Pre-Introduction
"Chris did an excellent job on his capstone. He took on an important, broad topic and through diligent research, the paper is a valuable contribution to the body of social media work." --Bruce Warren
"Chris' paper on social media was very well-written and thorough. He's done great work on a subject that is relatively new and rapidly changing." --Michael Ketner
This 28 page paper, from my 2015 Masters Degree Capstone Project at the University of Pennsylvania, explores the value of social media as a business marketing tool. Special shoutout to Bruce Warren and Michael Ketner, who both were invaluable in guiding and reviewing this paper and motivating me to do my best work. For further discussion, citation info, suggestions, etc. please contact me.
Introduction
I never took social media too seriously. When I was in high school, MySpace emerged as the cool social media platform everyone seemed to be using. I never bothered creating an account. I wasn’t anti-social; MySpace just seemed like the wild west at the time. My friends had profile pages, cluttered with images and music, which nearly caused my slow 56k modem to melt down on multiple occasions. My parents didn’t like me tying up our phone line using the internet either. The good old days.
The first time I heard of “The Facebook” was as a new student at Temple University in 2004. A friend of mine mentioned that Facebook had just expanded its limited access from students at several select colleges and universities to many more, including ours. When I signed up, it felt like an exclusive club. The platform was novel and primitive; there weren’t any news feeds, business pages or complicated personalization algorithms driving the user experience. The interface, especially compared to MySpace, was wonderfully clean and structured.
At the time, I didn’t realize the full potential of Facebook and I’m not sure that Facebook did either. I'm not sure I would have believed someone if they told me I'd one day be "friends" with my 80-year-old great aunt on it, that most Americans would eventually be using Facebook, or that I'd be writing a research paper on it as my graduate capstone project.
For most of the past decade, I’ve viewed Facebook simply as an end user. It wasn’t till I started taking classes at the University of Pennsylvania that I slowly started to recognize and piece together the many aspects of social media. Interestingly, my fascination with social media came as a byproduct of my courses in entrepreneurship and leadership. Studying entrepreneurship gave me insight into finding and bringing value to customers through products and services. Marketing courses opened my eyes to branding, advertising and reaching customers and building relationships with them. Classes in leadership taught me about creativity and management. I started to look at social media in a more curious way. All of my studies and interests seemed to unify when I enrolled in a semester-long course studying social media with Bruce Warren (a reader of this paper) and Syd Havely. I quickly became excited to apply my prior coursework to my newfound appreciation for the new, fascinating world of social media. I became really interested in how organizations and social media might be able to go together and wanted to learn as much as I could about the topic.
I’ve spent a great deal of time watching how organizations utilize their social media presences. I’ve read several books and many articles about social media through my own curious exploration and via recommendations from experts in the field, including my readers. My readings include Contagious by Jonah Berger, Likeable Social Media by Dave Kerpen, Can’t Buy Me Like by Bob Garfield and Doug Levy, The Curve by Nicholas Lovell and The Story Factor by Annette Simmons, among others. Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, is one of my favorites and influenced me in writing this paper in an entertaining style and tone, leveraging stories and real life examples frequently.
This research paper is the ultimate culmination of my course work, careful observation of social media platforms (particularly how organizations use them) and research to understand the past, present and future of social media. Through the use of statistics, personal experiences and real life examples, this paper sets out to tell the story of social media and how it can be used for marketing in organizations.
Last and most importantly, I am lucky to have the guidance and expertise from two terrific readers for this paper: Bruce Warren and Michael Ketner. I would like to acknowledge them both.
Bruce Warren is the Assistant General Manager for Programming at WXPN at the University of Pennsylvania and the instructor of ‘Social Media and the Organization’ in the Organizational Dynamics program. He is the creator and author of the popular music blog, ‘Some Velvet Blog,’ and was named by Billboard, a music industry trade magazine, as one of Billboard's ‘Twitter 140: The Music Industry Characters You Need to Follow.’ He oversees WXPN’s social media presence and digital strategy. WXPN’s recent broadcast of ‘The 885 Best Songs of All Time’ and the accompanying ‘88 Worst Songs of All Time’ countdown was a social media sensation, topping Twitter’s most popular topics of discussion in the United States – a remarkable feat. Bruce’s hands-on experience and enthusiasm for social media has directly inspired my interest in exploring and understanding the topic as much as I can.
Michael Ketner is the Director of Performance at the Music Department at the University of Pennsylvania and also teaches ‘Arts Entrepreneurship’ at the University. He is the founder of Departure Consulting where he coaches musicians and artists in maximizing their talents in an effort to provide the most possible value through their art. Michael’s expertise, particularly in marketing and broadly in entrepreneurship and the arts, has given me significant insight into understanding and approaching social media marketing and its role in business.
Without further ado, it’s time to lift the shiny hood of social media and see what’s going on. I hope you “like” this paper!
