Chapter 9
Social Media Marketing
Learning Objectives:
By the time students complete this chapter they should be able to:
• Define social media marketing.
• Explain why marketers find it necessary to engage in social media marketing.
• Explain why social media marketing is not free.
• Describe the ways in which marketer communications are different in social media from
those in traditional mass media and online marketing.
Chapter Perspective
This chapter should be especially engaging for students because they are avid users of social
media. Which networks, for what purposes, and how much/how often will make for interesting
discussions throughout the chapter. There are two things to be especially aware of. First, students
think they know all about social networks because they use them. That is significantly different
from being an effective social media marketer and they need to be reminded of that throughout.
Second, the space is still undergoing explosive change and some of that needs to be integrated
into presentation and discussion.
Please consider the Google+ page a resource that can be helpful in keeping up. We try to
remember to post items with a searchable hashtag, #9SMM for this chapter.
The Explosion of Social Network Use
Figure 9.1 is almost a placeholder. It is worth a bit of attention because it includes some very
large networks like Orkut and Ozone that may not be known to most students and that alone is an
important point. It should be supplemented by current data. Searching for something like “size of
social networks” will uncover interesting recent data. You can use “infographic” in your search
Marketers “Follow the Eyeballs”
That is hardly a new idea; traditional mass media advertisers invented the concept long ago.
Clearly a lot of the eyeballs are trained on social networks now, so marketers must be there also.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
I like to tell students it’s not fun and games making a Facebook page—continuing to try to make
the point that it’s different from consumer use.
The definition used in the text is:
Social media marketing is business use of selected social media channels to understand
Which Businesses Use Social Media Marketing?
Figure 9.2 makes what seems to be a valid point; B2C marketers have been quicker to adopt
SMM than B2B. While that may be true, B2B marketers who use social media wisely and
experiencing great success. People are people, after all, and they like to be informed and
engaged, whether for work or pleasure.
Stress from the beginning, also, that social media is not free. The platforms are free; the cost in
human time and expertise is not. Unfortunately Figure 9.4 suggests that most marketers are going
in the direction of the easiest not efforts that are both labor intensive and marketing effective like
blogger outreach.
The issue of internal use of SMM to motivate employees (it is useful for collaboration also) is
interesting. Zappos is the classic example, although their networks are public, not private internal
networks. Harrah’s has been a continuing example throughout the text and they have recently
Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy
Throughout the chapter the aim is to focus on strategy, not tools, so if you want to cover the first
third of the chapter rather quickly that would increase the focus on the importance of strategy.
Figure 9.6 gives the 4 steps in developing a SMM strategy. It is important to go through it step
by step.
1. Listening (or monitoring). It’s like any good cocktail party—listen before you speak or
you’re likely to make a fool of yourself. Whether you have a formal monitoring center or
Listening tools are useful, and there are more every day. It takes human effort and insight
to make them work.
Insight includes knowledge about the audience and Forrester’s Social Technographics
ladder, Figure 9.7, is a well-known summary of social media segments. Many of us
belong to more than one segment depending on the nature of our activity at any given
time.
2. Communicating. The “Rules of the Road” are extremely important in this process. It is
4. Collaborating. Again, tools come into play. Blogs are one and there is a fairly lengthy
section on what makes a good blog. There has been a lot of commentary lately that
infographics are replacing blog postings, reason being that a lot of data can be gathered
into a rather small space and visualized. That’s true, but it doesn’t replace discussion of
strategy for marketers and product uses/benefits for their customers. Twitter is listed as a
tool; it certainly provides feedback. More direct is product reviews; not the effort many
marketers now make to get you to review a product after you have purchased it.
Owyang summarizes the tools in his social business stack, Figure 9.12.
Executing SMM Strategies
The Nokia example, Figure 9.13, introduces the media concepts of SMM. It is as good a
statement of the difference between mass media and social media as I’ve seen—“from Big Bangs
to Continuous Engagement.” The difficulties they’ve had in execution are interesting. Mark
Social Media Marketing Metrics
SMM requires a whole new set of metrics and they have yet to be integrated into traditional
online metrics platforms completely, although that work is progressing. The need for integration,
and the number of channels to be integrated, is the subject of Figure 9.14. Radian6 has a good
Continuing the emphasis on the importance of objectives to successfully measuring marketing
accomplishment, see Table 9.2 for an example of what objectives and corresponding metrics
might look like for a personal blog.
