Social Media Marketing 356 v1 PDF

Social Media Marketing
Sub Code - 356
Developed by
Prof. Chinmay Kamat
On behalf of
Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research
Advisory Board
Chairman
Prof. Dr. V.S. Prasad
Former Director (NAAC)
Former Vice-Chancellor
(Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University)
Board Members
1. Prof. Dr. Uday Salunkhe  2. Dr. B.P. Sabale  3. Prof. Dr. Vijay Khole  4. Prof. Anuradha Deshmukh 
Group Director  Chancellor, D.Y. Patil University, Former Vice-Chancellor  Former Director 
Welingkar Institute of Navi Mumbai  (Mumbai University) (YCMOU)
Management Ex Vice-Chancellor (YCMOU)
Program Design and Advisory Team
Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Mr. Manish Pitke

Dean – Marketing Faculty – Travel and Tourism
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Management Consultant
Prof. Kanu Doshi Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Dean – Finance Dean – Marketing
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Prof. Dr. V.H. Iyer Mr. Smitesh Bhosale

Dean – Management Development Programs Faculty – Media and Advertising
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Founder of EVALUENZ
Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Prof. Vineel Bhurke

Dean – Marketing Faculty – Rural Management
Prof. Venkat lyer Dr. Pravin Kumar Agrawal

Director – Intraspect Development Faculty – Healthcare Management
Manager Medical – Air India Ltd.
Prof. Dr. Pradeep Pendse Mrs. Margaret Vas

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Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Former Manager-Catering Services – Air India Ltd.
Prof. Sandeep Kelkar Mr. Anuj Pandey

Faculty – IT Publisher
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Management Books Publishing, Mumbai
Prof. Dr. Swapna Pradhan Course Editor

Faculty – Retail Prof. Dr. P.S. Rao
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai Dean – Quality Systems
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Prof. Bijoy B. Bhattacharyya Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Dean – Banking Dean – Marketing
Mr. P.M. Bendre Course Coordinators

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Former Quality Chief – Bosch Ltd. Head – PGDM (HB)
Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Mr. Ajay Prabhu Ms. Kirti Sampat

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Corporate Consultant Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
Mr. A.S. Pillai Mr. Kishor Tamhankar

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Ex Senior V.P. (Sify) Welingkar Institute of Management, Mumbai
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Contents
Chapter No. Chapter Name Page No.
Chapter 1 Basics of Social Media Marketing 3

Chapter 2 Blending Traditional Marketing with Social 34
Media
Chapter 3 Developing Strategies for Social Media 67

Marketing
Chapter 4 Leveraging The Power of Social Networking 120
Sites
Chapter 5 Creating Markets through Media Sharing Sites 200

Chapter 6 Acquiring Customers through Blogs and 272
Twitter
Chapter 7 Marketing through Social News and 333

Bookmarking Sites
Chapter 8 Quantifying Social Media Marketing Efforts 383
Chapter 9 Innovative Trends and Best Practices of the 409
Social Media Experts 
3
BASICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Chapter 1
Basics of Social Media Marketing
Objectives
After discussing this chapter, you will be able to:
• define and explain the concept of social media marketing

• discuss the benefits of social media marketing
• enlist and describe the categories of social media marketing
• describe in detail the social influence factors driving successful
social media marketing
Structure
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Basics of Social Media Marketing
1.3 The Benefits of Social Media Marketing
1.4 Categories of Social Media Marketing
1.5 Social Influence Factors Driving Successful Social Media
Marketing
1.6 Activities
1.7 Summary
1.8 Self Assessment Questions
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1.1 INTRODUCTION
Social networks are communities of people who typically share a

common behaviour, idea, interest or activity. A social network
indicates a graph of relationships (social familiarities) within a group
of individuals (people, organisations). Social networking sites have
increased in the last decade. The most popular social networks
include Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. They facilitate
communication by providing a variety of ways for users to interact
with each other like e-mail or instant message.
Social networks provide a medium for people to interact with others

who are influential and make recommendations about products and
services. These sites can improve lots of business activities, including:
word-of-mouth marketing, market research, general marketing, idea
generation and new product development, co-innovation, customer
service, public relations, employee communications and reputation
management.
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Social Media Marketing is marketing that focuses on people, not

products. The products can be presented by the company with as
many qualitative features and promotional tools as possible, but what
really matters is the comments and appreciations left by the
customers. People provide the content, and this is the reason why
Social Media Marketing is so scary and challenging for marketers.
They do not control the marketing content anymore. Negative word-
of-mouth can be spread worldwide in a couple of minutes only. With
the explosion of Internet-based messages transmitted through the
Social Media, they are now a main factor in influencing many aspects
of consumer behaviour, such as awareness, considerations,
information gathering, opinions, attitudes, purchasing decisions and
post-purchase evaluations.
International marketers need to recognise the power and critical

nature of the conversations being held by consumers using social
media. Consequently, the ability of influencing the crowd effectively
is the main quality needed by the marketing team.
Also, what is important about Social Media Marketing is that

marketer can listen, track and measure what is shared on the Social
Media Sites in order to improve the offered message and adapt it
more to the customers’ needs. Thanks to the Social Media analytics
and metrics available, the impact of Social Media on a company’s
marketing strategy can be measured and evaluated relatively easily.
Over the last ten years, there has been a fundamental shift in how
people access information and news. Companies traditionally used
the media to get their messages out to their audiences via marketing,
advertising or public relations. Marketing and advertising push a
message out to the masses. Companies use public relations to supply
news to the media and expert sources to provide stories about their
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industry. The goal is to get media mentions of their company,

