Social media is a product of
Internet-based applications. The content of social media includes text,
pictures, videos and network. Regarding the aim of the firms or marketers there
are many channels are offered by the social media. The most popular social media
channels can be listed as following: blogs, microblogs (Twitter), social
networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Myspace), media-sharing sites
(Youtube, Flickr), review websites (TripAdvisor.com) and Wikis (Wikipedia)
(Mangold, Faulds, 2009; Zarella, 2010; Berthon et al., 2012).
Blogs can be defined as following:
―A blog is a type of content
management system (CMS) that makes it easy for anyone to publish short articles
called posts‖ (Zarella, 2010). Blogs are the websites owned by those
individuals who provide the content regularly. This content can be commentaries
or diaries of a person which can include text, pictures, videos and links of
the other blogs or web pages. Also, blogs provide other social features such as
leaving comments, trackbacks and subscriptions which are perfect for the
marketing activity (Berthon et al., 2012; Zarella, 2010).
Microblogs refers to a common
information medium which provides to create brief textual entries (Efron,
2011). Microblogs provide to write very short messages which are limited with a
certain number of characters in a message. Those short messages are texted and
shared by a person or an organization and it can be read by thousands of
followers all around the world (Efron, 2011; Berthon et al., 2012). Twitter is
a good example of microblogs (Mangold, Faulds, 2009; Zarella, 2010; Kaplan,
Haenlein, 2011; Efron, 2011; Berthon et al., 2012).
Social networking sites refer to a website which provides
individuals to connect with their friends online or offline. People can create
a profile on social networking websites, find and add their friends, send
messages to their friends and update their profile. Social networking sites
attract marketers since firms can interact with their target consumers through,
groups, fan pages and plug-in applications (Zarella, 2010; Berthon et al., 2012).
Facebook and LinkedIn are the best example for this type of social media
channels (Mangold, Faulds, 2009; Kaplan, Haenlein, 2011; Berthon et al., 2012).
Media sharing
websites such as Youtube and Flickr allow individuals to upload, store and
share pictures or videos on websites (Berthon et al., 2012).
Review websites are websites where individuals can share their
opinions and experiences about a product, a company, a brand or a service.
Firms/Marketers can also provide information about their products, services or
brands through joining the conversation or discussion (Zarella, 2010).
TripAdvisor.com is a good example for this kind of websites. TripAdvisor.com
provides travel-related content via user reviews.
Wikis are collaborative websites which allow collaborative
creation, modification or deletion of its content and structure (Mangold,
Faulds, 2009; Mathews, 2011). Wikipedia is well-known example for Wikis. People
can create the content or they edit the information which is already created by
others (Mathews, 2011).
Regarding literature, there are
many social media channels which can attract marketers. They all provide
marketers to communicate and interact with their target consumer groups. There
are also other social media channels. According to GlobalWebIndex report
(2014), Facebook is the leader in terms of members. It has 81% of adults (16-64
ages) all around world. The halves of the members are using Facebook actively.
In terms of members Youtube, Twitter and LinkedIn follow Facebook with the rates
of 60%, 53% and 34%. The active usage of LinkedIn is reported as 13%. In Turkey
more than 80% of internet users have visited or used the service of Facebook
and Youtube in 2014. More than 60% of internet users have used the service of
Twitter in Turkey, in 2014 (GWI, 2014). As a result, at this study the most
prominent social media channels have been selected.
Social
media channels are used for marketing strategy by firms and marketers.
There are two
approaches exist:
• The
Passive Approach: Social media is used as a source of customers. The aim of the
marketers is to provide information about the market needs, customer
experiences, competitive movements and trends. E.g. Blogs, review websites.
• The
Active Approach: Social media is used for marketing activities such as
communication, direct sales, customer acquisition and customer retention by the
firms or marketers. E.g. Blogs, Wikis, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube
(Constantinides, 2014).
Consequently, marketers can use
those mentioned social media channels such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter for
their marketing activity. The decision about which social media channel they
use mostly depends on their marketing strategy. Marketers can use a combination
of channels for their relevant marketing activity such as advertising or public
relations. In order to develop a successful marketing program, marketing
strategy must comply with the right social media channel.
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