Mediaboss Marketing

Social media optimization (SMO) is the use of a number of outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, service brand or event. Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, video sharing websites and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search engine optimization, in that the goal is to generate web traffic and increase awareness for a website. In general, social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content to encourage more users to use and share links to the website across social media and networking sites. SMO also refers to software tools that automate this process, or to website experts who undertake this process for clients.

The goal of SMO is to strategically create interesting online content, ranging from well-written text to eye-catching digital photos or video clips that encourages and entices people to engage with a website and then share this content, via its weblink, with their social media contacts and friends. Common examples of social media engagement are "liking and commenting on posts, retweeting, embedding, sharing, and promoting content".[1] Social media optimization is also an effective way of implementing online reputation management (ORM), meaning that if someone posts bad reviews of a business, a SMO strategy can ensure that the negative feedback is not the first link to come up in a list of search engine results.[2]

In the 2010s, with social media sites overtaking TV as a source for news for young people, news organisations have become increasingly reliant on social media platforms for generating web traffic. Publishers such as The Economist employ large social media teams to optimise their online posts and maximise traffic,[3] while other major publishers now use advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology to generate higher volumes of web traffic.[4]

Social media optimization is becoming an increasingly important factor in search engine optimization, which is the process of designing a website in a way so that it has as high a ranking as possible on search engines. As search engines are increasingly utilizing the recommendations of users of social networks such as Reddit, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ to rank pages in the search engine result pages.[citation needed] The implication is that when a webpage is shared or "liked" by a user on a social network, it counts as a "vote" for that webpage's quality. Thus, search engines can use such votes accordingly to properly ranked websites in search engine results pages. Furthermore, since it is more difficult to top the scales or influence the search engines in this way, search engines are putting more stock into social search.[5] This, coupled with increasingly personalized search based on interests and location, has significantly increased the importance of a social media presence in search engine optimization. Due to personalized search results, location-based social media presences on websites such as Yelp, Google Places, Foursquare, and Yahoo! Local have become increasingly important. While social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, it differs in several ways. Primarily, SMO focuses on driving web traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search engine ranking is also a benefit of successful social media optimization. Further, SMO is helpful to target particular geographic regions in order to target and reach potential customers. This helps in lead generation (finding new customers) and contributes to high conversion rates (i.e., converting previously uninterested individuals into people who are interested in a brand or organization).

Social media optimization is in many ways connected to the technique of viral marketing or "viral seeding" where word of mouth is created through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. An effective SMO campaign can harness the power of viral marketing; for example, 80% of activity on Pinterest is generated through "repinning." Furthermore, by following social trends and utilizing alternative social networks, websites can retain existing followers while also attracting new ones. This allows businesses to build an online following and presence, all linking back to the company's website for increased traffic. For example, with an effective social bookmarking campaign, not only can website traffic be increased, but a site's rankings can also be increased. In a similar way, the engagement with blogs creates a similar result by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogosphere and special blog search engines. Social media optimization is considered an integral part of an online reputation management (ORM) or search engine reputation management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who care about their online presence.[6]

Social media optimization is not limited to marketing and brand building. Increasingly, smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy (i.e., product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more). Additionally, social media optimization can be implemented to foster a community of the associated site, allowing for a healthy business-to-consumer (B2C) relationship.[7]

According to technologist Danny Sullivan, the term "social media optimization" was first used and described by marketer Rohit Bhargava[8][9] on his marketing blog in August, 2006. In the same post, Bhargava established the five important rules of social media optimization. Bhargava believed that by following his rules, anyone could influence the levels of traffic and engagement on their site, increase popularity, and ensure that it ranks highly in search engine results. An additional 11 SMO rules have since been added to the list by other marketing contributors.

The 16 rules of SMO, according to one source, are as follows:[10]

Bhargava's initial five rules were more specifically designed to SMO, while the list is now much broader and addresses everything that can be done across different social media platforms. According to author and CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden, a Social Media Strategy is also necessary to ensure optimization. This is a similar concept to Bhargava's list of rules for SMO.

The Social Media Strategy may consider:[11]

According to Lon Safko and David K. Brake in The Social Media Bible, it is also important to act like a publisher by maintaining an effective organisational strategy, to have an original concept and unique "edge" that differentiates one's approach from competitors, and to experiment with new ideas if things do not work the first time.[2] If a business is blog-based, an effective method of SMO is using widgets that allow users to share content to their personal social media platforms. This will ultimately reach a wider target audience and drive more traffic to the original post. Blog widgets and plug-ins for post-sharing are most commonly linked to Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter. They occasionally also link to social media platforms such as StumbleUpon, Tumblr, and Pinterest. Many sharing widgets also include user counters which indicate how many times the content has been liked and shared across different social media pages. This can influence whether or not new users will engage with the post, and also gives businesses an idea of what kind of posts are most successful at engaging audiences. By using relevant and trending keywords in titles and throughout blog posts, a business can also increase search engine optimization and the chances of their content of being read and shared by a large audience.[11] The root of effective SMO is the content that is being posted, so professional content creation tools can be very beneficial. These can include editing programs such as Photoshop, GIMP, Final Cut Pro, and Dreamweaver. Many websites also offer customization options such as different layouts to personalize a page and create a point of difference.[2]

With social media sites overtaking TV as a source for news for young people, news organisations have become increasingly reliant on social media platforms for generating traffic. A report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism described how a 'second wave of disruption' had hit news organisations,[12] with publishers such as The Economist having to employ large social media teams to optimism their posts and maximize traffic.[3] Major publishers such as Le Monde and Vogue now use advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technology from Echobox to post stories more effectively and generate higher volumes of traffic.[4]

