Blog assignment 6 : 'Social Media'

       Few weeks ago, I watched a video in Youtube website and it is one of the coca-cola company’s campaign    that they did. What they did is that they put vending machine in college and try to surprise people who buy cokes by pouring out coke bottles or giving out free stuffs from vending machine hole, which is never expected to happen. The impact of this simple test was huge. It was not only surprising their customers but delivering happiness and sharing them with people around them creating unique memories and experiences. Right after this video clip was posted, it rated more than 30 million clicks. It was made under the logo of ‘Open Happiness’ meaning that happiness begins when you buy a coke and it really proved true! Even me, who was just watching that video could feel the happiness and surprise emotion that the actual person who was stunned by the pouring cokes felt, and it was so impressive and big impact that it remains in my mind. I spread words to friends about this fun coca-cola campaign even without noticing it, and here comes the power of ‘social media’ effect.  

This fun video was spread quickly through blog, twitter, facebook and what the company did was just uploading one video not huge marketing campaign.  They didn’t focus on advertising their products or company. What they did was just to create happenings for their customers and of course, happy happenings.

“The point of social media marketing is here, is ‘making people talk about it themselves’”.

      The emphasis is on the each one of individual self. Those each individuals are influential that they affect each other equally (it’s true that sometimes there are some individuals who are more influential than others, but in terms of consumers). Social media marketing is to trigger those influential individuals to affect each other through the tool ‘social media’ and trigger them slightly enough to let them talk about it themselves. What company does is to create positive and surprising experiences that are just enough to be triggered, and expose their brands with it and let them recognize the experience and the brand together.

The famous quote said by the social media marketing director of coca-cola is that “as a globally well known brand, we have responsibility to respond to people who talk and gossip about our brand “. These days marketing world is talking about social media everywhere. It’s evolving vigorously everyday and its influence is getting so powerful and unpredictable that we can’t help paying attention to it. So, what is the social media?

WHAT is social media?

    Based on the advent of technology Web 2.0, the social media is proliferated so quickly into our society in accordance with the popularization of digital gadgets like cell phones, digital cameras and smart phones. People can share about their photos, videos, and words in everywhere and everywhen simultaneously and this communication activity is becoming strong base. People voluntarily participate in relationship and communication through social media and continuing network connects people who are willing to participate.

      Youtube, twitter, blog, facebook are based on platform that is personalized, connects with other friends, share information and continue their communication in ubiquitous connection status. It changed the individuals’ life style and paradigm of marketing communication in business world.

WHAT does it do?

     Using this idea and system of social media, the concept of social media marketing arises in the business world. the concept of social media marketing is a certain type of communication activity that companies try to understand consumers’ needs and wants and also sustain relationships with instant responses based on openness and connections of various point of contacts created by social media. Social media act as more than just tool for promotion for companies because it involves more voluntary participation of consumers themselves. They became more active in their roles and influences in the relationship between the company and themselves and they send information to companies as well as much as they get information from companies. It similar to the concept of ‘prosumer’ which combines the word producer and consumer together, and it refers to the idea consumer more acting like producer as well. Social media has created background for those prosumers and its natural phenomenon that more consumers are becoming prosumers. Due to social media, the relationship between the company and consumer has been reinforced.

  According to one of the article that I read, the reasons that consumers ‘follows’ certain brands’ twitter is that 1) they want to get information about newly released products which social media can be effective promotion tool in this sense, 2) they want to communicate with brands and build relationships and social media acts as tool for feedbacks and keeping consumer participation, 3) they want to save money because they can get sales information and social media can be also effective promotion tool here, 4) they just want to enjoy the fun contents that companies create 5) lastly they want to show their loyalty to their favorite brands and people who fall into this category is the most influential and valuable customers to companies since they are willing to spend their time and effort to spread positive information to influence others about brands when properly communicated with companies.

“The characteristic of social media marketing can be said ‘voluntariness’, ‘real time’, ‘connectivity’.”

    By understanding reasons why consumers use social media, I thought that it gives some clues and directions to companies about how and where they need to head themselves toward the enlarging market of social media. It reveals that companies need to effectively use the social media as promotion and communication tool to deliver information about their brands using the advantage of social media being ‘real time’. Also, they need to create platform for consumers to participate and express their opinions, feedbacks . Not only providing information through social media, they need to put effort to provide interactive contents to consumers including the element of fun and approach proper types of consumers in proper types of media to get positive responses from them.

WHAT can companies do?

 Regarding the point of finding consumers’ insights through social media, the important value is ‘active thoughts and experience’. People talk more about their thoughts and opinions than ever before and those “voluntarily revealed information about individuals through social media include hidden needs and behaviors called ‘customer insights’ that were impossible to detect before”. The strongest advantage of social media is that companies can interpret many consumers various trends and needs and find opportunity in developing or improving new products. According to one of the market research, only the 5% of needs are actually verbally expressed from what they want. Like this fact, social media is effective way to look for hidden insights that have never been expressed from consumers.

"For example, when the company Apple released their new product ipad, the number of messages delivered through twitter was over 500,000. The Apple found interesting fact that the word that consumers used the most number of times when talking about ipad turned out to be the word ‘case’ and they could see that the consumers were more interested in cases that protect their expensive gadget. Due to this interesting insights, Apple could utilize this new opportunity to focus more on developing efficient cases for ipad and it was successful. "

Social media is voluntarily used by consumers but as we can see from the example, it can be used for companies to gain the insights and actually impact their business strategy. It’s becoming valuable and effective source for them to reveal the hidden insights and it’s even positive than traditional marketing strategy that companies used to do in the past because it’s voluntarily done by consumers for their own interest.

Social media is created through all contents that created by consumer themselves. The contents and responses reflect what consumers think about brands. Due to this daily life contents and comments, companies can find useful insights and come up with solutions. Those thoughts and opinions expressed through social media can reveal hidden insights than cannot be gained through artificial and quantitative research methods. Companies should concentrate on looking for valuable insights in qualitative data pouring out from social media and reflect them on their future plans and build fellowship with their customers.

Beyond the advantage of social media that company can find and understand consumers’ insights, also it motivates company to create customer experiences too.  Another role that social media can act for companies I think is making customers become enthusiastic about their brand by providing creative contents. It doesn’t take a lot of marketing budget or long term plan, but generate huge impact on brand recognition and loyalty. This reason was also one of the reasons why people follow brands’ twitter too. People using social media are looking for more fun and creative stuffs everyday and that is why people create their contents to express themselves. Interesting and creative contents attract people’s attention and thanks to real time social media, its power of attracting many peoples’ attention in a short time is unpredictable.

   Companies can use this advantage, and drag more peoples’ attention on their brand, expose, make fun, impress, and attract customers. Like the coca-cola video, companies are focusing on creating more fun experiences on their brands and products, and the practice itself dragged attention. Therefore, companies need to become one of the member of using social media themselves so that they can build strong bond of sympathy. They need to act as one of the most active contents creator and try to create consumers experiences as well.

* Useful resoure : http://www.engagementdb.com/
ENGAGEMENTdb Report 2009 : Ranking the top 100 Global Brands
It's posted by the company called Altimerter Group founded by  Charlene Li who was co-author of Groundswell .