Türkiye Sosyal Medya Pazarlama Trendleri

SOCIAL MEDIA
MARKETING
TRENDS IN TURKEY
June 2012

About the Authors
AYŞEGÜL TOKER is a professor of Information
Systems at the Department of Management, and the
Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Administrative
Sciences, Boğaziçi University. She has research
interests and various publications in the areas of social
networks and media, mobile marketing, e-business and
e-commerce, customer relationship management, and
customer-knowledge management. You can contact
her by email at tokera@boun.edu.tr
MİNA SERAJ is a Ph.D. candidate of marketing at
Boğaziçi University and has a B.A. degree in Economics
from University of Pennsylvania. Her publications and
research interests include online consumer culture,
social networks, social media marketing, and word-of-
mouth. She also has professional marketing experience
as well as consulting experience in many industries
prior to her studies. You can contact her by email at
mina.seraj@boun.edu.tr.
BURCU BIÇAKÇI ERSOY is a management consultant
with the Istanbul office of Egon Zehnder International.
She leads the Technology and Telecommunication
Practice in Turkey and is an active member of the
practice in the region. You can contact her by
e-mail at burcu.bicakci@ezi.net

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TRENDS IN TURKEY
4
With the development of online platforms, social media has emerged as one of the major
communication means where consumers can interact with each other and with companies,
products, or brands. This has helped remove significant communication barriers between
businesses and people, shifting a significant amount of power to consumers. Consumers
today have an effect in steering marketing strategies of companies through their feedbacks
and involvement in product or service co-creation. This C2B influence needs to be understood
by businesses thoroughly in order to better serve customers who express themselves in all
kinds of social media platforms as well as to accomplish targeted business outcomes.
The case of Turkey is particularly interesting as it is a hyper-active market in terms of social
media consumer-adoption. Our extended study on social media trends in Turkey reveals
crucial insights regarding the level of firms and areas of improvement:
• Market is consumer-driven, and social media strategies and applications are led by
major players:
ºº The adoption in Turkey for the companies is mainly driven by consumers, their
expectations, and their online behavior.
ºº There is competition orientation as well, where companies are urged by the
activities of their competitors. Even though positioning by this external push
factor of competition has become the norm, companies try to differentiate
themselves by focusing on their consumers’ needs and expectations rather than
by imitating their competitors.
ºº Market is shaped by major players and well-known brands in terms of social media
adoption, but there is a great potential in long-tail businesses to gain market
share and increase their brand awareness. Platform providers like Google believe
in substantial opportunities for the small and medium businesses through social
media applications.
• There is lack of engaging social media applications:
o They are mostly information exchange and campaign management oriented.
o In such plain platforms, consumers generally end up using their power of
contagious influence for delivering their service related complaints and drive
firms to focus on reputation and complaint management rather than consumer-
engaging social and cultural initiatives.
• The main strategic issue regarding social media marketing is the inefficiencies in terms
of integration and alignment of the main functions, business units or departments for
a common social media strategy:
o Social media is mainly the accountability of marketing professionals and the
“listening to what the customer is saying online” mentality is not internalized
across the organization.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

5
• The unstructured social media data that has great potential to be transformed into
enriched customer insights for strategic management is not tracked or analyzed
properly.
Our results based on the data collected from 145 companies show that there are three
groups of companies incorporating social media to their businesses at different stages:
experimenters, implementers, and strategists:
• Experimenters use some basic digital media tools and their social media applications
facilitate information sharing and campaign management rather than providing
interactive environments for consumers to share or co-create.
• Implementers, on the other hand, use standard Facebook profiles, Twitter or company
pages as social media platforms. Simple interactive applications, mostly interactive
games for promotions or small competitions, are available for entertainment and
brand awareness purposes. Consumers use such firms’ Facebook and Twitter sites to
complain about service failures or reflect their sentiments.
• Strategists are the top performers in their industries or pioneers of e-commerce
businesses in Turkey. They are definitely more advanced compared to other firms
and the social interactions they facilitate are geared towards relationship building
and co-creation through hosting platforms such as discussion boards, blogs, and other
content.
In terms of social media usage, Turkey has been very active on the consumer side with
businesses responding to them at various levels. The areas for which there are rooms
for improvement are found as consumer engagement, integration across organization,
and social media data analysis, which can further enhance consumer experience as well
as business results. As Charlene Li, one of the experts in social media and the author of
Groundswell, mentions: companies have learning potential from such platforms through
dialogues, support provided to customers, and innovation opportunities. Turkish social
media market seems to be effective in generating one-to-many communications, but
can further improve in consumer driven dialogues, customer support service platforms,
and innovation possibilities that motivate co-creation. With such an active consumer
base online, it can be safely posited that any aforementioned efforts in improvement areas
on the business front are expected to pay back immensely.