products or services.
These methods are a one-way communication, where a company

delivers a message through the media, but individuals have no real
way of responding. Today, this one-to-many mass media model has
given way to the social web and a new way of communicating with
people has emerged. Since people have tried receiving one-way
communications, they are looking more and more for news and
information in places other than the media. People no longer rely on
the media. New tools enable them to network, read blogs, post
comments and reviews, actively gather news and information, and
share this with others. People are engaging in conversations.
Conversation is the new marketing. Tapping into these conversations
shows where your audience is spending time online, and what
subjects and issues are of interest to them. As of 2010, over 80% of US
companies have started using some form of social media marketing,
and their biggest barrier to success in this new medium is lack of
knowledge. To reach the audience successfully, marketers need to
move their marketing activity from the traditional “push” method,
where they broadcast messages to thousands via the media, to a
“pull” strategy, where you make it easy for people to find
information, whenever and wherever they want it.
Let us make it clear at the very onset the difference between social
marketing and social media marketing. While the former deals with
marketing a cause for the common good, social media marketing is
about using platforms like Twitter or Facebook to promote products
and services. In this post, we are going to talk only about social
marketing and how you can spread out your word online. Because
you are selling an idea here through social marketing and not tangible
products and services, your approach has to be a little different from
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the run-of-the-mill online campaigns. Suppose you work for a charity

institution and want people to support your cause, financially and
otherwise. Now, there are others in this same arena as well! How will
you convince the global audience out there that your cause deserves
their attention, and money? You have to build up a campaign to
promote your idea in a way that grabs their eyeballs and also touches
the core of their hearts.
This is where social marketing blends with social media marketing.

Writing blog posts and articles about your cause and publishing them
online will only take you to a certain extent. The real power of social
marketing lies in unleashing your ideas on the social media platforms.
That is where you can go full-on in talking about your cause and
getting like-minded people on board. Social media networks,
especially Facebook, have avenues that will lead you to the correct
group of people who will do more for your cause than misdirected
marketing messages strewn across digital pathways.
To make your social marketing venture a success, you need sizzling

content. Ideas, if they need to be put across, must be wrapped in a
package of infotainment. Your content must have the power to cut
through the layers of cynicism in people today and make an impact. It
helps to address people who you know are sympathetic about the
cause that you are looking to uphold. You get that added advantage
on social media platforms where you know your target readers better.
1.2 BASICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Social media has been a buzz word from the last few years now in the
digital world. It has helped a number of online businesses to
constantly contact their users in a very effective way. In this age, if a
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business is not using right marketing strategies or not changing

strategies, it can extinct. So, it has become important to embrace
technology and enjoy the rewards.
It is possible for a business to have an online presence all on own but

it is much sensible idea to hire social media marketing consultants in
India to help get good visibility. This is because they know exactly
where to focus to bring in more traffic to create a win-win situation
for the business.
Nowadays, for any more or less important purchase, it has almost

become vital to learn about the brand, product or service, and
compare it with the equivalent of competing brands before
considering of purchasing it. While potential consumer do so, they
interact with friends, Google the products, search on Twitter and read
experiences of those who have used the brand, product or service
earlier. This section will analyse the Social Feedback Cycle, taking into
account the effects of Social Media on consumers’ buying behaviours,
comparing it to the classic purchase funnel for traditional media.
The Internet has now become the most common tool that consumers
use to find information on products and services that they are
considering buying. Besides opinions of friends and family, people
use the Internet as first source of information when making a major
purchase decision. Whether they like it or not, people are holding
conversations on the Internet about the products and services they
have used, sharing both good and bad experiences and feedbacks.
Actually, almost two out of every three conversations online refers to
a brand, product or service. These opinions have far more weight and
value, and are considered more trustworthy, than any information
provided by marketers.
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Indeed, word-of-mouth is considered to be the most trusted source of

information. Therefore, Social Media largely affects customers’
purchase decisions, because consumers usually seek other opinions
and recommendations. Indeed, 78% of global consumers declare that
they trust and believe other customers’ recommendations for
products and services more than any other medium. This is mainly
due to the fact that consumers are seen as more objective than the
companies’ own marketing message.
The effects of Social Media are really important as a social feedback

loop is created through the use of Social Media and will highly
influence the consideration stage of the purchase channel. For the past
fifty years, media was largely concentrating on awareness, because
awareness drives demand, and on point-of-sale, affirming pending
purchases or shifting them to a competing brand. The consideration
process through which consumers evaluate purchase options has been
under-utilised by too many marketers.
Social media marketing services in India and the world over can be
utilised to gain maximum visibility, improved sales and better brand
awareness. Companies offering different types of digital services use a
number of social media marketing platforms to help businesses
promote their business. Some of these social media sites include:
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• Facebook - Facebook is the most popular social media marketing

networking site on the Internet. Social media marketing consultants
in India help businesses share their business information along
with products details, photos, videos, and useful content with large
number of people. By using this platform, it becomes very easy for
a business to measure the demographics and interests of their
prospective customers. The brand page of a business will have
more and more friends and fans and will get more recognition in
the market.
• Twitter - Twitter allows businesses to broadcast short messages to

their followers, customers and prospects. Mainly, this social
networking site is used to publicise promotions and launch new
products and events. Professional digital agencies help businesses
to take help of this site in the best possible way to promote their
products and services.
• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is used by businesses to share business

information with others in the same target industry. It allows them
to join groups related to their industry and get relevant valuable
suggestions from other professionals in the same field.
Reaching out to so many people has never been so easy for businesses
before. Today, businesses can hire the services of social media
marketing services in India to promote their products and services to
large number of people who are interested in their services. These
professionals are experts in their field and have the appropriate
knowledge to implement the right marketing strategies. Social media
marketing services in India are no doubt, the most innovative way to
make one's business or presence visible in the market.
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1.3 THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Nowadays, Social Media Marketing is widely used by businesses

because it represents a cost-effective marketing solution. The social
media marketing tools can be used largely for free and very easily, in
comparison with other promotional tools. The main purposes of using
social media marketing are the amplification of word-of-mouth
marketing, market research, general marketing, idea generation and
new product development, co-innovation, customer service, public
relations, employee communications and reputation management.
Indeed, social networks can increase product and brand awareness,
web traffic, customer loyalty, but also improve the company’s Search
Engine Optimisation, and even increase the success of new product
launches.
Social Media Marketing can be using unconventional means to

achieve conventional goals, through the use of creativity, community,
and relationships instead of big budgets to achieve marketing
objectives. These methods are powerful guerrilla marketing strategies.
Every marketer is now armed with highly effective online
communications tools that enable him to garner the same level of
influence that many large corporations have. Therefore, social media
marketing is a great change in the world of marketing. Advertisement
and promotions can be sent to every corner of the world today using
social media marketing (SMM). This type of marketing can be used to
showcase, exchange information or even perform the company’s day
to day processes. Social media marketing is a new approach which is
widely used for the promotions and information exchange in the
business world.
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For every business using Social Media Marketing, the challenge is to

