The Impact of Social Media on Small Business

The impact of Social Media on small businesses

Contents
Introduction Chapter 2
a. History of social media
b. Problem statement 2
Research question 2
Interpretation 3
Scope 3
Methodology 4
Project type 4
Models and theories 4
Structure 4
Data collection 4
Criticisms of data 4
Literature Review 5
Social media platforms suitable for B2B 6
Benchmark 11
Key success factors that affect the social media marketing 13
Industries that can benefit from using social media marketing 15
Parts of the value chain in which SMM could be used 15
Social media in R&D 17
Social media in Marketing and sales 17
Social media customer support and service 19
Costs involved in engaging in social media marketing 20
Measuring the outcome of social media marketing 20
Social media and the future 23
Conclusion 25
Case Study
Linked IN 24
Twitter 28
FaceBook 32
Youtube 34
Blogs 37
Forums 39
Literature list 41

INTRODUCTION CHAPTER a. History of social media
Social media are Internet sites where people interact freely, sharing and discussing information about each other and their lives, using a multimedia mix of personal words, pictures, videos and audio.

At these Web sites, individuals and groups create and exchange content and engage in person-to-person conversations.

They appear in many forms including blogs and microblogs, forums and message boards, social networks, wikis, virtual worlds, social bookmarking, tagging and news, writing communities, digital storytelling and scrapbooking, and data, content, image and video sharing, podcast portals, and collective intelligence.

There are lots of well-known sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal, Wikipedia, Wetpaint, Wikidot, Second Life, Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit, Lulu and many others.

b. Problem statement
Social media has revolutionized the way we communicate with each other. People who previously just was content consumers, now has the possibility of being content producers. New social media brands keep popping up, and people are starting to interact more and more. What is interesting is to see how social media and B2B companies are using social media, why they are using it, and what they are gaining from it. With the introduction of social media, a new marketing term arose: social media marketing. This brings up an interesting discussion, saying that the control has now been taken out of the companies’ hands, and into the consumers and business partners’ hands. It will be interesting to look into, how the companies can den deal with this fact. Do they need to try to regain the control, or is it actually a positive thing, and how can they benefit from the new communication structure. Is social media marketing for everyone; and can it create a negative effect if not handled correctly. The communication possibilities are developing extremely fast, and it is important for the companies to be alert of the new and upcoming trends, and to be well informed when choosing how and which activities to engage in. c. Hypothesis:
Null Hypothesis
H0:
A social media platform can be economically valuable to a business organization only if it generates information that either improves the reliability of existing information, or is new information.
Invest time and effort tosocial media platforms is a efficient way to marketing a business
Alternative Hypothesis
H1:
A social media platform cannot be economically valuable to a business organization only if it generates information that either improves the reliability of existing information, or is new information.
Invest time and effort tosocial media platforms is not aefficient way to marketing a business

d. Research question
How can small companies benefit from the use of social media marketing?
The sub-questions giving a clear view for the answer to the research question:
1. Which social media platforms are suitable for B2B?
2. Which are the key success factors that affect the social media marketing?
3. Will it be equally beneficial from all industries to use social media marketing?
4. In which parts of value chain and for what purposes social media could be used?
5. What will be the costs involved in engaging in social media marketing?
6. How do you measure the outcome of social media marketing?
7. How will the social media develop in the future?
Interpretation
It is the most importance to start interpreting the problem statement by defining the limitations and the meaning of small companies, in order to clarify what differs themselves from the others. Therefore some parameter will be considered such as the company’s age, size number of employees, independency (branches and subsidiaries will not be considered as independent business and therefore will be rejected), and last but not least the annual revenue. It is important to highlight that some of the parameters mentioned above are going to be more flexible than others.
Regarding the term benefits it refers to the way the companies will increase their profit by the use of social media marketing. The increase of competitive advantage together with the market share would be aspects for the companies to evaluate once the social media marketing is implemented.
In what respects to the social media and what it entails, it is a term used to describe the type of media that is based on dialog and interaction between people by using web-based technologies. They support the democratization of knowledge and information and transform people from content consumers to content producers. For this report, the focus will be narrowed to social media marketing, which is a recent component used in organizations defined as the process of generating interest, exposure, opportunities sales and receiving feedback by using social media platforms.
Scope
This report will analyze the social media phenomenon with the focus on how can it be used for marketing. When looking into the marketing the research will be done from a small business perspective leaving big and medium businesses aside. Additionally the small businesses will represent unknown brands or services with limited marketing budgets that are operating in the B2B sector. The social media platforms that will be discussed in this report are blogs, forums and popular websites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and LinkedIn.
Methodology
Project type
The project requires to research in specific different areas of appliance of social media, and it will be conducted on a base of an interpretive research. The interpretive research lies mainly in qualitative research and that is what it is needed to answer the research question. The interpretive research will focus mainly on participant observation, unstructured interviews and personal documents. The report will not include specific, scientific facts of the benefits of social media, but more the personal opinion of journalist, authors, researcher of the fields and later on the interviewers. The reason for this is that there are not real scientific data about social media but only related on personal experience and it is known that experience can be perceived differently.
Models and theories
Structure
The project will be conducted though an analytical approach as well as descriptive. The main objective is to answer the research question by using both primary and secondary data. The sub questions are set to support the research questions and emphasized in the aspects that should be considered in order to answer the problem statement.
The structure used will cover sub-conclusions along the whole report that will help to narrow into a final conclusion that will answer the overall problem statement.
Data collection
Data will be collected through qualitative research. It will divided with primary research and secondary research; at first it will be reviewed the various existing articles and books on social media marketing, that could be found in the web or library. The second part of the research will involve creating collaboration with small companies that are operating with social media and interview the employees by phone or by mail or personal interviews.
Criticisms of data
The research will be based on articles, published data, facts collected in the past from other parties and interviews. The research will be conducted by treating secondary data analysis with appropriate skepticism and respect for its limitations and by demanding tacit assumptions about the unreliability of secondary data.
The interviews will be carried out probably trough the phone or via e-mails, and this restricts the possibility of getting extra information. Furthermore, due to our time limits we will restrict the number of companies’ interviews to five. This sample is undersized to find out the correct information and the statistical facts of the interviews, but it is important to evaluate and take in consideration the opinion of social media users even though it may not define the facts.
Literature Review
First of all it is important to look at why it is important for companies to engage in social media. One of the most obvious reasons is the popularity of some of the most established social media brands. To take an example the website YouTube has 65.000 video uploads each day (footnote), ending up in 13 hours of new video uploaded every minute. They have 100 million video views per day, and around 5 billion videos views pr. month. One out of every 10 user of the Internet are creators, meaning that they post public content. This is extremely large numbers, which makes social media pages like You Tube a must for companies to be present on. To illustrate what social media precisely is, and how companies are affected by it, we will create a short story as an example.
