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SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
NIRAJ JOSHI
HPGD/OC15/1498

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UNDERTAKING
I declare that project work entitled “ social media marketing “
Is my own work presented has been prepared personally by
me and it is not sourced from any outside agency . I
understand that , any such malpractice will have very serious
consequence and my admission to the program will be
cancelled without any refund of fees .
I am also aware that , I may face legal action if I follow such malpractices .
N.M. JOSHI

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Acknowledgement
I am using this opportunity to express my gratitude to everyone who supported
me throughout the course of this MBA project. I am thankful for their aspiring
guidance, invaluably constructive criticism and friendy advice during the
project work. I am sincerely grateful to them for sharing their truthful and
illuminating views on a number of issues related to the project.

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Thank you
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
social media has gained importance and acceptance at a very past pace .
it has become an avenue to share one’s personal & professional life. The
usage of social media as media marketing tool is already implemented by
many business . this reports analysed how effectively social media be used as
marketing tool . the comparison of social media versus traditional media for
marketing was studied and advantage of both are complied . this report also
analysed how small business starts ups cab benefit from the ever growing
social media industry .
Method this project report used journals , magazine , articles , newspaper
sticks , business reviews , online survey and so on from the welingkar
university . Further official media pages of verious companies facebook ,
twitter , linkedin were analysed to generate statics .

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Result social media presence is definitely an advantage for all kinds of
business Social media marketing has wider market appeal and is relativey
cheaper than traditional advertisements with a huge number of audiences and
high customisability of socail media for required content . social media
Marketing emerge as an exciting and effective tool for marketing

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TABLE OF CONTENT
Chapter Topic Page
1 Introduction
1.1 Overall objective
1.2 Method
2 Literature review
2.1 importance of social media in today’s world
2.2 social media for business to business marketing
2.2.1 Facebook for B2B marketing
2.3 Social media for business for business to consumer marketing
2.3.1 Social Media for travel and tourism
2.3.3.1 Twitter for the travel industry
2.3.2 Social Media for financial institution
2.3.2.1 Facebook for bank marketing

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2.3.2.2 Twitter for bank marketing
3 Finding and Discussions
3.1 Implementation of Social Media Marketing
3.1.1 Implementing Facebook
3.1.2 Implementing Twitter
3.2 Measuring the impact of social media marketing
3.3 Social media for small business starts - ups
3.4 Comparison of traditional advertising with social media advertising
3.6 STP & SWOT
3.7 DO’s & DON’T Social Media Marketing
4 Conclusion and Recommendation
4.1 Conclusion
4.2 ReRecommendation
5 References and bibliography

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Chapter 1

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Social media marketing sites have taken over today’s world .From what was
started merely for entertainment . Today these websites provides a host of
opportunities to its Users ranging from marketing their products increasing
awareness on social issue , sharing photos , video calls ,Joining groups and
forms of interests promoting an idea , finding family roots finding a lost friend ,
gaming , entertainment application and so on . In fact the usage of social
media marketing sites has been so diverse that many people use it for more
than just entertainment . Mena et al (2012) studied the readiness of health
students to use facebook as a platform for training professional habits
particularity in the case of influenza vaccination . this clearly shows
socical networking sites serve as a creative solution to many business
problems.
Now that you have an idea of the prevalence of social media and its rapidly
growing influence, let's take a look at some of the key ways in which social
media can help you connect with your target audience:
Generate awareness of your company and its products or services by
tapping into one of the largest audiences in the world.
Generate leads through your social networking connections, speeding
up the process by creating events and promotions.
Draw in visitors to your website and other online portals by using your
social media resources to promote new content.
Maintain direct relationships with your customers and potential
customers in order to improve your product and get to better know your
audience.
Provide customer service and advice directly to your audience and get
useful feedback from your followers to help track your success.
Facilitate sharing of your online content through the use of social media
sharing buttons, effectively letting your audience advertise for you.

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The above cites some of the key reasons to get involved in SMM, but there are
many more depending on the type of business you are operating. Local
businesses can also make extensive use of social media platforms targeted
specifically towards traditional high-street businesses. Sites like Google
Places, Bing Places, Yelp and Foursquare, among others, help you to show up
in local search results and online or mobile maps. What's more is that all of the
above is absolutely free to use, and while there are also paid SMM methods,
the free ones are far too valuable to neglect.
1 - Understanding the Social Media Marketing Process
Small business marketers often find the prospect of online marketing a
daunting one, not least because it can be difficult to know which areas to focus
on. SMM is an extensive subject with a complex hierarchy which you will need
to familiarize yourself with in order to plan your strategy. As is the case with
many forms of online marketing, SMM typically starts with your website:
The foundation of your social marketing campaign is your website,
particularly a blog, which provides a regular stream of content to keep
your audience interested, increase subscribers and social media
followers and raise awareness to your business and its online
presence.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds allow you to aggregate and sort
your content in such a way that you can provide more personalized
content to different segments of your audience. People can subscribe to
your blog to receive regular up
dates by way of RSS feeds.
Social search tools, such as Google Places, Bing Places, Foursquare,
Yelp and other online directories may be used to get listed in local
search results and draw more attention to your business and its online
presence. Social search is heavily intertwined with SMM for small
businesses.

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Social sharing and bookmarking refers to tagging and sharing content
on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ or
social bookmarking websites like Delicious, Digg or StumbleUpon. For
sharing to happen, you need to have enough high quality and useful
content.
Microblogging, typically using the Twitter platform, can help to raise
awareness and promote your content, thus drawing in more visitors to
your website or blog. However, for microblogging to become successful,
you need plenty of content worth promoting and sharing.
SMM starts with extensive planning, followed by research into your target
audience. You will then need to move your focus to engaging your audience
while publishing content (content marketing) and promoting it on your various
social networks while also encouraging your audience to do the same.
2 - Social Media Networks to Use
While just about everyone has heard of the largest social media sites, such as
Facebook and Twitter, there are many others worth a mention to. This chapter
takes a look at the world's most popular social media platforms and how they
can help small businesses with their social marketing campaigns.
Facebook
With 1.28 billion active user accounts in March, 2014, Facebook is by far the
largest social media platform in the world providing both paid and free
marketing opportunities for businesses small and large.

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 Facebook business pages offer a platform for businesses to provide
regular updates, build up subscribers and engage audiences directly.
 Facebook Ads provides a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising system which
businesses can use to provide targeted ads to relevant audiences.
 Your target audience can share your content on their own Facebook
accounts and increase awareness by 'Liking' certain posts.
Twitter
The social networking and microblogging platform Twitter has 200 million
active accounts, and it is particularly popular for businesses, entrepreneurs
and celebrities to provide short, regular updates.
 Twitter users can post short 'Tweets' with a 140-character limit, making
the platform compatible with SMS as well.
 Create a Twitter page specifically for your business and use it to attract
followers and reach out to your target audience.
 Twitter Promoted Tweets provides businesses with a paid advertising
platform helping them to reach out to a wider audience. Google+
Google+ has 540 million active accounts, making it the second-largest social
media site in the world. Most importantly, Google+ integrates with Google's
other important services for both businesses and individuals.
 Your Google+ profile is directly connected with your listing on
Google Places, a tool for local businesses to show up on maps and
local searches.
 Google+ offers a professionally orientated platform for businesses,
allowing them to carry out direct relationships with things like live video
conferencing.

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 Google+ integrates with other important Google services, such as
Google Authorship, Google Places and of course, the world's largest
search engine.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn has 277 million users, and unlike Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, it is
specifically aimed towards a professional market consisting of both individuals
and businesses.
 Creating a Company Page with LinkedIn provides you with a platform to
showcase your business and connect with potential customers and
leads.
 LinkedIn is the number one social media resource for professional
connections, such as those in business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
 Search for employees and valuable business leads by browsing
through professional profiles on LinkedIn.
Pinterest
Thanks to its unique, visual approach towards social media, Pinterest already
has well over 70 million active users and counting. Both individuals and
businesses can use Pinterest for sharing visual bookmarks known as 'Pins.'
 Pinterest is most suitable for businesses which rely heavily on visual
media, such as those in the fashion, photography, design and jewelry
industries.
 Pinterest offers business accounts including useful additional features
such as the ability to promote Pins and analyze results.
 You can link your Pinterest business profile with other social media
platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.
Instagram

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Another primarily image- and video-based social media website, Instagram
has more than 150 million active monthly users making it one of the most
popular services of its kind.
 Being visually orientated, Instagram is ideal for businesses in the
fashion, food, travel, design and technology industries.
 You can post creative snapshots and other illustrations showcasing
your company's products, host photo contests and integrate
promotional codes.
 You can only link to your business's website through your Instagram bio
page, though you can refer to it in post comments to help generate
traffic.
YouTube
Though not primarily a social networking website, the world's third most visited
website and the most popular video sharing resource, YouTube also
integrates important social features making it too important to ignore.
 YouTube provides a free platform which businesses can use to publish
video content such as tutorials, product overviews and more.
 YouTube provides its own paid advertising program, allowing
businesses to have their ads appear in other people's videos.
 YouTube's social features include video commenting, integration with
Google+ and ratings by way of likes and dislikes.
The above social networks largely revolve around building up relations and
sharing content, but the list certainly doesn't end here. Another important type
of social media is social bookmarking, a type of service which allows users to
add, annotate and share content from elsewhere on the Web. Though the
most of the above sites also facilitate social bookmarking, there are a number
of other websites which deal primarily with this area of social media. Some of
the most popular include Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious. These
sites provide you with a useful platform for promoting your content.