Showtime
On Wednesday, October 2, 2013, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s performance at Carnegie Hall, just hours away, was canceled due to a stagehands union strike. Rather than take the evening off, the Orchestra announced they would return home to the Kimmel Center and offer a free performance to anyone interested in attending. I remember sitting at my desk when I first saw the announcement spreading like wild fire across social media feeds. At the time, the Orchestra had an impressive following: an e-mail database of 136,000 addresses, 34,000 followers on Facebook and 40,000 on Twitter. However, with just 7 hours between the 11:30am announcement and the scheduled 6:30pm performance, could the Orchestra really fill many seats in their 2,500-seat venue? I had never seen the Orchestra, but as a music enthusiast who was suddenly interested in this marketing experiment, I rescheduled my evening’s plans and headed to Broad Street to investigate the scene.
Soon I found myself in the company of more than 2,200 enthusiastic people packing into the Kimmel Center. The performance kicked off and the audience was excited and engaged, applauding loudly after each piece performed. All the while, in my head, I was musing about the excellent audience turn out and how quickly and effectively social media spread the word.
To my surprise, social media’s role in the evening wasn’t over. As a matter of fact, the Orchestra was willing to break it’s own “no cell phones" rule to incorporate social media into the event. Just before beginning their surprise encore, conductor Yannick Nézet- Séguin took his cell phone from his pocket and encouraged the audience to photograph and record video of the encore, as long as they promised to post their recordings to social media. Several seconds later, hundreds of cell phones were taking photos and videos of the Orchestra performing an enthusiastic rendition of Tchaikovsky's “Polonaise.” Several minutes later, the photos and videos were being posted to social media.
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s last minute decision to use social media had a major impact on me. I was really impressed how they organized and presented a spectacular last minute event, fully engaging social media from promoting the hours-away performance to allowing attendees to share a recording of the experience. My social media feeds were buzzing about the Orchestra for days. It was a win-win situation for both the Orchestra, who received great promotion, and those who attended the performance, who were treated to a free performance by a world-class orchestra.
Nézet-Séguin later commented, “Social media really was the key for getting that many people [to attend]. I could feel when I came on the stage: they had only to dim the lights to create huge anticipation applause. Like a rock concert. It was wild." As I shuffled out of the Kimmel Center with hundreds of others that memorable evening, I took away some key thoughts. For one, the Philadelphia Orchestra puts on a fantastic show and Yannick Nézet-Séguin is a great, audience-engaging conductor. I was really impressed. I also realized the power of social media and immediately wanted to learn more about it. Promoting seats at a world-class orchestra performance, typically priced up to $200, for free is one thing, but is social media actually useful as a day-to-day marketing tool for organizations in general?
In this paper I set out to find if and how social media is successfully used in organizations as marketing tool. Further, if social media has marketing potential, what is its role and what makes it unique compared to other forms of marketing? In the context of social media, what does a “like” or “engagement” really mean and why is it important? What is the real cost of social media marketing to an organization and, ultimately, is it worth it?
For the purposes of this paper, we'll be thinking about the use of social media as a marketing tool in 'organizations.' When used, this term can be applied to any organization, defined as any “organized body of people with a particular purpose, especially a business, society, association, etc.”iv Further, though many social media networks have come into existence, this paper’s approach will be based in the context of Facebook and its functionalities. Facebook is easily the most popular social platform to date, with nearly triple the user base of any other platform, including LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter.v With that said, the concepts and ideas in this paper will be broadly applicable where possible, as approaches and functionalities similar to that of Facebook can be accomplished across many social media platforms. As social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk explains, “Once you learn the science of the social media sport, you will be able to apply what you learn...to any platform that crops up in the future.”
The use of social media is ubiquitous. Of the 320 million Americans (as of 4/3/2015), 71% have Facebook accounts and 70% of those users log on to the platform at least once per day. 45% log on several times a day. With the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets (nearly two thirds of Americans own smartphones), users are taking their social media with them everywhere they go, making it an even more pervasive part of everyday life. One in every five web pages views in the United States is on Facebook.
The social interactions that take place on social media platforms are what keeps people returning, or even longing, for more. Gary Vaynerchuk writes that social media is “immediately gratifying and hugely addictive. With their mobile devices in hand, people may as well be getting intravenous drips of the stuff, a constant and incredible noisy stream of information, imagery, and interaction.” When someone posts, likes or shares something on social media, it is broadcasted to a potentially enormous amount of social media users. On Facebook, adults have an average of 155 “friends,” or social media connections, who could potentially encounter their Facebook activity.
The potential reach of social media is something Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra seemed to recognize (and certainly leveraged) when they offered their surprise performance. While Nézet-Séguin was asking the audience members to share photographs and recordings, he might have been thinking, “Each one of these 2,200 people in attendance has an average of 155 Facebook friends. That’s 341,000 direct connections that could potentially see us in action!"