Copenhagen is famous for its beer; through the past 150 years Carlsberg has been making high quality beer coming out of a large factory. Some years back Carlsberg did focus groups, and found out that they could maximize profits by offering three types of beer; pilsner, dark, and golden. The residents of Copenhagen were content; they never thought it could be different. Suddenly a new invention came to Copenhagen, equipment making it possible for everyone to make their own beer, for only 10.000 kr. This changed everything, the Jensen family started producing dark beer with a twist of cinnamon, and the Andersen family started producing sweet beer. Soon the people of Copenhagen, at very little cost, were producing every beer possible to imagine. Of course some beers were more popular than others. The Hansen family’s cherry beer had a very small but loyal following; this was not a big problem, as the family only needed enough income to produce the next batch. David started to produce a spicy beer that turned out to be so popular that he actually started his own brewery and store. Over time people started to think differently about beer, it didn’t always come from a major brewery, but from neighbors and friends. It became something to share, something that brought people together. Carlsberg still made the best pilsner around, and to their surprise demand actually grew. However it was the unique beers made by the residents that brought people to Copenhagen. When they arrived there were a problem, there were too many beers to choose from. The visitors became overwhelmed; they wanted to find the beers that were new, popular and interesting to them. Peter had an idea, he put a board up on the side of his house, where he invited people that had tried his beer to, describe, rate and comment on the beer. People loved it, at a glance visitors could tell what his beer was about, and access if it was something for them. Over time every resident had his or their own board. The Hansen family’s board showed that not everyone liked it, but it was very unique. And interesting David’s board was filled with positive reviews and ratings. Soon a few things became clear to the residents of Copenhagen. First their beer seems to be getting better, because they have learned directly from the customer. Second the free customer reviews were more valuable than costly advertising. Third the boards created a way for the customers to find precisely what they wanted. The combination between using new technology and new ways to work with customers helped the residents of Copenhagen to feel like a unique community.
We could call this social beer, by the people for the people. But what does beer have in common with social media? Today everyone has a chance to make their own beer, thanks to free tool such as blogs, podcast and video sharing. Plus we now have a new way for real people to play a role in providing feedback, organization and promotion. Whether we are talking about a big established company, an individual with loyal fans, or simply someone with ideas and opinions, social media means new opportunities to create and communicate net new people.
Social media can include any digital communication channel that allows people to interact with other people. It’s not about brands, it’s about people sharing.
Social media platforms suitable for B2B
The social media network, LinkedIn is the suggested tool for connection in B2B. In this network the user will have the possibility to get noticed from major executive that sometimes are hard to reach, ask advice about business related question and connect to business that interest the user and prosper form it. The tool may present some disadvantages as we have seen in the analysis but considering the other media this will represent a good gate to get in communication with different business and be recommended. The tool could be used as well as a key account management system, in this way the user can check on your customers on a daily base, to show them that they matter for you and to show them that they are not going to be bothered with a phone call unless is necessary. The Key account manager could create leads from groups and blogs and work on maintain good relationship by always giving a good service and keeping in communication with new possible prospects. The tool is as we have seen design for B2B and it is perfectly suitable to work in connection with other business in order to create benefits for your company.
Twitter is based on micro blogging that updates the followers with instant messages of their interest. As it is widely know humans are social creatures that have a need to socialize, communicate and share emotions. The short tweets that people are sending create opportunity for B2B focused followers to understand and help develop empathy towards tweeters. Many RSS and other mobile services permit instantaneous responses which than starts a two way communication between two parties. This is a start of relationship building process. Because this type of communications is a one-on-one, it requires a lot of time to develop into relationship and sympathy from the targeted person. Thus such types of communication should be targeted only at KAM customers, high potential future value customers or important influences or decision makers. Such micro blogging environments create difficulties for B2B focused followers to filter thru the tweets. Important high ranking corporate officials such as Evan Williams, CEO of twitter, chooses to talk about birthday of one of the followers, his child Miles, future of Twitter and football world cup just in four following tweets. Building relationship and trust in such conditions requires time but answering even the most non-business related tweets of business people might lead to unexpected results.
Lack of focus groups and features in Twitter mean that more extensive social media brands such as Facebook and LinkedIn posses higher attractiveness to reach out for larger target groups. But real time responsiveness and high involvement make twitter a niche brand in order to reach out towards single key importance decision makers and influences.
The advantages of Facebook, from a business perspective, are that the costs are the small costs. Making a profile is free meaning that the potential communication via Facebook to with the other company will be free. In comparison to using telephone calls as a main means of communication for example. Promotion is also rather feasible, as developing one’s own page is also free and is a good way of marketing oneself, also in front of other companies. The main advantage is that Facebook, as a social networking website, has the tools for developing network communication with other companies. It also has a rather vast amount of users both individuals using it for fun and also companies wanting to promote themselves and build connections.
There are also relevant disadvantages that have to be taken into consideration. The safety issues that a company should consider would be problems such as identity theft, viruses and spam. Identity theft is when someone steals the identity of a person or, in this cases more importantly, a company. This goes hand in hand with miss-presentation as individuals may pretend to be a representative of your company and misinform and miss-present your company in an undesirable fashion. Facebook has also had problems with spam, mainly due to the fact that anyone can develop their own questionnaires and games and so forth. For your business this would be frowned upon by other potential companies as the media would not be taken seriously. Finally the last issue that was presented in the table was the problem of Facebook being superficial. Many disregard Facebook as a ”serious” medium as it was originally developed in order to share photos and videos and not to be used as a company medium of communication. This prejudice may again reflect badly upon your company in wanting to establish communication with another company over Facebook.
Youtube is video hosting website that permits its users to upload their videos. It also permits creating channels that latter can be followed by interest groups. This options means that videos are being used as a blogging tool to share opinions regarding products, companies and services. It was mostly considered that these reviews are watched by people that are interested in the product and are representing B2C markets. But a new research posted by Groundswell has found that: “91% of these technology decision-makers were Spectators -- the highest number ... ever seen in a Social Technographics Profile“. What was discovered is that B2B buyers are using same social media channels as B2C users to evaluate the product or a service. This again shows that focusing SMM at decision influences in order to make them into advocates of the company can affect the buying behavior of both B2B and B2C buyers.
Again limited functionality and niche focus of the SMM brand means that expanded relationship development should be carried thru different social media brands in order to follow the potentially beneficial individual.
It is believed that using blog regarding the B2B environment, it is convenient for a company to create because it does not take too much effort and it creates the opportunity of connecting the internal organization of the company with the rest of the customer base and the other possible connection. The discussion could be about creating a personal relationship with the customer or strictly professional due to the repercussion that having a too personal relationship could have. By having a personal relationship it could have the advantages of creating stronger relationship, instead it could lower the power of negotiation.
The first advantage of having Business-to-business Forum is that everyone is able to provide ideas, feedback and voice their opinion. From a business perspective this could lead to the development of strategies and being able to get online help. Companies will be able to gain insight from other companies, which they would otherwise not have gotten. Another very clear advantage of a Forum is that developing one is free, or at least very feasible. This means that any company is able to generate a forum within extremely reasonable means and use it as a strong marketing tool. Companies that have successful Forums will aesthetically look very good and have benefits over other companies that do not.
A disadvantage of having a forum is that they are prone to Flaming, meaning posts that abuse other users. There is also the issue of trolling, were users may develop threads that are time-wasting or write responses that are written merely to force a reaction from other users. Spamming is also often a problem were users will spam threads that forces moderators to step in. Inactivity may also be a problem as an inactive forum could put the company in a bad light, as explained below.
“If the forum isn't active, it'll look bad for your company. Having no forum is better than having a dead forum.”
