffusion of digital innovation
Diffusion of digital innovation
• The advertisement strategies of Kodak EasyShare digital cameras fits
well on the characteristics of Roger’s diffusion of innovation.
• It focused on simplicity.
• It gave the share key on the camera which makes this innovation easy
to try by consumers
• The tagline “The real Kodak moment happens when you share” was
also quite successful
• The advantage was its share key.
The wired world
• The number of internet users around the world is 3.88 billion as of
2017 jUNE out of total 7.52 billion population of the world (Internet
World Stats, 2017).
• Penetration % by world: 51.7% (Internet World Stats, 2017).
The wired world
Motives for Social Media Activities.
Why we login?

Contact,
Personal
Affinity comfort, and
utility
immediacy

Altruism Curiosity Validation

Motives for Social Media Activities.
Why we login?

• Affinity impulse: Social networks enable participants to express an

affinity, to acknowledge a liking and/or relationship with individuals
and reference groups.

• Personal utility impulse: While we tend to think of social media

participation truly as community participation, some do consider,
“What’s in it for me?” This is the personal utility impulse and it may
be one of the most important motives for brands to acknowledge.
Motives for Social Media Activities.
Why we login?
• Contact comfort and immediacy impulse: People have a natural drive to
feel a sense of psychological closeness to others. Contact comfort is the
sense of relief we feel from knowing others in our network are accessible.
Immediacy also lends a sense of relief in that the contact is without delay.

• Altruistic impulse: Some participate in social media as a way to do

something good. They use social media to “pay it forward.” The altruistic
impulse is also aided by the immediacy of social media, and this value has
been played out in the immediate altruistic responses (IAR)of social media
users to aid calls during crises such as the earthquake relief for Haiti or
Japan.
Motives for Social Media Activities.
Why we login?

• Curiosity impulse: People may feel a curiosity about others and want
to feed this interest—this is also known as the prurient impulse.

• Validation impulse: Social media focuses intently on the individual.

You can share as much or as little of your opinions and activities, and
comment on those of others. This focus on the self highlights the
validation impulse, in other words, feeding one’s own ego.
Market Segmentation: Slicing the
Social Media Pie
• Market segmentation is a process of dividing a market into distinct
groups that have common needs and characteristics.
• Types of segmentation
Geographic

Demographic

Psychographic

Benefit

Behavioral
Market Segmentation: Slicing the
Social Media Pie
• Geographic Segmentation: It refers to segmenting markets by region,
country, market size, market density, or climate.
• Geographic segmentation via social media is relevant to local business
that want to increase retail traffic in physical store locations. As
Foursquare members check in, local business in that area can reach
out to them with special offers and interactive promotions such as
free drinks or discounts.
• These rewards are for checking into business venues most recently
and most frequently; these instill a sense of loyalty among users.
Market Segmentation: Slicing the
Social Media Pie
• Demographic Segmentation: It refers to utilizing common
characteristics such as age, gender, income, ethnic background,
educational attainment, family lifecycle, and occupation to
understand how to group similar consumers together.
The Huggies MomInspired Grant
Program
Market Segmentation: Slicing the
Social Media Pie
• For example: Huggies sponsors a MomInspired Grant Program that
will award $15000 grants to mothers with product ideas that address
an unmet need of parents.
• Mothers can share ideas on the Huggies MomInspired microsite,
which also features the proposals of other inspired moms, a tweet
stream from moms, and detailed resources to ensure inspired
mothers understand how to write a winning business proposal.
Market Segmentation: Slicing the
Social Media Pie
• The campaign was 100% social. Online publicity, tweets, Facebook
updates on its fan page, StumbleUpon traffic on its microsite, and a
share button support the campaign. Huggies relies on mothers in the
know to tell other mothers about the opportunity.

• The brand goes beyond the basic love and pride a mother feels for her
child to the underlying motives and needs that face mothers. This is
the key component of demographic targeting
Psychographic Segmentation
• Psychographic segmentation: This approach slices up the market
based on personality, motives, lifestyle, attitudes, and opinions. These
variables can be used alone or combined with other segmentation
bases like demographics.
The Hallmark Social Calendar
Psychographic Segmentation
• Due to emergence of internet and social media the greeting card
industry faced tough time as this is an era of e-cards.