6
The case of Turkey is particularly interesting as it is a hyper-active market in terms of social media consumer-
adoption. Internet penetration rate in Turkey exceeds forty percent making it the fifth in Europe as to the
total number of online users and the third as to the total number of hours spent on the internet at thirty-two
hours per month1 . Global statistics show that, with more than 30 million members, 2011 Facebook usage in
Turkey ranks the first among all countries including United States of America, Indonesia, and India2. Around
87% percent of Turkish internet users are already members of Facebook3. Therefore, as a growing market
with high social media penetration, the case of Turkish businesses contains a big potential to understand the
growth opportunities for firms in social media. Yet, our findings show that despite the high level of activity
online, the social media evolution is still at a premature stage due to inadequate adoption levels of firms.
This study has been conducted as an extension of our Digital Media Trends in Turkey report4 (published by
Egon Zehnder International – Turkey in April 2012) to shed further light on social media marketing applications
and reveal the major strengths and weaknesses of the businesses in terms of adopting and applying social
media practices.
Methodology
The research commenced with a qualitative approach where 14 companies that are major players in the
Turkish industry were interviewed to lay out insights about social media adoption. Later a survey was
conducted with around 275 companies. Initial responses covered around 100 respondents with only 60%
of them giving feedback related to their social media strategies and applications. The second round of
data collection increased this number to a total of 145 respondents with 103 companies fully answering the
questions on social media which enabled us to draw conclusions about social media practices in Turkey.
Findings
Social media is promising, especially Twitter and online communities...
Social media is definitely a major influencer in strategic management and marketing in Turkey. Among various
channels of communication, it is one of the most preferred methods of interaction with the consumer: 84%
of companies are currently utilizing it as a platform and it has the highest growth potential with 13% of our
respondents mentioning that they have the intention to further adopt it in the future, leading to a total of
97% mass who realize its critical role (Figure 1). Facebook is the most popular means of social media with
the highest rate of present use (Figure 2). Accordingly discussion forums, blogs, adgames, and third part
e-commerce site currently have the least part in social media applications, and except for blogs, they do
not seem to promise a lot for the future. On the other hand, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, online communities,
and brand communities have the highest potential for future social media marketing applications.
1
Internetworldstats 2011 “Internet Usage in Europe,” (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats4.htm#top)
2
“Social Network Popularity Around the World,” ( http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/10/21/social-network-popularity-around-the-world-in-2011/)
3
“Turkey Facebook Statistics,” (http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/turkey)
4
http://www.egonzehnder.com/global/clientservice/executivesearch/publications/publicationlist/share/articleindex/share/publication/id/17500703

7
11% 13%
42%
1%
28%
8%
4% 7%
5%
9%
3%
2%
10%
6% 13% 7%
84%
79%
55%
97%
62%
87% 84% 86%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Face-to-face Call Center Paper Mail Website SMS Email Social Media Events
Currently using Planning to use Not using, no plans to use
4%
10%
26% 28%
42%
28% 24%
17%
39%
11%
54%
14%
43%
9%
32%
21%
32%
29%
32%
28%
18%
15%
5%
13%
14%
24%87%
58%
53%
40%
29%
40%
48%
65%
47%
84%
33%
72%
33%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Facebook
Twitter
Youtube
Blogs
DiscussionForums
OnlineCommunities
OwnBrandCommunity
Mobilemarketing
Companywebsite(withe
commerce)
Companywebsite(withoute
commerce)
Otherecommercesites
Digitalportals
Adgames
Currently using
Planning to use
Not using, no plans to use
Figure 2: Social Media Channels and Future Orientation
Figure 1: Communication Channels and Future Orientation