With so many people using social media on a regular basis, organizations such as the Philadelphia Orchestra are leveraging social media as a marketing opportunity. Couldn’t the Orchestra have accomplished the same marketing effect if they cut a check to CBS or NBC and aired a traditional television commercial? The same night as the Orchestra’s performance, ‘Survivor' aired to 10.16 million viewers and 'Law and Order' reached 6.85 million viewers. Though social media and traditional media outlets are both places for marketing opportunities, there are significant differences between the two.
In the past (and still today), we encounter an incredible amount of “traditional” mass advertising in print, television and radio. Estimates vary widely, but studies estimate that the average person encounters anywhere from several hundred to several thousand ads per day.xiv When marketers want to get fancy, they can roughly target the audience they want to reach by carefully choosing the style of their advertisement, the media outlet it is positioned on and the timing of its release. For instance, if you tune into an NFL television broadcast, you’re sure to encounter many beer commercials; Anheuser-Busch alone spends about $200 million per year on NFL sponsorship and advertising. However, you probably won’t see a beer commercial aired during children’s cartoons on Saturday mornings. This is because Anheuser-Busch believes its target market is likely to be watching NFL broadcasts and places its advertisements accordingly.
Before the advent of social media, these mass marketing tactics were the only option. In his 2014 release, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, social media guru Gary Vaynerchuk describes it in boxing terms; "Traditional marketing [has been] nothing but a one sided boxing match with businesses slamming right hooks onto the same three or four platforms -- radio, television, print, outdoor and later the internet as fast and as often as possible.”
Over the past decade with the advent of the internet and mobile device technology, consumers are being pulled away from traditional media outlets, such as television and print publications, in favor of spending time on the web. A 2014 Nielson report reveals that the average American adult spends more than 2 hours per day on their smartphone or PC using the internet.
As a result, the reach and effectiveness of traditional marketing appears to be dwindling. To put this into context, in 1979, a single episode of ‘All in the Family’ entertained more than 40 million Americans. Nowadays, even with a 29% greater population in America compared to 1979, the top shows of 2012 combined reached only 29.7 million viewers during prime time slots. To make matters worse for organizations using mass advertising, consumers are finding ways to bypass commercials altogether in many cases, whether using a digital video recorder (DVR) to record television shows and skip the commercials or by paying subscription fees to radio services such as Pandora or Spotify to avoid ads altogether. More than 40 percent of U.S. households have DVRs and it is estimated that at least 50% of those households use DVRs to jump forward through commercials. A TV Guide survey estimated that as many as 96% are skipping ads. Dave Kerpen, author of ‘Likable Social Media’, bluntly opines, “Traditional mass advertising is largely wasteful.”xxi He continues, “Why spend money time and effort only to contribute to mass advertising the consumer does not want or need in the first place?”
However, Nielson’s 2015 “Live TV + Social Media” survey reveals that despite having digital video recorders to record programs and services like Netflix to play previous television episodes, 65% of the respondents say they “still prefer to watch video programming live at its regularly scheduled time.” How could this be?
As it turns out, a significant relationship has emerged between live television and consumer’s use of smartphones and the internet. In addition to watching live television, viewers are using their “second screen,” whether it is a smartphone, tablet or computer, while soaking in entertainment. Megan Clarken, executive vice president of Nielsen Global Watch Product Leadership, has called this simultaneous use of technology “a fundamental extension of the viewing experience.” A big part of it has to do with social media; a full 53% say they like to "keep up [in real time] with shows so they can join the conversation on social media, and nearly half (49%) say they watch live video programming more if it has a social media tie in.”
With the emergence of “second screens,” consumers are bridging the gap between broadcast media and social media. Some organizations, such as Lay’s Potato Chips, recognize this trend and are finding ways to leverage it as a marketing opportunity. Later in this paper, we’ll look at the Lay’s “Do Us a Flavor” contest and how it has been a successful “second screen” campaign for the organization. But first, to fully understand the opportunities for organizations in the social media realm, it’s important to define the options that the Facebook platform presents.
There are various ways that organizations might approach Facebook as a marketing tool. We’ll look at two of them. The first is the ability to purchase advertising spots that appear in particular places across the site. At first, this may sound similar to traditional advertising. However, the tools offered to Facebook advertisers include impressively powerful and dynamic targeting strategies. This is because through the use of the Facebook platform, “Facebook accumulate heaps of information, including ages, friends and interests, about people who sign up for accounts and spend time on their site.” Essentially, every click a user makes is recorded behind the scenes by Facebook and used to profile the user. Advertisers can leverage the different characteristics collected by Facebook to target their ads to a specific audience. For instance, a college can pay for advertising that will appear strictly to users who indicate that they are in the local area and soon to graduate high school.