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Many other countries and geographical areas also have their own social media
networks, some of which have hundreds of millions of users. For example,
VKontakte, often dubbed the 'Russian Facebook' has around 250 million users
mostly in Russia and the former Soviet republics, while China has its Qzone
social network with almost half a billion users.
4 - Taking a Local Approach with Your Social Media Marketing Efforts
As a small business with a physical location, it is essential to take a more
localized approach when building up your online presence. While most of the
world's largest global companies also have a strong presence in the world of
social networking, there is absolutely no reason why you shouldn't be using
social media to market a traditional bricks-and-mortar business as well.
The first place to start is to claim your profiles on the most important resources
for local listings. It costs nothing to claim your local profiles, and you should
have them all up and running within a few days once you have verified that you
are the real owner of your business. Some of the most important social
resources for claiming your local profiles include the following:
Google Places. Claiming your Google Places profile will allow your
business to show up in local searches and on Google Maps.
Bing Places. Claiming your Bing Places profile will allow your business
to show up in local searches with Microsoft Bing and on Bing Maps.
Foursquare. Creating a listing on the Foursquare location-based social
networking website allows customers to find and 'check in' to venues.
You should also be sure to optimize your other social media platforms for a
local audience. For example, you can create a Facebook Page for a local
business or place and use Facebook Places, and most other social networks
also allow you to specify your location and company address so that people
can more easily find you when carrying out local searches.

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Once you have defined your community and established your presence on
social media, you will need to keep your online social activities at a high
professional standard in the long term. To more effectively manage your SMM
campaign, you'll need to continue to research your audience to determine
when is the best time to post and engage. You will also need to track your
performance through tools such as Google Analytics and by listening closely to
customer feedback and keeping in touch with current trends. Above all,
approach your audience in the right way, using the tips included in this guide,
and over time you will be able to strengthen your relationship with your
customers and reach out to new ones.
BACKGROUND
1.1 OVERALL AIM
Marketing is of core importance to any kind of business. It can range from
promotions and advertisements on a large scale to one to one word of mouth
marketing. Marketing forms the essence of a business by which the brand
name is reached to the intended audience. The cost associated with traditional
marketing techniques including print and visual media is increasing at a fast
pace. The cost of a full page colour advertisement in ‘Time of India’ is around
₹20000, if not more. Thus it is important to look out for new and more creative
methods of marketing. Online marketing especially social media marketing is a
sensible alternative. This report tries to analyse how effective is marketing via
social media. The report also compares and contrasts the advantages and
disadvantages of social media marketing with traditional advertising like print
and visual media. Today’s youngsters are aspirers. They dream big and want
to be their own boss. Most of them aspire to be entrepreneurs and the success
stories of entrepreneurs are a huge encouragement for them. A major problem
that these entrepreneurs face while starting a new business is the cost
associated with the brand building and marketing. In this era, though the
young population is all set to take over the world with extended technological
advancements, many of them fail due to lack of financial resources for brand

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building. It is in this scenario that this report analyses how well social media
marketing can help new businesses.
Therefore the objectives of this report are as follows: To study the
effectiveness and implementation of social media marketing for different
businesses To study how social media can be useful for small businesses
and new business start- ups. To compare and contrast social media
marketing to traditional marketing
1.2 METHOD
This report uses academic journals, magazine articles, live
survey and newspaper articles which gives an idea about the relevance of
social media as a marketing tool. These were accessed via the library of Amity
University. The search keys given were ‘social media’, ‘marketing through
Facebook’, ’Start-ups and social media’ ‘Facebook marketing’ ‘Twitter
marketing’, ‘LinkedIn marketing’ ‘social media marketing’ and so on. Various
social networking websites were also visited to get insights on how marketing
can be done through them. Also, in order to get ideas on how new business
start-ups are using social media for marketing success stories of some
entrepreneurs who recently started their business were read. The structure of
this project report is as follows.
The seven types of Social Media Channels affecting business will be the
Following
 Social Networks
 Blogs and Microblogs
 Contents Communities or Media Sharing Sites (Video/Audio/Photo/P

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8 Essential Elements of a Social Media
Marketing Strategy
Do you need help getting started with your social media marketing strategy?
Do you know what to include?
Goals and objectives guide your social media strategy to help you successfully
connect with your customers.
In this project report I’ll share what you need to include in your social media
marketing strategy so it works from day one.
#1: Identify Business Goals
Every piece of your social media strategy serves the goals you set. You simply can’t
move forward without knowing what you’re working toward.
Look closely at your company’s overall needs and decide how you want to use
social media to contribute to reaching them.
You’ll undoubtedly come up with several personalized goals, but there are a few that
all companies should include in their strategy—increasing brand awareness, retaining
customers and reducing marketing costs are relevant to everyone.

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1. TIMELY
2. SPECIFIC
3. REACHABLE
4. ETHICAL
5. MEASURABLE
6. ACHIEVABLE
7. REALISTIC
I suggest you choose two primary goals and two secondary goals to focus on.
Having too many goals distracts you and you’ll end up achieving none.
#2: Set Marketing Objectives
Goals aren’t terribly useful if you don’t have specific parameters that define when
each is achieved. For example, if one of your primary goals is generating leads and
sales, how many leads and sales do you have to generate before you consider that goal
a success?
Marketing objectives define how you get from Point A (an unfulfilled goal) to Point B
(a successfully fulfilled goal). You can determine your objectives with the
S-M-A-R-T approach: Make your objectives specific, measurable, achievable,
relevant and time-bound.
Using our previous example, if your goal is to generate leads and sales, a specific
marketing objective may be to increase leads by 50%. In order to measure your
progress, choose which analytics and tracking tools you need to have in place.
Setting yourself up for failure is never a good idea. If you set an objective of
increasing sales by 1,000%, it’s doubtful you’ll meet it. Choose objectives you can
achieve, given the resources you have.
You’ve taken the time to refine your goals so they’re relevant to your company, so
extend that same consideration to your objectives. If you want to get support from
your C-level executives, ensure your objectives are relevant to the company’s
overall vision.
Attaching a timeframe to your efforts is imperative. When do you intend to achieve
your goal(s)? Next month? By the end of this year?
Your objective of increasing leads by 50% may be specific, measurable, achievable
and relevant, but if you don’t set a deadline for achieving the goal, your efforts,
resources and attention may be pulled in other directions.
#3: Identify Ideal Customers
GOALS

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If a business is suffering from low engagement on their social profiles, it’s usually
because they don’t have an accurate ideal customer profile.
Buyer personas help you define and target the right people, in the right places, at the
right times with the right messages.
When you know your target audience’s age, occupation, income, interests, pains,
problems, obstacles, habits, likes, dislikes, motivations and objections, then it’s
easier and cheaper to target them on social or any other media.
The more specific you are, the more conversions you’re going to get out of every
channel you use to promote your business.
#4: Research Competition
When it comes to social media marketing, researching your competition not only
keeps you apprised of their activity, it gives you an idea of what’s working so you can
integrate those successful tactics into your own efforts.
Start by compiling a list of at least 3-5 main competitors. Search which social
networks they’re using and analyze their content strategy. Look at their number of
fans or followers, posting frequency and time of day.
Also pay attention to the type of content they’re posting and its context
(humorous, promotional, etc.) and how they’re responding to their fans.
The most important activity to look at is engagement. Even though page admins are
the only ones who can calculate engagement rate on a particular update, you can get a
good idea of what they’re seeing.

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For example, let’s say you’re looking at a competitor’s last 20-30 Facebook updates.
Take the total number of engagement activities for those posts and divide it by the
page’s total number of fans. (Engagement activity includes likes, comments, shares,
etc.)
You can use that formula on all of your competitors’ social profiles (e.g., on Twitter
you can calculate retweets and favorites).
Keep in mind that the calculation is meant to give you a general picture of how the
competition is doing so you can compare how you stack up against each other.
#5: Choose Channels and Tactics
Many businesses create accounts on every popular social network without researching
which platform will bring the most return. You can avoid wasting your time in the
wrong place by using the information from your buyer personas to determine which
platform is best for you.
If your prospects or customers tell you they spend 40% of their online time on
Facebook and 20% on Twitter, you know which primary and secondary social
networks you should focus on.
When your customers are using a specific network, that’s where you need to be—not
everywhere else.
Your tactics for each social channel rely on your goals and objectives, as well as the
best practices of each platform.
For example, if your goal is increasing leads and your primary social network is
Facebook, some effective tactics are investing in Facebook advertising or promotion
campaigns to draw more attention to your lead magnets.
#6: Create a Content Strategy
Content and social media have a symbiotic relationship: Without great content social
media is meaningless and without social media nobody will know about your content.
Use them together to reach and convert your prospects.
There are three main components to any successful social media content strategy: type
of content, time of posting and frequency of posting.
The type of content you should post on each social network relies on form and context.
Form is how you present that information—text only, images, links, video, etc.
Context fits with your company voice and platform trends. Should your content be
funny, serious, highly detailed and educational or something else?
There are many studies that give you a specific time when you should post on social
media. However, I suggest using those studies as guidelines rather than hard rules.