Social media gaming is online gaming activity performed through social media sites with friends and online gaming activity that promotes social media interaction. Examples of the former include FarmVille, Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, FrontierVille, and Mafia Wars. In these games a player's social network is exploited to recruit additional players and allies. An example of the latter is Empire Avenue, a virtual stock exchange where players buy and sell shares of each other's social network worth. Nielsen Media Research estimates that, as of June 2010, social networking and playing online games account for about one-third of all online activity by Americans.[13]

Facebook has in recent years become a popular channel for advertising, alongside traditional forms such as television, radio, and print. With over 1 billion active users, and 50% of those users logging into their accounts every day[14] it is an important communication platform that businesses can utilize and optimize to promote their brand and drive traffic to their websites. There are three commonly used strategies to increase advertising reach on Facebook:

Improving effectiveness and increasing network size are organic approaches, while buying more reach is a paid approach which does not require any further action.[15] Most businesses will attempt an "organic" approach to gaining a significant following before considering a paid approach. Because Facebook requires a login, it is important that posts are public to ensure they will reach the widest possible audience. Posts that have been heavily shared and interacted with by users are displayed as 'highlighted posts' at the top of newsfeeds. In order to achieve this status, the posts need to be engaging, interesting, or useful. This can be achieved by being spontaneous, asking questions, addressing current events and issues, and optimizing trending hashtags and keywords. The more engagement a post receives, the further it will spread and the more likely it is to feature on first in search results.

Another organic approach to Facebook optimization is cross-linking different social platforms. By posting links to websites or social media sites in the profile 'about' section, it is possible to direct traffic and ultimately increase search engine optimization. Another option is to share links to relevant videos and blog posts.[11] Facebook Connect is a functionality that launched in 2008 to allow Facebook users to sign up to different websites, enter competitions, and access exclusive promotions by logging in with their existing Facebook account details. This is beneficial to users as they don't have to create a new login every time they want to sign up to a website, but also beneficial to businesses as Facebook users become more likely to share their content. Often the two are interlinked, where in order to access parts of a website, a user has to like or share certain things on their personal profile or invite a number of friends to like a page. This can lead to greater traffic flow to a website as it reaches a wider audience. Businesses have more opportunities to reach their target markets if they choose a paid approach to SMO. When Facebook users create an account, they are urged to fill out their personal details such as gender, age, location, education, current and previous employers, religious and political views, interests, and personal preferences such as movie and music tastes. Facebook then takes this information and allows advertisers to use it to determine how to best market themselves to users that they know will be interested in their product. This can also be known as micro-targeting. If a user clicks on a link to like a page, it will show up on their profile and newsfeed. This then feeds back into organic social media optimization, as friends of the user will see this and be encouraged to click on the page themselves. Although advertisers are buying mass reach, they are attracting a customer base with a genuine interest in their product. Once a customer base has been established through a paid approach, businesses will often run promotions and competitions to attract more organic followers.[10]

The amount of businesses that use Facebook to advertise also holds significant relevance. Currently there are 3 million businesses that advertise on Facebook.[16] This makes Facebook the world's largest platform for social media advertising. What also holds importance is the amount of money leading businesses are spending on Facebook advertising alone. Procter & Gamble spend $60 million every year on Facebook advertising.[17] Other advertisers on Facebook include Microsoft, with a yearly spend of 35 million, Amazon, Nestle and American Express all with yearly expenditures above 25 million per year.

Furthermore the amount of small businesses advertising on Facebook is of relevance. This number has grown rapidly over the upcoming years and demonstrates how important social media advertising actually is. Currently 70% of the UK's small businesses use Facebook advertising.[18] This is a substantial amount of advertisers. Almost half of the world's small businesses use social media marketing product of some sort. This demonstrates the impact that social media has had on the current digital marketing era.

See the original post:
Social media optimization - Wikipedia

Just a few years ago, you could get away with building a social media marketing strategy on the fly. As long as you were present, you were doing more than your competitorsright?

Well its 2018 and not much of the same logic applies today. With 30% of millennials saying they engage with a brand on social at least once a month, your strategy cant be only about existence. Brands must be fully invested in their social media marketing strategies and focus on engagement. Otherwise, youll lose out on real customers, which means serious effects on your bottom line.

Were not here to scare your brand into the world of social media. Instead, we want to provide your marketing team with the right steps to take toward a successful social strategy so your brand isnt left in the dust.

Here are the seven steps to create a winning social media marketing strategy in 2018:

The first step to any strategy is to understand what you want out of your efforts. Social media marketing isnt about flipping a switch and calling it a day. Instead, social media planning should be looked at like cooking your favorite dish.

Once you have your ingredients, you follow a recipe and presto! But thats not always the case. What if you have guests and need to feed more people? What if someone is allergic to one of the ingredients? Suddenly, your goal goes from making a meal to ensuring it will feed enough people and be edible by all.

Thats why creating goals is so critical to the first part of your social media strategy. At the same time, its best to set goals that you know are attainable. Asking for 1 million new Instagram followers in 2018 is unrealistic. With achievable goals, youre more likely to stick to the original plan and continue to take on new hurdles as you complete old ones.

This is the same reason why brands should never take on every social media channel possible in their current marketing strategy. Try to choose the channels that have the most importance based on your brands goals. Avoid over complicating a strategy with too many targets and objectives. Simplicity can take you a long way.