Lastly, Forums may be very time-consuming, as one has to have moderators that take time to read every single post and every single thread in order to make sure that the content is appropriate. These are some of the considerations that need to be considered when a company opts for developing a business-to-business forum as advantages are evident but there are also disadvantages. It is important that the forum is taken seriously as this will often limit and discourage the trolls, flamers and spammers from posting.
Benchmark
In order to understand which social media is more appropriate for the B2B it has been developed a framework to benchmark several criteria that will evaluate the opportunity that the different brands create. First of all the criteria are relative for the business community and what related to the various possibilities that the different brand can help with. To understand this it is needed to understand why business uses social media do. There are various reasons why and there are many different opinions about the subject. Different articles give you reason why social media is worth the time, and this are the social media myths; is free, It does not require time, more feature enhancements are possible, everyone is using it, knowledge sharing, You can make a big splash in a short time, social Media will Replace Traditional Marketing, social Media is a Cure-All. This are the usual response if a person actually Google “social media benefits” even though it has been researched and this myths are just myths. Social media requires a lot of resources and time, and if not done it right it will just waste the company’s time. Another reason is that people want to communicate and achieve relationship and contacts, share knowledge even between people who live at the other side of the globe. Furthermore people are more and more online and business meeting happens more often over the computer and less in person and this is why social media marketing is still growing.
For these reason it has been decided to evaluate the different brand and see which ones have the following characteristics. (We will describe some of them) Build a customer community: this characteristic is very important because by using certain brand like blogs or LinkedIn you have the possibility to connect with your old or current customer and create a retention strategy with them, and ask for reviews and feedback on services and products. The possibility to generate feature for the product, some website gives you the privacy and the amount of network to give space to innovation. Same thing for customer service and product promotion where by doing taking care of the customer well enough, it can evolve in indirect advertisement. Another point is recruit brand advocates , in blogs and groups users of social media will feel like talking about companies and promote them and it is important for companies to take advantage of this opportunity. There are also disadvantages in some of the social media brands and the encountering of negative publicity and review is one of them.
Key success factors that affect the social media marketing
The influence of consumer comments and reviews
There is a critical mass of opinion givers and takers on the Internet. Data suggests that 74% of adults who uses the internet, have participated in posted an online product review, participated in online discussions, commented on a blog, or used online comments and opinions to research a product. After a search function, access to online product reviews, is the most demanded web site feature. 48 % of all people consequently research product and company reviews before purchasing, and 92 % of all online shoppers find reviews helpful. According to studies, recommendations from other consumers, this was stated by 78 % of the survey respondents Consumers trust the online information provided by other consumers, more than radio, television, magazines, internet advertising, and recommendations from salespeople or paid endorsers. Reviews can be found on many types of web sites, but according to research, not all is equally credible. The one that is stated to be the most credible source is social communities, where blogs is rated in the other end of the scale, with only 21% of the consumers that feel they can trust the product information found on blogs. Some bloggers have affiliated relationships with manufactures and retailers; this could be the reason why some consumers might feel that the blogs lack integrity.
To try to explain the trust factor we can look to the attribution theory People tend to discount the opinions and recommendations offered by endorsers paid by the company. This could include salespeople or celebrity brand endorsers like David Beckham is for Adidas, or Roger Federer is for Gillette. Consumers will discount the value of the opinion because the person giving it is being paid for it. This can be explained with the fact that consumers attribute the recommendation to the relationship between the agent and the brand. Citizen endorsement is on the other hand not motivated by the brand that will harvest the benefits from the positive comments and reviews. Even though citizen reviewers are not hired by the brand and do not directly represent them, they still have a high level of authority with the other consumers. The reason is that they actually have used the product and knows about the company and the service level it provides. This means that one like us have tried the product and are telling about their experience with it. Consumers seem to be more influenced by people similar to themselves, other than people who seem different. Celebrity endorsers often has the looks, charm and likability, but the often live a very different life than the average user of a product. To take an example, how similar is Pierce Brosnan’s life compared to the average family dad? One of the most credible sources according to consumers is the reviews of an expert. This is because people who tend to relay on heuristicsto make decisions, will tend to follow the advice of the experts. But also citizen endorsers have this appeal, and Bizrate found that 59% of their users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews. This is also backed up by Jen – Hung Huang and Yi – Fen Chen who also found that consumers were more influenced by other consumers, than by recommendations from experts. Furthermore they found that hedging does occur. This means that people tend to be influenced by consensus; it is pure human nature to think that when everybody else thinks something, then it must be right.
It is important for companies to focus on getting their customers to post comments and reviews for a number of reasons.
Industries that can benefit from using social media marketing
When starting a small company and thinking about getting involved in social media marketing it becomes very important to take into account what industry are you participating in. As mentioned before, in B2B business people making the buy decision are using the same social media channels to gather information about the brand as people in B2C environment. There are important considerations that have to be taken into account about company, customers and industry.
* Local versus international
* Complexity of product
* Complexity of buy decision
* Resources on hand
* Innovativeness of potential customers
Parts of the value chain in which SMM could be used
By analyzing the different social media brands and platforms it is difficult to see which use they have in the entire value chain. We are aware that social media could attract customer, find leads and allow building a strong relationship with customer and supplier. We are also aware of the various problems that social media could create in this sector due to the lack of power and the fact that any user could post bad reviews or critics. Now the question is directed to the value chain and the use of social media in the different department. One of the examples could be the internal organization.
There are different opinions on this matter, due to the costs spent from the organization, in consequence of the time wasted from the employees. It was evaluated “What obstacles does your organization see in adopting a Social media?” from Eval source and it was concluded that for most small companies that participates to the survey the major obstacles are time wasting and executive buy in. It is also known that for small business the cost is really relevant.
The result of the research shows that adopting social media in the organization is not as simple as it is believed. Even though the individuals are using social media often in their private life it does not seem to work in the same way in the organization. But we can see that the rate is changing and is becoming faster, and companies are starting to understand the various benefits and more often adopting the strategy.
According to an article of the BBC news of November 2007, social networking costs to company’s money and hours of productivity. “According to employment law firm Peninsula 233 million hours are lost every month as a result of employees "wasting time" on social networking.” This is apparently a real problem for company and some businesses are selling devices to block these websites to avoid “useless” costs.
The other side of the coin put social media as a learning tool for the employee, where sometimes the company has to send the workers to do apprenticeship, training and courses. This was also an extra cost before the introduction of social media. Now with the implementation of social media in the organization the employee can benefits of getting answer from expert of the field and create a faster communication and response on his work environment. With social learning the employee can share knowledge and slowly become an expert and this could also help to achieve different goals, like: productive employees, speed of business, flexibility and quality and it could lead to innovation.
Another point is the creation of efficiency using social media, by using social media it is believed that the employee could work faster and communicate with others more precisely.
The idea is that by implementing social media in the organization employee would prefer doing their job due to the development of a stronger collaborative environment, and the increase of the fun quotient.
All the point see the truth about social media in organization, the costs, the time wasted but also the good side where it could reduce training costs and increase the production of the employee and the knowledge sharing between the department and field expert. It is believed that it should be taken in consideration all views and concentrate on the benefits for the company to operate with this special tool, but somehow there is a trade off that should be considered.