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Remember, your audience is unique, so you need to test and figure out the best time
for yourself.
Posting frequency is as important as the content you share. You don’t want to annoy
your fans or followers, do you?
Finding the perfect frequency is crucial because it could mean more engagement for
your content or more unlikes and unfollows. Use Facebook Insights to see when
your fans are online and engaging with your content.
#7: Allocate Budget and Resources
To budget for social media marketing, look at the tactics you’ve chosen to achieve
your business goals and objectives.
Make a comprehensive list of the tools you need (e.g., social media monitoring,
email marketing and CRM), services you’ll outsource (e.g., graphic design or video
production) and any advertising you’ll purchase. Next to each, include the annual
projected cost so you can have a high-level view of what you’re investing in and how
it affects your marketing budget.
Many businesses establish their budget first, and then select which tactics fit that
budget. I take the opposite approach. I establish a strategy first, and then determine
the budget that fits that strategy.
If your strategy execution fees exceed your budget estimate, prioritize your tactics
according to their ROI timeframe. The tactics with the fastest ROI (e.g., advertising
and social referral) take priority because they generate instant profit you can later
invest into long-term tactics (fan acquisition, quality content creation or long-term
engagement).
#8: Assign Roles
Knowing who’s responsible for what increases productivity and avoids confusion and
overlapping efforts. Things may be a bit messy in the beginning, but with time team
members will know their roles and what daily tasks they’re responsible for.

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When everyone knows his or her role, it’s time to start planning the execution
process. You can either plan daily or weekly. I don’t advise putting a monthly plan
together because lots of things will come up and you may end up wasting time
adapting to the new changes.
You can use tools like Basecamp or ActiveCollab to manage your team and assign
tasks to each member. These tools save you tons of time and help you stay organized.
Your Turn
Your social media marketing strategy isn’t written in stone. As you move forward,
you may discover that some tactics are not working as well as you thought they would.
Always try to adapt quickly and introduce the new changes to your overall
strategy.

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CHAPTER - 2

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Social media has taken over the world in every sense. In the field of marketing,
advertising, brand building, promotions social media is the most sought after
method adopted by entrepreneurs’ young and old. The word social media
brings to mind the most used networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and
Linked In though there are other social media websites such as MySpace,
Flicker and YouTube. Social media is widely used in various businesses like
small business, banking, retail marketing, B2B marketing, travel and tourism
marketing, financial institutions marketing and so on. This chapter aims to
throw light on the way in which social marketing can be used effectively for
business development. The initial part of this chapter will give an overview of
how social media as a whole can help promote businesses and further down
the report, specific cases pertaining to a particular social networking website
used for developing a particular business unit will be examined.
· 2.1IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN TODAY’S WORLD Marie Swift
(2006) suggests that placing an advertisement in the print media is not the
best solution for brand promotion. The problem with traditional mass
advertising according to Marie is that, these media appeal to a wide range of
people who may not even be interested to know who we are. On the other
hand, promotions and brand building must be done with people whom we think
are potential customers for our business. This can be achieved by

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channelizing a greater part of promotion and advertising budget for activities
such as networking, volunteering, hosting events and so on. Out of these
methods, networking is the best that suits the need of the time (Marie Swift,
2006). With the te
chnological advancements in today’s world, it is fairly easy to be connected
with the outside world with the help of social networking sites. Peer networking
is an important way of advertising and this is all set to take over the world of
marketing in the near future. The biggest advantage of social media marketing
is that it can be used for any kind of business regardless of whether it is B2B or
B2C. Also the relative cost is much lesser as compared with traditional
advertising.
To some entrepreneurs, social media marketing is the “next big thing,” a temporary yet powerful fad
that must be taken advantage of while it’s still in the spotlight. To others, it’s a buzzword with no
practical advantages and a steep, complicated learning curve.
Because it appeared quickly, social media has developed a reputation by some for being a passing
marketing interest, and therefore, an unprofitable one. The statistics, however, illustrate a different
picture. According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was
important for their business, with 80% indicating their efforts increased traffic to their websites. And
according to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media—but
85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use.This demonstrates a huge
potential for social media marketing to increase sales, but a lack of understanding on how to achieve
those results. Here’s a look at just some of the ways social media marketing can improve your
business:
1. Increased Brand Recognition.
Every opportunity you have to syndicate your content and increase
your visibility is valuable. Your social media networks are just new channels for your brand’s voice and
content. This is important because it simultaneously makes you easier and more accessible for new
customers, and makes you more familiar and recognizable for existing customers. For example, a
frequent Twitter user could hear about your company for the first time only after stumbling upon it in
a newsfeed. Or, an otherwise apathetic customer might become better acquainted with your brand
after seeing your presence on multiple networks.
2. Improved brand loyalty.
According to a report published by Texas Tech University, brands who
engage on social media channels enjoy higher loyalty from their customers. The report concludes
“Companies should take advantage of the tools social media gives them when it comes to connecting
with their audience. A strategic and open social media plan could prove influential in morphing
consumers into being brand loyal.” Another study published by Convince&Convert found that 53% of
Americans who follow brands in social are more loyal to those brands.
3. More Opportunities to Convert.
Every post you make on a social media platform is an opportunity
for customers to convert. When you build a following, you’ll simultaneously have access to new
customers, recent customers, and old customers, and you’ll be able to interact with all of them. Every

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blog post, image, video, or comment you share is a chance for someone to react, and every reaction
could lead to a site visit, and eventually a conversion. Not every interaction with your brand results in
a conversion, but every positive interaction increases the likelihood of an eventual conversion. Even if
your click-through rates are low, the sheer number of opportunities you have on social media is
significant. And as I pointed out in my article, “The Four Elements of Any Action, And How To Use
Them In Your Online Marketing Initiative,” “opportunity” is the first element of any action.
4. Higher conversion rates.
Social media marketing results in higher
conversion rates in a few distinct ways. Perhaps the most significant is its humanization element; the
fact that brands become more humanized by interacting in social media channels. Social media is a
place where brands can act like people do, and this is important because people like doing business
with other people; not with companies.
Additionally, studies have shown that social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than
outbound marketing, and a higher number of social media followers tends to improve trust and
credibility in your brand, representing social proof. As such, simply building your audience in social
media can improve conversion rates on your existing traffic.
5. Higher Brand Authority.Interacting with your customers regularly is a
show of good faith for other customers. When people go to compliment or brag about a product or
service, they turn to social media. And when they post your brand name, new audience members will
want to follow you for updates. The more people that are talking about you on social media, the more
valuable and authoritative your brand will seem to new users. Not to mention, if you can interact with
major influencers on Twitter or other social networks, your visible authority and reach will skyrocket.
6. Increased Inbound Traffic. Without social media, your inbound
traffic is limited to people already familiar with your brand and individuals searching for keywords you
currently rank for. Every social media profile you add is another path leading back to your site, and
every piece of content you syndicate on those profiles is another opportunity for a new visitor. The
more quality content you syndicate on social media, the more inbound traffic you’ll generate, and
more traffic means more leads and more conversions.
7. Decreased Marketing Costs. According to Hubspot, 84% of
marketers found as little as six hours of effort per week was enough to generate increased traffic. Six
hours is not a significant investment for a channel as large as social media. If you can lend just one
hour a day to developing your content and syndication strategy, you could start seeing the results of
your efforts. Even paid advertising through Facebook and Twitter is relatively cheap (depending on
your goals, of course). Start small and you’ll never have to worry about going over budget—once you
get a better feel for what to expect, you can increase your budget and increase your conversions
correspondingly.
8. Better Search Engine Rankings.SEO is the best way to
capture relevant traffic from search engines, but the requirements for success are always changing.
It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog, ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions,
and distribute links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be calculating
their rankings using social media presence as a significant factor, because of the fact that strong
brands almost always use social media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand
signal” to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy. That means, if you
want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a strong social media presence could be almost
mandatory.