And also, dont forget to document your social media goals. Not only is it important to help you benchmark where you are, but it also improves your chances of achieving them.According to some statistics, people who write their goals down are 30 times more successful.

Goal setting is a staple of all marketing and business strategies. Social media is no exception. Of course, with a range of social capabilities, it can be difficult to determine exactly what your objectives should be. For guidance, here are some common social media goals to consider:

Request a Demo

Approximately 79% of adults use Facebookbut are your customers actively engaging with your brand there? Understanding your audience is necessary to learn things like who buys your products, what age group is the toughest to sell and what income level makes up the most of your returning customers? As for social media, its just as critical to know your audience.

First, your brand should look into the demographics of your most valuable social channels. Like we mentioned before, you should have a goal in mind for your social media marketing strategy. This is why you need to research the channels that correlate the most with your goals.

To help you find your focus channels: lets take a quick look at the essential demographics data for each major network:

See even more demographics data on our in-depth guide!

While the demographics data above gives you insight into each channel, what about your own customers? Further analysis has to be completed before you can truly know your customer demographics on social media.

Thats why many brands use a social media dashboard that can provide an overview of whos following you and how they interact with you on each channel. Most brands today are using at least some sort of dashboard. However, does your dashboard address your specific goals?

Whether youre an agency providing insights for your clients or an enterprise company discovering your own demographics, an all-in-one dashboard solution is critical.

Sprout Social prides itself on the in-depth and essential demographics data for your social networks to help you identify your customers. Learn more with a free 30-day trial to uncover crucial data with Sprout!

While your targeted social media metrics might be the most important step of a strategy, its often the spot most veer off the path. Vanity metrics like follower count and likes are always good to measure, but does it tell you the whole story of your brand on social media?

We often get wrapped up in viewing followers and likes as the truth to a campaign, but its smart to take a step back and evaluate the social metrics associated with your overall goals.

Engagement metrics sometimes paint a better picture, because as weve mentioned many times here, building lasting relationships works on social. Large audiences and likable content is absolutely great, but here are some other metrics you might want to pursue in 2018:

Before you start creating content (we promise were almost there!), its really smart to investigate your competitors. We put this before the content creation process because you often find new ways to look at content by analyzing whats making your competitors successful.

Again, well always believe you shouldnt steal your competitors ideas, but instead learn and grow from their success and failures. So how do you find that information? The first step is to find out whos your competition in the first place.

The simplest way to find competitors is through a simple Google search. Look up your most valuable keywords, phrases and industry terms to see who shows up. For example, if you sold various soaps, handmade natural soaps would be a great keyword to investigate:

You can exclude the major retailers like Amazon and Bath & Body Works. Search for those who show up who are in your specific industry. Next you want to see who is active on social.

As you can see, Wild Soap has an active social presence, which means theyre a great candidate to track. After gathering a handful of industry competitors, its smart to use a social media competitive analysis tool like Sprout Social to track Facebook and Instagram content.

Here you can see post break downs of text, images and video to see what your competitors are doing to drive the most engagement. Once you dig through the competitive analysis, youll have a better idea of what your potential customers want.

Did someone say content? Its no liesocial media content is extremely important to your marketing strategy. However, its best to follow the previous steps before planning out content (we caught you, blog skippers!) so you can start building more effective themes.

For starters, we recommend creating content that fits to your brands identity. This means you should avoid things like reaching out to your unpopular demographics without a complete strategy in place.

Its necessary to find the perfect balance between target content and being overly promotional as well. In fact, 46% of users say theyll unfollow a brand if theres too many promotional messages. Additionally, 41% of users say theyd unfollow a brand that shared too much irrelevant content.

How important is video to your social media marketing strategy? Extremelyapproximately 90% of online shoppers believe product videos help them make a purchasing decision. Additionally, the average online video is completely watched end to end by 37% of viewers.

These type of stats should only enforce your reasoning to invest in social media video content. Brands can reach users through Instagram Stories, Facebook Live and other in-the-moment media.

One of the toughest challenges to visual content is creating it on a day-to-day basis. A Venngage infographic showed 36.7% of marketers said their No.1 struggle with creating visual content was doing so consistently.

This truly shows how important highly-visual content is to marketers and the people they want to reach. Thats why building content themes is a great approach to sectioning out your content. Instagram is one your premier channels to work off visual themes.

Anthropologie does an amazing job at keeping their Instagram feed consistent, colorful and eye-popping. Work in content themes to ensure you have a consistent schedule of excellent content to publish.

Social media channels are built as networks. This means their main purpose is to be a space to converse, discuss topics and share content. Your brand cant forget these core elements of networking and it takes effort to ensure conversations or engagement opportunities arent left unattended.

Through social media, you gain respect as a brand by just being present and talking to your audience. Thats why social customer care is so important to brands wanting to increase audience awareness. Its all about engagement.

For example, Seamless does a wonderful job of not only responding, but showing customer care is priority. Through the right social media monitoring tools, you can find instances across all your channels to interact, respond and gauge customer service inquiries.

Designating teams to specific tasks can help your staff run like a well-oiled social media team, whether youre a group of one or 100.

When is your brand available to engage and interact with customers? You might see some recommending times to post late in the evening. But if your brand isnt there to communicate, whats the point of posting at the preferred time?

Instead, try to ensure your social media or community managers are available and ready to answer any product questions or concerns when you tweet or post. Its smart to learn the best times to post on social media, but its just as critical to engage after posting.