This makes Facebook advertising a highly dynamic tool; “The metadata pouring into Facebook about individual users is for the benefit of advertisers that have flocked to Facebook’s way... In that trove of metadata, after all, lies more than demographics and generalized interests; it includes specifics about sentiments and gigantic clues about intent...Advertising nirvana is an ad chose especially for you.”
It is also noteworthy that Facebook advertising allows advertisers to pay for achieving certain types of results such as number of clicks on an ad, number of likes or simply general exposure to a certain number of users. As an added bonus, they’ll allow you to run multiple ads and will automatically adjust which of the ads they show based on how successful or unsuccessful each ad is.
A second marketing opportunity for organizations is through the creation of a free profile page on Facebook. This page can be tailored with photographs, contact details and more. Once an organization creates a page, they can post updates and the page functions very similarly to a personal user account. Most importantly, once an organization has a page, Facebook users can interact with it by liking, sharing and commenting on the page and its content. Users who “like” a page will (or potentially will) see subsequent updates from the page in their newsfeed — a personalized stream of information users see within the platform. More on this later.
In many ways, organizational social media pages, when used effectively, may offer a means to capture the attention of consumers. However, Vaynerchuk cautions organizations that Facebook pages should not be approached as simply as a new avenue for traditional marketing materials to be reused; “You can’t just repurpose old material created for one [marketing] platform, throw it up on another one, and then be surprised when everyone yawns in your face. No one would ever think it was a good idea to use a print ad for a television commercial, or confuse a banner ad for a radio spot.”
For social media marketing purposes, it’s important to view social media through this question: Why are users on social media in the first place? PEW research determined the most popular reasons as cited by social media users: “They especially appreciate photos and videos from friends (47% say that’s a major reason they use the site), the ability to share with many people at once (46% cite that as a major reason), updates from others (39% cite that), and humorous content (39%)."
It’s important to note that no one cited “advertising” as a top reason to use social media. As Jeffrey Rohrs puts it, “People don’t want to go to Facebook to look at advertising. They go to Facebook to connect with their friends and family, to let people that they might have gotten out of touch with find a way of connecting and reconnecting with them. And keeping folks updated about their lives, very personal things. And that’s where the soul of Facebook lies.”
Indeed, when it comes to the term “social media,” the key word is “social.” In order for organizations to find marketing opportunities in social media, they must understand how social media is its own unique marketing outlet. Social media has been compared to entering a “cocktail party with potentially thousands of discussions and replies” or “walking into someone’s living room.” Organizations who don’t understand this, as Vaynerchuk humorously posits, are "like tourists in Oslo who haven't bothered to study a word of Norwegian. How can you expect anyone to care what you have to say?”
In an unprecedented way, organizations now have an opportunity to connect with their followers in a social atmosphere. Now what?
A few summers ago, some friends and I took a road trip to the picturesque beach town of Cape May, New Jersey. As we walked down Jackson Street, admiring the Victorian Houses the vacation town is known for, we happened upon the Mad Batter restaurant, which had a menu posted outside near the sidewalk. It was just one of many delicious- looking dining options that we were evaluating for dinner, but something about this evaluation was completely different. As we were about to continue our walk, a couple exiting the restaurant enthusiastically told us how much they love the restaurant. “If you’re hungry, you should definitely eat here...we eat here every time we visit,” said the women as they walked away. For all we knew, the Mad Batter might not have been the best or most affordable restaurant in Cape May, but you know what? After the glowing recommendation, that’s the restaurant we ended up choosing.
Before even leaving the Mad Batter that night, I saw they had a Facebook page and, having enjoyed my experience, “liked” it from my smart phone. The Facebook ‘Like’ button has been described as “one of the most valuable innovations in technology over the last several decades.” Just about any action or piece of content, from organization’s Facebook page to photographs uploaded by friends can be “liked” on the platform. Facebook’s description of, “What does it mean to “Like” something?” is stunningly simple; "Clicking Like below a post on Facebook is an easy way to let people know that you enjoy it without leaving a comment." To a typical Facebook user, that answer is simple and practical but to social media marketers, it’s a gross understatement, due to a Facebook feature known as the “News Feed.”
Since 2006, the News Feed has been the centerpiece of Facebook; "News Feed highlights what's happening in your social circles on Facebook. It updates a personalized list of news stories throughout the day, so you'll know when Mark adds Britney Spears to his Favorites or when your crush is single again. Now, whenever you log in, you'll get the latest headlines generated by the activity of your friends and social groups.”
The personalization of Facebook via the News Feed is what makes the “like" button so important; “It’s Facebook’s ability to show you exactly what your friends and friends of friends like and that’s what makes it such a powerful tool," explains Likable Social Media author, Dave Kerpen. Once I liked the Mad Batter Facebook page, I started seeing their posts in my Facebook News Feed. And the more times I encountered and “liked” their posts, the more frequently their subsequent posts appeared in my News Feed. As an experiment, I started “liking” every Mad Batter post that appeared on my News Feed. Within several days, every single new post by the Mad Batter was appearing regularly on my News Feed. As long as I kept “liking” them, they kept appearing.