8
43%
27%
13%
9%
6% 2%
< 5 %
5 - 10 %
10 - 15 %
15 - 50 %
50 - 100 %
100%
Budgets seem low, but are they really?
When the budget allocations of survey companies are analyzed, 70% state that their digital marketing
budgets are below 10% of their total marketing expenditures (Figure 3). Even though, this is much below the
global average of 27%5 , it should be emphasized that surveys were conducted with the major players that
managed some big brands in their industries. Since such brands have considerable marketing budgets,
a 5-10% digital marketing budget, most of which is spent on social media, is actually quite substantial.
Figure 3: Digital Marketing Budget Allocations
5
Excerpt from „Revealing the impact of online advertising for FMCG brands“, by GFK, October 2011

9
Strategically oriented: YES, but how about company-wide integration?
In terms of strategic approach, most organizations do follow the latest digital marketing trends (74%) and
their top management supports their digital and social media marketing incentives (69%) (Figure 4). In
terms of integration among departments, with 53% of the respondents agreeing that they are competent in
realizing cross departmental action plans, there seems to be a development area to further increase strategic
effectiveness. This is especially interesting, considering the fact that 90% of the respondents state that they
are highly customer relationship oriented with clear strategies and collaboration of all departments. When
it comes to social media marketing, companies have some way to go for integrating company-wide strategy
and operations, similar to the needs of successful CRM. With the arrival of Social CRM concepts, initiation of
further company-wide integration on social platforms seems imminent but needs thorough consideration to
be successfully implemented.
9% 4%
17%
16% 24%
28%
44%
41%
43%
30% 28%
10%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Our organization understands and
follows the latest trends in digital
marketing and social media
Our top management understands,
owns, and supports our digital
marketing strategies
There is a good level of integration
between the departments in our
company in digital marketing strategy
execution
Strongly Agree Agree Neither Agree or Disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
Figure 4: Digital and Social Media Strategic Orientation

10
Engagement, engagement, engagement... The key to social media success
It is not “social” media we are talking about if interaction among participants is missing. Turkish businesses
especially need to focus on this aspect to become more effective as social media strategists rather than
becoming mere implementers. While 68% of our respondents agree that they use social media effectively in
line with their company strategy, this drops to 35-40% for engagement related issues (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Social Media Marketing Engagement Variables
3% 3% 4% 4%
14%
5%
8%
14%
19%
26%
28%
18%
22%
37%
36%
32%
25%
11%
50%
32%
32%
30% 24%
40%
18% 15%
9% 8% 10%
27%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
We use social media
effectively in line
with our company
strategy
There is a high level
of interactivity
among our SM
members
Online relationships /
social ties are
formed through our
SM application
There are major
influencers (mavens)
in our SM network
(independent of our
company)
Social media data is
integrated with other
marketing and CRM
systems of our
company
There is a specific
procedure that we
apply when there is
a complaint by a
consumer on our SM
platform
Strongly Agree Agree Neither Agree nor Disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree

11
C2C interactivity, formation of social ties among consumers, and existence of influencers on social media
platforms seem to lack even in most of the big players. This is evidence that implementers and strategists of
social media in Turkey need to consider consumer engagement further to fully exploit the benefits of online
platforms. Otherwise, social media will stay as another means of traditional one-to-many message delivery
channel rather than providing possibilities for community formation and enculturation that will enhance
consumer loyalty and innovation opportunities. 43% of companies we surveyed mention that they make use
of relationship building properties of social media, 32% say they motivate formation of community culture,
and only 19% inspire identity management - personal information exchange and profile establishment (Figure
6). Social media in its current form serves mostly as an informational exchange channel with a lot of potential
to become much more than what it is today.
19%
32%
43%
85%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%
Identity management
Specific online community culture
Relationship building and social ties
Topical informational exchange
Figure 6: Social Media Activities Provided to Consumers