According to our Index, a brands average response time is around 10 hours. But did you know that most users believe brands should respond to social media messages within four hours?

With all the updated algorithms, organic content has a tough time reaching the majority of your audience. The last thing you want to do is ignore those who engage and lose out on sending more down your marketing funnel.

So, how well did you do on your social media marketing strategy? Without continuously analyzing your efforts, youll never know how one campaign did over another. Having a birds-eye-view of your social media activity helps put things into perspective.

Youve got down your most important goals, network preferences and metricsnow its time to make sure you made the right decisions. Knowing youve made the right choices is still a difficult task in social media.

In fact, 46% of B2B marketers are unsure if their social strategy actually created revenue for their brand. But marketers are always trying and looking for the perfect connection. Thats why the most commonly used metric (80%) for marketers is engagement.

If you work at building lasting relationships, theres a lot less room for failure with your social media marketing strategy.

Sprout Social was created with social media marketing in mind. Our social media tools offer a full suite of analytics and reporting features to help you pinpoint exactly which posts, messages and hashtags perform the best.

Its easy to connect other critical tools to our dashboard like Google Analytics, which helps you see which posts drove the most traffic, conversions and overall revenue.

We wanted to give our readers a few resources to use moving forward. Thats why we put together this 7-step social media marketing strategy checklist to help all of our readers creating and auditing their own strategies.

We encourage you to share it with colleagues or use the embed code to put it on your own site!

7 Steps in Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy by Sprout Social

Go here to see the original:
7 Step Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2018 | Sprout ...

On average, we keep postings up at least 60 days. We check all listings multiple times a week to make sure they are still valid. If jobs expire, we remove them from this page.

If you wish to submit a marketing or social media job, send an email to markvanbaale@gmail.com with the following details:

Social Media Coordinator with Kansas City Chiefs (Posted May 23)

More Details and to Apply

Digital Marketing Specialist withBunzl (Posted May 23)

More Details and to Apply

Digital Marketing Coordinator withAnthony Plumbing, Heating and Cooling (Posted May 23)

More Details and to Apply

Copywriter with Rivet studio (Posted May 23)

More Details and to Apply

Openings with Rally House (Posted May 23)

Social Media Specialist

Marketing Coordinator

SEO Specialist

Digital & Website Strategist with Johnson County Community College (Posted May 23)

More Details and to Apply

Content Manager withBASYS Processing, Inc. (Posted May 23)

More Details and to Apply

Communications and Marketing Coordinator withMetropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault(Posted May 23)

More Details and to Apply

Digital Marketing Specialist withPioneer Services (Posted May 21)

More Details and to Apply

Marketing Manager withAutoAlert (Posted May 21)

More Details and to Apply

Senior Manager,Marketing Strategy withBlack & Veatch (Posted May 21)

More Details and to Apply

Openings with Dairy Farmers of America (Updated May 21)

Public Relations Manager

Content Coordinator

Member Communications Strategist

Marketing Manager with YMCA of Greater Kansas City (Posted May 21)

More Details and to Apply

Digital Content Coordinator withFederal Reserve Bank of Kansas City (Posted May 16)

More Details and to Apply

Marketing Communications ManagerwithKVC Health Systems (Posted May 16)

More Details and to Apply

Copywriter with ER Marketing agency (Posted May 16)

More Details and to Apply

Content Marketing Manager withUnity World Headquarters (Posted May 16)

More Details and to Apply

Communications Coordinator withWoods Chapel United Methodist Church Lees Summit Campus (Posted May 16)

More Details and to Apply

Communications Specialist withConklin Company, Inc. (Posted May 16)

More Details and to Apply

Brand Engagement Specialist with MSTS (Posted May 16)

More Details and to Apply

Social Media Specialist with Netsmart (Updated May 14)

More Details and to Apply

Marketing Coordinator with Plastic Packaging Technologies (Posted May 14)

More Details and to Apply

Digital Marketing Strategist withShawnee Mission Medical Center (Posted May 10)

More Details and to Apply

Communications and Outreach Specialist with Kansas State University Olathe Horticulture Center (Posted May 10)

More Details and to Apply

Digital Content Specialist withNetsmart (Posted May 9)

More Details and to Apply

Social Media Analyst with Intouch Solutions agency (Posted May 7)

More Details and to Apply

Email Marketing Specialist withCalifornia Casualty (Posted May 7)

More Details and to Apply

Digital Marketing Analyst withRussell Stover Chocolates (Posted May 6)

More Details and to Apply

Marketing Manager withBKD (Posted May 6)

More Details and to Apply

Senior eCommerce Coordinator withAllied Materials & Equipment(Posted May 6)

More Details and to Apply

Junior Copywriter/Editor withNetsmart (Posted May 6)

More Details and to Apply

Read the rest here:
Marketing and Social Media Jobs Kansas City Job Seekers

Learn about the concept of changing people's behavior, the basis of social marketing as a whole, and why it can be of use to your organization.

Community groups do many different things to solve the issues that interest them. A group fighting child hunger might advocate free breakfasts at school, increased funding for WIC (Women and Infant Children), and more child-oriented legislation from the state senate. And to accomplish each of these goals, the group will again probably do many different things: letter-writing campaigns, direct lobbying, and advertising in the media, to name just a few. Thousands of details and hard work by many people are usually involved in a successful initiative.