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9. Richer Customer Experiences.Social media, at its core, is a
communication channel like email or phone calls. Every customer interaction you have on social
media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your
relationship with your customers. For example, if a customer complains about your product on
Twitter, you can immediately address the comment, apologize publicly, and take action to make it
right. Or, if a customer compliments you, you can thank them and recommend additional products.
It’s a personal experience that lets customers know you care about them.
10. Improved Customer Insights. Social media also gives you an
opportunity to gain valuable information about what your customers are interested in and how they
behave, via social listening. For example, you can monitor user comments to see what people think of
your business directly. You can segment your content syndication lists based on topic and see which
types of content generate the most interest—and then produce more of that type of content. You can
measure conversions based on different promotions posted on various social media channels and
eventually find a perfect combination to generate revenue.
These are the benefits of sustaining a long-term social media campaign, but if you’re still
apprehensive about getting started, consider these points:
Your Competition Is Already Involved. Your competitors are already involved on social media, which
means your potential social media traffic and conversions are being poached. Don’t let your
competitors reap all the benefits while you stand idly by. If, somehow, your competition is not
involved on social media, there’s even more of a reason to get started—the field is open.
The Sooner You Start, the Sooner You Reap the Benefits. Social media is all about relationship building,
and it tends to grow exponentially as your followers tell their friends, and their friends tell their
friends, and so on. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll be able to start growing that audience.
Potential Losses Are Insignificant. Realistically, you don’t have anything to lose by getting involved in
social media. The amount of time and money it takes to create your profiles and start posting is
usually minimal, compared to other marketing channels. Just six hours a week or a few hundred
dollars is all it takes to establish your presence.
The longer you wait, the more you have to lose. Social media marketing, when done right, can lead to
more customers, more traffic, and more conversions, and it’s here to stay.
·
2.2 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO BUSINESS MARKETING
Michael Rodriguez et al (2012) conducted a
study on the effectiveness of social media marketing by analysing 1699
business to business clients from around 25 industries. The study proves that
social media is indeed helpful for B2B firms in generating new sales. Social
media is the best tool for finding new clients and deepening the relationship
with existing customers. The study assumed five hypotheses as follows: Social

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media usage creates opportunity, social media usage helps in understanding
customers, social media usage helps in relationship management, social
media usage aids in relationship sales performance and social media usage
helps in outcome based sales performance. Based on the social capital theory,
these hypotheses were tested and data obtained was analysed using the
standard protocol (Churchill 1979; Churchill and Peter 1984). The result of this
analysis supported the hypotheses that social media usage creates
opportunities, social media usage helps in relationship management and
social media usage helps in relationship sales performance. However, the
hypotheses that social media usage helps increase outcome based sales
performance and social media usage helps in understanding customers were
not supported. Thus taking all these into consideration, it can be concluded
that social media usage helps in developing B2B sales. With over 955 million
active users, Facebook tops the social media in terms of usage and number of
active users (Mashable website, 2013). Thus it is important to know how
Facebook can be used for B2B marketing.
2.2.1 FACEBOOK FOR B2B MARKETING
Although the idea of integrating business into personal life doesn’t seem to be
a right choice, Facebook being a larger community than all countries of this
world expect India and China can help develop B2B business (Handley, 2013).
For this the company must have a business page as opposed to the normal
individual profile page. The following things need to be kept in mind while
promoting business through Facebook: (1) The utmost important thing is to get
as many people to ‘like’ the official company page. Also contents must be
added frequently so that users constantly get the news of the company
through the news feed on their home page. This will keep them updated about
what is going on in the company. (2) Secondly communicate to the customers
visually as opposed to text only communication. Facebook uses an algorithm

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which gives more priority to videos and photos than text and increases visibility
of news item proportional to the number of people commenting or liking
·
In simple terms, if a news item is liked and commented by a
few people in the initial phase, there is more chance that it will be seen by
more people. (3) The number of times updates are added and the time of the
day when the posts are added is equally important. Choose a time which is
most likely to hit maximum number of clicks and limit the number of posts to
one or two per day. Similar to the usage of social media in B2B markets as
mentioned above, social media also aids B2C marketing. The following part of
this report analyses how various B2C clients are benefitted from social media
usage.
2.3 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR BUSINESS TO CONSUMER MARKETING
Social media can be effectively used for various B2C clients to
increase sales. This includes business markets such as travel and tourism,
banks, retail outlets and so on.
2.3.1 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR TRAVEL AND TOURISM
Various industries within the travel industry
are focusing on social media marketing along with the traditional marketing
techniques. The airline industry is one which heavily relies on social media for
promotions and advertisements. Hvass & Munar (2012) studied the
effectiveness of the airline industry using social media for promoting their
travel and tourism packages. Initially a total of 29 full service carriers and 20
low cost carriers were selected for this study and afterwards three airlines
were chosen from this set. These airlines had an account in Facebook or
Twitter or both. The study proves that most airlines use an official
tone/language while posting their updates thereby reducing the interactive
nature of the post (Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et al 2011). Followers would like
the content of these pages to be more informal but authentic. In fact many
airlines have more than one official page which can cause both confusion and

32. 32
clarity. It causes confusion because fans or followers may be reluctant to join
more than one page for the same company as it would be difficult to
distinguish between original official page and duplicate page. On the other
hand maintaining more than one official page on the social media can help to
clearly distinguish between various functionalities of the company. For
instance, content pertaining to employees need not be made public to the
customers and so two pages can be maintained which caters to employees
and customers. In any case, the result proves that maintaining a social media
account helps increase customer base for the travel and tourism industry and
as mentioned above many companies in the tourism industry are already into it
·
2.3.1.1 TWITTER FOR THE TRAVEL INDUSTRY
Saltzman (2009) conducted a real life case study on usage of
Twitter by various travel operators. It is interesting to note that different travel
agents use different strategies for marketing through twitter. While Southwest
airlines do not address most of customer service issues through twitter, it
responds to all other queries including latest fares, promotions offers and so
on. As for Marriot International which started with relatively less number of
followers, the main agenda was to implement the feedback provided by the
followers. The main success factor of Marriot’s page is that they don’t limit their
tweets to company specific deals and offers. Interesting fun facts are also
given due importance. Though Marriot also doesn’t encourage customer
service issues through Twitter as it may damage the reputation of the
company, any issues posted on Twitter are dealt with. For pleasant holidays,
the major reason they use Twitter is to communicate last minute deals to its
customers and other travel agents. Carnival Cruise Lines address customer
queries most effectively so that Twitter is more of a communication medium
between the company and the customers. Thus different strategies are
adopted by different travel operators for marketing through twitter. This
strategy has proved successful for all the travel agents because their growth in
terms of number of followers is whooping. All of them have grown to either
three digit or four digit numbers in a short span of five years and this proves

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that marketing through twitter is successful. Though the real success factor
lies in the amount of revenue generated through usage of social media, the
gain in popularity of these sites can’t be ignored. Table 1 shows the growth of
various travel operators in terms of number of followers. TRAVEL OPERATOR
FOLLOWERS (AS ON AUG 2007) FOLLOWERS (AS ON 27 SEP 2012)
PERCENTAGE GROWTH Southwest Airlines 406,091 1,372,970 338%
Marriot International 13,446 197,089 1465% Carnival Cruise Lines 8,671
60,556 698% Fairmount Hotels 4,550 42,033 923% Pleasant Holidays 2,767
7,727 279% Holland America Line 1,472 15,617 1060% Four Seasons Hotels
4,157 49,251 1184%
· Another area of wide usage of social media for B2C marketing is
in financial institutions especially in the banking segment. The next part of this
report concentrates on how financial institutions utilize social media for their
marketing strategies. 2.3.2 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
Many studies have been conducted to analyse the importance of social media
marketing in the financial institution segment. The use of Linked In which is
referred to as ‘professional Facebook’ is a very effective platform to build
business. “LinkedIn provides a prime opportunity to showcase your business
and its employees as experts in their field” (Hershberger, 2013). An important
fact about LinkedIn is that it has the highest average income of all social sites.
This means that LinkedIn is more to do with business than entertainment.
These days business validation is done by searching for the company in most
popular social media. If financial institutions do not have a profile, it is most
likely that the company will not be regarded as authentic. The advantages of
managing a profile on LinkedIn are as follows: The company website,
other social media presence like Facebook and Twitter can be integrated with
the LinkedIn page. Products and Services tab on the LinkedIn page can be
customised to suit the company’s requirements. Icons, Banners, Photos
and videos pertaining to brand building of the company can be included on the
LinkedIn page to increase viewership of the page. Several real life case
studies have been written about how banks in particular use other social

34. 34
media sites such as Facebook and twitter for marketing. The next part
focusses on banks using Facebook as a marketing tool
2.3.2.1 FACEBOOK FOR BANK MARKETING
According to Price (2011), customers who interact with a
company through social media are not discount shoppers. Financial
institutions like banks use Facebook as a tool to deepen existing potential
customers. Evidently Facebook is a place where people like to spent time in.
When a company’s presence is felt on a place where you want to be, there are
more chances that the company’s brand building boosts up as a by-product of
the liking for the social media website as a whole. Bank Atlantic is an example
which has 2217 likes as on 26 September 2012. The following is the strategy
implemented by Bank Atlantic:
· Use Facebook to create experiences, services and values unique to
Facebook users. This can be surveys, games and so on Place interactive
contents like videos and photos which will drive the customers towards the
bank’s official pages Encourage users who are active on the page by
promoting their content like blogs. Just as different tour operators have
different marketing strategies on twitter, different banks have different
marketing strategy on Facebook as well. Albro (2012) reports the strategies
used by various banks in the United States of America to increase their sales
through Facebook marketing. For First National Bank operating mainly in
Virginia, Facebook is an important way of keeping in touch with the customers.
The posts on the bank’s page are planned well in advance so that the bank is
prepared to counter any queries from customers regarding the posts. The
bank dedicates a person for responding to customer queries on the page.