Social media in R&D
In referring to the book “management of research and development in organization: managing the unmanageable” by Ravinder Kumar Jain and Harry CharalambosTriandis the R&D department needs certain elements to work properly: People, Ideas, founds and cultural elements. These elements have to be coordinated in order to achieve excellence and high level of productivity. The book explains how it is necessary to have in the department creative people that come up with perfect idea for the product. Winchell believed that the perfect people for the R&D department are analytical, curious, independent, self sufficient, flexible, and tolerant of ambiguity. That is why in the argumentation we support the idea that social media could be integrated in the R&D department. Companies usually have limited resources and they have limited amount of people that could improve innovation, and especially small business. As we know social media offers a wide network of people with ideas, creative and curious individual that could help the R&D department to implement new feature in products. Blogs are in this sense perfect, the company could post product idea and ask the public what they could change and implement different feature in the existing products. Of course not every idea is valid, so it could be that employees spend a lot of time evaluating pointless ideas and get demoralized about the subject. On the other hand companies have also the possibility of having a glance to the demand, due to the idea posted in different blog and they could see what the market need from the first line.
Social media in Marketing and sales
The myth of social media is that you can sell your product by developing a social media strategy. Well that is not completely true in accordance with “marketing to the social web: How digital customer communities build your business” by Larry Weber.
In the book in fact it is descript how instead you cannot sell trough social media but it should be your platform to start to achieve reverse marketing or get customer to you. The strategy of selling in social media has to be changed because it will have the opposite reaction of selling. Potential customer will withdraw and get annoyed if users starts promoting and selling their own products. Even though you should not sell in social media it is very important, this is because it will allow the user to use the network as a platform for new opportunities. The outcome in the end will probably be selling or getting new leads.
On the other hand other authors write about how much the marketing department can save up on resources by adopting a social media strategy for the marketing department. Authors write about the necessary tools for marketing that now can be avoided by just using the web like advertisement and press release, which was costly and difficult because companies did not know if the direct buyer will get the information or the news and they could miss opportunities. There are new rules for the marketing with the introduction of the social media and in accordance to them people want interaction and not journalist opinion but consumer opinion. Consumers do not want anymore propaganda but participation and they want to be part of the products support and creation.
Depending on the various opinions of authors, journalist and “smart people” it can be definitely answered that social media is not the answer to every problem in marketing, but it definitely changed the way to reach the public. We can spoil the myth that social media is free; when instead it requires hour and hours of work, but it can be said that sometimes it is cheaper than some media advertisement. In conclusion social media can be used as a platform for creating interest in the products and indirectly advertise companies and help business with less founds to become more visible. It could help to get notice from direct buyers and create relationship, and by helping other business by supplying answer to question it could lead to higher reputation and credibility. Another thing that social media is famous for of helping the company of achieving more trust from the customer is the possibility to gain customer feedback on service and product. In the various social networks website it is possible to write review about the product, and the users of the product can tell how good or how bad is the product. In this way companies can improve service or product by gaining direct and honest feedback from several people, and maybe have the possibility of changing the quality of the product or the service. A review made last year( October 2009) made clear that even though customer feedback is one of the most important reason to implement social media into the organization, 70% of marketers never made a change in the product or service based on this feedback. In accordance to the article this is a serious flap for companies since social media uses based on the survey are: Managing and monitoring customer feedback (41%), understanding the consumer and competitive landscape (41%) and reaching key influencers (33%). The article continues by describing the skepticism of using social media in the organization due to the lack of resources and the lack of expertise in this field that does not allow to companies to engage properly in social media.
Social media customer support and service
In accordance to several articles in the internet customer service is the new marketing. This is way it is being taken in consideration the idea that social media could help organization to achieve a better position using this tool to provide customer service. Using social media tools to solve enquiries of customer if done well could really turn the PR around. “Responding in public to such customer complaints requires some tact and good judgment, but when done well like this it can be a big win for a company in terms of positive PR.” Sometimes customer gets really unsatisfied with the product and the service and if they could contact someone in the social media network and resolve their problems publicly that could put companies in a good spot. Obviously there is the other side of the coin where it sees how much time the employees should spend on handling customer question and resolving their issues. If social media is to be adopted, it needs to be utilized across organizational functions. Methods need to be established to enable a dialogue to be transferred between departments so that people with the right skills respond to the demand. The problem is also that by using social media the expectation of the customer raises up due to the real time.it becomes crucial for companies to resolve problems quickly and speed up the progression of the dialog. Using social media for customer service could be an advantage for the company in case it is successful but it could end up in a disaster if not. While previously frustrated customers might tell ten contacts about their experience, an unsatisfied client using social media can tell thousands. Even worse, the online record of the complaint stays on the Internet eternally for all to see. In conclusion social media could be very useful to handle enquiries but it should be done properly with the correct strategy.
Costs involved in engaging in social media marketing
Measuring the outcome of social media marketing
As starting point, it is crucial to define and interpret the term outcome. This is defined by the institute for public relations ,as the quantifiable changes in awareness, knowledge, attitude, opinion, and behaviour levels that occur as a result of a public relations program or campaign; an effect, consequence, or impact of a set or program of communication activities or products, and may be either short-term (immediate) or long term. Having this definition as the basis, and from a business-to-business perspective, one can look at how these factors can be measured.
Measuring a company’s outcome when implementing social media marketing requires an in depth analysis of the different tools and strategies designed for it. The tools and techniques for measuring your own outcome are typically financial in nature – assessing ROI, impact on sales or lead generation. Regarding this last point, it could be argued that a financial overview will be a complete and viable tool to measure the outcome if an increase of profits is set as the main goal of every single enterprise.
As it is stated above, measuring the outcome of SMM is highly related to the individual company goals. There are other goals, rather than only profits, such as and Brand recognition and company satisfaction. With this, it is implied that companies may want to build their Brand recognition through mediums such as Facebook and Forums and have company satisfaction, for example having a strong relationship between your company and your supplier. Therefore, one must understand what is being measured from the social media marketing. Perhaps the company wishes to measure the attention that it is receiving from another company. This could be amount of traffic that a website has had for example the amount of people that have viewed your company’s Facebook website. Another measurement of success could be the participation. This would mean to the extent that the users interact with the social media, such as Facebook posts and Forum interaction between two companies. It basically comes down the, which goals your company has for establishing communication via these forms of media. If your goal was simply to establish awareness of your company you may well be satisfied with your forum having 10,000 members but nobody posting any messages. On the other hand if your goal was to gain feedback from the other company than you may well be satisfied with 100 members of another company but them being very active, concerning posting ideas and suggestions.
There are two ways in which to measure the outcome of social media marketing, with a qualitative or a quantitative approach. Whichever one a company may opt for in a business-to-business context, depends on the goals and objectives it has. The qualitative approach, as suggested by Deltina Hay, is concerned with a company recognizing what it wants to measure and how to measure for example ROI on conversations. This could for instance be conversations that took place within the Forum or on Facebook. Some examples is given below.
How are we currently talked about versus our competitors?
Are we part of conversations we were not initially part of?
With the qualitative approach you therefore measure if the company has moved with within the B2B field, meaning covering ground that the company was not before a part of. A pitfall of this form of measurement is that it takes a great of human analysis as it concerned with asking the correct questions.