find on which social media channels its audience and customers
spend their time and hold conversations. Also, people usually visit
several social media sites instead of sticking to only one. By reading,
listening and analysing their target audience’s activities, marketers
will be able to determine where, when, who and how the consumers
are interacting in the social media universe. It will also help marketers
to define who the influencers are and which role they play in the
online community: Whether they are networkers, everyday users,
trendsetters, reporters or opinion leaders.
Whether it is concerning large multinationals or small and medium-

sized enterprises, Social media Marketing presents many significant
benefits for the companies’ success. Social Media platforms foster
communication around brands and products, enhancing positive as
well as negative word-of-mouth around a business and its products
and services. Any message or piece of information shared on the
social media channels can be seen by thousands of people in an
extremely short period of time.
With the social media, once a customer has purchased the brand,
product or service, he will use it, experience its advantages and
disadvantages and form his personal opinion. He will then obviously
talk about his personal experience with this brand, product and
service on the Internet, and more particularly the social media
platforms. He might leave a comment on the company’s website or
the company’s social media sites, but also on more general forums
that the company’s marketers might never see. This conversation that
the customer is holding on the social media channels will be seen by
other people already aware of the brand, product or service. These
people will be in the second stage of consideration in the purchase
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channel. They will look for information about the brand, product or
service on the Internet, and will quickly and easily find the content
generated by the customer. Social media marketing has indeed made
a real impact in the present day, it is safe to say that it has
revolutionised business completely. The alternatives offered are a
budget friendly way of communicating and disseminating
information. Here are some of the benefits that social media may
provide:
• Direct communication: Social media marketing facilitates one to

one communication between the company and its customers. At
any point, organisations are free to ask for feedback and
suggestions for ways to improve their services and products. This
factor brings about proper customer engagement.
• Brand exposure and awareness: The main benefit acquired by

businesses implementing social media strategies represents the
increase in brand exposure. Brand exposure occurs when the
customer becomes aware of a product, service or advertisement
through at least one of their five senses, whether or not they paid
attention to it. Thanks to the social media platforms, new brands
can establish themselves and foster awareness. For existing brands,
social media platforms also raise awareness. The brands’ visibility
is increased thanks to their presence on the large variety of social
media channels, but also thanks to the word of mouth that is
automatically expanded around the brand. Companies can heavily
use Social Media Marketing to build their brand’s reputation and
enhance their popularity. This is also called online reputation
management.
• Ability to advertise more effectively: Setting up pages and profiles

on social media channels offers many opportunities for advertising
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and for the brand to be seen and reached by its audience. Exposure
is the first step for new brands. Without any exposure, the company
will just fail its launch.Moreover, the marketer can use social media
channels to promote their products and services. The brand’s social
media pages provide the opportunity to present the products and
services in a more interactive way. Consumers will have the choice
of reading the products’ description, photos and videos, and read
reviews and comments about these products.
• Cost effective: One of the biggest advantages of Social Media

Marketing is that it is extremely cost effective. Social media
marketing is a promotional tool that does not need high advertising
costs or an extremely high amount of time. It is a strategy of doing
good and costless business marketing. If a company is aware of
where its target audience is interaction in the social media
landscape, a small investment is enough to get a social media
strategy started and the returns can be amazing. If compared to
other offline promotional activities. Social media is relatively
inexpensive because of its viral characteristics. By little investment
in generating content a lot can be achieved. Social media marketing
guarantees relatively low costs, effectiveness and measurability.
Besides, social media encourages short-term success when looking
at increasing exposure and targeted traffic for instance. However,
social media optimisation will also offer long-term results such as
building trusted relationships with the customers.
• Save up on time: Ever need to reach out to your customer round

the clock or vice versa? Social media marketing is that tool which is
available 24/7 for all 365 days. With various tools available most of  
the work can happen on a weekend or on the go using just a smart
phone.
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• Increasing organisational visibility: Social Media Marketing

increases brand awareness by extending the online presence of the
products and brand. When social media platforms are widely used
by a business, it becomes extremely important to measure the
impacts of social media marketing on brand awareness. This can be
done with social media metrics. Tap into the potential market on
sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to find you your right customer.
Make efforts to spread the word about your company and make the
best of the exposure. Building an optimised social media presence
to increase the brands’ online awareness has become an absolute
must for digital marketing. 
 
Besides, social media signals are beginning to play an important
role with organic rankings. With Social Media Optimisation(SMO),
businesses can get a hefty boost in Search Engine Optimisation
(SEO) initiatives. Therefore, it goes without saying that making sure
that brands receive the proper exposure is important to
companies.There are many social media sites out there where
marketers and their brand can receive the proper exposure in
order to build brand awareness.  
 
All the traffic generated from social media channels can improve
the consumer’s perception of the brand. People trusts company
more when they are being referred from people they know. Social
media is all about building trustworthy relationships. Businesses
can get traffic straight from the content they publish on their social  
media pages and from the people who have read the content, like it,
share it and talk about it online.
• Leads generation: Leads are defined as potential customers or sales

prospects. With the millions of users connecting everyday on the
different social media sites, every business is bound to have some
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prospective customers somewhere on these sites. But how are

businesses supposed to find these potential customers? 
 
It is quite simple, every person who likes the Facebook page of the
company or follow the Twitter profile is a potential customer.
Therefore, by gaining more and more followers online, brands can
raise their chances of generating new customers. The challenge is to
encourage people to visit the companies’ social media sites and
once they are there, companies need to create enough value for
them to hang around. In order to make the visitors hang around,
the company’s social media Sites need to present the company
efficiently and to make some connections with the users, sharing
valuable content, offering useful information and answering any
requests or critics. Also, the personality of the brand needs to
expressively highlightened on the social media sites. Once the
visitors feel interested by the brand, then only, they will become
valuable leads.
• Targeted traffic: With millions of users, social media sites makes a

convenient target base for people who are trying to market
products or services to people online. Actually, Social Media
Marketing has become a very effective way to drive targeted traffic
to companies’ website or blogs. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
still plays a significant role in the website traffic, but social media
has opened many new doors, generated an extremely high amount  
of online traffic. Indeed, social media channels are now providing a
huge avenue for business owners, as they have millions of members
and make the scope of the reach unlimited.
Social media sites will drive targeted visitors back to the company’s
website. The more channels the company is using,the more back links
and interested referrals will point back to the website. In order to
17
define targeted traffic, we should provide a definition of traffic first.