Facebook vaguely explains the mysterious (yet highly discussed and researched) algorithms used to populate a user’s News Feed; "The stories that show in your News Feed are influenced by your connections and activity on Facebook. This helps you to see more stories that interest you from friends you interact with the most. The number of comments and likes a post receives and what kind of story it is (ex: photo, video, status update) can also make it more likely to appear in your News Feed." In other words, when people don’t “like" or engage with a friend’s or organization's posts, they stop appearing in their News Feeds.
The second takeaway from the Mad Batter experience is the power of word-of- mouth recommendations. There were plenty of equally charming restaurants with good- looking menus within a short radius. I’m sure there were cheaper restaurants more congruent with our meager budgets. Nonetheless, a couple of strangers single-handedly convinced us to choose this one. For us, a word-of-mouth recommendation made all of the difference and served as an example of why these recommendations can be such a powerful aspect of human life. As Jonah Berger, Wharton professor and author of Contagious, says, “People don’t listen to advertisements, they listen to their peers.”
In the realm of social media, the “like” button can be described as the social media equivalent of a word-of-mouth endorsement; “The Like button allows Facebook’s more than one billion users, with one click, to express approval of companies, organizations, articles or ideas,”xxxix says Dave Kerpen of Likable Social Media. “The brand was always built on word of mouth, which was the social media of decades prior,” says Krispy Kreme CMO Dwayne Chambers. “It was the man or woman going to the barber shop or beauty shop and chatting about a product or business.”
Facebook will show its users what their friends like, from posts to pages. For organizations looking to be effective in social media, this is incredibly important. “Think about it,” says Dave Kerpen; Why would you possibly make a decision about a doctor, an attorney, a mechanic or any important product or service for that matter, based on advertising or Google search placement when you make this decision based on the preferences and recommendations of trusted friends? Facebook and social media have made it infinitely easier to do the latter. It’s nothing short of a game changer for marketers and businesses of all sizes.
So, what if an organization can create a page with posts that users genuinely “like?” What if an organization can become a welcome and reoccurring presence with likable posts in their followers’ daily news feed and an endorsement that Facebook displays to their friends, just as the Mad Batter now was on my Facebook account?
When it comes to social media, Bob Garfield and Doug Levy, authors of Can’t Buy Me Like, say the key for organizations on social media is “relationship based marketing.” Though social media may be new, building a personal, humanized relationship is not a new marketing concept; “Cultivating relationships—versus unilaterally promulgating messages of seduction and persuasion—would have been a superior way of doing business in 1953, or 1983, as well as [today]. But we are not in 1953 [anymore].”
Kevin Purcer of the Denny’s marketing teams warns; "A lot of people don’t want brands in this conversation, so I think you need to earn the right to be there by not shilling your product at them...It's about understanding and relating to your audience, and just having a fun conversation with them. From doing that, you gain affinity and people get passionate about the brand.”
"If you think about if you are sitting at your house and in front of your computer and you are working along, and a friend of yours sends you an email,” explains Krispy Kreme CMO Dwayne Chambers, "no matter what you’re doing, you’re going to stop what you are doing and click on that email because it’s a friend of yours and you want to know what’s going on, because they wouldn’t send you an email unless there’s a reason. We want [Krispy Kreme] to be in that category.”xliv With nearly 5 million likes of their Facebook page and beautiful posts to accompany it, Krispy Kreme Donuts seems to know what they’re doing.
In his book, ‘Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook,’ Gary Vaynerchuk compares the process of relationship building to throwing “jabs,” like boxers do in a boxing match. For social media purposes, “jabs" can be defined as “lightweight pieces of content that benefit your customers.”xlvi Peter Friedman of LiveWorld recommends “40% of your social messaging to be social; about and by the people in your community, 40% to be about the category or context and only 20% to be about your brand and products. If you build the community, the community will build your brand."
Oreo is one organization that is well known for their effective social media usage and brand building. With nearly 40 million likes on Facebook, Oreo is constantly putting out great content that highlights their cookies in fun ways, responding and sharing user comments and even mentioning other businesses, such as Dairy Queen, who feature an Oreo blizzard on their menu. The notable fact is that they are indeed advertising their cookies but it doesn’t feel like they are advertising. For instance, one of their posts displays a short video of an Oreo cookie rotating and is captioned: "The good thing about being round is that every side is our good side.” Another post titled “Long Distance Dunk” shows a video of a gentleman shooting an Oreo into a glass of a milk from the other side of the room. Again, the notable fact is that their posts don’t feel like blatant advertisements. Instead, their social media presence is fun, lighthearted and catchy — just like an Oreo cookie should be. They’re likable. You want to share Oreo's posts with your friends.