The other form, as discussed by Deltina Hay, is quantitative research. A recommended tool in order to measure traffic on a website is Google Analytics. The definition as coined by Google is found below.
“Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you're more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites”.
Using this form of tool will give the company quantifiable data that can be analysed thereafter. This tool can show how long users stay on the website, amount of visits, new visits and so forth. The tool even graphs the data month for month making it easy and aesthetic to use. It has numerous features that make allows the traffic to be monitored, whether it be on a Facebook page or the Forum. This is therefore an excellent tool if the goal of the company is to create awareness and to see whether the website is experiencing significant growth. The advantage of this form is that it forms a good overview of success and minimizes human effort in the analysis in contrast to the qualitative method. The pitfall is that it does not answer many questions that the qualitative approach definitely would.
Another author, by Katie Delahaye Paine, discussed the same principles as Deltina Hay, in the sense that outcome must be measured in context. This means that it depends whether the company to company interaction is financially motivated or relationship motivated. As explained below she gives an example of how you would measure from a financial perspective.
“So if it costs you $120 a year to set up a blog and you spend an hour a day on it, and your time is worth $150 an hour, your cost for the year is $54,870. If the blog generates 50 click through a day or 18,250 a year, your cost per click is $3”.
Of course with a large company these costs would ultimately be bigger but it gives a good example of how to measure costs from a mere financial and analytical perspective. Google analytics would be a useful tool in order to make these forms of estimations.
If the outcome is relationship based, the method is evidently different as this approach is to build a relationship as it often is B2B. She explains it as found below.
“You would survey your constituencies to determine the strength of their feelings towards your brands on issues like trust, satisfaction, commitment and control mutuality”
As emphasised, the idea is to develop a survey that will provide qualitative answers similar to the approach suggested by Deltina Hay. There is again focus on understanding what one wants to measure and asking the correct questions in order to see whether the goals have been met between the two companies. This could be for example to ask qualitative questions to the employees that use Facebook, Forum or other media generated by the companies. Again the pitfall is that this process is very time-consuming.
Social media and the future
1) The physical and digital worlds will be more highly connected than ever before – already today we are able to run in the park and track our progress online while sharing it with our friends or track our weight loss, or even our ovulation (well, some of us, that is) with iPhone apps that connect to our Facebook and twitter profiles and enable us to keep track of our progress as well as share the data with our friends. Robert Scoble had a brilliant presentation on this topic at the last TNW Conference in Amsterdam. You can see it here.
2) Facebook, Twitter and other major social networks will become increasingly what Fred Wilson coins “Social Dashboards”. In essence, Facebook and Twitter are social channels on which other companies can grow and develop their own technologies and businesses. Both Facebook and Twitter have created economies far larger than many nations. Take for example, companies like Stocktwits, Tweetdeck and Zynga, (amongst others) that have gained huge profits “piggybacking” on these two platforms.
3) Until now, brands have been very concerned with bringing as many people as possible to their pages. Consumer brands can now finally reap the fruits and build social commerce stores where Facebook users (all 700 Million of them) can purchase products on their favorite social network without needing to go to any destination site. Facebook will become one of the major channels of future online shopping.
4) Companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon are currently collecting information about each any every one of us: Our likes and dislikes, our interests and disdains. Soon in an age of Web 3.0, an age of Semantic Web, we will no longer need to search for information on the Web as information will find us based on all this data which companies are collecting. The right information will be served to the right people at the right time, saving us all a lot of time, effort and energy.
5) Mobile technology will become more dominant and NFC technology will be developed further enabling it to offer us special promotions, coupons and tips based on our geographical location and the interest graph we discussed in insight #3.
6) Human Relationships will no longer be as physically dependent and we will befriend and hang out with people from all over the world and all walks of life, all ethnicities and all beliefs, creating a worldwide melting pot.
7) We will no longer be passive media consumers. Media will interact with us in dynamic ways on all platforms. Just like gamers playing WOW today, we will all become a part of a virtual world unknown to us yet where we will all be avatars in the game of life.
8 ) As the Web is overloaded with more information, the content that we are exposed to will become more and more customized to our needs as companies will large sums of money to companies like Facebook and Google, making sure that the information we are exposed to is highly targeted to our interests. Rather than experiencing information overload, we will actually experience the opposite effect.
9) Companies will understand better how to measure the ROI of social media and realize that social media is not about the number of people brands have in their communities but rather the amount of engagement that they see on their page and the overall online sentiment they faced this month as opposed to the last. See Gary Vaynerchuk’s response to how companies should measure the ROI of social media in the video link above.
10) Services will become increasingly crowdsourced. Whether it be the way that we get from point A to point B (Waze), the way that we find answers to our questions (Quora), the manner in which we test our Websites (uTest), the way that we get things done (Fiverr) or the way that we share information (Wikipedia).
All of these insights are of course complete speculations based on my years of experience in the world of social media and following of trends occurring all over the digital space. Do you agree with these speculations? Is anything missing? What do you think is coming up next in social media?

Conclusion
Different social media platforms and brands are focused on different targets. Some offer wide networking opportunities, some allow video sharing while others provide instant messaging. Blogging and forums are different types of platform as they do not have specific brands but are rather hosted by those interested in starting conversation within a specific topic with their group of interest. It is impossible to define a single or couple of social media brands that should be used in the marketing mix to achieve desired effect. Three important variables within social media are time, scope and purpose. To understand which platforms should be used we need to first define what goals should a small B2B orientated company have and then mach these goals to the variables.
A startup company with limited marketing budget and one or two employees responsible for marketing and sales should primarily focus increasing its brand awareness so that people would know who they are and what they sell. In this type of situation the whole range of social media brands has to be used. When doing so it is important to set two main goals. The first one is to find people who might be interested in buying the product and start a conversation and relationship development. The second one, even more important, is to find influential people, who have many followers, that are potential future buyers, and to make these people talk about your brand. In both cases scope and purpose are important. Time has less influence as brand awareness is a long term effect. In such scenario company should use big networking sites and Facebook and LinkedIn to initiate personal conversations with potential buyers and influences. Influencers can be found active on forums and blogs where they share their knowledge, but these platforms do not provide good environment to initiate personal conversation as they have limited amount of features in comparison to Facebook or LinkedIn.
Now when the company has went thru the first stage of increasing brand awareness and finding customers other important tasks arise. Gathering feedback, participating in social conversations and updating current and potential customers become important additional tasks that people working with social media have to participate in. In this perspective our third variable which is time becomes much more important. Twitter is perfect for updating followers wherever they are with important news, comments and feedback. This also gives a more human like image for the company as many companies tweet not only product related messages but also funny and interesting things happening in the office, outside or elsewhere. In order to gather more substantial feedback company can open forums or start a blog of their own within their website so that people could comment on their products and ask questions. Additional tasks with important time variable is scouting the web and gathering feedback and monitoring chats among people involving the company’s name, product or the whole industry. It is important to participate in these chats and talk with people if they have some negative feedback. It is said:
“People will talk about you, you like it or not, and it is for you to choose to participate in this discussion or to stay on the side lines and watch how your fait is decided without doing anything to influence it”
Some company’s state that the negative comments about them on the internet has decreased by up to 70%, after they started engaging in social media communication. Social media is a two way communication where company is not the one choosing a specific channel and sticking to it, but rather using all possible channels to cover maximum ground when the need arises to do so.

