Social Media Impact On Digital Marketing

Issue #2

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Digital Review

I s s u e :2 . Ma rch . 2 0 1 1

CONTENTS

Introduction 6

Public Relations 14

Digital Media Compares 9

Digital Review

Public Relations 14

And I’ll be giving you tips along

the way to provide insight!

Traffic Building 28

Conclude 43

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Introduction

The new faceof digital marketing.

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Introduction

To become more effective in overall growth

and reach of target audience, a brand has to engage

with their future prospects and customers online,

which will have an obvious effect on increasing sales

and gaining market share. The internet is seen as such

a big prospect that reaches a vast audience.

An good integrated approach to digital

marketing combines search marketing (SEO), social

media and inspiring user generated content to:

• Maximise your online exposure

• Increase targeted visitors to your website

• Turn visitors into customers

• Increase customer retention

• Turn repeat customers into brand advocates

But the real question is how does this part of

digital marketing compare to those of the more

conventional approach.

The future of marketing is undeniably heading

towards digital, with increased user consumption and

an obvious attraction to what appears to be an easier,

more effective and low costing medium. As other

marketing and advertising budgets are hit by economic

dips, digital marketing shows a continually healthy

growth. Zenith Optimeda reports a 40% increase onto

digital advertising, this significant increase will have a

major impact on offline advertising.

The trend appears irreversible; the enabling

technology is here to stay and become more prevalent

and now it is up to brands and agencies to be capable

of adapting and perfecting this new dominant force.

But how can social media help to improve and further

establish this movement?

This report dictates how social media and user

generated content can effect the movement of

advertising online and how brands can utilise them

effectively, demonstrating which brands are taking

advantage

The developing role of Social Media on the digital

marketing mix– How Brands can utilise this new tool

effectively.

Digital Review

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Getting Your Head

Together.

Building traffic to a site is great but

what's the point of having a million

“While still mired in hype, social media

is increasingly delivering demonstrable

business results.” (NMA)

In the last two years advertising spend

has begun to follow users into social

media.

There are still big questions to be

answered about social media

Digital MediaDigital marketing allows us to

do that, in particular social media

marketing. After all it only involves

targeting people that actually ‘like’

your product, so it’s predominantly

about maintain a consumer and

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Digital Review

what's the point of having a million

views if you only get your message

through to six people? If these

potential people are not actually

buying items or feeding more positivity

into the brand? Other forms of digital

marketing help reach and get the right

people onto the web page, what social

media does is focus more at the

retention of vital consumers, keeping

them up to date and helping them to

become more frequent viewers. Its all

about creating and maintaining brand

loyalty.

It is getting more and more

difficult for brands to engage with their

consumers, despite these advances in

technology. The internet may make it

easier for brands to assess

engagement, but first we actually have

to get these consumers interested and

keep them interested, the right

consumers that are beneficial.

answered about social media

advertising:

•How can we combine social media

engagement with an effective

advertising presence?

•Which are the most effective networks

to advertise on?

•How can we maximise and measure

ROI?

•Should innovative companies be

advertising on location-based networks,

mobile networks or social gaming?

Lets try and answer some of

these questions. Read on and see just

how effective social media marketing

can be and how it can influence the new

trends of our world where the computer

screen is masked as our faces and our

opinions are spread throughout the

world in the privacy of our own homes.

about maintain a consumer and

making them regular visitors of your

site, by delivering items and news

specifically relevant to them. The

database is their for you to take full

advantage of. Face book ad

measurement also allows you to target

people based on their other likes and

interests, demographic region, age and

sex Keeping them up to date with the

necessary information that leads to a

sale.

As people are getting more use

to internet consumption, they become

more sceptical and less reluctant to

just give out their information. There

is a big hype into the prospects of

digital and many exclaim that it is

better than the normal conventional

offline marketing. And now there is

even said to be a new trend that steers

away from mainstream digital

marketing into social media

advertising.

Digital Review

Social Media Impact On Digital Marketing

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Advantages Advantages DisadvantagesDisadvantages

•Consumer specific

enabling

personalisation

•Adds to database for

future research

•Good place to test

ads or products

•Enables engagement

measurement with

clicks.

•Generates traffic to

main website

•Can be see as junk

•May not influence

the right consumer if

not implemented well

•Can not build

consumer profile of

the market

•Cannot predict

trends

•Cannot answer why a

consumer has clicked

•Can target

consumers more

specifically.