Traffic occurs whenever a person visits a website. There are lots of
techniques for getting traffic to websites and they can easily get
thousands of visitors everyday.However, unless this traffic is targeted,
the visitors will probably not be interested and purchase the product
or service.
In contrast, targeted traffic is traffic that reached a website thanks to

an interest in the product or service offered. Targeted traffic is when
the audience reads an ad for a product or service that a brand is
promoting on its website and they are actually interested in
purchasing that product, and so they click this link to go to the
company’s website. One of the biggest advantages that advertising
through social media can offer marketers is the ability to specifically
target customers based on a variety of different factors.Social media
sites are storing all kinds of data on their users, such as age, gender,
geographical location,interests, and many other pieces of information.
Consequently, these data can be used to reach the company’s target
audience. Therefore, marketers can deliver marketing messages
directly to the people who are the most likely to notice them and click
on them.
• Effective monitoring of competitors: Besides, Internet and Social

Media has completely transformed the way market research and
competitor monitoring is being accomplished. Thanks to the
amount of data left in the archive of the social media channels,
information about the target audience and the competitors is easily
accessible. Therefore, social media highly facilitates market insights.
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On the one hand, social media channels offer the opportunity to spy
on competition. Any brand can watch and read closely what is taking
place on its competitors’ website, blogs, and social media sites.
Competitive benchmarking is an important part of any social media
strategy. Each brand has its own strategies, goals, and execution
tactics. However, brands and their competitors are usually striving to
reach and engage with the same consumer database. Many tools exist
to help marketers analyse what their competitors are doing.
First, it is worth examining how active the competitors are on their

social media sites everyday: how many sites they have created, how
many sites they are updating, how they are posting, how often, and
more importantly, how the people are reacting to their posts. On
LinkedIn for instance, it is possible to see how many employees a
company has, how many followers they have, which products and
services they are offering, and even through which networks both
companies are linked together. Then, marketers can set up Google
Alerts in order to get a message every time a specific word is being
used on the Internet. This free service provided by Google, helps
monitoring the competitors by allowing marketers to see what their
19
competitors are appreciated for, and what they receive complaints for.
This technique is a perfect way of discovering where the audience is
and which social media strategies are working. Marketers get
valuable information from setting up keywords such as the
competitors’ products, executives, brand name variations… Alerts
will provide insights into programs, tactics and strategies.
It will help the brand to differentiate itself and stay ahead from the
competitors. Many other tools are available for marketers such as
Hyper alerts, Twitter Search or Social Mention. The use of social
media to research competitors provides valuable information for any
business looking to implement a smart social media marketing
strategy.Understanding the competitors’ activities offers insight into
which strategies are successful and which strategies are not, and thus,
helps driving decision making without the expense and risk of trying
them first. Additionally, finding out how consumers feel about a
brand, it product and services when compared to its competitors that
are offering similar products and services help the business to
strengthen the features that customers like, and make alterations
where they feel that the company is lacking, when compared to the
competition.
• Target specific Information: The data available on the social media

channels also directly concerns the target audience. Indeed,
analysing the data of the people interaction on the social media
channels provide marketers with demographics and behaviour
characteristics of their consumers. Although marketers may not
have the ability to control what goes on in social media, they can
definitely learn from it. They can study what is taking place and
learn from it. Social media can thus, be compared to one big
ongoing focus group that provides constant insight into consumer  
perceptions on brands. It helps understanding the target audience,
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its characteristics, and its needs and expectations. This information

influences the social media marketing strategy of the
company, helping to improve it.  
 
Marketers will use the best marketing techniques and design the
most adequate marketing message to reach directly their target
market. Finally, social media channels offer the opportunity to test
the marketing campaigns and gather feedbacks before spending the
money on trying to reach the target market as a whole. This will
help the company getting a better understanding of what will reach
the target audience more effectively. In summary, Social Media
Marketing does clearly offer many opportunities to businesses in
regards to their market research, whether it is aiming at
competition monitoring, marketing strategies testing or target
market understanding.
1.4 CATEGORIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
The social media domain is a huge medium that can be divided in

many different types of categories also called as channels. Every
marketer has his own way of distinguishing one social media from
another. Therefore, in this section, we will present the two most
famous models showing the different types of social media channels.
First, we will analyse the Social Media Starfish of Robert Scoble,
before taking a closer look into the Social Media Landscape by Fred
Cavazza.
According to Robert Scoble, the Social Media Starfish illustrates the

different social media channels that people are using to interact on the
Internet. It shows the evolving social media landscape. Although this
model is very famous in the social media marketing domain, it was
developed in 2007 and is thus, far out of date. Indeed, Robert Scoble
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put Conversions in the center of his starfish, which is nowadays

completely irrelevant, as it has been proven again and again that
Social Media Marketing is based on the people, and nothing else.
Also, the examples chosen are very limited and missing the latest
social media sites that have been launched and has developed
themselves lately, such as Pinterest or Google+ for instance.
Figure 1.1: The Social Media Starfish, by Robert Scoble
Fred Cavazza, a French web business consultant, has become famous

with his blog posts presenting his vision of the Social Media
Landscapes every year. He started in 2008, dividing the social media
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channels into ten main groups: publish, share, discuss, social

networks, micro blog, lifestream, livecast, virtual worlds, social games
and MMO. Through the years, he has been updating his model with
the changes in Social Media Marketing. In 2009, he started to put the
social platforms in the center of the Social Media Landscape, with
four main groups around: Expressing, Networking, Sharing and
Gaming. Then, in 2011, Cavazza gave the central position of his model
to Facebook and Google, which are both connected to the seven main
areas of Social Media: Publish, Share, Discuss, Commerce, Location,
Network and Games.
Figure 1.2: The Social Media Landscape 2008, by Fred Cavazza
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Figure 1.3: The Social Media Landscape 2012, by Fred Cavazza
In Fred Cavazza’s latest version of the Social Media Landscape 2012,

the central position of the figure is taken by Facebook, Twitter and
Google+, because he wants to emphasise the fact that they are
providing a large variety of functionalities, and that they are often
used as relays for what Internet users are doing on other platforms.
Also, he has added some new players, a generalisation of
conversations and interactions, and the addition of device types such
as laptops, smartphones, tablets and connected devices. This graph
illustrates greatly the very dense ecosystem which symbolises Social
Media, spreading the various services over families: 
 
