Social media refers to using web and mobile technologies to facilitate interactive dialogue and sharing of user-created content. There are various forms of social media including forums, blogs, wikis, social networks, videos, and pictures. Social media consists of 5 elements - attention, attraction, affinity, audience, and action. The main advantages are relationships, connectivity, creativity, sharing, and transparency, while the main disadvantages include information overload, difficulty finding quality content, and inconsistent delivery. Basic marketing principles like understanding customer needs and delivering value still apply to social media, which can be used to reach new audiences, engage existing ones, and build strong community marketing strategies centered around user communication.
1. Assignment 2 1
Signe Kirt
HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences
MAR8LC067-2
18.09.2011
Social media in marketing
What is social media?
According to Wikipedia, social media refers to the use of web-
based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an
interactive dialogue. Social media are media for social inter-
action. In one word social media is all about sharing user-cre-
ated content.
It is quite hard to precisely define social media because it has
so many different forms, such as web forums, blogs, wikis, we-
blogs, video- and picture sharing sites, etc. According to Ka-
plan and Haenlein there are six different types of social media:
1) collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia);
2) blogs and microblogs (e.g. Twitter);
3) content communities (e.g. Youtube);
4) social networking sites (e.g. Facebook);
5) virtual game worlds (e.g. World of Warcraft);
6) virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life).
Social media elements
According to Deragon and Bullock social media consists of 5
As: attention, attraction, affinity, audience, action. They are the
five steps has to be fulfilled step-by-step. At first one has to
earn attention to even get people looking at certain content.
When you earn their attention long enough then you create an
attraction. The earned attraction helps to form an affinity and if
you repeat the process to enough people, you create an audi-
ence. Once you have a large audience, a certain percent of
2. Assignment 2 2
them will want to engage with you, your product or service,
and that is the beginning of action.
Main advantages and disadvantages in using social media in marketing
The main advantages of social media are relationships and con-
versations, connectivity, creativity, sharing, multiculturality,
democratisation of media through visibility and transparency.
The main disadvantages are informaton and social networking
overload, hard to find the best content, through anonymity is is
possile to generate hate, and often delivering the content is not
consistent.
What are the main principles in social media use in marketing?
Basic marketing principles still apply to social media; it is still
important to satisfy your client’s need that means you still have
to understand what your clients need. Your product has to also
deliver some kind of value for the client – it is getting more
and more popular providing an extra value for the client com-
munity through social media, for example shoe store (or brand)
Facebook page shares besides new news about its products also
valuable information about how to maintain your shoes and
keep them nice for the longer period to its community.
Social media can be used in several ways: reaching out for new
audience, engaging old audience, and of course many compa-
nies see the both sides in their social marketing plan – engaging
and winning. Social media helps companies to build a very
strong community marketing strategies, where the brand is not
the most important thing, but the communication between the
users of that brand, sharing experience and ideas.
3. Assignment 2 3
Bibliography
Deragon, J. and Bullock, D. The five elements of Social Media
URL: http://www.relationship-economy.com/Five%20Elements%20of%20Social
%20Media.pdf Visited: 17.9.2011
Wikipedia about social media
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media Visited: 17.9.2011
Blog: Compassion in politics
URL: http://compassioninpolitics.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/advantages-and-disad-
vantages-of-social-media/ Visited: 18.9.2011
Worsham, S. blog
URL: http://sazbean.com/2011/07/19/basic-marketing-principles-still-apply-to-so-
cial-media Visited: 18.9.2011