With that said, what makes a post “likable?” What makes someone “share” a page or post with his or her friends? What kinds of posts build an organization’s brand? Though it’s impossible to predict if a particular post will be engaged with on social media, some characteristics seem to be particularly well received.
Jonah Berger, marketing professor at the Wharton School and author of Contagious, spent 10 years studying “why things catch on,” and much of it can be applied directly to social media marketing. In his book, he says there are six STEPPS, or characteristics of content, products or ideas, that tend to lead to engagement, liking and sharing: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotions, Public, Practical Value and Stories.
Social currency can be summarized as, “How does it make people look to talk about a product or idea?” Berger continues, “Most people would rather look smart than dumb, rich than poor, and cool than geeky. Just like the clothes we wear and the cars we drive, what we talk about influences how others see us. It’s social currency. Knowing about a cool thing—like a blender that can tear through an iPhone—makes people seem sharp and in the know.” Berger’s mention of blending an iPhone is a reference to a YouTube video featuring a Blendtec blender literally “blending” an iPhone. The 12 million views it has received speaks to the video’s remarkable nature and its ability to be liked and shared by viewers. It’s a video you immediately want to share with others because you believe they, too, will find it entertaining. Hence, Blendtec created social currency with their post.
Triggers refer to “stimuli that prompt people to think about related things. Peanut butter reminds us of jelly and the word “dog” reminds us of the word “cat”...We need to design products and ideas that are frequently triggered by the environment and create new triggers by linking our products and ideas to prevalent cues in the environment.” A recent example of this in social media was Pep Boys ‘April Fools’ joke for 2015. The automotive service company was promoting its “newest service" on its Facebook page: Scented Oil Changes. "Bring grandma’s kitchen right into the driver’s seat with a fresh- baked cookie scented oil change,” touted one post with a picture of an oil bottle and chocolate chip cookies. Another post featuring coffee beans explains, "The smell wafts through your vents so you can enjoy that early morning coffee aroma before you even get to the office.” A third post reads, "Choose from a variety of scents, including fruit-punch. The smell will waft through your vents and make your ride the go-to carpool!”liv Each post has received hundreds of likes, comments and shares. Next time you need an oil change, Pep Boys might come to mind first.
Emotion can be summarized as, “When we share, we care.” Content that is contagious “usually evokes some sort of emotion...blending an iPhone is surprising. A potential tax hike is infuriating. Emotional things often get shared.” Posts that make me people laugh and think are good too; for example, Regal Cinemas posted a picture of comedy actors Rodney Dangerfield (playing Thornton Melon in ‘Back to School’) and Will Ferrell (playing Frank the Tank in ‘Old School’). The post asked, “Who would you rather have as your college roommate?” Instead of “pushing ticket purchases on Fandango," like many movie theaters do on social media, “Regal Cinemas bucked the trend with this successful [post] that pits two movie characters against each others.”lvi The post got people to post comments debating the actors, remembering funny moments from the films, and might have even put them in the mood to go to a Regal Cinema to see a movie.
Berger elaborates on Public by explaining; ‘“Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular.” Jeep got this down when they saw the opportunity to share a fan photo on their Facebook page; “It’s a Jeep thing,” reads the post that shows a picture of a fan smiling while riding in her Jeep with the windows down. “Symptoms include wind-tousled hair, a perpetual smile, and feelings of euphoria.” Gary Vaynerchuk comments, “What’s cool is that she’s not a model— she’s a fan...one look, and you start to wish you had a Jeep, too.”
Practical Value: “How can we craft content that seems useful? People like to help others, so if we can show them how our products or ideas will save time, improve health, or save money, they’ll spread the word.”lix As Dave Kerpen explains, “If you represent an accounting firm, write a blog article, such as “Top 10 Tax-Saving Strategies for the year and share it on Facebook”...[or] simply finding helpful articles online and sharing them with your community provide value that current and prospective customers appreciate.”lx This is important and reciprocally beneficial because “by consistently providing great content over time, you won’t need to advertise how wonderful you are— your community will already know based on what you’ve shared. And when they’re ready to buy your product or service, they won’t need to respond to ads telling them whom to turn to...they’ll already feel like they know you—they trust you and like you—so they’ll turn to you to solve the problem.”
The last of the STEPPS is Stories, because, “People don’t just share information, they tell stories.”lxii Annette Simmons, author of The Story Factor explains, "[stories add] emotional content and added sensory details...a story weaves detail, character, and events into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.”lxiii An inspiring story can be told in just a couple of sentences, as proven by the Mini car company. One of their Facebook posts shows one of their iconic Mini Cooper cars, with it’s top down, driving down a snowy road. The photo grabs your attention, naturally leading your eyes to the text below, which reads, “Who’s taken the top down already? These fearless daredevils are headed for the snowy alpine roads of Laax, Switzerland to prove it’s worth the ride!” Though riding with a car top down in the winter seems "absurd,” clicking the embedded link in the post takes you to a blog post, “which documents how all it takes is a pair of snow goggles and Mini’s heated leather seats to make an open-air alpine drive a comfortable as a road trip down California’s Highway 1.” Then you’re sold.