Building Your Personal Brand in Social Space
I can’t imagine any student who would not find this section compelling. It is part of the
reasoning behind the Internet Career Builder Exercise that continues throughout the text.
However, the idea of personal branding goes further.
There are a number of personal branding gurus; the one who has built a successful career on it is
another of my local favorites, Dan Schawbel. Just doing a Google search on his name gives you
a good idea of the dimensions of the brand he has build, and a successful marketing services firm
Bringing Top Management into the Social Media Fold
The resistance of top managers to social media may be lessening, but in many quarters it is still
alive and well. Measuring ROI is certainly a problem, but my sense is that the real reason is that
many mangers fear loss of control. There’s some truth to that, but my reply is always that it is
better to know what is being said about your brand and deal with it in an appropriate way than it
Discussion Questions
1. Why do you think social networks have grown so quickly in countries all over the
world?
It seems to me that it’s the irresistible human urge to communicate. Add the desirability of
2. Be able to explain why social media marketing is useful to small businesses as well as
large corporations. Are there differences in executing an SMM strategy in a small
business and a large corporation?
The fact that basic platform are free and do-it-yourself are powerful draws for the small business.
The rules of the road apply to small businesses just as they do to small businesses. I wonder if it
3. How do the steps in developing an SMM strategy differ from those you have seen in
other aspects of marketing, for example, developing a brand marketing plan or an
advertising campaign strategy?
The basic rule “know your customer” is the same. However the execution is quite different.
4. Why do marketers consider earned media especially desirable?
It is like PR in traditional media; it carries along with it the brand image/prestige of the blog,
5. What potential values do blogs and Twitter have for B2B marketers?
Assume we mean by this “owned media” that is published by the corporate marketer. They both
6. What are some ways in which Facebook can be used by B2C marketers?
The ways are only limited by creativity. Distributing coupons and other offers are probably the
7. Thinking just of corporate content, do you often share, write product reviews, or
comment or like? Why or why not?
If you look at the Forrester ladder, Figure 9.7, only 23% of the Internet user population falls into
8. Do you receive any coupon or other deal offers by email or mobile app? Do you like
them? Do you use them?
In my experience, the answers are usually “Yes, yes, and yes.” With the rise of location-based
9. In case histories throughout this chapter, the metrics that were used to measure the
success of the program have been given. Make a list of metrics and the platforms to
which they apply and be prepared to discuss their value to the marketer.
Just a few examples include blog comments, Facebook Likes, YouTube views, and Twitter
10. Do you see any value to having a “personal brand” on the Internet?
I could ask the question another way. Do you know marketing practitioners who have gotten
their current job as a result of their resume on LinkedIn? Most of us would say yes. This post has
11. Why do you think some managers are resistant to the idea of engaging in social media
marketing? What could you do or say to convince your reluctant boss that SMM could
be a good idea in a specific business setting?
Start out by understanding that it’s really hard to convince a non-believer. I have seen actual
amazement on the faces of managers when I present data about the majority of comments being
positive. And I can tell that a lot of them don’t believe me and my data!
1. Internet Career Builder Exercise.
2. Study the Forrester Social Technographics® Ladder in Figure 9.7. Develop a short
questionnaire to determine the segment into which a consumer fits and the specific
platforms he uses and what he does on those platforms. Administer the questionnaire to
a sample of your friends, family, and colleagues as directed by your instructor. Be
prepared to discuss your findings about social media activities in class.
This is a good idea because the segments lend themselves to direct questions about what the
respondent does on which social media platforms.
3. Choose a business (B2C or B2B) or nonprofit organization that could benefit from a
social media campaign and develop a campaign outline. Include the following elements
in your outline:
● Specific campaign objectives
● Identification of the target audience
● Detailed description of the social media marketing activities
● Metrics to be used to judge campaign success
● Timeline for the specific campaign
● Budget for direct costs incurred
Now that you have thought about what you want to do, write an Introduction for your plan
outline that explains why the social media initiative is important and how it integrates into
the overall marketing activities of the business.
Constructing an entire social media marketing plan is a major undertaking, although a very
useful one. As a shorter exercise you could have students develop a set of SMM objectives and
match them with the corresponding metrics.