•Cheaper alternative

•Opens engagement

channel to interact

with consumers

•Also can be used to

generate traffic

•Can highlight brand

faults for future

product development

Cannot control

content

Must be updated

regularly to obtain full

productivity and

maintain consumer

base.

Digital Review

Social media is climbing the digital marketing

ladder.

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Gaining an email address is

quite difficult, these days there is a lot

of scepticism in anyone giving out

anyone their email address. It seems

almost as private as handing out a

home address. What social media

does is already hold that email

address in the database straight away

as soon as the participant signs up.

Brands can then pay to get these. The

only problem here is paying for that

information, making it seem much

more beneficial on the basis of cost,

for businesses to gain their own ways

to gain e-mail addresses through web

page sign ups.

Digital Review

Together, earned and paid media are far more effective when

the programs are humanized. The difference between social

network advertising and marketing and traditional online

campaigns are the ecosystems where engagement is fostered”

– Brian Solis

Who actually sends letters

anymore in this day and age. The younger

the generation, the more the possibility

that the age group has never even sent a

letter. So where are they all and how do

we get our messages? The answer is

email.

So, if we are all using email

addresses now it seems like using this

form of digital marketing would be

essential to reach a wider audience.

It seems that now that postal

advertising is declining and an sending

emails are becoming a main focus in

attracting the right consumer, it is also

much cheaper. the importance of a brand

having a consumers email address is more

important than even having the

consumers actual home address

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Digital Review

It’s not only Facebook that can show and

measure engagement. Consumer review sites,

MySpace, Twitter, Blogs and other user

generated content are placed their so that

consumers can voice their opinions.

Ever since the introduction of these type

of sites, it have been seen as beneficial for

marketers and agencies to understand their

cultures and appreciate the powers that

consumers now have. The power to make or

break a brand with just the touch of a button.

So, now we have to pay more attention

to what consumers have to say, getting

someone's email is alright, well done you have

letters on a computer screen, but if you get the

person that the email address belongs to like

you, then that email address actually means

something. Make that person like you so much

that they themselves try to spread out a

positive message to others about your brand.

Of course what happens offline is

essential in helping this process of obtaining a

brand representative (brand advocate). So a

business or brand must make sure that their

operations offline are in order, otherwise the

misfortunate incidents may be spread all over

the world by one unhappy consumer. The

worst thing about the internet is that once you

put your mind to it you can find anything. So if

you are mad at a particular brand, you will

eventually find others that share the same

views online. It’s about controlling this as much

as you can before it damages the brands

reputation.

So what is better, email marketing or

social media advertising? They are both good at

obtaining consumers and bringing in new ones

with different forms of persuasions, but we all

know that the current trend is social, not only

personalising the content but creating positive

communities that help push the message of

campaigns or objectives further.

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The developing role of Social Media on the

digital marketing mix– How Brands can utilise

this new tool effectively.

Digital Review

Social Media With Public Relations

However, marketers are still unsure

exactly how to adapt to the new world of Social

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Digital Review

Social Media is the democratization of

content and the shift in the role people in the

process of reading and disseminating

information (and thus creating and sharing

content).

According to the last issue of Digital

Review Social Media represents a shift from

broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many

model, rooted in a conversational format

between authors and peers within their

social channels.

Today Social Media sites such as

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Myspace, Bebo

etc, are empowering people to become the

new influencers, and they are forcing PR and

marketing professionals to recognize and

include there powerful tools in their

advertising and marketing communications

strategies.

exactly how to adapt to the new world of Social

Media.

Social Media is powerful. It is not only

changing ‘the game’, it is also inspiring

everyone across every marketing discipline to

evolve or quickly become victims of media.

PR revolves around consumer opinion to take

the right steps forward for the brand or

individual represented!

The New Look Into The Old Public Relations

PR 2.0 was born almost ten years

ago, before Web 2.0, and was inspired by

the early signs of the shift in media during

the Web 1.0 ‘boom’.

Long before Social Media, user-

generated content originated from the

very people who would inevitably rise up

PR professional

says:

‘There are so many uses — conversational

marketing, reaching influencers — that PR is able to

participate in conversations and answer questions,

As one PR professional, Jeremy Pepper, told DR

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very people who would inevitably rise up

and use the Web as their soapbox, and

who would eventually recruit readers,

enthusiasts, and evangelists along away.