Case studies:
Linked IN
Main purpose
LinkedIn is define as a social network website, that is mainly designed for the business community, in order to creates new contacts with businesses or keep in touch with clients, colleagues, and affiliates. LinkedIn is designed for business professional and business owners instead of the general public. Some call LinkedIn a social network others call it a business network, to make sure to specify that it is not for social contacts. Others again call it contact management system. It can be agreed that it depends on the user the main purpose of this social media, but it was definitely design for professional purposes. The goal of the sites is to allow the people who register in the websites to established connection and create a professional network. The logo of LinkedIn is “relationship matters”. The website allows you to find others who you should connect with, so that they can add value to you, and you can create value for them.
Number of users
LinkedIn reported last 7 months ago that it reached 50 million users worldwide. The company announced that to reach the first million took almost 2 years, but it took only 12 days to reach the last million. Mainly the users of linked in are located in the US (about 50%). The company embodies 200 countries by representing 170 industries.
Now has 60 million users, and over the past year all the networking sites are growing fast. In the last few months Linked IN grew so fast that in 2 months it expanded of 5 million people. In October, LinkedIn’s network’s CEO, Jeff Weiner, said in the post that half of LinkedIn’s membership is international. ”
Who is using it?
The user of LinkedIn are distributer among age groups, it is represented of a majority of 56 % of 35 to 54 years old people and the other segments are distributed on 33% evenly spread on each side of the majority of the group and the rest represent the 4%. Referring to an article written by Michael Arrington in November 5th 2008, the user of LinkedIn is rich and executive. In this analysis it shows that the majority of LinkedIn users have an income higher than 93.000$. LinkedIn statistic states that the users of the site are of an average age of 41 years old, 64% are male and with a household income of 109,000$. According to Anderson Analytics, which is the company that conducted the statistical research with LinkedIn, they divided the users of LinkedIn in different major segments which are: Savvy Networkers, Senior Executives, Late adopters, exploring options.
The first one is Savvy Networkers and it corresponds to an estimation of 9 million people. The profile of this person represents someone who started using social media earlier than others. They have the most connections and use this social media for more than just on purpose.
The senior executives are estimated to be around 8.4 million they have important jobs and they are starting to build a strong network on LinkedIn.
The late adopters are instead are the ones who did not want to join for a while and they receive a lot of request before deciding to join. They use LinkedIn more as a “social” media to connect with friends and colleagues.
The rest are the exploring option profile that is using LinkedIn to look for job opportunities and more connections. Keeping in consideration the sources there are some reference regarding the numbers and the demographic taken in consideration that are not clear how they found out the specific figures were found. It is not described the sample size or the sampling method or anything regarding the statistics. It can be argued that probably more male than female are using LinkedIn and that older people are common to use it but the household number average seems too high and it can be discussed since it is not know where was it calculated from.
Features
Creating a profile is the first step is to create a personal profile. It will contain the person personal information, that one is willing to share, including job experience, education and skills, like a small CV that you can always update.
Creating connection: with the profile one can connect to people that he know, previous and current co-worker or clients, and then connect with the connection of the first connection etc. To connect with other people there are different degrees of connection. Everyone who is in the users immediate network is a first degree connection. Everyone that is in contact with your first degree connection becomes your second degree connection and then the network of the complete connection becomes really vast.
Recommendations: the direct and indirect connection can recommend the person and write a recommendation to attract business and job opportunities. Recommendations can be powerful and a great to strengthen a relationship with a customer perhaps.
Employers can post job opportunities to find candidates. The website allows users to research companies with which they may be interested in collaborating with. When one types a given company in the search box, it will show statistics about the company. This will probably show the ratio of female to male employees, the location of the company's headquarters and offices and what is necessary to establish connection. The next feature is LinkedIn Answer, which allows the user to ask questions mainly business related, for the community to answer. This feature is very similar to yahoo answer, but in a more professional way of operating. In this way people can research and get a straight answer from expert of the field and several different opinions about problems and questions proponed. LinkedIn groups feature work for all users to become members of various group and establish relationships, some groups are with a narrow domain, others are more broad and generic. You can have it on the mobile phone, but with imitate language access. LinkedIn groups give the opportunity of narrowing down the members and look for specific candidates among the group and get in connection with them. The 24 October 2008 Linked in announce that the company was going to launch a new service that enables for people who perform market research, to conduct projects with access of a network 30 million professional in the world, where the majority are decision makers. This feature is called LinkedIn Surveys .
Complexity of use
The interface of LinkedIn recently changed and articles described easier and more attractive for customers, and the new feature just add is a filter that helps the user by choosing topic filtering most read articles, companies, competitors and industries.
Advantages
* Increase your visibilities
* Find connection
* Promote your business
* Look for reference
* Increase job opportunities
* Get advice
* Build relationship
By using the different type of features descript above LinkedIn, the website can be used through getting the ability to be known and connects with other people. The various features will obviously help the user find contact and help to get found by others. After finding different people then the user will have the opportunity to share information advices and news between LinkedIn blogs and groups.
Disadvantages
* With too many contacts it is difficult to keep track of them
* Hard to locate individual or company due to the vast number of users
* Since is a web based tool message sometimes can be misinterpreted.
LinkedIn should not be considered as a social media, it does not include the interaction features like in facebook, in fact beside answers, mails ad blogs there is not as much interaction other social media. But even though there are less feature of interaction it can be argued that there could be more possibilities of growing relationship by starting with social media and not by continuing with the networking.
Real time
Time is a real issue in social media, the writer will aspect comments and responses in a short period of time. LinkedIn could be considered real time because users keep the account open during most of the day, at work, or at home to check what news are on the sites. This allows the writer to receive many comments in a short interlude and get a dynamic conversation
Security
LinkedIn does not provide any privacy, the users will put the profile were everyone can see private information and your contact, so in the case that someone is looking for more privacy in a professional level maybe LinkedIn is not for you.
In 2008 it was reported breach in LinkedIn security where 10.000 users were targeted by a fake list of business contacts. The list in the message was software that cracked user names passwords and the data from the person’s pc. The company commented that the mail was not send from the LinkedIn network and they gave instruction to the targeted people how to handle the situation. They also suggested to connect only to people that they know and they trust, to avoid scam to occur.
Twitter
Main purpose
Twitter was launched in July of 2006 as a “micro-blogging service that allows people to type in short messages or status updates that can be read by people following them”. It was created by a podcasting company Odeo during a brainstorming session. The main purpose was to allow users to update their friends and followers with SMS style massages about their activities and status. Since it first opened in 2006 now twitter has become an informational tool for people and companies to share information, news and opinions with the world.
Number of users
Twitter does not have a source that would provide up-to-date usage statistics. Instead they provide them in news releases. It is hard to track the amount of logins and traffic as 75% of twitting is done 3rd party applications. In April 2010 Twitter has announced that it has reached 100 Million registered users. The growth of new users is close to 300.000 per day. These users are both simple people creating accounts for their private use and companies creating their twitter account to get involved in social communication. One of the issues with the users is their activity. According to a study done by Barracuda Labs that tries to establish how many “True users” does twitter has, only 21% of users are actively participating in this website.
