Forms of Social Media Marketing

By İçerik Ustası

Monday, May 29, 2017

Forms of Social Media Marketing

There emerged different marketing strategies in social media nowadays, which can be categorized in three groups. These are public relations, marketing the production of the content, and viral marketing, which are also the purposes of online activities (Miletsky, 2010: 81):

-          Public relations: Staff in public relation have been made obliged to communicate the target groups of customers as a result of the rapid spread of conventional media news reposted and shared by people. Without public relations active in the social media, news that could be perceived positively by users could turn into trouble or disappear without being noticed. 

-          Marketing content production: in this category, there are blogs, websites, and other contents that are marketed to users of internet. They are designed in a way to draw the attention of online users.

-          Viral Marketing: the contents produced by firms engaging in social media marketing need to be characterized by its virality. They should be designed in a way to make users feel like sharing them such as interesting, fun, enthusiastic and sensitive. So-designed content spreads much faster and disseminates awareness in the services and products in the right way that firms planned. 

The most used techniques in social media marketing are viral marketing and buzz marketing. Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to send the message to thousands, to millions (Kirby and Marsden, 2006: 87)

Eley and Tilley (2009: 21) define viral marketing as ‘‘a marketing message spreading rapidly and exponentially like a virus and a ‘words of mouth’ influence created with a video, campaign or advertisement’’. Evans (2008: 69) likens viral marketing to a room full of children (so-called customers) who have just learnt to walk. 

Karakuş (2015) on the other hand describes viral marketing as ‘‘a method of spread though words of mouth without any need for extensive advertisement. It is a marketing technique of transmitting a marketing news to another. It can reach a number of people rapidly, which makes it an efficient method’’.

Dobele, Toleman and Beverland (2005: 144) argue that there are three major benefits of viral marketing to the firms:

-          The cost of message-containing brand is covered by consumers since it is transmitted by them directly. 

-          This messaging and transmission is voluntarily done by the senders, which characterizes it with a different identity and provokes more interest. 

-          Consumers share them with friends, family members or work mates who have similar interests, which enables these messages to be sent to the target mass automatically. 

Buzz marketing, on the other hand, is defined as attempts to create rumours about the brand of the service or products (Gardner, 2005: 27).According to Mohr (2007:397), buzz marketing is an attempt to legally employ the voluntary people who can transmit their experiences to others and reach a wider audience.  It is also defined in Wikipedia as follows: ‘‘Marketing buzz or simply buzz a term used in viral marketing,  is the interaction of consumers and users of a product or service which amplifies or alters the original marketing message’’ (Wikipedia Encyclopaedia, 2015).A successful buzz marketing has been practiced by Nokia, which sent 8 popular blog users a Nokia 3650 with a camera just introduced in the market. The selected users are under 18 and could take creative pictures and upload them in their blogs, which were the major common characteristics of these young people. Nokia did not explicitly request them to mention these devices in their blogs but just to try these devices for photography. The users uploaded the photographs they took with this mobile phone camera and publish their comments in their own blogs. Some of them even created separate mobile phone blogs (Gardner, 2007). 

In addition, another marketing strategy, words of mouth (WOM) developed into eWOM a new version of WOM through the impact of technology, which allowed the users to express their feelings and opinions without any limitation. 

eWOM is now used by potential travel customers as a strategy to get information and search for destination (Litvin, et al., 2006: 466). eWOM is particularly being used in the tourism sector. Customers who had a pleasant holiday inform people around them through eWOM, which influences others positively, whereas the negative ones may also need to negative impact on the consumers of tourism (Kutluk, 2012: 59).

2.7.2. The Use of Social Media Marketing In Tourism Industry

Recently internet has started to be used in many sectors for marketing and interaction (Köroğlu, et al., 2011: 101). Use of internet has been more and more common in tourism industry  (Korkmaz, 2000: 31). Intermediary travel agencies of major tourism firms have been able to establish relations with potential customers and masses, which facilitates their process of access to service buying. This increases the use of internet more and more efficiently for particular purposes (Ekinci, 2004: 24). Internet-based technologies are utilized at every stages of tourism marketing, which are extensively influencing the sector. The most used applications are e-mail, web page, news groups, discussion (social media discussion groups), chap rooms, linkproviding pages, webcasting, online broadcast, and online advertisements (Kozak, 2010).