User groups, forums, bulletin boards,

and even manually created personal

websites were the channels through which

people shared their thoughts, opinions,

expertise, and vision. As the Web grew, so

did the ability to reach people through

online tolls and channels. Nowadays PR

professionals use social media every single

day to get the word out about clients, to

communicate with customers and to

respond to questions or problems.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and

other social sites have quickly become

important tools in a PR professional’s

overall toolkit.

participate in conversations and answer questions,

be a support system for clients and companies, as

well as empowering customers and power users to

be a de facto resource for your company, a

champion for your products.’

Digital Review is going to take a look at how

PR professionals are using social media to achieve

real results when dealing with business-to-business

relationships, when representing companies that

already have a well-known brand, and in politics.

The team also look into some of the tools of the

trade that PR pros are using to measure the success

of their work.

Digital Review

The Role of Social

Media in Business-

to-Business PR

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Pepper considers social media an

important part of the public relations toolkit.

When DR asked him what social media has to

offer PR professionals, he said, ‘Social media is a

great tool for public relations people, especially

if you align it to both PR goals and figure out

what the ROI(Return of Investment) is for the

client or the company.’

Pepper offered some insight into how he uses

Social Media with Palisade Systems, a business-

to-business data loss prevention company. For

Palisade, the main goal is to increase the

company’s name recognition. Because data loss

prevention deals with sensitive data and often

regulatory compliancehaving strong name

recognition is important, as a known name can

often be equated with trust. Pepper explained how

he goes about reaching his client’s core audience, in

this case small and medium-sized enterprises.

‘At Palisade, we’ve done a three-pronged

approach: traditional PR, traditional analyst

relations and social media. We have a Palisade Blog

where we write and talk about Data Loss Prevention

and various issues for corporations, we are on

Twitter, shooting out information, re-Tweeting

interesting articles in the space, and participating in

conversations [@PalisadeDLP], and, we reach out

to security bloggers.’

Digital Review

While expected Twitter to have

limited use in a B2B PR strategy, it turns out it

can actually be pretty powerful. By following

security experts and industry analysts, Palisade

can take part in the conversations happening in

‘One recent example is that EPISD (El Paso

Independent School District) is a legacy customer of

Palisade Systems, and recently signed up for the DLP

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can take part in the conversations happening in

the space. Pepper can also track keywords on

Twitter and then communicate with CIOs and IT

people who are asking questions about DLP and

he can then send them case studies or reach out

to start a new kind of relationship.

As Pepper said, “It lets the people know

that there is another solution besides the large

corporations, and lets us have conversations

with the analysts beyond the calls.”

Blogging, for instance, is one way the company

can share stories beyond just what goes into a

press release.

Palisade Systems, and recently signed up for the DLP

solution. I interviewed the IT staff for the press release,

and got great anecdotes that weren’t really appropriate

for the press release. But I was able to tell them in the

blog post, and expand on why they continue to use

Palisade — because of our support, and our product.’

Digital Review

Digital Review

Social Media

Drives Authenticity

Political figures have really embraced

social media — UK’s politicians, the White

House and many more have an official

presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube,

plus their own blog-powered website, for

example —local and national representatives

from all over the world are taking to the web

to connect with their constituents.

Tweetminster also tracks and analyses thousands of

posts by news sources, journalists, bloggers and the

wider “UK politics network” (defined by their

bespoke network analysis tools) comprising

thousands of influential activists, writers, bloggers,

pundits, analysts and opinion leaders within the

Twitter community.

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to connect with their constituents.

The best example of political presence

in world of Social Media is Tweetminster.

Tweetminster was launched in December

2008 with the goal of making UK politics

more open and social. Their mission is to

make politicians more accessible to the

public, help people follow breaking news

stories, and make sense of political issues by

connecting directly with the MPs, journalists

and politicos that shape the national debate.

When Government launched

Tweetminster there were 4 MPs using

Twitter. As of January 19th 2010 there were

111 MPs and 226 PPCs on Twitter, and these

numbers are growing daily.

Digital Review

So which is the right

sort of social media to

connect to in order to

achieve maximum

ROI?

Any is good, obviously you need to know

where your target market is predominantly, this

way you focus more on retention of

Digital Review

Building Brand

Loyalty

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Using social media has provided

Pepper with a simple way to build brand

loyalty without having to invest significant

time and resources.

The approach for Pepper has been

figuring out ways to develop brand loyalty

and turn customers into fans. One method

that has yielded results for Targus is

utilizing its Twitter account for giveaways

and promotions and monitoring Twitter

conversations to target bag-buying

consumers.