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• Publishing: Blog engines (WordPress, Blogger…), wiki

platforms (Wikipedia, Wikia…), lifeblog services (Tumblr,
Posterous…) and social Q&A (Quora)
• Sharing: Dedicated online services for videos (YouTube,

Dailymotion, Vimeo…), pictures (Flickr, Instagram…), links
(Delicious, Digg…), products (Pinterest), music (Spotify…) and
documents (Slideshare, Scribd…)
• Playing: Major editors (Zynga, Playdompcap…), dedicated

platforms (Hi5…) and smaller but innovative editors (Digital
Chocolate, Kobojo…)Networking: Professional (LinkedIn,
Viadeo…), personal (MySpace, Badoo…) or for former
acquaintances (MyYearBook, Classmates…)
• Buying: Customer intelligence platforms (Bazaarvoice,

PowerReviews…), purchase sharing (Polyvore),
recommendation (Hunch) or social commerce offerings
(Boosket) 
• Localization: Mobile applications (Foursquare, Path…),

socialized city guides (Yelp, DisMoisOu…) or upcoming events
or venues (Plancast).
As we are focusing on the benefits of Social Media Marketing for

businesses, we will only analyse the social media channels that have
any utility or effects on businesses. Therefore, the report will not be
examining the group of ‘Buying’ and its customer reviews, and the
group of ‘Playing’, which includes Virtual Game and Social Worlds,
such as the famous sites, World of Warcraft and Second Life. Also,
from Cavazza’s ‘Localisation’ group, we will only be studying the
25
social events channels. However, the additional groups will be added.

Blogs and Microblogs are separated from Wikis, and from Social
Bookmarking and News sites as well. Besides, the discussion forums
are distinguished.
The seven types of Social Media channels affecting businesses will be

the following:
• Social Networks: e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+…
• Blogs and Microblogs: e.g., WordPress Blogger, Twitter…
• Content Communities or Media Sharing Sites (Video/Audio/

Photo/Presentations): e.g., Flickr, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo,
Picasa,Pinterest, Slideshare…
• Wikis or User Generated Content (UGC): e.g., Wikipedia,

WikiTravel, World66…
• Social Bookmarking and News Sites: e.g., Digg, Reddit, Diigo,

Delicious, Google Reader…
• Discussion Forums and Message Boards: e.g., Phorum, Yahoo

Groups, PHPbb…
• Social Events: e.g., Eventful, Meetup.
Blogs and microblogs will be regrouped in a same section, as well as

Social Bookmarking and Social News sites. A few examples for each
type of Social Media channel are shown through their logos.
26
1.5 Social Media Marketing: Factors influencing online marketing
Real Time Interaction
Social Media channels represent a wide interactive dialogue between

brands and their current and prospective customers. Through the
social media sites, consumers are able to leave feedbacks and share
their opinions, but they can also request help and support. The
communication is interactive and often fosters relationships between
companies and their customers. Marketers can have a direct
conversation with precisely the individuals who are purchasing their
products or services, or who are currently looking for what they have
to offer.
On the companies’ blogs, pages and profiles, customers can leave

feedbacks, expressing their true thoughts and feelings about a
company and its products and services. Thanks to this
communication, marketers get the opportunity to answer these
thoughts, but also to educate the customers. These opinions help
brands to improve their customers’ experience. Feedbacks may
include general opinions of the brand, experiences trying the products
and services, convenience with the buying process, and even the way
that consumers feel about the look and usability of the company’s
website. Through these feedbacks, marketers can find out if the
company is meeting or exceeding the expectations of its customers.
Of course, consumers can leave negative opinions. Negative word-of-

mouth can expand really quickly with the social media channels.
However, if the business has a real social media marketing strategy,
then it will see it as an ability to monitor public perception of its
27
brand, products and services in real time. If a negative opinion goes

viral through Social Media’s worldwide interconnected platforms,
marketers have the opportunity and responsibility to provide a quick
and effective response. The aim is to listen, discover and resolve
problems rapidly before they spin out of control.
Quality Customer Service
By offering a quick, efficient and personalised customer service,

consumers will appreciate it and feel different. Strengthening the
customer service online is also a way of presenting the brand,
products and services in a more human, interactive way. It offers a
human face in the form of a social spokesperson, with person-to-
person conversations which build trust in the company’s authenticity
and professionalism. Therefore, a personalised experience through the
solving of an issue will foster customer engagement, loyalty and trust.
Finally, this customer interaction on the social media platforms is also
indirectly reducing costs, as the online community might as well help
answering the problems, and the cost per interaction in customer
support is definitely cheaper through the social media sites than using
telephone or email support.
Benefits in PR and Human Relations
Another important benefit for businesses implementing a social

media strategy concerns the domains of Public Relations and Human
Resources. Public relations specialists were some of the first people to
embrace the power of social media. They use it every single day to get
the word out about clients, to communicate with customers and to
respond to questions or problems. Anybody can now connect with
people in their industry, impress them with their professionalism, and
28
gather information that can directly help them in their professional

career.
Using the social network LinkedIn, for example, is a valuable asset for
businesses aiming at building a professional network. Business-to-
business companies might easily find prospective customers, while
any type of business can use LinkedIn to look for employees, posting
job alerts and connecting with future potential employees. Other
examples of professional social networks are Video, Ryze,
Meettheboss or Focus.com. Social media supports the recruitment
system in many ways. It helps searching for new candidates, keeping
in contact with them, advertising specific jobs, advertising to build
company profiles, building talent pools, building employer brands,
graduate recruitments, but also providing an online application
process for selections. Therefore, the new term Social Recruiting has
been developed in order to define the process of recruiting candidates
through the use of social media platforms as promotional and
advertising channels by employers. Public relations and social media
are both about creating and fostering relationships. Professional
networking has been made exponentially easier with social media.
Nowadays networking represents the ability to tap into hundreds of
relevant connections with just the click of a button.
1.6 ACTIVITIES
1. Facebook is the most popular social media marketing networking