35. 35
Similarly Bath Savings Institution believes in a two way synchronisation
between the banks official website and the official Facebook page. While
updates are posted on both the website and on the Facebook page, the bank
aims at creating an interaction with the customers through the Facebook page.
An important aspect of Bath Savings Institution is that it does not discuss
products or services of the bank through Facebook. The bank believes that
details of products or services are not what customers want. Just as banks use
Facebook for marketing, Twitter is also widely used by many banks to promote
their brand. The next part of the report throws light on Twitter marketing by
banks.
2.3.2.2 TWITTER FOR BANK MARKETING
A difference in using Twitter for marketing as compared to
Facebook or LinkedIn is that Twitter is more demanding. Frequent tweets
should be written in order to engage customers and this may require an
additional person in marketing to keep the page live and updated at all times
(Walt Albro, 2012). Also even if multiple tweets are written, the number of
potential customers in Twitter is much less than of Facebook due to fact that it
has far lesser active users than Facebook. However, many banks have
already started using twitter as a means to communicate with their customers.
Baylake Bank has two persons from the marketing department to work full time
for the bank’s social media presence. Baylake Bank is active on Twitter,

36. 36
Facebook and LinkedIn. The advantage that the bank sees in being on Twitter
is the nearly real time conversations it can offer to customers. Thus customers
receive feedback on their query in a very fast manner. The content for social
media is reviewed every two weeks and approved for posting. Avidia bank
has outsourced its marketing operations through Twitter since the bank has
only a small number of marketing staff. Avidia bank aims at creating new
customers and strengthening its brand name through Twitter. Interestingly
North Jersey Community Bank has about a dozen twitter accounts. The bank
uses one as its official twitter page while the others are for communication
between employees and the bank’s clients. Thus various banks are utilizing
social media for its marketing. Apart from financial institutions and travel and
tourism industries, retailers are also on the lookout for utilising social media
presence for marketing. The next part of this report gives an idea of how
retailers use social media for marketing.
2.3.3 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR RETAILERS
The August (2009) issue of Market Watch: Technology
suggests that usage of Twitter if monitored well can help in increasing sales
revenue beyond expectations. Many retailers are already reaping the benefits
of being on Twitter. For instance ‘Dell Retail Outlet’ had 704,000 followers on
twitter in 2009 and an accumulated turnover of $2 million through twitter since
the inception of its twitter page in 2007. Today it has 1,506,824 followers which
record a 214% growth in terms of number of followers in a short span of 3
years. Fashion retailer ASOS is also actively tweeting their offers, promotions
and discounts through twitter. Similarly Fresh and Easy which is the US
subsidiary of Tesco launched a new family meal pack as suggested by its
customers through Twitter. A leading furniture retailer in the UK – Habitat –
cautions that twitter usage, particularly the use of hashtags for promotions
must be done with extreme care. The company faced a bad reputation when it
used non relevant hashtags to improve viewership. Thus usage of twitter for

37. 37
retailers is also found useful. Though the above study proves that social media
usage aids in developing both B2C and B2B businesses, Handley Ann (2012)
suggests that using Facebook for business needs may create a negative
impact on the person trying to promote the business. She suggests that
Facebook is something personal and people don’t expect business deals
through Facebook. It is supposed to be a social networking site meant for
making friends and keeping in touch with existing friends.
·

38. 38
CHAPTER - 3
·

39. 39
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
It is clear from the literature review that usage of social media for marketing
has been embraced by businesses of all kinds. It is proved that business to
business marketing and business to consumer marketing is possible and
highly effective through the usage of social media especially Facebook, Twitter
and LinkedIn. The next part of the report concentrates on how social media
presence can be increased for business firms and how is it better than or
worse than traditional advertising techniques. It also focusses on how social
media usage can enhance small businesses. Merely implementation of social
media may not be useful for businesses but there should be a way to measure
the impact of using social media for marketing. Thus discussion on how to
measure the return on investment in social media will also be covered. In
addition to this the general thumb rules of using social media sites for
marketing will be discussed.
3.1 IMPLEMENTATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Usage of social media helps to create a feeling for the customers that they
have a direct and immediate access to the company (Rodriguez et al, 2012). It
is more of a pull strategy rather than a push strategy for business development
as proposed by Lager (2009). An important aspect of social media marketing
is that the results of social media marketing will be known only after some time
of implementation. Merely setting up a page on any social networking site such
as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn is not enough to generate sales. The most
important part of implementation is that it should regularly and frequently be
updated. Twitter in particular which is more of real time status updates,
requires frequent updating and feedback to queries. At the same time, too
many posts should not be posted since it will damage the reputation of the
brand and over populate the customer home page. There are different tactics
for implementing pages on different social media sites as follows:
3.1.1 IMPLEMENTING FACEBOOK

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There are several things to keep in mind before plunging into the world of
Facebook marketing. Facebook is not the ideal place for marketing all kinds of
businesses. A firm’s objectives should be laid down and it should completely
match with the Facebook marketing style (Maxwell 2012). This means that
Facebook marketing should completely fit with the brand being marketed.
Keeping in mind the fact that average age of people using Facebook rose from
33 to 38 in 2011 (Maxwell 2012), a brand which caters to audience in their late
· thirties can easily be marketed using Facebook. Once the brand is
recognised to be good enough for Facebook marketing, the next hurdle is to
urge people to ‘like’ your page. For this interactive and interesting content
should be shared on a regular basis. The next step is to engage the people
who have liked your page by providing them unique deals through Facebook.
Having done this, integrating the company official website, other social media
pages such as Twitter and LinkedIn pages with the company’s official
Facebook page is the next important thing. These icons must be placed
promptly, in a place which is visible to all visitors easily and there should be
easy navigation between these pages (Maxwell 2012). Status updates, videos,
photos, creative games and so on must be updated at steady pace of intervals
so that viewers never think that the company’s page is not maintained well. On
the other hand, do not overload the customers with too many posts. One post
everyday will be most rewarding as people won’t get bored seeing the firm’s
page. There should be someone responsible for keeping the page live and
active throughout the year, every year. There are various methods for this. The
easiest is to delegate the work for the marketing department. But another
solution to decrease workload and to increase creativity of the posts is to
circulate the responsibility of posting with the various departments such as HR,
Finance and accounts department. This can be done since Facebook is very
popular and does not require any technical expertise to update posts. Another
method is outsourcing and there are many companies which outsource social
media marketing. Collecting feedback from the customers and implementing
them in the business is very important since they are invaluable suggestions
from people who want your brand to grow. A legal media policy for data

41. 41
protection should also be implemented so that the company’s legal side is also
taken care of.
· 3.1.2 IMPLEMENTING TWITTER
As opposed to Facebook, Twitter requires more real time tweets and hence it
is more demanding. There should be a person in charge of ‘tweeting’ the
relevant information at the right time (Marketing Magazine, 2012). There are
several points to be kept in mind while tweeting: Consistently tweet at the
peak hour of the day and respond to queries directly and promptly. Do not
tweet too many times in a day. Plan in advance regarding what to post and
when to post. Keep the posts short and interesting. Sharing unique content
on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the company’s website will urge users to
follow the company’s page on all the social media websites. Find people
who are sharing information related with your business and engage them in
your social media marketing. It is important to keep in mind that in order to
draw attention from Facebook or Twitter users who are already busy, engaged
and entertained, the company needs to post something even more interesting
which will increase the company’s sales revenue indirectly The person who
is designated to send tweets must know about the company well and he/she
must be very much aware of the business language of the firm. Either content
should be reviewed before posting or someone experienced should be given
the task of social media marketing. A specific amount of time at regular
intervals like morning, midday and evening should be spent for responding to
twitter queries if any. Do not just promote the business but promote
interesting content such as funny videos, useful information and so on. All the
content shared should have some relevance with regard to the firm itself.
Use simple language which can be understood by a common man. Take
special care not to include jargons in tweets. Maintain a positive attitude in
the tweets and do not get too personal (Gunelius , 2011)
· Having studied how to implement a twitter page and a Facebook page, the
next important thing is to measure the outcome of these efforts. Hence
calculating the return on investment from social media is equally important.
3.2 MEASURING THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

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When a CFO of a firm looks at cutting down costs, the ones most likely to get
cut are the ones whose ROI is not known. Hence, investment on social media
marketing is likely to get cut and thereby the firm will suffer bad consequences
(Price 2011). Thus it is very important to calculate the ROI for social media
marketing. Follow the steps for the same. Track the initial numbers- revenue,
average customer spending, website user traffic, new customers and so on.
Make a note of the expenses related to maintaining and updating the social
media page and track the amount of revenue generated from the social media.
Subtracting the expense from the revenue and dividing it with the initial
investment will yield the ROI. The challenge here is that the expense here will
be a measure of time whereas the revenue generated will be in pounds. This
time can be converted to currency by multiplying the time with the hourly wage
and adding the computer and internet cost to it. After posting regular updates
on the page for a month or so, calculate the increased revenue (Price 2011).
Apart from this various tools are available to track users who visit a page on
Facebook just like Google Analytics is used to track people visiting a website.
The tools available in the market are as follows: i. Facebook Insights: Gives
data on customer interaction, ‘likes’ comments and so on in a visually
pleasing way which is easy to understand and analyse. ii. HootSite: Consists
of a web application and a mobile application which can be used by novice
users as well to interpret traffic on a webpage iii. Nutshellmail: Gives reports
on social media usage as an email which has details like comments, ‘likes’
and so on for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. iv. TweetDeck: Used to get a
peripheral idea on who is using the company’s twitter page and who is coming
back. Similarly, it is important to measure the impact of using Facebook for
bank marketing. This can be done by monitoring the change in visitors’
number when a promotion has been updated on its Facebook page and by
measuring customer satisfaction levels from time to time (Price, 2011). Since
the implementation of social media and measuring the impact of social media
is done, the next question is whether social media marketing is viable for small
· businesses and new start-ups. The next part of the report focuses on
viability on social media marketing for small businesses start-ups.