In one situation, Pepper followed a

conversation between a user who had a bag from a

rival company. Pepper tweeted the user a coupon

code for 25% off, which ended up being more than

what the company that made his old bag had

offered him and resulted in the user writing about

his experience. That’s the type of thing that can

create long-time customers and also get users

observing or reading about the situation to consider

Targus for their next product.

Digital Review

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Tools of the

TradeDigital Review

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Josh Jones-Dilworth, the founder and CEO of the

PR and marketing consulting firm Jones-Dilworth, Inc. has a

lot of expertise in blogging and social media. As such, Jones-

Dilworth has developed his own system for measuring the

effectiveness of different social media approaches as they

relate to PR.

Jones-Dilworth explained that while it is fairly easy

to measure conversations and engagement on an empirical

level, putting that analytical data into context so that it can

be evaluated as cause and effect is considerably more

difficult.

“Right now we are doing a lot of work to mash up

social data with business data to get cause and effect. Some

products are starting to support this action — but only a

few. I think this is the next big wave. You’ve got to be able

to tie causes to effects, and that is the big challenge right

now, what all our clients want, and what is frankly the

hardest to accomplish.”

DR absolutely agree that this is both a big challenge

when evaluating the successfulness of social media in any

context — PR or otherwise — and that it is going to be a

large area of growth in the future.

For the future, Jones-Dilworth sees visualisations

and modelling as two key components to watch for.

“Visualization -is important-because we really need to be

able to make these streams come alive and make them

navigable, otherwise you’ve got death by data, pure and

simple. More is more is more until it isn’t.

Modelling is all about predicting out futures: Who

will be the Forecast of social media? Who will help with

intelligent decision support?”

Until we reach the stage where drawing

contextual correlations between social media actions and

results can be more easily measured (or at least, more

easily distilled), it is vital to have concrete goals before

starting a social media strategy in PR and to also have

some sort of baseline.

Digital Review

Common

Threads

PR professionals are

using social media in a lot of

ways to either supplement or

add on to existing PR strategies.

It isn’t about just putting a PR

pitch on Twitter or Facebook, it’s

about using the platforms in ways add on to existing PR strategies.

The most successful PR

pros focus on creating active

relationships and truly engaging

with their customers (or

constituents) to have a real

conversation.

about using the platforms in ways

that help clients to connect.

New ideas are essential and knowing what your consumers

individual needs are also relevant in keeping them happy

and generating a positive brand image.

Digital Review

The developing role of Social Media on the

digital marketing mix– How Brands can utilise

this new tool effectively.

Digital Review

Social media is described as the “shift in how

people discover, read and share news, information and

content” (Solis, 2007). People are doing so through the

internet in the form of blogs, social networks

(eg.Facebook, Myspace,Orkut), news aggregators (eg.

Digg, Stumbleupon), video and music portals (eg.

YouTube, Last.FM), social bookmarking (eg. Delicious,

Red dit), micro-blogging (eg.Twitter, P lurk), online

forums and reviews (eg.Amazon, Yahoo Answers!) and

other social communication channels. Social media gives

marketers a voice and a way to communicate with peers,

As the groundswell began exhibiting collective

influence through sharing on the internet, businesses

began to take notice and seek ways to participate in the

‘conversations’. Enterprises, such as IBM and Microsoft,

began building their own community forums, and

corporate blogs, including Dell’s and Ford’s, began

appearing to reach out to customers (Li and Bernoff,

2008). In time, the marketing function also began

integrating social media in campaigns. The use of

Facebook and Twitter to market products and services

are beginning to receive attention from businesses in

recent years.

A Developing

Role

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marketers a voice and a way to communicate with peers,

customers and potential consumers. It personalizes the

"brand" and helps you to spread your message in a

relaxed and conversational way. This has been made

possible through converging technological evolutions on

the internet, named ‘Web 2.0’, the internet as a 2-way

communication platform (O’Reilly, 2005).

There is no question that digital marketing

continues its upward trend. And across all industries in

2009, budgets were impacted by the economy, forcing

marketers to be more ruthless about seeking efficient

results. It should be no surprise to anyone that the rise of

digital is a sure thing. As consumers increasingly

influence each other and share opinionated views on

brands and products on the internet, businesses are

forced to rethink and reorganise marketing and

communication strategies in order to deal with this

‘threat’ to traditional ways of doing business. Social

media as a tool in a consumer marketing environment, is

currently an evolving ‘phenomena’ in business

marketing. Enlightened marketers are beginning to drive

the use of social media as a component in their

marketing strategy and campaigns to reach out to

customers and fans. Among the sub- disciplines of

marketing that may utilise social media include

promotions, marketing intelligence, sentiments research,

public relations, marketing communications and product

and customer management.