site – but in this chapter we have seen many other social
networking sites. Browse online and research two relatively
unknown sites similar to Facebook 
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————-
29
2. Browse the Internet and obtain more insight on social media

channels offering the opportunity to test the marketing campaigns
and gather feedbacks. 
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________
1.7 SUMMARY
In this chapter, we have discussed about basics of social media. Social

networks are communities of people who typically share a common
behaviour, idea, interest or activity. A social network indicates a graph
of relationships within a group of individuals. Social networking sites
have increased in the last decade. The most popular social networks
include Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. They facilitate
communication by providing a variety of ways for users to interact
with each other like e-mail or instant message. Social Media
Marketing is marketing that focuses on people, not products. The
products can be presented by the company with as many qualitative
features and promotional tools as possible, but what really matters is
the comments and appreciations left by the customers. People provide
the content, and this is the reason why Social Media Marketing is so
scary and challenging for marketers. They do not control the
marketing content anymore. Negative word-of-mouth can spread
worldwide in a couple of minutes only. To make your social
marketing venture a success, you need sizzling content. Ideas, if they
need to be put across, must be wrapped in a package of infotainment.

Your content must have the power to cut through the layers of
cynicism in people today and make an impact. It helps to address
30
people who you know are sympathetic about the cause that you are
looking to uphold. You get that added advantage on social media
platforms where you know your target readers better.
Social media has been a buzz word from the last few years now in the
digital world. It has helped a number of online businesses to
constantly contact their users in a very effective way. In this age, if a
business is not using right marketing strategies or not changing
strategies, it can become extinct. So, it has become important to
embrace technology and enjoy the rewards. Social media marketing
services in India and the world over can be utilised to gain maximum
visibility, improved sales and better brand awareness. Companies
offering different types of digital services use a number of social
media marketing platforms to help businesses promote their business.
Some of these social media sites include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.
We have discussed about benefits of social media, such as:
• Brand exposure and awareness

• Cost effective
• Increasing organisational visibility
• Targeted traffic
• Target specific information
The seven types of social media channels affecting businesses will be

the following:
• Social Networks: e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+…
• Blogs and Microblogs: e.g., WordPress Blogger, Twitter…  
31
• Content Communities or Media Sharing Sites (Video/Audio/

Photo/Presentations): e.g., Flickr, YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo,
Picasa, Pinterest, Slideshare…
• Wikis or User Generated Content (UGC): e.g., Wikipedia,

WikiTravel, World66…
• Social Bookmarking and News Sites: e.g., Digg, Reddit, Diigo,

Delicious, Google Reader…
• Discussion Forums and Message Boards: e.g., Phorum, Yahoo

Groups, PHPbb…
• Social Events: e.g., Eventful, Meetup…
Social media channels represent a wide interactive dialogue between

brands and their current and prospective customers. Through the
social media sites, consumers are able to leave feedbacks and share
their opinions, but they can also request help and support. The
communication is interactive and often fosters relationships between
companies and their customers. Marketers can have a direct
conversation with precisely the individuals who are purchasing their
products or services, or who are currently looking for what they have
to offer.
Another important benefit for businesses implementing a social

media strategy concerns the domains of Public Relations and Human
Resources. Public relations specialists were some of the first people to
embrace the power of social media. They use it every single day to get
the word out about clients, to communicate with customers and to
respond to questions or problems. Anybody can now connect with
people in their industry, impress them with their professionalism, and
gather information that can directly help them in their professional
career.
32
1.8 SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1. Discuss in detail why the international marketers need to

recognise the power and critical nature of the conversations being
held by consumers using social media?
2. Describe why the effects of social media are really important?
3. Cite the reasons that social media platforms also raise awareness
for existing brands?
4. Explain in brief the effective monitoring of competitors.
5. Explain in brief the Fred Cavazza’s latest version of the Social Med
Landscape 2012.
6. Describe in detail the seven types of social media channels

affecting businesses.
7. Identify the factors that make communication an interactive

process by the use of social media.
8. What is the effect of Social Media Marketing in Quality Customer

Service?
9. Explain in what way social media supports the recruitment

system?
33
REFERENCE MATERIAL
Click on the links below to view additional reference material for this
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
Video Lecture - Part 1
34
BLENDING TRADITIONAL MARKETING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
Chapter 2
Blending Traditional Marketing with Social Media
Objectives
• After going through this chapter you will be able to:

• Understand the reasons behind moving to social media marketing
• Know about the five pillars of social media marketing
• Understand how to identify social media sites that appeal to your
target audience
• Describe the techniques to blend social media with traditional
marketing
Structure
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Reasons Behind Moving to Social Media Marketing
2.3 The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing
2.4 Identify Social Media Sites that Appeal to Your Target Audience
2.5 Scenarios: Special Blend of Social Media and Traditional
Marketing
2.6 Techniques to Blend Social Media with Traditional Marketing
2.7 Developing a Holistic Approach
2.8 Short Case Study
2.9 Activities
2.10 Summary
35
2.1 Introduction: Combining Social Media with Traditional