Berger concludes that following these STEPPS, or even just a few of them, can allow you to “harness social influence and word of mouth to get any product or idea to catch on.” Further, “it doesn’t require a huge advertising budget, marketing genius, or some sort of creative gene.”lxv Perhaps not. But what is the cost of social media? And is it worth it?
Minutes after Jacoby Jones returned a second-half kickoff for a touchdown in Super Bowl XLVII in 2013, a sensor in the chain of equipment supplying power to Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans wrongly “detected an ‘abnormality’ in the system,” causing an electrical breaker to trip. The stadium went dark, except for some sparse backup lighting, and “play was stopped for about 34 minutes, and the international television broadcast was interrupted.”
While most people were wondering what to do, Oreo’s social media team was thinking about ways to seize the opportunity in real time. They posted a photo of a lone Oreo cookie to their Twitter account with the caption, “You can still dunk the dark.” It was perfectly timed and people on Twitter loved it, with the post receiving 10,000 retweets within the hour. The Huffington Post later reported, "One of the most buzz-worthy ads of the Super Bowl on Sunday wasn't even a commercial — it was a mere tweet from Oreo during the blackout.” CNET's Daniel Terdiman was quoted as saying, "Oreo came up with an idea so brilliant and bold that it out and out won the night.”
Jonah Berger commented on the power of the ‘retweet’ and echoed the sentiments of others; A retweet is much more engaged, it is suggesting that the audience is not only processing this message but actively engaging with the message and selecting the message to pass on to their friends...It definitely makes the brand seem like a more clever, more interesting, sharp brand. So in terms of brand equity this [Oreo cookie tweet] is as effective, if not more effective, than just showing another Super Bowl ad.
With their clever post, Oreo struck social media gold during one of the most- watched events in U.S. TV history that nightlxix and the potential of social media was recognized on a large scale; "The reaction left some wondering whether the quick tweet had an even greater payoff than Oreo's actual Super Bowl ad, which cost millions more to create. AdAge reported that the graphic released during the blackout was "designed, captioned and approved within minutes," thanks to members of 360i — the cookie company's agency — gathered at a war room during the game.”
The success of Oreo’s post wasn’t completely random. With Super Bowl viewers on their “second screens,” engaged in social media, the real-time tweet was timely, catchy and relevant. As Megan Clarken of Nielson explains of the “second screen” trend, “While multiple screens give viewers more options, they also give content providers and advertisers more opportunities and ways to reach and engage with viewers...Well-designed experiences can not only make the viewing experience more enjoyable, but they maximize the time users spend interacting with brands, too.” And that’s exactly what Oreo’s real- time social media posting took advantage of; “No matter what you call it, it’s become the way we engage with consumers,” explains Oreo.
Other organizations are also recognizing the opportunity of connecting with consumers who are using their second screens. To commemorate their 75th anniversary, Lay’s Potato Chips launched a name-your-own potato chip flavor contest in 2012. The “Do Us A Flavor” contest was advertised largely through television and radio commercials featuring actress Eva Longoria and chef Michael Symon, who were two of the judges for the contest. People interested in submitting a flavor were guided to the Lay’s Facebook and Twitter pages. The campaign was a tremendous success, with 3.8 million flavor submissions from more than 5 million consumers.
Following the enthusiastic response, Lay’s has continued the “Do Us a Flavor” contest each year since its debut. It’s no surprise that people start brainstorming, talking, and submitting flavor ideas when they see the contest commercials; "Food and flavor are such a natural passion point for people – when you think about it, everyone has a story to tell about a great meal or the first time they tried their favorite dish,” explains 2014 celebrity judge, Wayne Brady. Once consumers take out their second screens to vote on social media, they’ll find Lay’s “present and engaged.” As Frito-Lay’s CMO Ram Krishnan explains, “We [look] forward to having a great conversation with consumers on the second screen."
For organizations, finding a way to engage with consumers on their second screens can have a significant impact; “Mondelez (the parent company of Oreo) regularly watches its return on investment based on analysis from research firm Nielsen, which shows the ratio of sales dollars to dollars spent on advertising and promotional activity. When their traditional advertising (such as TV) is paired with digital and social media efforts, they see a jump: Campaigns are generally two times as effective for their money.”