Looked at from a different perspective, however, it comes down to one thing. At the root of all of the group's work is one basic principle: change people's behavior. This is true not only for a child hunger campaign, but for almost any health or community development initiative. A coalition against violence wants people to stop committing acts of violence. A teen pregnancy initiative tries to put an end to children having children. And an organization for peace looks for the day when world peace is more than a lovely thought on holiday greeting cards.

This concept of changing people's behavior is the basis of this section, and of social marketing as a whole. We will talk about what social marketing is, and why it can be of use to you in your organization. Then, we'll go into more depth on marketing, and discuss what are known as the "4 Ps"--the four elements around which all types of marketing, social or profit-oriented, are centered. Finally, we'll finish with an overview of the stages someone will go through if their effort is successful.

It's a lot of information, and much of it is more conceptual in nature than many other sections of the Tool Box. The next three sections of this chapter, then, will try to ground these ideas more thoroughly, so they can be used in your day-to-day work.

So what, exactly, is social marketing? In Social Marketing Report, it's defined as, "the application of commercial marketing techniques to social problems." It means to take the same principles used in selling goods--such as shoes, television shows, or pizza--to convince people to change their behavior.

What does that mean? Well, instead of selling hamburgers, you're selling a life without heart attacks. Instead of convincing teenagers to buy blue jeans, you're convincing them to buy the advantages of postponing pregnancy.

Of course, if you are selling blue jeans, you're still trying to influence behavior--you're convincing people they need to wear your jeans--either for comfort, or for style, or for value. So then, what is the difference between social marketing and commercial marketing?

It's really summed up in one key point: commercial marketing tries to change people's behavior for the benefit of the marketer; social marketing tries to change people's behavior for the benefit of the consumer, or of society as a whole.

And, although it's not technically a part of social marketing, you'll probably want to...

The above list represents just the bare bones of a social marketing effort. Each of these points will be discussed in detail later in this section, and in Section Four of this chapter. For a full example of a very successful nationwide social marketing plan, see the Examples section at the end of the main text.

A lot of people confuse social marketing with one of its components, advertising. But leaves are just one part of the tree--even when they're only part you can see. Likewise, advertising is a very important part of social marketing, but it's still just a part.

Is that confusing? Well, look at the following messages:

On the other hand...

The bad news is, there is a definite art to it--it's not all something you're born with, and it's not only common sense. After all, people get degrees in this stuff; and major corporations such as Nike or Coca-Cola spend millions of dollars to ensure that their marketing campaigns are state-of-the-art.

Now for the good news: first of all, it's learnable. You may not have been born with phrases like market segmentation floating around in your head, but you can learn what they mean, and how to use them.

Second, it's scalable. Some campaigns are quite large, such as the National High Blood Pressure campaign discussed in the Examples at the end of this section. However, social marketing campaigns can also be quite a bit smaller. That is, you can do it on a local level, when you have limited resources. Just because your group doesn't run the Hyatt Regency, or hasn't resources anywhere in the same ballpark, that doesn't mean you can't take the same principles and put into effect the change that you want to see in your community.

So what makes the concept of social marketing particularly important? Perhaps you've been doing your work quite effectively for years without ever even hearing the phrase. That's actually pretty likely; the phrase was only coined about 25 years ago.

There are three major advantages, however, which suggest that social marketing is worthy of your consideration:

Bottom line? Social marketing is a good idea because it works.

Before we discuss social marketing further, however, it's important to have a grasp on the principles of commercial marketing, since that is what it's based on. As community health workers, or members of non-profit organizations, the idea might seem a bit odd. We're used to a completely different mindset. Terms like "marketing" may conjure up images of big business and corporate greed; they certainly don't make us think of programs to try to help our neighbors.

Even so, your neighbors may not be open to your ideas and programs right off the bat, and you may find yourself having to persuade them. This is what social marketing excels at. The idea may be new for you, or a complete change in how your perceive things. That change, however, may end up being the breath of air your organization needs to become even more effective in changing behavior.

The essence of all marketing can be summed up in what has been termed the "4 Ps." They are product, price, place, and promotion. Let's look at each in turn.

A good social marketing plan, then will try to reduce these costs. An anti-litter campaign will try to place more trash cans around the city; a smoking cessation group might offer support groups to help with the effort, nutrition counseling to counteract weight gain, and nicotine patches to reduce the pangs of withdrawal.

Likewise, if you are "selling" teen pregnancy prevention, what barriers make it difficult to prevent those pregnancies? Can teenagers easily obtain birth control, or is it difficult for them to get hold of? Maybe there isn't a good teen clinic in town. Or if there is a clinic available, maybe it's all the way across town, and it's only open on weekdays until 4:00, making it difficult to get to without missing school.

Social marketing efforts make it easier to change behavior by making sure the necessary supports are not only available, but also easily accessible to the most people possible. The less people need to go out of their way to make a change, the more likely they are to make it.

Promoting your cause doesn't need to take a lot of money. It can also take place through less costly methods, such as good old-fashioned word of mouth. Convincing people through a one-on-one conversation can be just as effective at changing someone's point of view as the best made commercial, or even more so. (Think about it. Which would make you get a tetanus booster: a television commercial or a suggestion from your doctor?) Word of mouth is a highly desirable part of social marketing.

Remember, though--advertising alone is not social marketing.

With that understanding of marketing in mind, let's turn now to the focal point of an effective campaign--the consumer. People will have different ideas and beliefs at different times. For example, among smokers, some may not believe smoking is that bad for them, others might understand the risks but not care, still others may not want to take the effort to stop smoking, and a final group of smokers may be actively trying to quit. A social marketing campaign will see all of these beliefs (and their related actions) as part of a continuum, and try to move people along to the next step.