There are many benefits in using social sharing sites as a marketing means. These are discussed as follows (Marketing Leadership Council, 2008):

-          Promoting products and services: Firms spread their services and product to wider audience through using social media. For example, hotels want to be part of social networks more and more, which could lead them to sharing more and more information with users.  Hotels upload photographs, videos, and activity updates in the social networks and draw more and more attention. 

-          Recognizing customers: Firms put their advertisements in social media and stay in touch with the member of the sites, which could help them recognize their customers. According to one research.

-          Increasing brand recognition: The social media marketing campaigns run through social media can reach a number of different consumer groups. While this increases brand recognition, it can also influence the consumers’ perceptions of the firm positively.

-          Promoting social responsibility: firms can also share with their customers their attitudes and behaviours towards environmental and social issues. Hotel Las Vegas Hilton has a page titled as Las Vegas Hilton Green Team Project in Facebook. Hotel Las Vegas Hilton has 14.367 followers in Facebook. With this page they aim to show their attitudes toward the environment to their customers.

-          In-house information sharing: Firms support the idea of their staff being members of social network platforms. Therefore, the staff can share their knowledge and experiences about their business and firms. If a firm supports these people adequately, they can function as a representative of their own firms in the social network and provide updated knowledge to the customers. 

Firms in tourism industry see social media as an emerging alternative distribution channel. Its use is accepted to be an important factor in the increasing competition (Aymankuy, et al., 2013: 379).The tourism companies in Turkey (travel agencies, hotels and airlines) have the following reasons for using internet in their promotion and marketing activities (Avcıkurt and Köroğlu, 2000: 112):

-          Providing everyone with equal access,

-          Low cost of communication and information sharing,

-          Easy access to customers,

-          Giving prestige to the agency,

-          Creating a rich and catchy contents in marketing strategies for users 

Bozatlı (2011) argues that hotels uses social media for the following purposes: creating interest in the hotel, introducing promotions, meeting them in an intimate settings, following the factors that make them happy and unhappy, drawing the attention of the media, and creating recognition and promotion of the brand (Eröz and Doğdubay, 2012: 143).

Tourism agencies need to place greater emphasis on the development of image, maintaining the image and social media marketing activities. A proper social media marketing promotes the brand image of the firm and increases the reliability, whereas a negative experience can damage them negatively (Curkan, 2013: 95). Therefore, social media has profound impact on the dignity and brand of a firm (Kim and Ko, 2012: 1481). A slightly negative word or a tweet, post and comment shared in

Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor or other social platforms can tarnish their reputation. 

Some tourism agencies which are aware of the rising power and role of social media in their development hire administrators who could work on the use of internet and social media platforms. Brian Simpson, one of such administrators, is responsible for social hospitality in The Roger Smith Hotel New York. Simpson comments on the impact of social media on brand image and its dependency and adds that social networks are useful, robust, and permanent and that using diverse channels in social media will help firms ensure brand loyalty and customer participation. With reference to Simpson’s remarks, it is clear that a proper use of social media for marketing purposes can have greater positive impact on the image of brand and destination image (Atadil, 2011: 58). 

One of the best examples of this is American Jetblue airlines. About to go bankrupt, the company got out the crisis with an appropriate and efficient social media marketing strategy. After a plane crash, the company launched a social media campaign including Facebook, twitter, blogs and YouTube to develop positive perceptions among the customers. The speech in which the CEO of the company apologized was recorded and uploaded in YouTube, which was then watched by thousands of people. At the same time, the company answered the questions asked through twitter and shared several posts on Facebook. Ultimately, the campaign became successful and the company overcame the bankruptcy (Curkan, 2013: 98).

Rank	Hotel name	Number of users
1	Bellagio Las Vegas (USA)	247.480
2	Caesars Palace (USA)	222.022
3	Decameron El Salvador(Mexico)	120.021
4	Atlantis The Palm (Dubai)	101.797
5	Hotel Southern(India)	99.697

Social media marketing has been increasingly used by tourism agencies such as hotels, airlines, other segments of travel sectors in order to increase recognition of their brands. Airlines firms share promotion films through YouTube and offer inviting discounts in social networks such as Loopt. Tourism consumers plan all they need through using internet ranging from reservation to dining. For example, flight tickets of Delta airlines can be bought in Facebook. Similarly, Mariott chain hotels set up Marriott Courtyard Facebook pages to update customers (Eröz and Doğdubay, 2012: 145). Hotels make use of the facilities Facebook network and establish closer relationships with existing and potential consumers. It is thought that the trust, cogency and mutual participation could reflect positively on the sales (Wheeler, 2009). 

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