Who are the users?
Twitter is used more by older population as micro-blogging together with blogs and forums are focused more on content of messages than networking possibilities in websites such as Facebook or MySpace. People aged 25-34 are 30% more likely to visit twitter together with the group of 45-54 who are using twitter 36% more than average user. These users tweet about different topics. “Pear Analytics” have conducted a research that has focused segmenting these tweets according to their content. 40.55% of all tweets can be attributed to the category of pointless babble such as:”I’m eating a sandwich”. 37% are conversations between users and only 1 out of 20 tweets are related to self promotion, product or business offers. A “Gizmodo” Blog has posted a visualization called “If Only 100 People Were on Twitter”. According to the research 20 people would be “dead” meaning empty accounts that are not used. 50 others are the lazy ones, who would not post more than once a week. Only 5 would have more than 100 followers and the other 5 would be responsible for tweeting 75% of the whole content.
Features
Twitter is a niche website that focuses in short messages and micro blogging. It does not try to expand itself into social networking platform such as Facebook or MySpace. Because of this Twitter has features that go hand in hand with its concept. It is possible to tweet and read what other us have tweeted. These tweets are limited to 140 characters as the focus is on the short and simple messages. There are many 3rd party applications that expand the use of twitter in PC’s, Mac’s and Smartphone’s. It is possible to update one’s status by SMS (text messages), RSS or emails. It is possible to specify the visibility of tweets (by default everybody can see them). In order to find new contacts, information and groups of interest there is a search available. There are many applications and websites that work based on Twitted messages.
Complexity
Twitter is very simple to use. It is easy to register with very little information required to set up a profile. Focus on micro blogging and limited amount of features makes it understandable and intuitive. Followers can easily search for tweets on different platform that they are interested in. The complicated part that makes searching hard appears when a company name (F.E. Electronic Arts) is entered in the search field, wide range of tweets and channels appear where EA’s products and decisions are discussed and evaluated, but it is very hard to distinguish which of the channels is actually the one of the company itself.
Advantages
* Less complicated and more trendy than RSS making it easier to stay updated with latest news
* Many applications that are adapted to work on twitter makes it easy to reach and operate in
* Easy to update your followers with important news in few words
* It is easy to register and free to use
Disadvantages
* Twitter has scoped itself to be a short micro blogging website, this has left it striped from many features that other social media websites have such as:
* No groups, forums, classified ads, it is impossible to upload videos, pictures, play games and use other applications.
Real time
Social media phenomenon requires that there would be two sides engaged in conversation or interaction thru social media platforms. Time frame is very important as there is a limited amount of time which is considered acceptable for the initiator to receive an answer from the respondent. In this sense Twitter has an edge as its short messages and well developed applications accessible from different hardware make it easy to write, receive and fallow tweets. Also limitation of 140 letters means that tweets are structured as very short messages or sentences in a dialog more than fully structures reports or emails. This structure requires more than few messages to go back and forth so it is considered normal to use twitters as a real-time chat.
Security
Twitter does not intend to gather a lot of information about their users as it does not contain pictures, videos, personal statuses and other intimate information. It is easy to register and with very few details about users, twitter has not had a single privacy scandal in comparison with other social networking websites such as Facebook.
FaceBook
Main Purpose
Facebook was launched in 2004 as a social networking site. It was created by Harvard students, Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The main purpose of Facebook is networking, and has a vast amount of features that aids this process. Nowadays, Facebook has become a tool for people and companies, also Business to Business, in order to inform on knowledge, events or news to mention a few.
Number of Users
Facebook at this moment has more than 400 million users with 50% of these accessing Facebook everyday. The graph below gives a good idea of the extent of the growth of users in a relevant time period.
These user also share a vast amount of information. As is described ”1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each week”( footnote 4). This clearly cements the notion that Facebook is an ever-growing community of informational sharing. Hence there will ultimately be opportunties from a Business to Business perspective. Many companies already have their own ”page” on Facebook that they can use to reach the Facebook community in order to brand and promote for example. An example of this is Nestle, as their page explains their history and gives links to their products. In this way, the companies appeal to both the leisure users of Facebook as well as the other companies that have profiles on Facebook.
Features
Facebook inevitably has a growing number of features from day to day as they are constantly developed. From a business perspective, there are many features that can be used in order to aid the company whether it be for Business to Business or to other users. Facebook allows advertisement and many companies use this in order to promote their products. This is known as Facebook Ads and is available to everyone. Some argue though, that Facebook advertisement is not very effective. In one case, a man had only eight clicks out of 10,080 ”impressions” on his advertise campaign on Facebook. The case does not however discuss what his venture is about or the form of information that he presents, and these would ultimately effect the amount of clicks.
Another feature that is popular is the News feed management. This feature allows users to remain updated on the pages in which they are members. From a business point the advantage is that one can update the news on products, research and promote events to a large audience through very little effort. In this way businesses can also communicate with eachother easily in an aestetic platform that is easily understandable.
Other commonly used features are photo/video uploads, making events, marketplace, chat, live chat, and notifications sucha s the news feed. It is useful for making company events or even having the live chat as a medium of communication in order to speed up business processes. There are also evidently disadvantages that present that will be discussed later. Probably the best feature of Facebook is simply the fact that so many people use it, as explained by the quote below.
”Facebook has a large user base and lots of traffic, and is a great tool for building a social 'mesh': the digital web of connections between you and people you know”
Hence Facebook can be a useful tool in building a social network. Whether it be an existing base of clients or to develop a new relations with another business. On the other hands others emphasise that Facebook is not a marketplace but rather a place for developing a network as the quote below underlines.
”Facebook is a place to make connections, not to buy products and services”
This is discussed in the sense that trying to sell services and products on Facebook would in most cases not be very successful. This is due to a number of reasons, mainly the issue of trust. This will be looked at in the advantages and disadvantages section below.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook
Advantages | Disadvantages |
Free | Safety issues – Identity theft, virus, spam |
Develop network | Miss-presentation, misinterpretation |
Promotion | Superficial |
Youtube
Main purpose
As you might know “Youtube” is the world’s most popular online video community at the moment. The main purpose of “Youtube” is to allow people from all over the world to upload and share video clips of different content. This is the place which provides a forum for a people to connect, inform and inspire others worldwide. Basically, “Youtube” is a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers.
Number of users
According to Alexa internet, Inc. (an amazon.com company) there are 24% of global internet users who visit Youtube daily. Nowadays, there are approximately 1,802,330,457 internet users worldwide and 24% (432.559.309) of them visit “Youtube”.
Who are the users?
Basically you can find different range of people using “Youtube”. To be more precise, there are people who are mostly watching videos and people/companies who are uploading videos. As mentioned before in the main purpose, “Youtube” actual target audience is original content creators and advertisers. In “Youtube” page you have option where you can create your own page and customize it your way and this option has attracted many different companies to do so – create their own page. Nowadays “Youtube” is very famous video community and many companies find it as opportunity to advertise in using “Youtube”. At the moment you can find many companies who have created their own page – BBC, Electronic Arts, Lionsgate, NBA, Sony Pictures Television etc. To be more effective, “Youtube” even made partnership with these companies.