Social media is of particular interest to

businesses. Currently, businesses of all sizes are

experimenting with social media marketing, grappling

with the question of how to get in on what appears to

be an especially viral way to get their message (and

their products) out there.

The main problem with social media marketing

from a business perspective is that it can be incredibly

time-consuming. Social media marketing campaigns are

not one-shot affairs; they need to be nurtured over

time. While big businesses such as Dell, Microsoft and

HP have been using social media marketing effectively,

they have the kinds of marketing budgets that allow

them to assign number of staff to conduct and manage

social media marketing campaigns, resources that a lot

of small businesses don't have.

For all that, social media marketing is a type of

marketing that many small businesses could benefit

from, if only to find out more about what their

customers are thinking - and saying - about their brand

and their products.

Digital Review

How social media can aid in increasing searching.

Search Engine

Optimisation From a

Social Media

Perspective

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Traffic building: The use of online and offline promotion

techniques to increase the audience of a site (both new and

existing customers). Dave Chaffey, PR smith. (2008) eMarketing

eXcellence Third Edition

The immense growth in the amount of time

people are spending on the Internet, plus the rising

cost of pay per click advertising has seen search

engine optimisation become increasingly popular over

the past 5 years. Search engine optimization aims to

achieve the goal of getting more visitors to a website

by helping it get higher rankings in the search engines.

This simply means that search engine optimization's

goal is to make a website appear on the first pages, if

not the first page of a search done through the search

engine.

There are two ways to be able to get noticed by

search engines.

• Pay-per-click-advertisements. A good example of

a pay-per-click system that is employed by search

engines is the Google Adwords system.

• Organic searches. Search engines

evaluate websites by using what they call "spiders."

These programs scan the websites and collects

information about them. This area is primarily the

main arena of search engine optimization. It utilizes a

set of methods to be able to get search engines to list

the website on high ranks.

Digital Review

SEO

PPC

Search Engine Optimisation should be

considered as a strategy to drive qualified

traffic to the website at the lowest cost.

Measuring the effectiveness of the search

SEO measurement:

•Increased Traffic - Search engine

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Measuring the effectiveness of the search

engine optimization (SEO) efforts is crucial in

the success of a business. Only the figures can

determine if the online marketing strategies

are working or if there are some areas that

need improvement and polishing.

There are different stages when it comes

to search engine optimization and it is

important to understand that different things

can occur from a properly executed search

engine optimization campaign.

•Increased Traffic - Search engine

optimization is the process of creating

inbound streams of targeted web traffic.

•Increase Visibility - Increased visibility is

also an important result of conducting any

search engine optimization campaign

online.

•Increased Links – Increased links is the

holy grail of link building and SEM, but some

businesses simply want to increase the

number of links regardless of what they do

or where they sit.

•Increased Branding - Building up their

company name is really the most important

thing to them when it comes to search

engine marketing.

•Increased Sales - Increased sales is most

likely the goal for many who conduct online

SEO, but it is important to realize that there

are certain steps that need to be in place

prior to seeing an increase in revenues.

Digital Review

SEO With PR

Basically, online PR involves activities geared

towards influencing media, communities and Like SEO, online PR requires a mix (although

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towards influencing media, communities and

audiences that exist solely on the Internet using

online channels. That includes search engines, blogs,

news search, forums, discussion threads, social

networks and other online communication tools.

Brand reputation monitoring and management is

also a focus area for online PR.

David Meerman Scott, in his book ‘The New

Rules of Marketing & PR’ (2007), fervently suggests

that traditional public relations (PR) practices ‘do not

work anymore’. Scott cites that, instead of pushing

press releases or information to traditional media

outlets (for e.g. journalists, newspapers and TV

stations), companies can now take ownership and

independently publish information or news via Web

2.0 mediums.

These include official company blogs,

YouTube, online news sites and even through direct

relations with market analysts and influential

bloggers. This study believes that this strategy of

bypassing conventional media provides PR

practitioners an almost instant access to

communication channels, unlike traditional methods.

An almost real-time reaction is indeed a timely

benefit for companies in dealing with developing

crisis' communications.

in a different order of priority) of social, creative,

persuasive and technical skills. Developing

relationships with online publication editors and

bloggers is also particularly useful.

For companies that do not perform their

own PR, then an online or offline PR firm can help on

an ongoing basis for as long as that company has a

need for public and media relations.

