MARKETING MANAGEMENT - SMStrat Marketing Consulting

1 downloads 299 Views 430KB Size Report
This is especially true of Twitter, ... channel for companies partly because of its low barriers to ... Practically anyo
18 |

M a r k e t i n g M anag e m e n t

|

s u m m e r

2 012

Why Social

Media is Not

Free

The true costs of this seemingly free communications channel By Sujata Ramnarayan

T

here is a misguided belief among many that social media is free. Setting up a Twitter or a Facebook account costs nothing. Anyone can do it in minutes and start posting updates. This is especially true of Twitter, which is essentially a free global broadcasting channel.

s u m m e r

2 012

|

M a r k e t i n g p ow e r . co m

| 19

O

n Facebook, there’s no cost to create a page and subsequent updates, but companies still need to find other means to bring consumers to their pages. Even after bringing fans to a page, companies might be forced to pay for “social endorsement” updates on their prospects’ and customers’ feeds. As Facebook goes public, it is apparent that the company is thinking along these lines to increase its revenues as its regular and ordinary display ads usually get ignored. Social media has become popular as a communication channel for companies partly because of its low barriers to entry, along with its popularity among target customers. By all measures, it is clear that social media is here to stay. Social networking has become part of the fabric of people’s online social lives. According to a Pew Internet survey of U.S. adult Internet users, 65% said that they use social networking sites in 2011 compared to 34% in 2008. Social media channels are free to enter, but associated costs and problems become apparent later. That is also probably one of the reasons why the return on investment has been hard to measure. The perception that these channels are free, although prima-facie true, hides a number of problems. Looking at three of the major problems associated with this misconception will help companies plan a social media strategy that increases ROI.

1. Implementing a social media strategy demands consistent and sustained intellectual energy Social media tools require an investment of intellectual energy with consistency at short intervals. Unlike other channels of communication such as e-mail campaigns that could go out weekly or monthly, social media requires a consistent feed of thought at least twice a day if not more to cut through the social Web noise and cross the threshold of effectiveness. Although this does not seem like a lot, the fragmentation of audiences and varied demographics

20 |

M a r k e t i n g M anag e m e n t

|

s u m m e r

2 012

on different social networks multiplies the need for this effort. In some ways, social media is like e-mail was at one time—free. Yet e-mail marketing now requires IT infrastructure and management, analysis of metrics for finetuning, follow-up response and a consistent effort toward greater effectiveness and ROI. E-mail has also presented several security challenges involving spam, phishing and scams that require a corporate policy enforcement approach to monitor and protect users from abuse. We see similar security issues and compliance issues now happening on

social networks as well. Many companies are entering the social sphere without investments, and the budget often is pulled out of the experimental side of marketing. It might seem cool to be considered forward-thinking in your marketing efforts, but social media channels are expensive to maintain and monitor when measured in terms of effort required. The barriers to entry into social media are seemingly none, which creates more competition for attention. Once you make efforts to grow it, monitor it, track it and manage it, social media can become expensive.

2. Unbridled proliferation requires maintenance and control Practically anyone can create a Facebook page or a Twitter account, which has led to social media’s unchecked growth. Whether you created it or not, using social media as a channel of communication has a cost of ownership resulting from required maintenance, monitoring, tracking and management. For these reasons, it’s important to implement a corporate-wide social media strategy with a budget

Visit marketingpower.com/amatv to check out the latest episode of AMA TV: The Marketing Channel to learn more about why social media isn’t free.

that recognizes its total cost of ownership. Even if content is restricted to 140 characters, creating it still requires unique imagination, creativity and an understanding of the target market and desired objectives. When creating content for social media, it’s necessary to interact as in an online conversation and to monitor and react as needed. Recently, several big brands have experienced public relations crises resulting from their use of social media. For example, Chrysler found an employee of a media agency it was contracting with posting tweets such as “I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the motor city and yet no one here knows how to drive [edited for vulgarity between the words to and drive].” The employee was dismissed, and Chrysler decided not to renew its contract with the agency. In another case, Gilbert Gottfried, the voice of Aflac’s famous duck, posted about 10 jokes about the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. This was a major blow to a company that has 75% of its revenues coming from Japan. In both of these high profile cases, the tasteless or insensitive tweets were generated by those hired and working for these companies. These are just a two examples of public relations crises created by tweets that can reach a mass audience in seconds. Once picked up, one simple error gets amplified and re-tweeted. Facebook is similar in a way because anyone can create a Facebook page. Such unmanaged proliferation is a challenge because you cannot measure what you don’t know. A cursory search on Facebook for a few major compa-

b r ief ly • Consider the intellectual energy that an investment in social media requires. • Monitor and control the content of online conversations. • Create a corporate-level strategy to manage your company’s social media presence.

nies shows the difficulty of knowing and managing your organization’s social media presence. This is just on a single social network. A random small sample of companies shows that they have multiple Facebook pages, sometimes created by the same groups (presumably unbeknown to each other), other times created by different groups, sometimes with different logos. For example, there are multiple Ford Facebook pages: one for corporate, some product-specific, some created by fans and some created by different groups for the same purpose such as products and services. While social media is supposed to be natural and organic, such unmonitored growth of your social media corporate presence is cumbersome at the very least and a threat to branding, corporate strategy and security at the other extreme. Discovering your social presence has many aspects, and

Figure 1: Unmonitored Growth Company

Number of Facebook Pages

Types of Pages

Apple

Greater than 10

Corporate, product-specific, country-specific, store, unofficial (by users/fans), Wikipedia

