Key elements for getting to know clients in the new economy.
Social media started as a way of getting in touch between young people at university, but nowdays social media has created a new way of interacting with people, with clients, ect
Social media like facebook, with 750 million users, Twiter with 275 million people, and linkedin with more than 100 million proffesional registered are stable business. Social media are one of the key elements of the communication era as the have chance sociaety and technology, and in few years the will have more then half of the market share in the publicity sector.
in this paper, we will talk about how to use social media and how to create high effective marketing strategies promoting the user to coolaborate, paying especial attention to facebook, twitter and linkedin as new channels of communication with clients.
1. Brief introduction to social media.
Social media is one of the most famous services/products that were created on the internet sector, although social media does not incorporate new IP technology, that is new protocols of communication between systems, there are a new topology in the way it stablish how people communicate. Social media establish a platform for people to comunicate news, press, or they way they feel.
social media is a place for large groups of people to meet on line, even millions of people, coming from different places in the world who share some interests or some socio demographical backgrounds, and they colaborate into a process of communicating contents, messages and news. Social media is creating new habits in society, as they allows citizens to express ideas, contents, and it might be done as part of their proffesional life, as a hhoby or even as a political issue.
for some experts the origin of social media started in 1995, when Randy Conrads, created the place www.classmates.com in other to keep in contact with class mates, from school, university, etc. In 2002 some social media strats promoting making friends on social media, in 2003 Xing and Myspace start getting famous.
The idea of being able to get in contact with people that will help users to develop their personal and proffesional career, promoted the growht of users. but soon, these social media realizaed that the concept was very romantic by not very practical, and them social media like linkedin focused on more practical issues, like create a CV, look forward a job because we are unemployed, or even if being employed we are looking for another job.
If we are looking forward business opportunities, or if we are willing a client to contract us for a certain project.
Also some other media has been developed no so focus on proffesional issues but more on hobbies, and personal life. That is facebook, the bfirst social media that year 2010 was the web site more visited in USA , more the google.
Microblogging is another phenomenum thats is created and that gets into relation with social media, many proffesionals or amateurs use blogs to further rexpress their ideas. Twiter was born to make blogs easier, faster and get conneted with social media, so people can follow you up.
Twiter allows you to create a short message similar to that of an sms, and it is conneted to other social media in order to spread the information on Internet.
2. facebook as a new channel to communicate with friends.
Facebook it is the most well know social media in the international market, it is very generalist, so covers all segments of population. It is not longer used only by youngers.
Also facebook is used by companies in order to promote their brand , facebook allows user to have a proffesional web page on facebook with content, videos, pictures, etc and then promote users to visit the site by promoting in on the facebook social media. also the company can easy listen to their users/clients to know them better.
One your proffesional site is created in Facebook, users can become fans of it, so they will follow your site content.
There is one users that would be in charge of the administration of the site, its contents, strauctures etc, also this users will get the statistics about users, more visited contents, etc. On the left side of the website,
The user in charge of the website can create different menus. Starting with we are going to focus on the usual menu used in facebook. Also facebooks allows you to create and integrate new funcionalities into facebook, like games, calendars, Conquest, etc..
Once the website is created, the objetive is to get fans, in order to stablish s direct communciation with them. In order todo so, a "Like box" can be installed, also advertisements can be placed.
Social pluggs in facilitae the integration of the facebook social media with the rest of the world wide web, so that users can share teh content of the content, and also looked up if tehir friends liked the information provided.
Facebook insights allows you to check out different information about who visited your page, who are your fans, etc.. Facebook will provided you information about:
- Users that had become your fans, with sociodemographical data.
- Visualized contents on the website( messages, pictures, videos, etc)
- User comments.
- Menus and seccions of the site that got more visits.
facebooks provides all this information with graphisc and friednly use tools.
3. Promotion on facebook.
Thanks to its fast growth on Internet, 750 million users world wide, and because in most cases facebook has demographic data about the users, like sex, age, country, city, etc also some academical, proffesionals data, and hobbies, like music they like, writters, and so on. therefore facebook is a good place for creating marketing strategies. facebook main incomes come from marketing activities.
An advertisiment in facebook has this sections:
- Ttitle: no more than 25 caracters.
- URL of the web site in which the adversitment will be shown ( it can be a web sie outside or inside facebook)
- Picture: no more than 110*80 pixels.
- Content: a text of no more than 125 caracters.
- Social content: An optional tools that allows reader to check out if any of their friends in facebook read that adversitment.
In facebook, the adversitment that is shown to users on the right side menu, can be linked to web site in facebook, to an aplication, ot to an event or a facebook group. But also it can be link to an external web site.
One of the main advantages of facebook is that it allows very good socio demographic segmentation.
- demographic data: sex, age, married or not.
- Geographical location.
- Academical and proffesional background, studies ,university, companies in which has been working.