The idea is that these changes won't happen overnight. Most people won't go immediately from believing smoking is "cool" and not really understanding the health risks to quitting right away. Instead, a social marketing campaign might start them thinking that it's not the best thing to do--and after that idea has had time to turn around in their head for a while, another part of the campaign will help them quit, and yet another part will help them remain smoke free.

How are these beliefs shaped and decisions made? Well, generally speaking, the following activities need to occur:

In much of Africa, women have traditionally had many, many children; in such countries as Nigeria, the average woman might bear as many as 12 children during her lifetime. A social marketing message that has been widely disseminated, then, is have fewer children. This message has been geared towards the goals of increasing women's health, and decreasing overpopulation and famine.

As we mentioned above, not every person will be at the same place on the continuum. It's like they are at different points on a bridge, spanning from attention to action. The tasks of the marketer are first to know who stands where on the bridge, and then to design messages to move each targeted person or group one or more stages further along that bridge, in the direction of desired action.

Social marketing is a concept that's fairly new to the health and development field. Nonetheless, it's an idea that shows immense promise, and can give you an excellent framework through which your organization can do what you have set out to do: help individuals and society as a whole live better lives. Is this something that can be used to further the goals of your program or coalition? The next section of this chapter, will help you decide the answer to just this question.

Read more:
Chapter 45. Social Marketing of Successful Components of ...

Viral marketing (or viral advertising) is a marketing technique that uses pre-existing social networking services and other technologies to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales or marketing buzz) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer viruses. It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks.[1]

The concept is often misused or misunderstood,[2][3] as people apply it to any successful enough story without taking into account the word "viral".[4]

Viral advertising is personal and, while coming from an identified sponsor, it does not mean businesses pay for its distribution.[5] Most of the well-known viral ads circulating online are ads paid by a sponsor company, launched either on their own platform (company webpage or social media profile) or on social media websites such as YouTube.[6] Consumers receive the page link from a social media network or copy the entire ad from a website and pass it along through e-mail or posting it on a blog, webpage or social media profile. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages, or web pages. The most commonly utilized transmission vehicles for viral messages include: pass-along based, incentive based, trendy based, and undercover based. However, the creative nature of viral marketing enables an "endless amount of potential forms and vehicles the messages can utilize for transmission", including mobile devices.[7]

The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period of time.[8]

The term "viral marketing" has also been used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaignsmarketing strategies that advertise a product to people without them knowing they are being marketed to.[9]

The emergence of "viral marketing", as an approach to advertisement, has been tied to the popularization of the notion that ideas spread like viruses. The field that developed around this notion, memetics, peaked in popularity in the 1990s.[10] As this then began to influence marketing gurus, it took on a life of its own in that new context.

The term viral strategy was first used in marketing in 1995, in a pre-digital marketing era, by a strategy team at Chiat/Day advertising in LA (now TBWA LA) for the launch of the first PlayStation for Sony Computer Entertainment. Born from a need to combat huge target cynicism the insight was that people reject things pushed at them but seek out things that elude them. Chiat/Day created a 'stealth' campaign to go after influencers/opinion leaders, using street teams for the first time in brand marketing and layered an intricate omni-channel web of info and intrigue. Insiders picked up on it and spread the word. Within 6 months PlayStation was number one in its categorySony's most successful launch in history.

There is debate on the origination and the popularization of the specific term viral marketing, though some of the earliest uses of the current term are attributed to the Harvard Business School graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport. The term was later popularized by Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company article "The Virus of Marketing",[11] and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users.[12] An earlier attestation of the term is found in PC User magazine in 1989, but with a somewhat differing meaning.[13][14]

Among the first to write about viral marketing on the Internet was the media critic Doug Rushkoff.[15] The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting them", in the viral analogy's terms. As long as each infected user shares the idea with more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than onethe standard in epidemiology for qualifying something as an epidemic), the number of infected users grows according to an exponential curve. Of course, the marketing campaign may be successful even if the message spreads more slowly, if this user-to-user sharing is sustained by other forms of marketing communications, such as public relations or advertising.[citation needed]

Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high "social networking potential."[16] Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research. In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential. Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone networks, due to their personal nature.[citation needed]

In early 2013 the first ever Viral Summit was held in Las Vegas. It attempted to identify similar trends in viral marketing methods for various media.

This exponential growth is not infinite nonetheless, because customers, people, are finite. So there's a ceiling called carrying capacity.[17]

According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment:[18]

Whereas Kaplan, Haenlein and others reduce the role of marketers to crafting the initial viral message and seeding it, futurist and sales and marketing analyst Marc Feldman, who conducted IMT Strategies' viral marketing study in 2001,[citation needed] carves a different role for marketers which pushes the 'art' of viral marketing much closer to 'science'.[20]

To clarify and organize the information related to potential measures of viral campaigns, the key measurement possibilities should be considered in relation to the objectives formulated for the viral campaign. In this sense, some of the key cognitive outcomes of viral marketing activities can include measures such as the number of views, clicks, and hits for specific content, as well as the number of shares in social media, such as likes on Facebook or retweets on Twitter, which demonstrate that consumers processed the information received through the marketing message. Measures such as the number of reviews for a product or the number of members for a campaign webpage quantify the number of individuals who have acknowledged the information provided by marketers. Besides statistics that are related to online traffic, surveys can assess the degree of product or brand knowledge, though this type of measurement is more complicated and requires more resources.[21][22]