• Hallmark, the market leader in the greeting card industry, created a

new product offer known as Hallmark Social Calendar, a Facebook
application, and the Hallmark Mobile Greetings mobile app.
Psychographic Segmentation
• The Social Calendar enables Facebook users to track birthdays and
other holidays and get reminders, but it does something even more
enticing. With the Social Calendar you can send “Wall Wishes”, virtual
gifts, and other greetings Hallmark style!
• What’s more– Its free.
• With Hallmark Mobile app, you can send mobile-to-mobile MMS
greetings.
Benefit Segmentation

• Benefit Segmentation: It groups individuals in the marketing

universe according to the benefits they seek from the product
available.
• For example: In the auto industry people who buy hybrids and
electric cars look for different benefits from the car than those
who buy muscle cars or SUV.
Benefit Segmentation
• Besides wanting an emotional bond and valuable services, consumers
may also want to simply save money.
• Razorfish’s Feed report found that 44% of those who follow a brand
on Twitter and 37% of those who had friended a brand on Facebook
did so exclusively to be privy to special deals and offers.
Benefit Segmentation
• The popularity of location services such FourSquare supports this
reasoning as it was seen, users get awarded with deals when they
check in with local business venues.

• Jet Blue on its 10th anniversary, promoted $10 fares on Facebook,

targeting Facebook users who were fans or friends of Jet Blue and
those who had a vacation-related status message on their walls.
Behavioral Segmentation
• Behavioral Segmentation: It divides consumers into groups based on
how they act with regard to a brand or product category.
• Marketers rely on 80/20 Rule: Twenty percent of brand’s customers,
purchase 80 percent of its products.
Social Media Segments
• There are four typologies of digital consumers, each of which offer
insights into the lives of social consumers.
Social Technographics

Pew Internet Technology Types

Anderson Analytics: Users & Non Users

Microblog User Types

Social Technographics
• Forrester Research introduced the concept of social technographics,
based on research it conducted on the social and digital lives of the
consumers.

• Forrester identified six types of people (of those online) based on how
those people use and interact with social media.

• As the types reflected increasing levels of involvement in social

media, Forrester use a ladder to illustrate the segment.
Social Technographic
Ladder
• Source: Social Media
Marketing 2e

© Tracy L. Tuten and Michael R. Solomon 2015

Pew Internet Technology Types
In this scheme, digital lifestyle groups are based on two characteristics:

(1) whether they hold a positive or negative view of digital mobility and

(2) relationships with assets (gadgets and services), actions (activities), and
attitudes (how technology fits in their lives).
 Pew Internet
Technology Types

Source: The Mobile Difference by John B. Horrigan.

Available at : http://www.pewinternet.org/2009/03/25/the-mobile-difference/
Pew Internet
Technology Types
Anderson Analytics’ Social Media
Users and Non-Users
• Anderson Analytics worked with Greenfield Online to survey and
interview respondents on their attitudes and behaviors regarding
social networking.
• Based on these results, Anderson was able to identify and categorize
seven types of individuals, from the social media pessimist to the
social media maven.
 Anderson Analytics’ Social Media
Users and Non-Users

Source: Anderson’s website and also published at Jennifer Van Grove, “ What type of Social Media User are You?,”
Mashable .com Available at: http://mashable.com/2009/07/15/social-media-users/#RHawWONrzZqC
Anderson Analytics’ Social Media
Users and Non-Users
• They then used the data to publish a report on the lifestyles,
behaviors, spending habits, and income levels for each of their
identified categories.

• The results are in, and the largest percentage of social network
service users are business users (31.8%), which they estimate
correlates to a total segment of 35 million users with an average age
of 33 and an average income of $56k.
Anderson Analytics’ Social Media
Users and Non-Users
• This data isn't necessarily surprising — chances are you knew the
social media pessimists would have many concerns and not enjoy
social sharing — but it's very interesting research that gives us more
insight into the types of people who fall into these various categories.

• For example, when it comes to the social media maven category,

Anderson concluded that the average income is $71k, average age is
27, and the population size is 24 million
Microblog User Types
• The last model of social segmentation was suggested by Kevin
Hillstrom, CEO of MineThatData.
• Hillstrom analysed Tweets as:
1. Original statements.
2. Responses to the statements of others.
3. Retweets of the statements of others.
Microblog User Types
• There are four user types in microblogging.

1. Elite: Power players such as elite are considered influencers in social

communities, because those users provide content for the masses.
2. Difference Makers: Participate only when they see clear value. They
may be managing their own time-benefit analysis in terms of how
they dedicate time to participating in communities.
Microblog User Types
3. Knowledge Seekers: They use the community to learn and grow.
This is definitely a behavior in many communities, Though it
perhaps more visible in communities like LinkedIn.
4. Attention Seekers: Little original content, rather repost to the
content of others.