Problem: Social media as a tool
After defining a problem for the new PbL, we came up with the following
learning objectives:
1. What are different social media platforms and why and how to use them?
2. How to measure the effectiveness of social media ?
1. What are different social
media platforms/ why and how to use them?
Nowadays, social media plays a more and more important role regarding B2C
but also B2B. There are several social media platforms to choose from. However,
it is not about using all social media platforms and the question whether to
use social media as a marketing tool but rather about using the most effective
ones for the business and the question how well to use it.
In order to choose the right platforms it is important to know the
characteristics, advantages, opportunities and so on. The following
illustration by Frankly Communication (2014) lists the main social media
platforms and their characteristics.
The following graphic by accion (2015) also compares the main social media
platforms such as facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram
and Google+ regarding. According to accion (2015), the first step when it comes
to choosing the right platform is to define the target audience and how to
reach them. After this the goals have to be set. There are many different goals
such as generating leads, improving sales but also increasing brand
recognition.
According to Powers (2015), different social media platforms should be used
for different purposes. The place to start is with a full understanding of the
most widely-used social platforms, their unique purpose, and whether or not
your business will be able to reach its target audience.
Facebook: The primary purpose of
Facebook is to build brand loyalty and reputation. This platform establishes
your business as an authority through interesting content and informational
posts. It is not the best platform for sales negotitations or reaching new
audiences but more for creation of brand awareness and to get in touch with
following clients.
- Reaches a variety of segments of an audience with one post
- Offers opportunity to create ads to drive traffic to your website/blog
- Encourages dialogue and depth with a customer base
- Ideal for sharing personal stories, testimonials, detailed information
about your business
Tips by
Scherer (2014):
- photos generate 120% more engagement than simple text
- posts shorter than 250 characters have 60% more engagement than longer posts
- Thursday and Friday have 18% better engagement than other days of the week
- question posts have double the engagement of non-question posts
Twitter: The main purpose of Twitter is to share breaking news and quick updates,
promote new products, content, or brand contests and to collect instant
feedback from the audience. It is a great platform to promote brand
awareness.
- Serves people looking for quick info, company news, and immediate
response to questions about products or events
- Focuses on dialogue creation and starting conversations with customers
- utilises hashtags (trending hastags increase the chance of getting
engagement from people who aren't your followers)
- Best platform for PR/publicity purposes when traditional media does not
respond
Pinterest: This platform acts as an online scrapbook,
showcases products, and displays brand essence through inspiration boards. Most
of the users are females and the most common posts or pins are receipes, style
or decoration ideas, DIY crafts and so on. On this platform a strong visual
identity is important in order to engage the users.
Instagram: This is a great platform for
image-friendly businesses like restaurants, clothes and fashion, food,
architecture, technology, designers etc. Instagram is one of the fastes growing
platforms, especially among young people
- User-generated content gets better engagement than content generated by
businesses (GoPro)
Google+: It is ideal for content sharing, especially
because it is compatible with YouTube, the Google Hangouts function (which
makes video conferencing a cinch) and Circles and Communities (which make
segmented sharing easy). Great platform for tech and engineering
companies.
2. How to measure the
effectiveness of social media?
There are a lot of different tools to measure the effectiveness of social
media regarding the different platforms. A lot of platforms have their own
analytics such as Facebook Insight, YouTube Insight, Google Analytics but a
paid tools exist as well.
The following graph by Statista (2016) shows the top KPIs used for social
media marketing worldwide in 2014. The top three KPIs have been activity and
engagement with profil, web traffic and the increase in followers or
likes.
The following infographic by salesforce which was found in the article by
Seltzer (2016) summarizes everything related to social media in a very good
way.
Sources:
accion. 2015. Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business.
URL: http://us.accion.org/business-resources/articles-videos/choosing-right-social-media-platform-your-business. Accessed: 28.03.2016
Frankly Communications. 2014.Social Media Usage & Demographics. URL: http://www.franklycommunications.com/social-media-usage-and-demographics-infographic/. Accessed: 28.03.2016
Powers. K. 2015. Social Media & Your Business: Choosing the Best
Platform. URL: http://www.verticalresponse.com/blog/social-media-your-business-choosing-the-best-platform/. Accessed: 28.03.2016
Scherer. J. 2014. Social Media Marketing: Which Platform is Right for your
Business. URL: http://blog.wishpond.com/post/72672192941/social-media-marketing-which-platform-is-right-for. Accessed: 29.03.2016
Seltzer. D. 2016. Best Practices to Measure Social Media Efforts for Your
Business. URL: http://www.sbmarketingtools.com/best-practices-to-measure-social-media-efforts-for-your-business-infographic/. Accessed: 28.03.2016
Statista. 2016. Key performance indicators (KPIs) used for social media
marketing worldwide as of April 2014. URL: http://www.statista.com/statistics/318768/kpi-social-media-marketing/. Accessed:
30.03.2016
