Online & Social Media Strategies
Prof. dr. Wendy Van den Broeck
Monday, April 22nd, 2024
Lesson 8
Characteristics of Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites typically vary in terms of three important dimensions:
- Audience and degree of specialization
o Internal social networks vs. external social networks
o Personal vs. professional social networks
- The social objects that mediate the relationships among members
o Vertical networks designed around object sociability
o I.e. linkedin where it is focused on one topic
o Or cat forums, parenting stuff, dating apps etc.
- Degree of openness
- Member subscription -> member list -> advertisers
- Online brand communities (do you know examples?)
- Social networking fatigue and social lock-in
- Identity portability (e.g. OpenID)
- Authentication via Facebook Connect
Social Network Activities
- Engagement (liking stuff and commenting)
- Social sharing – actually posting (facilitated by widgets, apps etc.)
- User-generated content (own creation + secondary content)
- Study: 75% shares content on Social Media • Interesting/entertaining
o Helpful to others
o Funny
Marketing Applications in the Social Community Zone
1 Social Presence – How they are online on their platforms
- Brands create a brand profile within a selected social networking communities. In
this way, the brand acts as a node in the network’s social graph.
- The fan base (friends/followers) is an indicator of the brand’s success in establishing
a known presence within a community.
- Brand mascots (i.e. michelin, Mr. Proper, Donald McDonald, etc)
- The brand must have a distinct social media character (must have a good strategy to
create an online presence because if you deviate from what your values are, what
you promise, your aspirational attributes, traits and opportunities, you will be called
out)
Friendvertising and the 3M model for FGC (firm-generated content)
- Megaphone (a broadcast post)
- Magnet (asking for interaction, ecouraging reactions)
- Monitor (interactions with comments, answering concerns)
Charactaristics of social fans
- Brands talk
- Real Time Marketing (RTM)
- Contests and requests for UGC (taking pictures of somethig)
Characteristics of brand community engagement
- Cohesive social channel strategy
- Active community management
- Content mission, quality, and storytelling
- Engagement and community relationship building
- Collaboration with influencers
- Amplification efforts
2 Earned Media – reviews, good things said by word of mouth
3 Paid Media –
- Target persona (demographics, interest, web behavior,...)
- Custom audiences (e-mail addresses of customer databases)
- Targeting of ‘lookalike audiences’
- Retarget content – remark
Social ads are online display ads that incorporate user data in the ad or in the targeting of
the ad and enable some form of social interaction within the ad unit or landing page.
- A social engagement ad contains ad creative (image and text) along with an option to
encourage the viewer to engage with the brand (e.g., clickable “Like” button).
- A social context ad includes ad creative, an engagement device, and personalized
referral content from people in the viewer’s network.
- Organic social ads are shared on a person’s activity stream following a brand
interaction (such as liking the brand).
- CPC: cost per click (sometimes via auction, you can set a maximum price)
- CPM: cost per mille – fixed price for 1000 impressions, doesn’t matter if people click
or not
- CTR: click through rate: how many people actually click on your ad after seeing it
Outbound links: links that get you somewhere else
Social Branded Entertainment
When brands create owned vehicles of branded content, in the form of games, music, or
film, which is participatory and shareable via digital connections, that is social branded
entertainment.
- There are different degrees of brand integraiton (sponsorship, in movies, tv shows)
- High degree is when you see branded content(content created by brand)
Social game: Social games are multiplayer, competitive, goal-oriented activities with defined
rules of engagement and online connectivity among players.
- Get you engaged in playing games, stupid games you play on yout smartphone. Fun
games that are clearly linked to a brand. By making people spend time with your
brand they become exposed to it.
Why do social games work for marketers?
- Gamers are open to advertising content in games.
- Brands benefit when they associate with a successful game.
- Players identify with the brands their characters use, increasing brand involvement.
- Branding within a game’s story is an unobtrusive way to share a brand’s core
message.
- Targeting to specific groups is possible.
- Marketers can measure a game’s promotional value.