Ford

Greater than 10

Ford (four different pages), Ford product- or model-specific such as Ford Mustang, Ford Trucks, usage (Ford Racing), country-specific (Ford Mexico)

Dell

Greater than 10

Dell (at least two different pages), Dell Spot (Canadian/Customer Support), Dell Enterprise, Dell country-specific pages (e.g. Dell Vietnam), Dell Deals page, Dell Lounge (another promotional page), social media for business page (to discuss B-to-B use of social media)

JetBlue Airways

Greater than 10

At least seven JetBlue pages (some official and some created by fans), Wikipedia page, JetBlue promotions page Source: SMStrat, www.smstrat.com

s u m m e r

2 012

|

M a r k e t i n g p ow e r . co m

| 21

solutions are emerging that offer a Samepoint does the same thing a unique view into the problem, with little differently. Need More most focusing on various forms of The difference between Social iQ Marketing Power? listening or sentiment analysis. Networks and Social Mention is like Several solutions are available. getting a view of the forest and then go to marketingpower.com One of these is Social iQ Networks, taking a closer look at the trees and AMA Articles which allows you to easily view your leaves as opposed to starting with Agents of Change: Measuring Influence, social presence and categorize your the leaves some of which do not Marketing News, 2012 total social surface (company, embelong in your forest, and working Doing Well by Doing Good: The Benevolent ployee, partner sites together), such your way up from that. Different Halo of Social Goodwill, Marketing Science as how many Facebook pages relate processes create different insights. Institute, 2012 to your company and what are they These tools can help companies AMA Webcast about. discover, monitor, analyze and, Kick-start Your Content Marketing Strategy Another solution that approaches ultimately, control social media conwith Video and Social Media, sponsored by the problem of understanding your versations. For example, a search for Brightcove, 2012 social presence from a different angle McDonald’s on Social iQ Networks’ is Social Mention, which lets you Social Discovery solution reveals see individual conversations going that there are 1,005 Facebook pages on within different social spheres. As opposed to looking and groups, 20 Twitter accounts, 203 LinkedIn accounts, at where the social conversations are taking place, Social 10 YouTube and 10 Google+ accounts. However, when the Mention lets you see what each person on different social solution is customized to reflect only those with the highplatforms has said and whether it is positive or negative. est levels of engagement (measured by number of

22 |

M a r k e t i n g M anag e m e n t

|

s u m m e r

2 012

followers, likes, latest updates etc.), it comes Figure 2: An Example of Search Results for McDonald’s on up with 26 Facebook pages, 26 Facebook Social iQ Networks’ Discovery Platform groups, one Twitter account, 11 LinkedIn pages/groups, one YouTube and one Google+ account related to McDonald’s. Google+ 1 Now it is much easier to prioritize and focus on the social network surface areas 1 YouTube that matter. Further analysis very quickly reveals Facebook pages that have been 11 LinkedIn created by non-fans of McDonald’s such as one titled “If Pubs don’t serve Drunk people, why does McDonald’s serve fat Twitter 1 people?’ with 832,969 likes, and another one titled “Do people in Canada live in 52 Facebook Igloos? No. Do people in America live at McDonald’s?” 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 A quick look at the Facebook groups results shows that there are three types of Note: These are search results adjusted to show only those with activity on any date and engagement in the top 5%. groups where McDonald’s is mentioned: Source: www.socialiqnetworks.com those related to food, to health and then corporation-specific. A look at the most active YouTube account in the results need to have social media direction at all levels, including reveals that it is unrelated to McDonald’s. corporate. Social media cuts across all functions—marketing, Social iQ Networks provides a broader framework to human resources, information technology and legal. A comunderstand the social platforms where you are being talked pany that recognizes this and formulates a social media policy about, who has created that presence, whether it is created and strategy at the corporate level will get a better ROI. by someone within the corporation, how active it is, etc. For A corporate-level social media strategy prevents a commore specific conversations that may be happening on blogs, pany’s social media presence from proliferating without comment pages and other places, but not necessarily in a direction. The first step to this is becoming aware of your form that is concentrated on a particular page, tools such as corporate social media presence with regular monitorSocial Mention and Samepoint provide more insights. ing. Second, companies must direct this presence using For example, typing the word McDonald’s in Social corporate-level objectives. Mention tells you that it has had 35 mentions in blogs and Social media is here to stay. It is organic and cuts across points to the specific blogs that have appeared in the last 30 functional departments within organizations. However, it days. It also tells you that there have been 256 microblog needs to be discovered, managed and monitored. It needs mentions (this refers to Twitter and Facebook types of updirection at the corporate and functional levels to prevent dates) in the last 30 days. Although it gives you ready numunbridled proliferation without preventing its organic bers on sentiment analysis (i.e., what percentage of those growth. This requires a serious investment in people, time mentions are positive, negative or neutral), the technology is and tools. MM still not robust enough to do it accurately. However, because it provides a listing of those microblogs, one can get an idea quickly as to whether the overall trend is positive or nega✒ Sujata Ramnarayan is the managing principal of SMStrat, tive and what exactly is being said on the topic. a strategic marketing consulting firm that focuses on digital media. Her

3. Corporate-level management must be involved

background includes several years in the industry as a senior analyst at

It is important for companies to be more purpose-oriented in their social media pursuits. This means that companies

and as an adjunct professor at San Jose State. She may be reached at

Gartner where she managed the digital media research program, as well as her work as an assistant professor of marketing at Humboldt State [email protected].

s u m m e r

2 012

|

M a r k e t i n g p ow e r . co m

| 23