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3.3 SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SMALL BUSINESS START-UPS
Ankeny (2011) finds out how is it possible for small business start-ups to utilize
Facebook as their marketing tool. There are numerous small business
start-ups which use Facebook as an effective tool for marketing. The biggest
advantage of small business start-ups in using Facebook for marketing is the
massive expense cut. Initial phase of a company is the time when the brand
needs to be built through strong PR events. With about a billion population and
around half of them logging in everyday, there is no cheaper medium of
promotion as Facebook especially for small business start-ups. By
encouraging people to interact on Facebook by providing unique promotions,
business opportunities and so on, people get more acquainted with the brand
itself. By providing discounts and other offers to Facebook customers alone,
the need for reviewing the page again and again becomes a necessity. Hence,
the page gets clicked many more times and thus the brand building takes
place without much hassle. When Facebook page of a new start-up company
is being designed, it must be designed in such a way that it engages more
customers. Thus by increasing the amount of time spent on the Facebook
page of the company, the brand name gets more deeply engraved into the
customers mind (Ankeny 2011). The success of a small business start-up by
Anna Strahs proves that Facebook marketing works really well for new
business start-ups (Ankeny, 2011). She started her own bakery which baked
alternative food which was corn free, nut free and diary free. She started a
Facebook page as soon as she started the company and regularly updated
photos and videos of her progress. Facebook managed her market research,
feedback collection and promotions. While she managed to know what the
customers want through Facebook using customer feedback, she did her
promotions by updating posts and photos through Facebook. By
understanding the true potential of Facebook, she invested in Facebook
advertisements as well and the response was truly rewarding. From what
started as a business to cater to the necessity of people with dietary

44. 44
restrictions, the company has grown far and wide and ships its products
across the United States of America. This was possible with a mere $300
spent for advertisements. This is the true potential of social media for new
start-ups. At a time when financial resources are very limited and brand
building is of high priority, social media advertisements can eliminate the
huge amount of money spent on advertisements and at the same time create a
brand image in a relatively shorter span of time Having studied the way in
which social media can be exploited for small businesses start-ups, the next
important thing is to compare and contrast between traditional advertisements
and social media promotions and conclude which is better and why.
3.4 COMPARISON OF TRADITIONAL ADVERTISING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING
Traditional advertising media includes print media, radio and visual media. In
fact, only the print media was considered to be traditional media but in this
context of discussing the impact of social media advertising and its
comparison with other media advertisements, all other existing media except
the social media is considered as traditional media, at least for the sake of this
report. Though social media is gaining importance and acceptance, 45% of
advertisement revenue is still paid for advertisements in the print media
Hampel (2012). This figure can be debated to be a result of the inexpensive
social media advertisements as mentioned earlier. Though the investment for
advertising in social media is very less, the mass appeal is much higher and
hence more returns can be expected. Hampel (2012) identifies that
“consumers are becoming increasingly resistant to traditional advertising”
(Pieters and Wedel, 2007). Precise targeting of consumers is not possible in
mass media such as print and television. Whereas by using the Internet as a
source of advertisements, people who are interested in a particular product
can be drawn towards the company more easily. As mentioned before, this is
called as a pull strategy as opposed to a push strategy. Even within the
traditional media of advertising, premium print advertisements which are far
more expensive than normal advertisements are being widely used. “More
prestigious perception of an advertising stimulus converges with the

45. 45
advertised brand, thereby leading premium-print advertisements to be
perceived more prestigiously” (Hampel, 2012). According to Hill & Moran
(2012) the interactive nature of social media is the factor which draws a large
number of people towards it as compared to the traditional media such as TV,
radio and print media. Social media is more customisable as compared to
traditional media. In social media, it is easy to find what a consumer needs.
Contrastingly, in case of traditional media, the consumer is forced to enjoy
whatever is broadcasted by someone else. Social media makes it easier to
search for relevant information thereby cutting down the time, energy and
money required to search for it. Above all man being a social animal is on the
· constant outlook towards interacting with other people around him.
Traditional media does not give an opportunity for this whereas social media
was actually built for this purpose in the first place. Though there are some
downsides to social media marketing such as privacy concern, legal concern
and over exposure towards public, these limitations can be overcome if social
media is used promptly, wisely and effectively. Thus social media is by any
chance better than traditional media in terms of expense, wider appeal and
lesser indirect costs
10 Social Media Marketing Do’s
#1: Save Time, Re-purpose Content.
While this is a great tactic it is important to be thoughtful about the way that you are
re-using content. Simply spitting out the same information over and over again will
not work. Be sure to change elements of your posts in order to either highlight
different information within the post or target a different segment within your
audience.
#2: Interaction is Where It’s At!
True interaction via social media can be a tough tactic for many marketers to
master. Finding the correct balance of self promotion and intriguing content that
inspires action can be very instrumental in using social media appropriately. Take
some time to comment or interact with your current clients and prospective clients to
show that you’re there, and you care about what they are saying. A simple tactic is to
ask questions that inspire a response.
#3: Try Multiple Media Types.
Social media users are interested in fresh new ways of presenting content and ways
that they can share it with their networks. In fact certain forms of media such as

46. 46
infographics or videos have a tendency to be much more sharable and appealing. Try
to incorporate some new media types into your social media content plan for the year.
#4: For Pete’s Sake! Make it Searchable.
I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you have some sort of optimization in
place for your website. Keep the same strategy in mind for your social media
content. If it can be searched it can be optimized.
#5: Keep Calm in
a Crisis
The last thing you need is your social media intern “Sarah” having a meltdown at the
first sign of something unfavorable being said about your brand on social media. By
keeping a level head and having an emergency preparedness plan ready should
disaster strike you will be able to calmly and rationally tackle the issue. P.S.
Ignoring it doesn’t count as a plan.
#6: Customize the Flow
If you’re like us you have multiple audience members to provide information to
online. This could be different verticals or even different departments within a single
organization. Do your homework, what sites do your different audience members
participate in and what topics are of importance to them?
#7: Don’t Let Just Anyone Represent Your Brand
In the past some companies have encouraged all team members to participate in the
promotion of their brands because they worked under the notion that more was
better. False. While you don’t want to discourage interaction or squash the dreams
of your team it is important that the voice of your social media strategy represents
who you are and what you believe in as a company. Trish from accounting that posts
on her social network about the copious amounts of alcohol consumed Tuesday night
and the terrible time she’s having at work the next day may not be the best resource
for networking your company.
#8: What Was the Purpose of This Again?
Remember why you’re using social media in the first place. By setting a set of
realistic and attainable goals you will be able to test what works and what doesn’t and
adapt your online marketing strategy from there.
#9: Pull Out the Tool Box and Find Your Measuring Tape
If you create a beautiful piece of furniture but can’t fit it through the front door what
was the point? The same applies to your online strategy. I don’t want to discourage
planning big but make sure that you have an effective means of measuring your
success in order to identify the true ROI of your online marketing strategy.
#10: Be Innovative, or at Least Open to Innovation
You don’t have to be cutting edge to run a successful social media
program. However, it doesn’t hurt to have your eyes and ears open to the latest
trends. Experiment with your strategy to find new and interesting ways to present the
same information to your networks.

