Assess the management, organization, and technology issues for using social media to engage with customers.
- To most of the people used Facebook and twitter to keep touch with friend and to let them learn and know what there are doing. Social media like Facebook and Twitter have transformed the way some businesses think about advertising. For all type of companies, Facebook and twitter has become powerful tool for engaging customers. Companies can use Facebook and twitter to make trade off, promotion, and services to make a business without spend significant cost. For service, location based on business such as gourmet food trucks can tweet their current location to loyal followers and fans.
- Appointment-based businesses can easily tweet or post cancellations and unexpected openings. Larger companies of all sizes have an opportunity run sweepstakes and promotions and other all size of companies have an opportunity to shape the perception of their brands and to solidify relationships with their customers. Companies have running out that capitalize on the social media feature if Facebook to achieve greater visibility. For example, Facebook have feature the ability to like a brand, send a virtual gift, answer a pool question, and instantly stream information to your news feed. Twitter has developed many new offering like promoted tweets and promoted trend. These features give advertisers the ability to have their tweets displayed more prominently when twitter users search for certain keyword.
- People:
- Nowadays, most people will use the social media to keep in touch with friend and let them know what they recently doing.
- On the other side, it need to spend time to monitor each network, respond to comment, answer the question and post product information. Sometime the workers might not be able to think rationally to respond on the comment of the customers.
- For example, Facebook ads feature the ability to ‘Like’ a brand, send a virtual gift, answer a poll question, or instantly stream information to your news feed. Facebook also allow you to following the fan page of the brand and can get the new feed about the brand or the updates news, promotion, and competition.
- Organization:
- Companies are rolling out ads that capitalize on the social media features of Facebook to achieve greater visibility. Many companies are running online ads that focus less on pitching their product than on promoting their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. In addition, location based businesses like gourmet food trucks can tweet their current location to loyal followers and fans. Appointment-based businesses can easily tweet or post cancellations and unexpected openings. Larger companies run sweepstakes and promotions and can have an opportunity to shape the perception of their brands and to solidify relationships with their customers.
- On the other hand, the organization need to choose the suitable channel to engage with customers. The social media that using by the company must well suit with the company products and service. The security problem by using the social networking. The company confidential information might expose to competitors.
- For example, Best Buy uses a dedicated team of Twitter responders to answer user questions and respond to complaints. The company then mines the data through text mining and converts the data to useful information about the company’s products. The company uses the information to gauge the success of promotions, which products are hot and which are duds and the impact of advertising campaigns.
- Technology:
- Facebook, Twitter, and Line can become powerful tools for engaging customers in business for all companies of all shapes and sizes. Half of all Twitter users recommend product in their tweets. Tweets are the world’s largest focus group. The ads feature menu tabs and allow users to click within the ad to see a brand’s Twitter messages or Facebook wall posts in real time, or to watch a brand’s video content from YouTube-all within the Web page where the ad appears. Even if the Facebook or Twitter postings in ads show brands apologizing about missteps or customer complaints, advertisers may still benefit. Twitter has developed many new offerings to interested advertisers, like Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends. Facebook targeting capabilities to determine which type of people respond to the various ads it has created.
- On the other side, the technology does not always work. When the company cannot connect to the social networking, it will affect the operation efficiency. The company might face problem to integrate new technologies into the enterprise environment.
- For example, the online advertisement for the Mrs. Meyers cleaning brand used a different kind of technology in which viewers placed their cursor over the advertisement, exposing an area that display being visited. Consumers were also more likely to click on a “learn more” button to go to Mrs. Meyers’ own Website with 35 of every 1,000 users clicking through compared with an average of just one in 1,000 for traditional online advertisements. Those kinds of technical tricks differentiate a company from its competitors.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for advertising, brand building, market research, and customer service?
- Advantage:
- The advantage of advertising in social media marketing is cost-related. The majority of social media web sites are free to access, create a profile and post information. The advantage of reaching your targeted market was little or no cash investment wanted, and the audience wanting your information was voluntarily joins and follows you. The viral nature of social media means that each person who reads your posts has the capability to spread the news wide within his own network, so information can reach a large number of people in a short time.
- That result shows just how highly CMOs (chief marketing officer) rate the brand building advantage of social media. Chief marketing officer (CMO) is a corporate executive responsible for marketing activities in an organization. Considering the size of the potential market on social media channels like Facebook and Twitter, it’s an obvious brand opportunity. Brand building was the original reason for businesses to join social media. The math was basic but they produce favorable results 900 million people on Facebook, even accessing 0.001% of that would provide a huge opportunity. Even though businesses have identified other advantages of social media, brand building is still a key part of the plan. The research provided further evidence of this as over 80% of CMOs agree that social marketing can have a measurable impact on brand awareness and brand loyalty. For example, Levi’s was one of the first national brands to use Facebook and twitter to allow customer to socialize and share their purchases with friend. The Levi’s Facebook page have 500,000 ‘like’ message posted by friends sharing their favorite jeans.
- Advertising: Twitter has developed new offerings for advertisers like Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends.
- Brand building: The Levi’s Facebook page has 500,000 “Like” message posted by friends sharing their favorite jeans.
- Market research: Wrigleyville Sports has been building a Facebook following for over three years.
- Customer service: Traditional marketing is all about creating and delivering a message using communication that is primarily one-way.
- Disadvantage:
- The disadvantage of in social media marketing is updating the social media accounts take time and effort. A senior person with knowledge about the company and products should handle your social media presence, and the cost in time means the media is not completely free. It is ongoing work to find new angles about your products continually and to post and re-post information. The information is only visible for a short time before newer posts replace it. In addition, publishing obvious advertising copy is unacceptable in the social media world, therefore you must present the information in the form of conversation or you will lose followers.
- Negative feedback: Consumers can create positive or negative feedback or comments depends on how the company present online and the quality of products or services.
- Privacy and security issues: Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked in early 2013, its logo was replaced by a McDonald’s logo and rogue announcements appeared including one that Burger King had been sold to a competitor.
- Unpredictable: The results of a social presence can be unpredictable and not always beneficial as a number of companies have learned.
Give some examples of management decisions that were facilitated by using social media to interact with customers.
- Wrigleyville knows which customers respond to its promotions, how much they spent and what they purchased. It can measure conversion rates, the value of keyword buys and the ultimate return on advertising campaigns. It knows exactly where and how to spend its advertising dollars most effectively.
- Best Buy uses its central analytical platform to analyze unstructured data and make decisions about which products to promote, which are duds and how effective its advertising campaigns are.
Should all companies use Facebook and Twitter for customer service and advertising? Why or why not? What kinds of companies are best suited to use these platforms?
- No, it is not necessary all companies need to use Facebook and Twitter for customer services and advertising. The reason is the small businesses are not really need to involve in social media. When the company cannot effectively be using the social media and giving response to the customers, it will bring negative impact on the company at the same time it will damage the brand of the company. Social media can help some companies interact with their customers but not all the companies.
- Some customers just want the company be accessible and it does not mean want to follow or like the company. For the small company, business owner might not have enough time to manage the social network and give respond to customer questions. Moreover, some of the company especially small company is lack of experience or technical skills to carry out the social media.
- Before a company jumps into using Facebook and Twitter it needs to make sure the “back room” mechanics are in place to process customer service requests. Best Buy did it right by using a dedicated tame of Twitter responders. If the company’s employees are not available for the unanticipated response volume, the plan could backfire.