Basically, reputation management (online)

is the business of monitoring what the marketplace

is saying about brand. It also means responding to

situations before it run out of control. Venues

include blogs, discussion threads, forums and social

networking sites. A simplistic formula is to allocate a

proportion of resources to reputation management

in relation to how important a brand is to the overall

business.

Monitoring how consumers talk about

brand can provide early warning signs for product or

service issues as well as promotion opportunities

that can be leveraged. Companies can start by

subscribing to RSS feeds of search results on their

company name from blog and news search engines,

set up a Google Alerts account or use the BlogPulse

conversation tracker.

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IBM is increasing its partner effort around

service-oriented architectures with new social

networking tools, search engine optimization help

and other resources. IBM will train partners in the

niceties of SEO to help them generate more traffic

for their websites and make their services and

products more easily found on the Web.

IBM created a tool that it uses to look at

IBM has also seen substantial savings due to

reduced travel and communications costs by shifting

the dialogue to virtual, more interactive platforms.

Online partnership & Interactive advertising.

Most of IBM recent advertising in traditional

media has focused on its e-business initiative. The

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IBM created a tool that it uses to look at

its own site metadata, headers, summaries, images

and monitor readability, and IBM.com has reaped

the benefits, Carter said. "It checks how many

Google crawls you get, the rate and traffic rating.

It's a really nice analysis tool."

Other deliverables will be live social media training

sessions in New York City, London, San Francisco

and other locations to help partners get the most

out of existing social networking tools -- Facebook,

LinkedIn and so on. IBM trainers will show partners

how to "paint" their Facebook page, optimizing it

for business use. IBM will also host an online

business catalog to give partners and customers

access to SOA-related resources.

IBM has benefited from £2.5m a year in

productivity savings since it implemented its social

media strategy in 2007, according to the company.

Adoption of social media among IBM

employees increased dramatically, and the

company now has more than 80 IBM-branded

Twitter handles delivering IBM news and messages.

There are currently more than 500 IBM

groups on Facebook encouraging communication

among stakeholders.

media has focused on its e-business initiative. The

company has been trying to associate itself with

conducting business virtually and, in particular, with

commerce over the internet.

The campaign, which ran this spring and

summer, combined high-traffic sites, which were used

to gain maximum exposure for the brand, with value-

driven, sponsorship-based positioning in key editorial

environments.

IBM also sponsored two sites: This is London

(www.thisislondon.co.uk), Associated New Media's

online version of London's Evening Standard, and AOL.

The AOL sponsorship ran along fairly

conventional lines: IBM was sponsor of the online

service's Computing and Business sections, and ran

banners across AOL as a whole. IBM also ran a

competition where AOL users could win free access

time. To enter, visitors had to answer questions about

e-business, providing IBM with valuable data.

Of those who visited 'This is London' during

the IBM sponsorship, 85 per cent said they associated

the IBM name with the site.

Digital Review

Viral marketing :

Particularly because of its open and connected

infrastructure, the internet facilitates the spread of

information across geographies and boundaries. This has

been a critical factor in the success of viral marketing

campaigns launched by businesses. However, social

media has also proven to be a handful for companies.

The video became a viral sensation and has received 5.4

Social Media Stats:

•No IBM corporate blog or Twitter account

•17,000 internal blogs

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The video became a viral sensation and has received 5.4

million views to date since July 2009. The Times UK

estimated that the bad publicity generated by the video

cost a 10% drop in stock prices (amounting to US$180

million) within days of the video’s debut (Ayres, 2009).

This powerful effect of the groundswell on businesses is

one of many examples of social media’s persuasive

influence.

IBM Systemic launched four 'IT Revenge' viral

videos on YouTube. According to the official description

from IBM of the viral video campaign.

IBM launched a "viral video" marketing campaign for the

System i5， sort of--on Google's YouTube site and is

using that company's AdSense automated advertising

distribution system to place the four videos on Web

sites.

Many of the Google AdSense ads on the IT Jungle

site had videos being served up from IBM in them.

People are increasingly becoming digitally connected to

each other via social networks and online activities. With

current rate of adoption, the online population will

represent a significant, easily-targeted market for

businesses. By investing in getting connected with their

online market and customers now, companies will have

the edge and advantage on competitors in the future.