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10 Social Media Marketing Don’ts
#1: Hello? Is Anyone Listening?
One of the worst things that you can do is ignore your audience. I shared an example
last week of ChapStick’s reaction to unfavorable responses from their
network. Deleting information or simply refusing to answer are a big marketing fail.
#2:Have You Ever Tried to Have a Conversation With a Robot?
If you are like me, at one time or another you’ve found yourself screaming at the
automated help desk for your credit card company beyond frustrated that you couldn’t
speak with a live representative. Try to spare your online audience of the same
exasperation and create thoughtful and conversational content. Leave the robots for
the other guys.
#3: I Know You Are But What Am I?
As we’ve said before it is difficult if not impossible to take things back once you’ve
said them online. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with audience members,
colleagues, or competitors but there is no need to be impolite. If you take a do unto
others approach you will save yourself and your company a lot of damage control.
#4: Accounts Covered in an Inch of Dust.
You did some research and found 10 new social networking platforms that your
company is not signed up for. You assign a task to your marketing team to sign up
for these accounts, and unfortunately that is as far as it goes. If you cannot commit to
utilizing a platform on a regular basis and setting it up in a way that clearly represents
your brand then what is the point. Don’t do it just to do it.
#5: One Size Does Not Fit All.
All social media sites are not created equal. As marketers we must consider not only
the type of interaction that typically happens on a given platform but also the audience
we are trying to reach with that platform. If your social strategy for Twitter,
Facebook, and LinkedIn are all exactly the same you may want to reconsider your
plan.
#6: The Nameless & Faceless Group from Company XYZ
In order to make friends online you need to be friendly. Part of being friendly means
adding a personal note to your social media profiles. Snap some impromptu photos
around the office and share a little bit about some of the key team members. This is
an instance where a little bit of extra effort can go a long way.
#7: Taking Your Relationship To the Next Step.
Romancing your prospects does not end at gaining them as followers. Sure they’ve
signed up to receive updates on your company but is that really enough?If your
ultimate goal is to gain them as new clients then it is important to have a personalized
and meaningful flow of communication that sets next steps in the relationship. An
example would be recommending that you have a phone conversation or possibly
meet in person to discuss some business opportunities.
#8: We Really Care About You. Just Kidding.
Spending countless time and effort to engage with prospects only to abandon them is

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a completely useless tactic. Handle these relationships with the same care that you
would your other business relationships.
#9: We Have No Idea What is Important To You.
Our company is great, we have so much to offer you, hire us now! I consider each of
these to be obnoxious and pitiful tactics for engaging followers. Instead of utilizing
your platform as a means for marketing your products and services try instead to offer
information that can help solve the business problem of your prospects.
#10: What Are All of These Followers For Anyways?
Now that you’ve built up this community of online followers what can you use it
for? Your online community is a great resource for crowdsourcing content and
brainstorming ideas. If you want to gather a set of your own statistics why not go to
your online community and ask them to participate in a study or survey and share the
results with everyone.
Social media marketing advantages
If you’re trying to promote a business, social media can be a huge help. For one thing,
your current and potential customers are already there. Facebook alone has 1.13
billion daily active users, and that’s only one of the many platforms you can use for
advertising purposes.
Large audiences
In addition to Facebook, Twitter has 313 million monthly active users, Instagram has
500 million, and Pinterest has about 110 million. Although you don’t need to utilize
every single platform, creating accounts on just one or two can give you exposure to
millions of people around the world.
Free to create
One of the biggest advantages of social media marketing is that it is entirely free to
start. None of the largest platforms have signup fees of any sort, so the only
investment you’ll need to make is in the form of time.
That being said, there are paid advertising options on most social media platforms.
These can be a great tool for growing your following and reaching more users, but are
by no means mandatory for businesses.
Encourages sharing
Perhaps the most unique advantage of social media is the ability to get help from your
followers. People love to share things with their networks, from photos and recipes to
interesting articles and hot deals.

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Unlike other forms of Internet marketing, like your site and paid
advertisements, content on social media is often shared. However wide your
reach, your followers can share with their followers, who then share with
their followers, giving you a wider reach (with lower cost) than a
traditional marketing campaign.
Unlike other forms of Internet marketing, like your site and paid advertisements,
content on social media is often shared. However wide your reach, your followers can
share with their followers, who then share with their followers, giving you a wider
reach (with lower cost) than a traditional marketing campaign.
Increases brand loyalty
In addition to increasing the reach of your brand, social media also allows you to
increase brand loyalty. And a study conducted by The Social Habit shows that 53% of
Americans who follow brands on social media are more likely to remain loyal to those
brands.
Social media is more than a sales pitch. Instead, it facilitates two-way communication
that allows you to build meaningful relationships with current and potential customers.
This makes them more confident in their decision to trust your business, and it
encourages them to choose your brand in the future.
Uncovers valuable insights
You can also use social media to gain valuable information about your customers that
will help you make smarter business decisions. For example, social listening allows
you to discover how people feel about your company and brand. With social listening,
you can uncover conversations about your business and answer questions about your
offerings.
What do people like about your business? How can you improve your products and
services to better meet the needs of your target audience? Understanding the answers
to these questions can your business stand out from the competition and reach more
people
Social media marketing disadvantages
Of course, social media marketing isn’t without its flaws. Just as quickly as users can
share your content on social media, they can choose to share an unflattering story
about you or your business.
Negative feedback

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Social media users have free rein to post whatever they want. This means that
satisfied customers can leave glowing reviews on your pages, but it also means that
unhappy ones can leave angry rants about your business.
Some of this negative feedback could come from within your own organization.
Disgruntled employees have been known to vent on social media about work and their
bosses, which makes the entire company look bad.
Potential for embarrassment
It’s easy to get caught up in social media and post whatever comes to mind, which can
have huge consequences for any business.
Take, for example, when DiGiorno Pizza noticed that “#WhyIStayed” was trending
on Twitter, and jumped on board with a tweet that read “#WhyIStayed You had
pizza.” This doesn’t sound awful until you consider that the hashtag was being used to
discuss why victims of domestic violence stay in abusive relationships.
For companies with a large audience, mistakes like this don’t go unnoticed. Thanks to
social media users’ quick reactions and tendency to share, the tweet was all over
major media outlets within hours.
Time intensive
It takes a lot of time and effort to maintain an interactive social media presence. If you
have a small team or limited resources, it is sometimes difficult to devote the needed
resources to social media.
People have to monitor each social network, respond to questions and feedback, and
post valuable updates. While some people may view this as a drawback, investing
time into social media can help your business create lasting relationships with
customers that will keep them coming back for years to come.

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How to successfully manage your social media strategy
As a marketer, you should approach social media as a valuable marketing tool—but
one with potential consequences. It can be tough to strike a balance between
professional and personal, but well-organized social accounts can be very beneficial
to your business.
So how can you create an effective social media strategy?
Set concrete goals
What’s the point of being on social media? What do you expect to get out of posting
on sites like Facebook and Twitter? Create a set of goals for your strategy and make
sure every subsequent activity brings you closer to meeting it.
Thanks to the analytic options on popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and
Pinterest, it is easy to measure how successful you are in reaching these goals. Use
these features to your advantage, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Create a social team
Set guidelines
You might get a lot of shares and retweets by posting videos of puppies acting cute,
but is that really going to reinforce your company’s image? Create a content strategy
that matches not only your social media goals, but your company’s brand and
mission.
Make sure that every member of your social team is familiar with these goals. This
ensures that you only post content that best resonates with followers, and creates a
sense of consistency.
Social media can be a personal, cost-effective addition to any marketing strategy, but
it takes time to perfect

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SWOT Analysis: Social Media
Strengths:
 Large market reach or penetrat
 Easy to set up
 Very useful if you are setting up a digital engagement strategy (to new people, young people)
 active community members who are willing to become institute representatives
 build a conversation and converse with others and build close networking bonds
 quick information exchange
 Direct contact with audience (almost like face-to-face)
 Lets you follow and connect with people/groups that interest you – but are not necessarily
your friends (as with Facebook). Authors, celebrities, co-workers, colleges,
organizations, whatever
 Cost-effective in the sense most of the platforms are free. They just demand time
 Human factor: Your “brand” becomes more HUMAN
 Media exposure
 Twitter is in a strong market position in micro-messaging. Facebook is the only real
competitor here – and they attract users for different reasons.
 Build strong, long term relationships through online social networking, at a faster pace than
just relying on traditional face-to-face networking
 Gets tons of publicity.
 Is a thing on its own (almost no competition in microblogging)
 It is simple but powerful
 It is 100% social in an all-social web
 It is free
 Has developers creating hundreds of applications around its API.
 It’s definitely not evil (yet)
 Businesses, Organizations, Companies like it a lot
 It is real-time
 It is searchable
 It is totally RSS-enabled
 It is the ultimate link discovering and sharing tool
 Tweets show link attachments (may need to be shortened)
 Some post-secondary institutes use it openly (not blocked on intranets)

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Weaknesses:
 Tough to train or convince management team/group members on social media principles
 A lot of “Why Bother” from most mainstream (i.e. Facebook users) people
 Needs more horsepower. It is down quite often
 Unequal distribution of tweets. 90% of tweets are coming from the top 10% of the users.
 Has low retention rate. Only 40%.
 Lack of tools or resources to track and monitor social media campaign results
 The API calls are limited. Hurts App growth
 What about information leakage, liability, security, and management?
 Effort vs results: Even if it is more measurable than other channels, it is difficult (especially
for small business operations) to balance the effort put on social media against the results
obtained
 Consistency: Engaging with your audience at a direct level means more efforts in terms of
keeping a consistent message/ corporate image
 Making up for mistakes: The time-frame to correct errors that affect your audience is less.
Because you are heavily exposed, your company has to take action more promptly than if
you weren’t (especially if people are having conversations about your brand, you will have to
engage and clarify)
 Blocked at many work sites: management sees it drops productivity; hurts bottom line