Advertising for better performance
Social media doesn’t have to mean writing a blog or creating a

widget. When a viewer repeats the tag line from a TV spot,
spontaneously sings a jingle they heard, tells a friend about their
experience with a certain brand or posts reviews online—they’re
engaging in a form of social media too. Whether a brand sets out to
create a social media campaign that starts people talking or
something else causes lots of people to begin chatting up the brand,
that public buzz, for better or worse, is social media.
Social Media cannot be Controlled
By integrating traditional advertising and marketing tactics where

you can control the message, with the influence and reach of social
media, marketers can guide the message instead of control it. Many
companies have shied away from social media marketing because
they’re concerned about losing control of the message and fear what
their brand message might become in the hands of the public.
Marketers remain in control of crafting the strategy and executing the
“official” version of the message; all of which sets the stage for
customers to base their opinions on opinions they may choose to
share.
!  
36
Defining what that brand experience ultimately means to the

customer is neither the job nor privilege of the marketer. It’s up to the
customers. The more the brand means to them, the more they connect
with it. That in turn determines their purchase decision, their loyalty,
and whether they feel strongly enough to advocate for the brand in
the future.
A lot of great ideas have given rise to innovative, effective, and

measurable social business programs. But these are still exceptions,
which is unfortunate as social technology is within the reach of nearly
everyone. The collaborative technologies that now define
contemporary marketplaces — technologies commonly called “social
media,” the “Social Web,” or “Web 2.0” — offer a viable approach to
driving changes in deeper business processes across a wide range of
applications. There is something here for most organisations,
something that extends very much beyond marketing and
communications.
When marketers control what is said about their product, as in the

case of an ad, people view it as biased and self-serving. When a third
party, like a customer writes an online review of a product, it’s
viewed as honest and credible, and that is the secret to the power of
social media. In a 2009 online survey by Forrester Research showed
that “people trusted the purchase advice of strangers online more
than TV or print ads.”
For a lot of organisations—including business, nonprofit and

governmental agencies—use of social media very often begins in
marketing, public communications, or a similar office or department
with a direct connection to customers and stakeholders. This makes
sense given that a typical driver for getting involved with social
media is a slew of negative comments, a need for “virality,” or a boost
37
to overall awareness in the marketplace and especially in the minds

and hearts of those customers increasingly out of reach of the
traditional media. In a word, many organisations are looking for
engagement, and they see social media as the way to get it.
Traditional Marketing Clarifies Social Media
While social media marketing can be great for spreading your

message, it has a significant shortfall: people don’t necessarily spread
the same message you would like them to. While its authentic and
honest, it may not be a message that fits your strategy and may even
be detrimental. Traditional marketing can help to create the
foundation of information and guide the brand message as it is
passed throughout the social community. By cross promoting the
contents of one marketing effort, for example, TV with another, like
social media you increase the “volume” of the message, focus the
accuracy and add frequency, thereby, maximising the effectiveness of
both efforts.
In a 2008 study by Yankelovich and Sequent Partners called “When

Advertising Works,” it was found that “ads that make an impression
in traditional media were more likely to stimulate word of mouth
than ads that make an impression in digital media. Social media
marketing — properly practiced — seeks to engage customers in the
online social locations where they naturally spend time. By
comparison, social business picks up on what they are talking about
and what they are interested in and connects this back into the
business where it can be processed and used to create the next round
of customer experiences and hence, the next round of conversations.
It’s important to understand the role of the customer — taken here to

include anyone “on the other side” of a business transaction: It might
38
be a retail consumer, a business customer, a donor for a nonprofit

organisation or a voter in an election. What’s common across all of
these archetypes — and what matters in the context of social business
— is that each of them has access to information, in addition to
whatever information you put into the marketplace, that can support
or refute the messages you’ve spent time and money creating.
Social Media Amplifies Traditional Marketing
Balancing the free-form messaging of social media with the control,

consistency and mass reach of traditional media can offer the best of
both worlds. Today, the focus needs to be on building an opt-in
audience in order to create community, foster loyalty and generate
conversations.
A great example of this is a recent promotion by Estée Lauder. They

took a free makeover promotion to an entirely new level when they
used social media to drive women to participate and later bring
awareness to this in-store event. In order to attract digitally savvy
women to the makeup counters at leading department stores, Estée
used social media and online PR to offer free makeovers and free
professional headshot. After each makeover, women would have a
glamour photo taken of them (including of course an Estée Lauder
logo in the background) and upload the image as their social profile
photo before ever leaving the counter. By uploading the glamorous
39
photo with the logo, the customer introduces her entire social
network to the brand, a personalised example of its benefits and
hopefully even spark a few conversations along the way.
2.2 Reasons behind moving to Social media marketing
Over 73% of small business owners are now using sites like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest to help grow their businesses. If you
are still standing on the social sidelines, there’s never been a better
time to get started, because it works. If you’re a business owner,
chances are you’ve already considered using social media to help get
the word out about your business. You’re not alone.
In a recent Survey, 95% of small business owners reported that not

only were they using Facebook to market their business, but 82% of
those people found it to be effective. Perhaps that’s why, in that same
survey, 81% of those currently using social media marketing to
connect with customers, members and prospects, said they expect to
increase their efforts in the coming year.
Consider an organisation like Freescale, a spin-off of Motorola.

Freescale uses YouTube for a variety of sanctioned purposes,
including as a place for current employees to publish videos about
their jobs as engineers: The purpose is the encouragement of
prospective employees — given the chance to see “inside Freescale”
— to more strongly consider working for Freescale. Or, look at an
organisation like Coca Cola: Coke is reducing its dependence on
branded microsite in favour of consumer-driven social sites like
Facebook for building connections with customers. Coke is also
directly tapping customer tastes through its Coca Cola Freestyle
vending machines that let consumers mix their own Coke flavours.
Comcast and may other firms now use Twitter as a customer-support
40
channel. The list of examples of the direct integration of collaborative

and shared publishing applications in business — beyond marketing
— is growing rapidly.
Here are 10 reasons why social media marketing could be right for
business:
• Social media does help to get the word out: First and foremost —
social media does in fact help to get the word out about business.
But even more important than the exposure it provides your
organisation is the opportunity it provides to grow the relationships
with that target audience. The Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and
LinkedIn connections are people who know your organisation,
have likely done business with you in the past, and will be most
likely to tell their friends about you. Social media allows you to
strengthen relationships with these connections through social
engagement. Thus, because that engagement is easily visible to the
connections of your current fans and followers, social media can
introduce your business to a whole new audience and enable you to
reach your next great customer.
• Social media is popular — really, really, popular: You don’t need

to be a dedicated reader of tech blogs or an expert in online
marketing to know that social media is really popular among
consumers. With over 1 billion people on Facebook, 200 million
people on Twitter, and 200 million more on LinkedIn — social
media will touch nearly every customer that walks through your
door. For most small businesses, Facebook is the jumping-off point
for getting started with social media marketing. With its extensive
reach and dynamic functionality — there are very few businesses
that couldn’t benefit from having a presence on Facebook. And
41
starting there will make it easier when you want to try something
new.
• Social media sites are free: Getting started on social media is