If we take a look into Alexa internet, Inc. audience demographics regarding “Youtube” we can see that general population is 18-24 years old. Mostly visitors represent United States – 22, 7% of total visitors of “Youtube”.
Features
* Register and upload your own original videos
* Create your own page with videos – customize it your way
* Comments and discussion with other users under related video
* Like or dislike rating system
* Subscribe system for videos
* Watch videos in HD, full screen
* Ability to easily and in real time share “Youtube” uploaded videos in “Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, blogger, live spaces, Bebo, Buzz, Stumbleupon or just email it”
* Create your own playlist and favorites
* Progressive search and browse with modification options
* Private video sharing – limited access URL, private share with your clients or friends
* After registration on “Youtube” you will be able to post comments on public and get private messages from other users
Watching
You just need to find the search field and type in what you are looking for and Youtube in response will give you many videos you might looking for. Actually, “Youtube” is very easy to use. When you got your idea what you are looking for you can start to type it in and while you do it search field will show you possible variants for your search, thereafter you press enter and “Youtube” page will show you list of featured videos, playlist results and channel results of videos you might look for – click on video and enjoy.
Uploading
To upload video you will need to register and become a “Youtube” user and thereafter you will be able to upload videos by clicking “upload video” – type the name of video, description, tag and category and it is done.
Comments & Conversation
Under every video on “Youtube” you are able to find comments and conversation between people regarding related video. To leave comment you just need to type it in and press “post”.
As you can see complexity of “Youtube” is on very low level even the child can use it – you just need to know some basics.
Advantages and disadvantages
Advantages | Disadvantages |
Everyone can upload their own original videos with different content. „Youtube” do not charge fee for uploaded video advertisements – so it attract many companies. | Uploaded videos can easily confuse people. If you are looking for concrete video you will have to deal with many fake videos. Also, many users are uploading not their own videos – for instance, music clips of different artists. |
Users of “Youtube” can create their own page and customized it their way. You can be individuality; all your uploaded videos are easily to find in your page. You are even able to give information and tips about your page and have discussion. | |
Everyone can post a comment on related video – ask questions, express your opinion and there might arise interesting discussion regarding video. | Posted comments are not controlled and regulated by administrators of “Youtube” – it is easily to find many videos where comments contain bad language, racism, different slang, etc. |
Real time
In “Youtube” it depends whether the user is online or offline to reply on message instantly. Most of the discussions are made public under related video and in most of the situations asked questions are not answered in “Youtube” public. From features we now know that in “Youtube” you have option of private messaging and we assume that more serious and precise conversation is made private – for instance, if you are advertising something and somebody wants to buy it.
Security
In “Youtube” level of privacy depends on wishes of user. You have many options to choose – you can do public conversation with users or you have option of private messaging. You are able to upload videos with shared properties or make it limited with specific URL address.
Blogs
Main purpose
The Blog is normally a website or parts of a website that are usually .Blogs are usually are organized by someone that has something to say. These are called Blog story that are posted from an individual, like in a newspaper. They The entries are posted from a small message box where the users write the subject and the message, and they usually are displayed in reverse-chronological order.
In a B2B contest the blog could be used to create a website where people working in the same field could discuss similar issue and get advice of how to manage their problems and ask for advice. The user could share links and articles regarding the business related issues and give advices and news.Blogs are flexible and people can share their opinion quickly and require little technical skills. Using blogs will allow the user to disseminate news and share information between the users and it could be linked to B2B relationship.
Number of users
A study of 2005 was stating that 7% of the Internet users say they owned a blog or web-based diary, and that represent more than 8 million people. The study shows as well that blogs was doubling every 5 months, and that more than 40.000 blogs are created a day.
We can deduce from this number even if they are not recent that blogs are very popular and many people uses them. Since Blogs are of different size and field it is probably difficult to find out how many people actually uses blogs.
Who uses blogs?
The latest statistic of 2009 report that two third of the users of blogs are male and the majority is in between 18-44. The educational level of the users is for 75% have college degrees and the rest have graduate degrees. One out of four has a high income and they represent a majority of family, married and with kids.
Features
Blogs are divided in different groups and formats that works differently and with a different purpose. CEO blogs, executive blogs, group blogs, company blog, topical blog, advocacy blogs, promotional blogs.
Blogs do not have special features, is just a way to share information and creates discussion about a specific topic and involve several people in the debate. It is important that the approach taken to a blog is by using the simple strategy that it will be named STRAIGHT (Succinct, transparent, responsive, accepting, insightful, genuine, humorous and timely).
Complexity of use
The interface of a blog is easy to use and the point is to fill out a small message box to include your comment on a particular subject. In case of creating the blog it is a bit more complicated, because it works like making a website. In some cases there are different website host where you can create the blog there with predefined features and that is actually simple. If we compare to other types of social media like facebook or LinkedIn where the only thing the users has to do is create a profile and start using it, it is considered much more complicated.
Advantages
* Blogs are easy to use
* They create an entire community
* Blogs allows you to interact with your customer base
* The consumer gets better informed
* You can get stronger relationship and create brand loyalty with the customer base, by creating a more personal view of the organization with this tool.
* Blogs can help to share knowledge and it can be used within the organization.
* You can get feedback
Disadvantages
* The people who write in blogs sometimes cannot express properly their ideas or they write not interest angles.
* Not many people have time to write or have a lot to say
* A blog is good if it is updated but many blog are not
* Sometimes the writer does not write what he thinks and that ruins the image of the blog and the coherency.
Real time
Blogs are not in real time, or no less than mail, people read the user post and answer as soon as he can, but is not like a chat where people can reply immediately after the post is made. It is believed that it is still well structured even though people cannot reply straight away.
Security
The security in blog is not high, there is no privacy and it is suggested that when writing a blog it is better to keep the identity anonymous. Compared with other social media it is much more secure since not all the users information is exposed to attacker.
Forums
Main Purpose
Forums are a media tool design to share knowledge about different topics between those integrated into them. Participants can read and reflect on postings and seek out further information before making a response.. The main purpose of forums is networking and knowledge sharing. Forums have become a useful tool for B2B is for users to obtain feedback on their business with the hope of improving them. In the B2B forums, users leave their comments and questions about the products or service and other users or members of the company respond to them.
Number of Users
Forums in general have increased the number of users within the last decade in a great extend. There are no precise references of the exact number of users due the current increase of users. Now a day’s many companies have forums in their own web pages in order to increase accessibility to users and consequently obtain feedback of their product or service.
Features
Forums have an increasing number of features. Within Forums you are able to make your own posts with your specific topic of discussion. Hereafter the forum members are able to make comments on your topic of discussion. The posts are written within Threads, which is simply a collection of posts. Usually the Thread has a title with the topic of discussions. For example if the Topic was the war in Iraq, then the thread might have a title like Iraq War discussion. Every forum usually has one or two administrators that control how the Forum looks and keeps it running smoothly. Forums also have some moderators that are able to delete posts and ban users if they are believe that the posts are inappropriate. In a business-to-business sense, a company could build a forum in order to gain feedback from other companies on products, approaches and strategies. The administrator and moderators would have to be trusted employees in order to keep the forum running and to avoid some of the common complications that arise from having forums. These complications will be discussed in the next section.
Advantages and disadvantages
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