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Opportunities:
 Creating/joining online presence on sites where the company currently doesn’t exist
 Great opportunity for individuals and organizations to connect and exchange information
 New target or niche markets that are untapped: students, the public
 Promotions, news, events that can be offered through social media platforms
 Partnerships with other groups, organizations, schools, government, etc
 Penetration into a new geographical market quickly
 Recruitment of interested new members, students, public support
 Allows you to build short and long term relationships with prospects
 Humanizes the ‘brand’ and makes the recruitment process more personal
 Twitter could become our digital public face to the world
 Can gain deep insights into real-time trends, news, and all of us; “be the pulse of the
internet” as said by Founder Biz Stone
 Integration into real-time games, media, and apps. We’ve barely scratched the surface so far
on what’s possible. Twitter as real time infrastructure.
 It can become a dominant search engine
 It is becoming the biggest social media marketing tool
 It may acquire some of the desktop clients or the url shortening services.
 It may become the dominant way for businesses to communicate with their customers
 quick delivery, branding opportunities, and enhanced marketing opportunities
 Twitter feeds that provide everything from alerts to new blog posts to breaking news and
political messages. One example of a popular Twitter feed is @cnnbrk,
 Allow Tweets to be “crawled by Spiders”
 Being present where stuff happens: People research for info/products/services online and
value more the opinion of other individuals than whatever a company may say about their
own offer. If your company is present in an interactive environment like social media, the
opportunities for engagement, conversion and most importantly clarification of doubts
regarding your brand, are countless.
 Developing a following/ audience that auto-nurtures itself: Your efforts in Social media,
together with the effort of your following may mean that your audience become your best
sales people
 Talent coming your way effortless: Because of the possibilities of exposure that Social Media
allows for, interacting here, may mean that future talent (in the shape of employees,
partners or, you-name-it) will come your way through the power of connecting online!

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 Reach out to certain groups that traditional media didn’t alow you to: Because Social
media is for everyone, sooner or later you’ll come accross people you never though of as
your client. This opens the doors to building new relationships but also to valuable feedback
that can help you develop your products or services more intelligently
Threats:
 Macro factors such as economy, will this affect your user base?
 Competitor is going after the same space or same audience with similar campaign
 Is the current campaign sustainable, can it continue?
 What obstacles stand in the way of success and failure?
 Attitudes on privacy: while lately it seems everyone is willing to share the most intimate as
well as mundane details of their life – their could easily be a backlash against this trend
 We’ve all heard of a few embarrassing stories about over-sharing online, and a few
high-profile examples might make people rethink their habits
 Micro-messaging may just be a fad. There’s nothing inherently awesome about 140
characters. Its working for now, but I’m sure theres a better way to share information out
there then 140 character bursts
 It got too much publicity in a short time. May get burned out
 It is getting dangerously spammy/porn spammy
 Has no solid revenue model (future advertisements?)
 May have trouble with unauthorized accounts on behalf of
groups/government/organizations/people
 Paid twitter streams may hurt the brand image
 Facebook may get even more twitty and compete face-to-face with Twitter in microblogging
sphere
 Other social networking sites (MySpace, Tagged, Friendfeed, identi.ca, others) may grow
and steal market share
 Acquisition by a bigger player (Google) may disappoint early adopters and loyal users
 Advertisements on the sites

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5 Examples of Great Social Media
Marketing

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5 Examples of Great Social Media Marketing
Most people think of social media as a tool for stimulating conversations
between people, whether they’re individuals or groups. Social media
marketing expands on this idea by stimulating website traffic and sales
by using social media to attract users to the brand. Facebook, Twitter,
Google+ and Pinterest are all examples of social media sites, but Twitter
seems to be the one that allows for the greatest creativity in the shortest
format with regards to self promotion. Brands must be careful to create
a response with just 140 characters and a picture or video. Here are five
of the best examples of companies who excel in this medium.
Oreo
The little snack cookie that could, Oreo has a very playful Twitter account that
highlights new products—including collaborations—responds to users comments, and
deftly incorporates puns, pickup lines and one-liners into their feed. They also use
pictures and short, 6-second Vine videos to get people talking. By interacting with
fans and never taking themselves too seriously, Oreo has developed a rabid following
from celebrities, customers and other companies.

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Oreo also creates images specifically for use on Twitter that include random facts,
interesting things, and just funny one-liners. In addition, they stay relevant by
commenting on the news, and talking about things everyone knows about.
Eat24
A beloved food delivery service used across the nation, Eat24 knows it doesn’t have
to do much to get people to use it, after all, people love to eat. But they further endear
themselves to the hungry public by using catchy turns of phrase and referencing pop
culture hot topics like Kanye West’s latest album and smart phone apps like
Bejeweled. Another bonus: They often feature coupons for the site.
Delta Airlines
There are few experiences more taxing or stressful than having flight delays, lost
luggage or other travel related issues. But Delta’s twitter account employs a dozen
people who are dedicated to solving issues stat; just send them a tweet about what’s
happening. Though many airlines are experiencing plummeting customer service
reviews, Delta manages to soothe hard feelings and impress people at the worst
moments with quick responses and a dedication to satisfaction.
Dos Equis
Famous for its hilarious commercials starring “The Most Interesting Man in the
World,” Dos Equis continues its domination of the adult beverage world by offering
more examples of the fictional fascinating man’s superior personality. Many of the
tweets are topical, including holiday appropriate options, but mostly they are
humorous plays on phrases and ideas, such as, “If he were to pay you a compliment,
you could use it to qualify for a mortgage.”
H&M
The juggernaut fashion brand knows its customers don’t just want tweets discussing
sales, though they cover that too. The brand boasts backstage photos of upcoming
collections, including interviews with designers, models and more. The pictures are
essential to selling the goods, and they include one with nearly every tweet. Plus, they
offer giveaways, sneak peeks and discounts to loyal followers.

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How to Create a Social Media Marketing Plan in 6 Steps
So you need to create a social media marketing plan. No easy task, right? Many of us
struggle to iron out exactly what that is, let alone figure out how to build one from
scratch.
Put simply, every action you take on social networks should be a part of a larger
social media marketing strategy. That means every post, reply, like, and comment
should all be guided by a plan that’s driving toward business goals. It might sound
complicated, but if you take the time to create a comprehensive social media strategy,
the rest of your social efforts should follow naturally. Everyone can do this if they
approach it correctly.
Learn what a social media marketing plan should include, and follow our six-step plan
for creating your own.
What is a social media marketing plan?
A social media marketing plan is the summary of everything you plan to do and hope
to achieve for your business using social networks. This plan should comprise an
audit of where your accounts are today, goals for where you want them to be in the
near future, and all the tools you want to use to get there.
In general, the more specific you can get with your plan, the more effective you’ll be
in its implementation. Try to keep it concise. Don’t make your social media marketing
strategy so lofty and broad that it’s unattainable. The plan will guide your actions, but
it will also be a measure by which you determine whether you’re succeeding or failing.
You don’t want to set yourself up for failure from the outset.
Step 1: Create social media marketing objectives and goals
The first step to any social media marketing strategy is to establish the objectives and
goals that you hope to achieve. Having these objectives also allows you to quickly
react when social media campaigns are not meeting your expectations. Without goals,
you have no means of gauging success or proving your social media return on
investment (ROI).
These goals should be aligned with your broader marketing strategy, so that your
social media efforts drive toward your business objectives. If your social media
marketing strategy is shown to support business goals, you’re more likely to get
executive buy-in and investment.
A key component of setting effective goals for your social media strategy is to
determine what metrics you’ll use to measure their success. Go beyond vanity metrics

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such as retweets and likes. Focus on things such as leads generated, web referrals, and
conversion rate. For more on this, check out our posts on the social media metrics,
social ads metrics, and social video metrics that matter.
As you write your goals, keep your audience and customers in mind. Try creating
audience or customer personas—archetypes that include details about demographics,
interests, pain points, etc.—to test your goals. For example, if you’re trying to
determine if a goal is properly fleshed out, ask yourself in what way it will help you
reach your audience.
You should also use the S.M.A.R.T. framework when setting your goals. This means
that each objective should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and
time-bound.
A good example of a well-written S.M.A.R.T. goal might look like this: “For
Instagram we will share photos that communicate our company culture. We will do
this by posting three photos a week. The target for each is at least 30 likes and five
comments.”
A simple way to start your social media marketing plan is by writing down at least
three social media goals. Make sure to ask yourself what the goal will look like when
completed, and use that to determine how you will track it.
Step 2: Conduct a social media audit
Prior to creating your social media marketing plan, you need to assess your current
social media use and how it’s working. This means figuring out who is currently
connecting with you via social, which social media sites your target market uses, and
how your social media presence compares to your competitors’.
Once you’ve conducted your audit you should have a clear picture of every social
account representing your business, who runs or controls them, and what purpose they
serve. This inventory should be maintained regularly, especially as you scale your
business.
It should also be evident which accounts need to be updated and which need to be
deleted altogether. If your audit uncovers fraudulent accounts—a fake branded
Twitter profile, for example—report them. Reporting fraudulent accounts will help
ensure that people searching for you online only connect with the accounts you
manage.
This is the perfect point in the process to assess which channels you want to continue
using or potentially add to the mix.
Go back to your audience personas—those archetypes that represent your
customers—these will help you determine which channels are most effective for your
brand.