12
9%
18% 21%
11% 9%
21%8%
14%
13%
12%
9%
17%
18%
16%
25%
26% 31%
26%
27%
28%
21%
31% 31%
21%
38%
25%
19% 21% 20%
15%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
We track consumer
feedbacks on major
social media
platforms
Use of analytical
tools or systems to
monitor and extract
knowledge from SM
We classify collected
social media data
into specific
categories aligned
with our strategy
We take internal
action(reorganizing
processes, improving
products or service,
etc.) according to
feedbacks
We take external
action (align
advertising, re-
determine digital
media messages,
etc.) according to
feedbacks
We monitor social
media ROI and
effects of overall
company
performance
Never Rarely Sometimes Usually Always
Figure 7: Data Analysis and Action Plans in Social Media
We are what we measure
Another critical issue that stands out is social media data analysis opportunities for Turkish companies. Even
though, most players are active in social media platforms, they are there to disseminate information and
not as much to collect it. The consumers are expressing themselves everywhere: on company related social
media platforms or elsewhere. The word-of-mouth created by social consumers is immense and has the
greatest power on consumer choices. 55% of respondents in this survey agree that they somehow track
consumers’ voice and 43% use analytical tools to do so. Tracking and data collection are done through
agencies and vendors as 85% of companies prefer outsourcing such services (Figure 7). Taxonomizing such
collected data into categories based on business goals is even less with only 40% of companies doing so. Of
course, without classifications and analytical tools at hand, providing internal and external action plans in
response to customer feedbacks and developing insights stay at moderate levels.

13
Self-awareness is the greatest virtue for further improvement
26% of the businesses classify themselves as beginners, 47% as intermediate players, 22% as advanced
players, and %5 as experts (Figure8). These self-reported classifications are quite parallel to how companies
can be clustered in terms of engagement, integration, and analytical competence. Therefore, we provide
three stages of social media adoption that businesses are going through: experimenters, implementers, and
strategists.
Experimenters use some basic digital media tools and their social media applications facilitate information
sharing and campaign management rather than providing interactive environments for consumers to co-
create or share. Social media data is not integrated into CRM systems and firms in this group lack processes
to handle any kind of unstructured data provided by social media.
Implementers, on the other hand, use standard Facebook profiles, Twitter or company pages as social media
platforms. Content sharing is mostly done by forwarding information, and is nothing close to co-creation of
content or value. In return, consumers do not actively engage in contributory conversations, which cause
interactions to fade away or end up in futile chatter. Simple interactive applications, mostly simple interactive
games regarding promotions or small competitions, are available for entertainment and brand awareness
Figure 8: Social Media Level Self-Rating by Companies

14
purposes. Such applications are geared toward increasing brand loyalty, eWOM, and positive experiences with
the company. Social media data is tracked but not thoroughly aligned with company strategies. Therefore,
the unstructured social media data is partially analyzed and not fully utilized. Consumers use such firms’
Facebook and Twitter sites to complain about service failures or just to make simple positive / neutral /
negative comments without much content. However, detailed processes for handling these complaints are
not outlined.
Strategists claim that they are the most effective users of social media in the Turkish market. Usually they are
the top performers in their industries or pioneers of e-commerce businesses in Turkey. They are definitely
more advanced compared to other firms and the social interactions they facilitate contain more relationship
building and co-creation platforms such as discussion boards, blogs, and other content sharing and creating
opportunities among consumers. Social media is a part of strategists’ marketing plans and they have completed
their organizational structures to fit into their digital strategies. Various electronic social platforms, mobile
applications, and CRM processes are processed and assessed together to develop their businesses. Their
processes are generally focused on complaint management and they are quite good at it. Strategists are
well aware that influencers on social media do have power to affect their audiences significantly. However,
there are also development areas for strategists: despite their success in data analysis, strategists struggle
in converting social media data into consumer insights. Even though there are internal and external action
plans in response to feedbacks and activities online, their social media strategy is not integrated into their
corporate strategy. Moreover, their applications are not geared towards building a specific online community
culture and are short-term oriented.
What Lies Ahead?
Social media is flourishing at a fast pace in Turkey. There is a lot that has been accomplished, but there is still
a lot to do. The potential is great for sure. What seems to be beneficial for companies to focus on are:
• Providing engagement opportunities and online support where consumers can get into dialogues with
each other rather than just be exposed to information present on traditional media,
• Integrating social media marketing activities through all functions, business units, and departments in
the company with top management support,
• Using sophisticated tracking and analyzing tools to turn unstructured social media data into customer
insights,
• Co-creating together with consumers through engagement, integration, and analysis.
In short, it is up to the businesses to create a truly “social” media. Luckily, an active consumer base is ready
to act on the initiatives provided by the businesses and experiment with them on the way to progress. We
seem to be standing at just the beginning of what technology has to offer us, this time involving businesses,
consumers, third parties, academia, and governments. The boundaries have vanished and the rest is up to
us all.

16

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