Related to consumers' attitudes toward a brand or even toward the marketing communication, different online and social media statistics, including the number of likes and shares within a social network, can be used. The number of reviews for a certain brand or product and the quality assessed by users are indicators of attitudes. Classical measures of consumer attitude toward the brand can be gathered through surveys of consumers. Behavioral measures are very important because changes in consumers' behavior and buying decisions are what marketers hope to see through viral campaigns. There are numerous indicators that can be used in this context as a function of marketers' objectives. Some of them include the most known online and social media statistics such as number and quality of shares, views, product reviews, and comments. Consumers' brand engagement can be measured through the K-factor, the number of followers, friends, registered users, and time spent on the website. Indicators that are more bottom-line oriented focus on consumers' actions after acknowledging the marketing content, including the number of requests for information, samples, or test-drives. Nevertheless, responses to actual call-to-action messages are important, including the conversion rate. Consumers' behavior is expected to lead to contributions to the bottom line of the company, meaning increase in sales, both in quantity and financial amount. However, when quantifying changes in sales, managers need to consider other factors that could potentially affect sales besides the viral marketing activities. Besides positive effects on sales, the use of viral marketing is expected to bring significant reductions in marketing costs and expenses.[23][24]

Viral marketing often involves and utilizes:

Viral target marketing is based on three important principles:[25]

By applying these three important disciplines to an advertising model, a VMS company is able to match a client with their targeted customers at a cost effective advantage.

The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast; it can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight. However, the Internet and social media technologies themselves do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to share content to other people faster. Therefore, it is generally agreed that a campaign must typically follow a certain set of guidelines in order to potentially be successful:[26]

The growth of social networks significantly contributed to the effectiveness of viral marketing.[28] As of 2009, two thirds of the world's Internet population visits a social networking service or blog site at least every week.[29] Facebook alone has over 1 billion active users.[30] In 2009, time spent visiting social media sites began to exceed time spent emailing.[31] A 2010 study found that 52% of people who view news online forward it on through social networks, email, or posts.[32]

'The influencers in order to communicate marketing messages to the audiences you seek to reach'.[33] In business, it is indicated that people prefer interaction with humans to a logo.[34] Therefore, it seems that influencers are on behalf of a company to build up a relationship between the brand and their customers. Companies would be left behind if they neglected the trend of influencers in viral marketing, as over 60% of global brands have used influencers in marketing in 2016.[35] The influencer types come along with the level of customers' involvement in companies' marketing.[36] First, unintentional influences,[37][36] because of brand satisfaction and low involvement, their action is just to deliver a company's message to a potential user.[38] Secondly, users will become salesmen or promoters for a particular company with incentives.[37][36] For example, ICQ offered their users benefits to create the awareness of their friends. Finally, the mass reached influencers are those who have a huge range of followers on the social network. Recent trend in businesses activity is to offer incentives to individual users for re-posting the advertisement messages to their own profiles. A common type of an incentive puts all the re-posting users into a random draw for a valuable gift [39]

Marketers and agencies commonly consider celebrities as a good influencer with endorsement work. This conception is similar to celebrity marketing. Based on a survey, 69% of company marketing department and 74% of agencies are currently working with celebrities in the UK. The celebrity types come along with their working environment. Traditional celebrities are considered as singles, dancers, actors or models. These types of public characters are continuing to be the most commonly used by company marketers. The survey found that 4 in 10 company having worked with these traditional celebrities in the prior year. However, people these years are spending more time on social media rather than traditional media such as TV. The researchers also claim that customers are not firmly believed celebrities are effectively influential.[40][41]

Social media stars among a kind of influencer on viral marketing since consumers are spending more time on the Internet than before. And companies and agencies start to consider collaborating with social media stars as their product endorser.

Social media stars such as YouTuber Zoella or Instagrammer Aimee Song are followed by millions of people online. These online celebrities are having more connection and influence with their followers because they have more frequent and realistic conversation and interaction on the Internet in terms of comments or likes.[42]

This trend captured by marketers who are used to explore new potential customers. Agencies are placing social media stars alongside singers and musicians at the top of the heap of celebrity types they had worked with. And there are more than 28% of company marketers having worked with one social media celebrity in the previous year.[41]

The challenges of strategically maximizing the influence spread in social networks are addressed in management science.[43]

Using influencers in viral marketing provides companies several benefits. It enables companies to spend little time and budget on their marketing communication and brand awareness promotion.[44] For example, Alberto Zanot, in the 2006 FIFA Football World Cup, shared Zinedine Zidane's headbutt against Italy and engaged more than 1.5 million viewers in less than the very first hour. Secondly, it enhances the credibility of messages.[45][46][47][48][49] These trust-based relationships grab the audience's attention, create customers' demand, increase sales and loyalty, or simply drive customers' attitude and behavior.[47][48] In the case of Coke, Millennials changed their mind about the product, from parents' drink to the beverage for teens.[50] It built up Millennials' social needs by 'sharing a Coke' with their friends. This created a deep connection with Gen Y, dramatically increased sales (+11% compared with last year) and market share (+1.6%).[50]

