What is Social Media
‘Social media is the term commonly given to internet and mobile based channels and tools that allow users to interact with each other and share opinions and content. As the name implies, social media involves the building of communities or networks and encouraging participation and engagement’ (Smart insights, No Date). There are a numerous social media sites such as Facebook, twitter and Instagram (and many more). Different social media sites have different ‘Uses’ such as image/video-based content which is Instagram, to communicate with others (social networking), Facebook or as blog sites to blog about different things to share around the world, twitter.
Social media is used all around the world with different countries having differently preferred social media sites.
Figure 1
This chart shows that in the UK Facebook have the most users, followed by twitter and
YouTube (excluding LinkedIn.) Facebook has 1.65 Billion users worldwide making it the most used social media site in the world. This chart also shows that the UK likes to watch videos on YouTube. This is a good way of proving that social media is evolving as people are turning to video sites such as YouTube to watch different things instead of the Television. According to research (2017, ‘Social Media today’) people spend more time watching YouTube videos a day than any other social media. 40 minutes on YouTube, 35 minutes on Facebook, 25 minutes on snapchat, 15 minutes on Instagram and 1 minute on twitter.
#Hashtags
A technique associated with social media marketing could be the use of hashtags/# on different social media platforms. Hashtags are a type of metadata, which allow anyone to tag common content on twitter, Instagram or Facebook (Barbee B, 28 Feb 2018). By using/clicking a hashtag this groups all the same content and narrows it down to whatever the hashtag is about. This allows the users to just read/see content of what they are interested about instead of having to view other things. Research shows that businesses that use hashtags on Instagram and twitter increase their engagement by 12.6% (Stanley, 2018) Having a high engagement level on social media platforms can prove effective as it can increase brand awareness (O’Brien, Aug 16 2018). This can be done by consumers getting responses back to their questions by the business.
Having a hashtag for a business could be effective as it allows potential customers or even current customers to see what other people think of the brand. .
An example of this could be, if somebody wanted to see what the amazon echo was like, they could use the #AmazonEcho to see different posts just about the amazon echo. Instagram allows users to follow the hashtag meaning people who follow #AmazonEcho (Figure 2) can see other users who also use the same #. This also has the means of maybe creating a sense of community between owners who can share their different thoughts on the product.
Figure 2
Engagement
Another technique associated with social media would be engaging with followers/customers. This would be a key technique to keeping contact with anybody who has any issues or questions about their product. Engaging with people shows a voice from the brand, which could prove useful. 2.8 Billion people use social media worldwide (Spredfast, 2018.) Social media has become one of the fastest and most rapidly changing forms of digital platforms. The first main reason a business should use social media, as its digital platform should be due to the fact that this raises brand awareness. This is done as many people have moved online and are constantly browsing different things online. By a business using social media it allows them to respond to customers, this builds up a good customer relation as it allows the brand to instantly and directly respond to its customers. This can be shown by the fact 42% of twitter users (Smith, 2017) expect a response to their question within one hour. Using social media to respond back to customers/followers would also lead to customer loyalty and would help build a good loyal customer base for the business.
Website Traffic
Another reason to use social media as a digital platform is the fact it increases traffic to websites (Agbaimoni O & Bullock L, June 2013,), which leads to more sales for the business. The more active the business is on different social media platforms, the more chance the traffic to the websites will increase as it allows users from different social media platforms to see/communicate with the brand.
How Not to do social media
A way social media could go wrong would be if an advertising campaign contained the wrong information on something, this could be embarrassing for the brand, which could harm the brand reputation. An example of this could be the 2016 Russian Coke campaign where Coke used an incorrect map of Russia, this then led Ukrainians to have hate towards the drink and called online protests to ban the drink in the country. By a country banning the drink, this could cause an impact to Coke’s sales and reputation, as it would mean 2 whole nations would ban the drink in their countries.
Another way of not using social media correctly as a digital platform would be down to the fact there is sometimes a delayed return of investment. The reason for the delayed return of investment is because there is a lot of labor involved in the fact a company has to pay somebody or an organization to monitor their social media sites to interact or create posts/blogs for the brand. This then has to take a liking to the potential customers who will be the ones who will purchase from the brand. The reason for the delayed return of investments is due to the fact the campaign has to build a good number of sales and build good customer relations in order for the company to make any money. Another way for there to be a delayed return of investments could be due to the fact, if a company was to use an influencer to market their product/service they would have to pay the influencer. Different influencers charge different amounts of money for each social media platforms. However, using influencers could be beneficial, as they will target the brands target market. The return on investment might be delayed, as the company has to pay a large lump of money to the influencer. It might take time for the influencer’s audience to like the company doing the advertising.
Figure 3; Here is a price chart for what influencers with certain amount of followers charge on different social media sites (Griffiths A, 2017)
Figure 3
A recent social media campaign Amazon echo has done was a 30 second advert/video on the social media site, Facebook. Amazon echo collaborated with American singer, Michael Buble. The campaign is called ‘Daily Buble’ (Facebook screenshot, 2019-Figure 4) The way Amazon Echo used Michael Buble for this campaign was by using his distinctive voice to respond back to Amazon echo users asking Alexa. This type of campaign is called influencer marketing. This is when a company uses a celebrity/influencer to promote their brand. In this case, Amazon Echo used Michael Buble to advertise a new feature of the amazon echo. The campaign could also be used to increase consumer purchases (Sutttle R 2018), meaning there would be some people who would buy the product knowing a celebrity is using it too. Influencer marketing would also increase engagement levels as the influencers used would attract their followers as well as current customers who would share or like the post as they have seen an influencer, in this case a high class celebrity. (Izea, 2018)
Figure 4
The reason why businesses should invest in social media is due to the fact technology is always rapidly changing and more and more people are always on the phone or searching around on the Internet. According to research, in 2018 there was 3.196 Billion people using social media which was 13% higher than 2017 (Cooper, 2018) This stat shows by one year social media has increased-Marketer states that, UK marketers have spent £3.3 Billion on social media marketing which was 24% higher than 2017. This shows that more businesses are concentrating on social media marketing (E-marketer, 2018) .Having a big presence on social media would be key for the brand also as it shows that the brand is also moving along with technology as the product, the Amazon Echo is the first of a kind in the fact Amazon has created a product whereby you use your voice to control things such as playing music or finding out the weather.
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