When Fan Page Karma (fanpagekarma.com) analysed 1500 German Facebook pages, calculated the average interaction and then rated the weather for every single day of the year 2013 they found that there was a distinct linear correlation between weather and user behaviour, including that:
• Bad weather always makes the interaction increase – completely independently from season.
• Fans react on average 42 per cent more often when the sun isn’t shining.
• On rainy summer weekends posts receive nearly twice as much reaction: the post interaction increases by 90 per cent.
• Even in spring, autumn and winter a clear difference between sunny and rainy days is noticeable: there are 39 per cent more reactions on average.
Source: blog.fanpagekarma.com/2013/12/04/rains-users-react-facebook- posts
Chapter exercises
1. Discuss the issue of who owns any social media marketing at your university or college. Consider the same question in different industries. 2. Discuss the notion that many products, brands and organizations
have a social media presence but without any recognized marketing objectives.
3. Consider your involvement in social media. Do you offer any ROI for products, brands or organizations who target you within social media?
References
Charlesworth, A. (2009) Internet Marketing: A Practical Approach. Butterworth Heinemann. Cohen, H. (2010) Old Spice’s Viral Social Media Drives Sales. Available online at www.
heidicohen.com/old-spice’s-viral-social-media-drives-sales
Dawkins, N. (2012) Fifty Shades of Social Media Measurement Tools. Available online at marketingland.com/fi fty-shades-of-social-media-measurement-tools-14261 Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business (2013) The CMO Survey. Available
online at https://faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/cmosurveyresults/The_CMO_Survey_ Highlights_and_Insights_Aug%20-%2013-Final.pdf
eMarketer (2013) B2B Social Media Lead Generation: Best Practices for 2013. Available online at www.emarketer.com
ExactTarget (2014) 2014 State of Marketing. Available online at www.content. exacttarget.com/en/StateOfMarketing2014
Kamal, I. (2011) The Social Media Measurement Imperative: Building Business Value. Available online at www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008727
Li, C. (2010) Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead. Jossey-Bass.
Sterne, J. (2010) How Much Is a Social Media Participant Worth? Available online at www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1708953/how-much-is-social-media- participant-worth
Syncapse (2013) The Value of a Facebook Fan. Available online at www.syncapse.com/ value-of-a-facebook-fan-2013
Tata Consultancy Services (2013) Mastering Digital Feedback. Available online at www. tcs.com
5 Social service and support
The point is made in the preface of this book that many – if not all – of the various subjects covered in this book are inextricably linked, and those addressed in this chapter are no exception. However, there is fi rst an issue of what is it called to be addressed.
This book is called An Introduction to Social Media Marketing and yet in this section of the book I am going to ask the question of what is marketing? The reason it must be addressed is that marketing is normally seen as attracting customers, and once they become customers a different department of the organization takes over. For example, advertising might attract people into a Tesco store but would that organization’s marketing department be responsible for the store layout, its cleanliness and staff? Similarly, a marketer in a B2B engineering company might be responsible for making a sale to a customer, but after that they play little or no part in the design, manufacture and delivery of the fi nished product.
So why should customer service be one of my stated objectives for any social media marketing strategy? A marketer might put forward the argument that this is the case because the service offered by a supermarket is actually the product that the customer has bought, therefore the delivery of the product – in this case a service – falls under the remit of the marketing department. Naturally, in a smaller business the demarcation lines are less obvious, with staff and departments working much closer together. Which brings us to a marketing paradox that existed long before the Internet was developed. Small to medium business owners and managers will frequently say they have no formal marketing department, plan or strategy, and yet in reality they practise – almost naturally – marketing that larger organizations strive hard to achieve. This is because as the small business expands it is necessary to employ more people who are specialists in aspects of the business. Human resources and accounts are obvious examples – as is marketing. As soon as departments exist, cohesion between the functions becomes problematic. (Note that this is an extremely simplistic interpretation of how businesses develop, but it is – I think – suffi cient to make the point.) However, as has been covered in the earlier chapters of this book, digital technology in general and social media in particular have changed the relationship between the organization and the
customer – and it is the organization that accepts that every employee has a role to play in its marketing (the concept of market orientation) which has gained most from the digital revolution. And if we accept that this is the way that busi- nesses must now operate if they are to be successful – then service and support is most certainly part of marketing. Think of it, perhaps, as post-sales ngagement.
But hold on for just a second, we marketers are fond of new terms and phrases to make it look as though we are always on the cutting edge of our subject (marketers aren’t the only ones guilty of this: human resources used to be the personnel department). Isn’t post-sales engagement another term for – or aspect of – relationship marketing? And note that the discipline of relationship marketing is relatively new and yet the practice has existed since mankind started trading.
The customer experience
Although the concept of the customer experience has been around for a long time, in recent years it has risen to be a hot topic in marketing circles. It is no coincidence that this rise has coincided with the ascend- ancy in the popularity of social media. A concept I have endorsed since the fi rst days of the Internet is that marketing has moved from helping the seller to sell to helping the buyer to buy. As digital marketing authority Gerry McGovern (2011) says, ‘old-school marketing is about getting customers to do things. Web marketing is about helping customers do things.’
This refl ects the shift in the balance of power between the customer and the marketer; in the digital environment the power belongs to the customer and in social media this is an absolute. No longer can products, brands or organizations dictate how customers think about them, customers make up their own minds – and it is inevitable that it is in social media that the contemporary customers’ minds are made up.
Naturally, the concept of customer experience extends beyond the digital environment and depending on the brand, product or organization ‘digital’ will have more or less of an infl uence. For the offl ine retailer it is the help the cus- tomer gets in selecting the right product or the smile they get at the checkout. For the small garage it is the prompt parts delivery that means the customer’s car is ready for them to collect on time. However, for the contemporary brand that experience not only extends online, but the digital experience may dictate the overall customer experience. However, it is also the case that although the digital marketers can infl uence how the brand, product or organization is per- ceived and even have a positive infl uence, the offl ine customer experience must match the online promise. Indeed, this refl ects the fact that the social media marketer either suffers from a vicious circle where bad service is trumpeted on
“
marketing has moved from helping theseller to sell to helping the buyer to buy
68 Strategic social media marketing
social media sites – or they benefi t from a virtuous circle where excellent service is shouted from the digital house tops. It is within this notion that social media has brought such a benefi t to the consumer.