Though the act of signing up and posting on social media platforms may be free, and Oreo’s Super Bowl post and the Lay’s social media contest may have been big successes, there are many aspects that are not exactly “free” for organizations. Take the Denny’s food chain as an example. For the 2014 Super Bowl, they decided they were going to take a social media approach and interact with “second screeners”, like Oreo had done. They had a team of 10 (including a community manager well-versed in the Denny's brand voice, a brand strategist and several graphic designers, creative directors, and writers) brainstorming and posting messages during the game. They even had a representative from Denny's in case they wanted to get approval for “something out of the ordinary.”
A team of 10 hands-on professionals is substantial. For social media to be effective, many marketing professionals insist that organization must be this committed. As Vaynerchuk puts it: "The thing to remember is you’re fighting a never ending boxing match."
“All social media efforts must flow from an authentic sense of purpose, not gimmickry and transparently bogus boilerplate,” says Jeremy Heimans of the Purpose Agency. “You’ve become McDonald’s, where you end up prematurely declaring victory because you’ve implemented a salad on your menu."
When an organization joins the social media world, it is important to recognize that the internet is always “on” and moving quickly. It’s all day, every day. Samantha Hardcastle of Amore Social Media breaks down social media for organizations into 5 parts: posting status updates, monitoring comments and messages, creating original content, paid advertising and consulting time. Each task requires regular, if not continuous, attention. For a small business, "You don’t NEED to hire someone full time, but you do need a professional who can put in several hours a week...don’t skimp on these services or you will end up wasting your money.”
Dave Kerpen explains, “Social media is not free...though it’s cheaper than traditional advertising costs. It needs to be integrated across the whole company." Further, organizations must “accept that complaints are unavoidable...react quickly and the customer will accept you...and respond to positive comments too." It’s crucial to be authentic too; “Be honest and transparent in who you're speaking for, in what you truly believe and who you are...[there should be] no scripts.”
The amount of effort that social media requires is not trivial. It takes manpower and skill to represent an organization in a positive, authentic way on social media. Hardcastle estimates that organizations might expect to spend $850 a month for a professional social media presence that doesn’t “skimp.” However, for a large organization, you might “need a million dollar budget and a 15 person team managing your marketing.”
Despite the cost, social media is a commitment and investment; it is estimated that it costs 5 to 7 times more to gain a new customer than keep an old one. A 5 percent increase in retention can increase profits between 25 and 85 percent. Social media is highly unique in its ability to foster direct engagement and ongoing relationships between organizations and their followers and customers. As Gary Vaynerchuk says, when organizations build relationships with their customers through great content, there can be terrific benefits; If your content can make a person feel, he is likely to share it with others, providing you with amplified word of mouth at a fraction of the cost of most other media. Best of all, you not only own the content, you own the relationship with your customer. You’re not spending a million dollars to rent thirty seconds from a television network. You could spend a million dollars to acquire committed fans on Facebook, and that would be money well spent, but when you also storytell properly, the only additional cost you’ll have is for the nonworking creative. Your content simply lives on, replicating itself over and over as your fans and followers pass it along through word of mouth, diminishing your costs with every retweet, share, pin, heart and post.
Many organizations and marketers are trying to figure out how to measure their social media efforts. It’s very difficult to quantify the value of a Facebook like or the amount and quality of engagement a business gets on social media. Garfield and Levy don’t spend too much time juggling with the issue; “We look at the matter entirely differently...We first of all don’t obsess about some valuation of the Like, because we know whatever that sum is...it is far greater than the value of a paid-media impression." In evaluating a popular Coca-Cola social media video posting, Andy Sernovitz of SocialMedia.org breaks it down like this; “Look...four million voluntary views where someone said, ‘You’ve got see this!’ are not the same as four million TV impressions. It’s a whole different league of that ‘engagement’ word that the ad industry embraced and then forgot."
In the days of traditional advertising, the number of views, impressions and acquisitions measured success. Today, success is much more about the level of content sharing and engagement; An ad is someone passing you on the street, someone you may or may not even notice. A Like is an encounter. Maybe it’s a kiss and a hug and a catch- up, or maybe it’s just a mutual smile in passing, but it is an actual engagement involving at least a modicum of attention and emotion and presumption of ongoingness. A relationship, in other words.
And it’s a relationship that must be nurtured and nourished.
“Business cannot flow sustainably without the establishment of connections that are genuine and mutually satisfying.” If you can build relationships via social media, explain Bob Garfield and Doug Levy, you’ll “reduce the cost of promotion, improving ROI and bottom line performance.”
With everything considered, social media has the potential to be a new, highly valuable marketing tool for organizations. With the number of users on social media, all of whom look at a highly personalized feed of information, organizations must approach social media as a unique, new opportunity for marketing. It's crucial that organizations create content that is engaging and likable in order to be effective. Social media requires a commitment from organizations. They must build and nurture relationships with their followers. Approached in this way, social media offers organizations an unprecedented opportunity to engage and develop their fan base.
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