•17,000 internal blogs

•100,000 employees using internal blogs

•53,000 members on SocialBlue (like Facebook for

employees)

•A few thousand “IBMers” on Twitter

•Thousands of external bloggers,

•Almost 200,000 on LinkedIn

•As many as 500,000 participants in company crowd-

sourcing “jams”

•50,000 in album networks on Facebook and LinkedIn

•Results:

•Crowd-sourcing identified 10 best incubator

businesses, which IBM funded with $100 million

•$100 billion in total revenue with a 44.1% gross profit

margin in 2008

•IBM lets employees talk—to each other and the

public—without intervention. With a culture as

diverse and distributed as IBM’s, getting employees to

collaborate and share makes good business sense.

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What Works? - IBM’s Culture for Social Media

Innovation

•Stand back

Have guidelines, but don’t police from above.

Employees tend to self-regulate.

•Involve employees in SM planning

Let employees write the guidelines and they’ll

feel empowered.

•Give them the tools—and a green light

Not every company can create their own

tools. Look for powerful social media tools

and encourage employees to use them to do

their jobs better.

•Use crowd-sourcing

Bring together employees, clients, partners

and friends for powerful idea-sharing.

An IBM tool called Dogear functions like

Delicious, a social bookmarking site. Blue Twit

mimics Twitter. A tool called SocialBlue acts

like Facebook, helping employees stay

connected with former colleagues and get to

know new ones.

Like Facebook, the 53,000 or so SocialBlue

members share photos and status updates. In

IBM’s widely dispersed environment, family IBM’s widely dispersed environment, family

photos mimic cubicle-decor and dialogue

mimics water-cooler interaction.

Zappos

Online shoe retailer Zappos does shoes and

social media remarkably well. Scores of bloggers, lots of

video blogging and 198 employees on Twitter help keep

the company's profile high and humanize the folks

behind the shoe sales. Additionally, there's a page that

aggregates all the public mentions of Zappos from

Twitter users at large. Zappos has set up special Twitter

tracking pages for some of its favorite outside fans as

well. There are lots of companies using Twitter these

days. But Zappos is a great model for other companies

seeking to get engaged.

Zappos has set up special Twitter tracking pages for

some of its favorite outside fans as well. There are lots of

companies using Twitter these days. But Zappos is a great

model for other companies seeking to get engaged.

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•5000 tweeter per week

•In all Tweeter customers service channels to

maintain the highest customer satisfaction.

•Create a "Twitter on the reaction of the fastest

growing brands, " Guinness World Records

•Twitter proactive service instead of consulting

telephone

Tweet types.

Provide Public Service announcements (PSA).

This team will help disseminate information

out to the community. Important information

gamers might need to know. This attitude of

preventing known problems or alerting to possible

problems helps gamers feel that the company cares.

If someone complains about a problem, and a public

service announcement was previously tweeted, the

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•‘Ats’ Try to respond to customers within 5

minutes when sent a direct ‘at’ message

•‘Founds’ Respond to customers who didn’t come

directly to Xbox support on Twitter (those that are

‘found’ on Twitter). They didn’t talk about

response objectives during the presentation but

they talk about the importance of responding to

‘found’ comments about Xbox, both positive and

negative.

•Positive Comments: The value of revolving

customers around is that they will often tweet a

positive comment which is something that can go

viral. Compare that to the limited publicity from

a single one on one individual phone call in a

normal service mode.

Engage Xbox Live Ambassadors.

Xbox has encouraged helpful Xbox

Community members to form a team to help

other Xbox users. They are called Xbox Live

Ambassadors. These people are game enthusiasts

who may take it upon themselves to help

freshmen or teach someone how to start a party.

Microsoft Xbox encourages these Xbox live

Ambassadors with special FAQs.

service announcement was previously tweeted, the

attitude of the gamer can be turned around more

easily because Xbox did try to alert gamers. This goes

along way to helping sooth sore feelings.

Measurements and Metrics.

There was a distinction made between

Measurements and Metrics. Metrics are what the

organization is accountable for (there is a target).

Measurements are interesting information but no

targets. For example:

Number of followers would be a measurement

Customer Satisfaction metrics as measured by a

survey would be a Metric. Examples of metrics in the

survey would be

a. Overall Satisfaction with Support

b. Was the Issue Resolved?

c. Would you have called support otherwise?

Challenge

If the Elite Tweet Fleet cannot solve a customer

problem, they have a pipeline into Customer Service

and Support.

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Other Social Media Activities:

In addition to Twitter activities, the Elite Tweet

Fleet also monitors the Facebook Fan page which has

700,000 followers. The Facebook fan page is where

the community helps each other but if a problem

festers beyond an hour, someone from the Elite

All the data certainly demonstrate that social

media can fulfill the traditional metrics of

marketing, which are to limit churn and increase

customer retention. More importantly, the CRM

practice, coupled with freely available social tools,

can be a cost effective activity to any organisation

intent on a long-term and sustainable business

model, albeit with budget limitations.