- Hobbies; likes and dislikes in music, films, etc.
It must be said that many people do not register those data or they do it not accuratly, therefore sometimes the segmentation in facebook can not be totally realiable.
In a nutshell when creating a marketing campeing in internet, the following ideas must be followed:
1. Establish marketing objetives. What we want to get from it. ( Like promoting a web site, increase of sales, promote an event 9
2. Target you audience. Make a segmentation by sociademo grahical data,and take into account their interestes, hobbies, and take into account tha possibility of creating different marketing startegies for different segmentations like young people, students, graduated students, proffesionals, fathers , mothers, etc.
3. Create a advertisemnts; for each segmentation a different advert could be created.
4. Estimate a budget.
5. Controlling the results. So that you can redising the strategy according to the results.
Facebook allows you to contract two different types of services fees;
- CPM, cost per impression.
- CPC, cost per click. similar to the one offered by google in Adwords.
In both cases the way to fix the price is dinamic, taken into account the competitors at that moment that also want to place an adverstiement , each client indicate the price that you want to expend so that facebook alocates the advertisements according to that, the most you are willing to pay the biggest probability that your ad will be shown.
Clients also can fixed the maximun amount of money to be spent on adversitment, per day, and how long the campaing is going to be active.
Client has access to a tool, in order to control all these feautures, in order to controll the marketing campeing, so he/she can have a look at Invocing, profitability, as well as:
- Impressions; number of times that the ad have been shown.
- Cliks. number of times that users click on the ad.
This tools also allows you to know when user clisked on the add, , what day of the week, and what type of segmentation they belong to ( age, sex, etc )
also facebook, allows you to create at the begginng several ads, then by controlling which one is more successfull and concentrate your campaing on those more effective.
therefore you can control and adjust the marketing activities daily.
4. difference between google and facebook in order to create a Marketing strategy.
Google is base on key words , that is known as SEM, search engine marketing, and it is focus on marketing activities to look for people interested in a certain product, service, or brand. It is more like a person that get into a library, and looks for contents. On the other hand Facebook is more like a party in which users are gather with friends,
they share their experiences, in this sense facebook ad is segmentated to a group of people sharing same hobbies or ideas.
Also there is a new tool in facebook since 2011, that allows users to get paid for seeing the adverts.
5. Twitter as a new tool of communication.
Twitwer is being used as a tool in order to keep in contact with users registered as followers, offering contents, news, etc.
This is a very efficient tool for those companies that want to promote new offers, give support to clients, pay attention to claims, try to make your clients to go to a certain shop, or event.
The success of this type of campaigns depend on how many followers the company has, therefore it is important to insert a Follow up botton.
Also twitter allows to unswer your fans, also you to forward the twitter to other users, etc..
Twitter is essential to get interactions between users, USER- ENGAGEMENT.
as it is one of the main ways for creating traffic on a marketing campaign. So when creating a twitter content, take into account that users, normally highly interact with those contents thata re very creative, new, that is they have been created in order to be shared.
one way of analysing the success on twitter is to look up the number of followers compering it to the competitors, taking into account the times of mentioned being registered, that is, how main times the twitter was forwarded, that is the number of retweets.
This way apart for seizing the audience, also your are seising the influence on that media.
5. Advertisement in Twitter.
in 2011 Twitter has establish a tool for adversitment in twitter, with 3 different types of ads.
- Promoted tweets. Those tweets will be shown by those users that have linked a related key word to their tweet , so the ad will be shown by users that are not followers. They wil be allowed to interact with the tweet as usual. It allows the user to have a CPE, cost per engagement, that is the advertiser only has to paid if the user interact. It is similar to the idea of Pay per click. Also, some traffic can be generated without cost, as if the promoted tweet is forward between fans there will be not extra cost for the company.
- trending topics. Another tool is the trending topics so it can be hightlighted as a trendy topic for a town or a geographical area, when user clink on it tehy are forwarded to all promoted tweets that content that trend topic.
- promoted accounts. it allows the company to increase the number of followers. The company will be hightlighted in the section Who to follow that twitter offers to their users according to their likes.
Twitter also allows you to have tools in order to controll your marketing activities in twitter.
6. Linkedin and networking among proffesionals.
Linkedin is the main social media when dealing with proffesional issues. with more than 100 million users registered by 2011, of which many are CEOs.
In linkedin users can describe their proffesional background. Also groups can be created and followed up, search tools are avalable in order to look for HRs, among the groups proffesionals can discuss about different ideas, giving their own poitn of view. Also proffesionasl can look for colaborations, etc. This way at linkedin there is a way of connecting people in order to colaborate on proffesional projects. It is also an atractive social media for advertisement.
Linkedin has an advertisement tool, called linkedin Ads, that allows segmentation by place, activity, company profile, studies background, proffesional experience, etc.. Ads can be CPM, or CPC. Ads are shown on the menu on the right side.