No doubt that harnessing influencers would be a lucrative business for both companies and influencers.[51] The concept of 'influencer' is no longer just an 'expert' but also anyone who delivers and influence on the credibility of a message (e.g. blogger)[46] In 2014, BritMums, network sharing family's daily life, had 6,000 bloggers and 11,300 views per month on average[52][53] and became endorsers for some particular brand such as Coca-Cola, Morrison. Another case, Aimee Song who had over 3.6m followers on the Instagram page and became Laura Mercier's social media influencers, gaining $500,000 monthly.[52]

Decision-making process seems to be hard for customers these days. Millers (1956) argued that people suffered from short-term memory.[54] This links to difficulties in customers' decision-making process and Paradox of Choice,[55] as they face various adverts and newspapers daily.[56] Influencers serve as a credible source for customers' decision-making process.[46][38] Neilsen reported that 80% of consumers appreciated a recommendation of their acquaintances,[57] as they have reasons to trust in their friends delivering the messages without benefits[57] and helping them reduce perceived risks behind choices.[58][59]

The main risk coming from the company is for it to target the wrong influencer or segment. Once the content is online, the sender won't be able to control it anymore.[60] It is therefore vital to aim at a particular segment when releasing the message. This is what happened to the company BlendTech which released videos showing the blender could blend anything, and encouraged users to share videos. This mainly caught the attention of teenage boys who thought it funny to blend and destroy anything they could;[61] even though the videos went viral, they did not target potential buyers of the product. This is considered to be one of the major factors that affects the success of the online promotion. It is critical and inevitable for the organisations to target the right audience. Another risk with internet is that a company's video could end up going viral on the other side of the planet where their products are not even for sale.[62]

According to a paper by Duncan Watts and colleagues entitled: "Everyone's an influencer",[63] the most common risk in viral marketing is that of the influencer not passing on the message, which can lead to the failure of the viral marketing campaign. A second risk is that the influencer modifies the content of the message. A third risk is that influencers pass on the wrong message. This can result from a misunderstanding or as a deliberate move.

Between 19961997, Hotmail was one of the first internet businesses to become extremely successful utilizing viral marketing techniques by inserting the tagline "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail" at the bottom of every e-mail sent out by its users. Hotmail was able to sign up 12 million users in 18 months.[64] At the time, this was historically the fastest growth of any user based media company.[65] By the time Hotmail reached "66 million users", the company was establishing "270,000 new accounts each day".[65]

In 2000, Slate.com described TiVo's unpublicized gambit of giving free systems to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt.[66]

Burger King has used several marketing campaigns. Its The Subservient Chicken campaign, running from 2004 until 2007, was an example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.[67]

The Blendtec viral video series Will It Blend? debuted in 2006. In the show, Tom Dickson, Blendtec founder and CEO, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender. Will it Blend? has been nominated for the 2007 YouTube award for Best Series, winner of .Net Magazine's 2007 Viral Video campaign of the year and winner of the Bronze level Clio Award for Viral Video in 2008.[68] In 2010, Blendtec claimed the top spot on the AdAge list of "Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time".[69] The Will It Blend page on YouTube currently shows over 200 million video views.[70]

The Big Word Project, launched in 2008, aimed to redefine the Oxford English Dictionary by allowing people to submit their website as the definition of their chosen word. The project, created to fund two Masters students' educations, attracted the attention of bloggers worldwide, and was featured on Daring Fireball and Wired Magazine.[71]

Companies may also be able to use a viral video that they did not create for marketing purposes. A notable example is the viral video "The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments" created by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of EepyBird. After the initial success of the video, Mentos was quick to offer its support. They shipped EepyBird thousands of mints for their experiments. Coke was slower to get involved.[72]

On March 6, 2012, Dollar Shave Club launched their online video campaign. In the first 48 hours of their video debuting on YouTube they had over 12,000 people signing up for the service. The video cost just $4500 to make and as of November 2015 has had more than 21 million views. The video was considered as one of the best viral marketing campaigns[73] of 2012 and won "Best Out-of-Nowhere Video Campaign" at the 2012 AdAge Viral Video Awards.

In 2014, A.L.S. Ice Bucket Challenge was among the best viral marketing challenges examples in the social network. Millions of people on the social media started filming themselves, pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads and sharing the video with their friends. The challenge was created to give support for fighting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease. People finished the challenge and then nominated the next person they knew on the social media to take the same challenge. By following this trend, Ice Bucket Challenge became a 'fab' on social media with many online celebrities such as Tyler Oakley, Zoe Sugg and huge celebrities and entrepreneurs like Justin Bieber, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates participating.[74] Until September 2014, over 2.4 million ice bucket-related videos had been posted on Facebook, and 28 million people had uploaded, commented on or liked ice bucket-related posts. And about 3.7 million videos had been uploaded on Instagram with the hashtags #ALSicebucketchallenge and #icebucketchallenge.[75] The ALS association didnt invent the ice bucket challenge, but they sure received a huge amount of donation from this activity. It raised a reported $220 million worldwide for A.L.S. organisations, and this amount is thirteen times as much donation as what it had in the whole preceding year in just eight weeks.[76]

In mid 2016, an Indian tea company (TE-A-ME) has delivered 6,000 tea bags[77] to DonaldTrumpand launched a video on YouTube.[78] and Facebook[79] The video campaign become an award-winning viral marketing case study and received various awards including most creative PR stunt[80] in Southeast Asia after receiving 52000+ video shares, 3.1M video view in first 72-hour and hundreds of publication mentions (including Mashable, Quartz,[81] Indian Express,[82] Buzzfeed[83]) across 80+ countries.

Read the rest here:
Viral marketing - Wikipedia