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festers beyond an hour, someone from the Elite

Tweet Fleet will get involved. They also monitor 3rd

party sites and forums and try to get the gamers to

the official and ‘correct’ information site run by

Microsoft. The Xbox Live Ambassadors are helpful on

these sites as well.

Key of success factor:

•Every Tweet is important

•Twitter is a unique way to listen and engage,

especially for those gamers who don’t know you are

listening

•Who you have supporting the product is key.

•Understand the audience and how to speak to them

in their language and conversational tone.

Summary of case study:

There is an excellent vehicle to listen to how

organizations are implementing social media. Social

media can be used to provide visibility and almost

real-time direct channels to engage and interact with

customers. Meadows-Klue (2007) further states that,

as customers have been empowered by easily-

available social media tools, the expectation is

growing that their favorite retailers will engage them

in the online domain.

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Final

Words

The report has shown that social media do

indeed have a significant role to play in

contemporary marketing. The significance of social

media as a possible corporate ideology cannot be

ignored. With open and transparent

communication through social media, companies

can benefit from the increased level of trust by

customers and stakeholders.

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customers and stakeholders.

Social media has also been proven to be an

effective tool for public relations and in the

creation of thought leadership for a company, and

have important applications for marketing

campaigns, public relations activities and customer

relationship management programs.

Although social media is a recent arsenal

to the field of business marketing, its potential as a

marketing tool cannot be overlooked. However,

the Experts still point out that further development

in its practice and usage is required in order to

increase corporate adoption. Also, a study into the

measurement of social media’s effectiveness and

its return on investment must also be undertaken.

Only then can the real value of social media to an

enterprise be ascertained.

No doubt that social media is a powerful tool

for any business moving in the Web 2.0 space and

beyond.

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Putting All The Pieces

Together

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It’s Important To

learn To Interlink.

To Conclude...

‘Advice is a device that isn't strong enough to change people. What people need

is impartation?. Impartation is the combination of advice, knowledge with

proof, experience and insight’, - Nigel Robinson (MediaCom)

to the consumer and striving to maximize

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To be effective in a campaign as

part of the campaign, all have to link

together to achieve the agreed business

objectives. You cant use social media just

on its own, just like you cant just do

online print ads without the correct

research, methodology and objectives

which will all come together to aid

whatever message you want to put across

The basics of a digital marketing

strategy at the moment include email

marketing, pay-per-click, search engine

optimisation, referral and affiliate

marketing and social media. The digital

marketing strategies of tomorrow will

also likely include the same. The

innovation that represents the future of

digital marketing is primarily in how each

channel is represented, managed and

utilised, focusing more on the value given

to the consumer and striving to maximize

their online experience and how to reach

the main objectives of a brand.

Search is and will continue to act as the

launch pad for most online experiences. The

difference will be in the application, access

and delivery of search results.

The web services we use today behind a

monitor, is increasingly being integrated into

more devices and channels (PCs, laptops,

mobile phones). Integration and

convergence as well as multi-platform

access are indeed the next logical

progression of the web, and marketers and

brands need to diversify their messages and

technologies to reach the maximum

number of users effectively.

‘Web 2′ technologies like social platforms,

blogs and other dialogue enablers have

been increasingly heard and will continue to

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lead the way marketers do business. This isn’t

anything new, but recognition that as internet

infrastructure grows, the need to listen to what your

customers want – and don’t want – is beyond

imperative.

This trend is current and is being develop

each and everyday as the technology improves and

the younger tech savvy market are growing up and

It’s Important To

learn To Interlink.

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the younger tech savvy market are growing up and

establishing their own web communities. Sites such

as Facebook, twitter and other generated content

enables people to spread your message themselves

without any costs. Getting these loyal brand

advocates can make campaigning much easier

compared to other forms of digital marketing. These

advocates use social media to give your campaign

that extra push. This is essential since most people

don't trust ads anyway, instead rely on other

people’s opinions to aid in their own purchasing

decisions.

Always remember to maximize value to your

end user, listen to them, and offer them what they

want. Personalisation is essential in maintaining and

increasing brand recognition. Simple things that are

not to be overlooked, such as website conversion

optimisation, A/B sample testing, feedback user

groups, continual updated information, optimises

the impact a web page has.

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