completely free. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn all offer
free accounts to users and businesses and signing up will not
require anything more than an email address. Some sites—like
LinkedIn—do offer paid accounts with features that are targeted at
more advanced users, but for the purposes of getting started,
there’s no upfront cost for most of the social networks.
• Social media reaches all ages and demographics: Social media has
really broken down all of the age barriers that once accompanied
the way people thought about social media. In fact, according to a
2011 study conducted by IBM, Baby Boomers have demonstrated
the most growth on social media sites. In 2010, 72% were using
Facebook, Twitter, and other networks — up from 50% in 2009. So,
no matter how young or how old your target audience may be,
chances are most of them are already logging on and waiting for
you to get started.
• Social media users are active: One thing you have to know about
social media users is that when they say they are on social media,
they are really on social media. When it comes to Facebook, more
than half of its users log on to the network every single day and 60
per cent of those users say checking Facebook is one of the first
things they do every day. This level of activity isn’t unique to
Facebook either, today more than 400 million tweets are sent on
Twitter each day. While a customer may visit your store once a
week—they could see you on Facebook or Twitter every single day.
42
• Social media encourages two-way communication: There is no

marketing tool available to small businesses today that provides the
type of two-way communication that comes with using social
media. It has the power to take any of the feedback you may receive
from using a tool like email marketing and supercharge it — letting
customers share their thoughts, questions, and ideas quickly and
publicly without having to take the time to write an entire email.
And it allows you to respond just as fast, without having to pick up
the phone or worry the customer isn’t seeing your response.
• Social media is perfect for customer service: Providing stellar

customer service is likely already a top priority for your small
business. But along with the two-way communication that social
media provides, it also offers a unique opportunity to step up your
customer service game and provide instant gratification to your
target audience. This will allow you to showcase just how much
you care about providing a memorable experience and will ensure
that no customer inquiry goes unnoticed. And by monitoring social
media for customer feedback and offering a response, you can drive
real business results. According to a 2011 survey, 64% of
respondents said they would be more likely to shop with a business
after receiving a response via Twitter. Customer service through
social media is quickly becoming an expectation of consumers. If
customers are already searching for you on Facebook or Twitter and
not finding your business — you may already be missing
opportunities to win new customers
• Social media lets you share a lot of information about your

business: Social media sites are becoming the preferred places for
consumers who want to learn more about a business. That’s
because these sites allow businesses to offer the most up to date
information about anything from products, services, or upcoming
43
events. Also, much of your activity and profiles on social media

sites can be made “public,” meaning they can be indexed by search
engines — one more way to make sure your business or
organisation comes up as the answer when someone is searching
for a local solution to a problem.
• Social media can make a big difference for your email marketing:
Social media has completely changed the game when it comes to
how small businesses think of email marketing. Sharing your email
newsletter across your social networks can open your content up to
a whole new audience and finally generate the type of buzz you’ve
been looking for. Together, these two powerful tools have reshaped
the marketing landscape and have really levelled the playing field
for small businesses trying to better connect with current customers
and reach new audiences for their business
• Social media is everywhere: The benefit of the increased presence

of mobile activity in our daily lives is huge for small businesses.
Every major social network (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn,
etc.) offers free mobile apps that let business owner manage their
presence on-the-go. More importantly, the Smart applications let
customers connect to their favourite sites wherever they are. For a
site like Twitter, 60% of its entire user base is connected via their
smartphones, tablets, or other mobile devices. These users aren’t
just sharing updates from their own lives, they’re searching for
businesses, products, and services, and connecting with brands
through their social channels. If your business is running late when
it comes to making your content “mobile-friendly,” social media
can be an easy and cost-effective first step to marketing in the
digital age. Plus, it can improve the chances of your business
getting found when someone is searching for a place to eat or a
product to buy, while on-the-go.
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2.3 The Five Pillars of Social Media Marketing
Any and all forms of Social Media Marketing tactics fall under at least
one of these five forms of action. Often the same channel will
incorporate two or more of these:
• Declaration of Identity
• Identity through Association
• User-initiated Conversation
• Provider-initiated Conversation
• In-person Interaction
1. Identity-based Interaction is your declaration of your value, who

you are, and where you can be found. Your customer happens
upon your online identity that you, as a provider, define and
declare. This is anything from your About Us pages on your blog
or website, to your MySpace profile, to your Twitter profile. Here,
there is very little interaction outside of your own declaration, but
this becomes critical in defining how you can benefit your
marketplace.
45
There has been a recent outcrop of websites created purely for this
function and behave like an expanded business card. Most also
include the opportunity to link to your other forms of presence online,
bringing together your presence in one place…well, kind-of. They
include:
• Naymz
• Ziki
• ClaimID
• SuprGlu
• LinkedIn
2. Association-based Interaction is the customers’ opportunity to

associate themselves with the customers and vice versa. Most
obviously, this is accomplished through things like becoming
“Friends” on MySpace, you and your customers’ BlogRoll, or through
their social bookmarking. This is your customer wearing your
company’s logo proudly.
The most explicit form of allowing for this ability is through social
bookmarking sites. I say this, and not social networking sites, because
this is the sole function of these sites. Make it easy for your customers
to bookmark your site, blog posts, etc., with their favourite tool.
• del.icio.us
• Furl
• blummy
• Magnolia
• StumbleUpon
• BlinkList
46
3. User-initiated Conversation is your users’ opportunity to create

their own declarations or questions, and your opportunity to respond.
This is your opportunity to be there and cater to them. Here, you
serve your customers. Perhaps the most cut-and-dry examples of this
lie in message boards, forums and “groups” sites such as Google
Groups, Yahoo! Groups, community sites, etc. So, how do you find
these conversations?
In order to get directly involved with your customers, the most well
known example of this is “GoogleGuy” on the Webmaster World
forums, is through users’ forums, and sites such as:
• Yahoo Groups
• Google Groups
• AOL Groups
47
• MSN Groups
• Topica email Lists
• Kaboodle Groups
• Eurekster
• tribe.net
• Ning
4. Provider-initiated Conversation is your chance to find out what

your customers think, feel, love and hate about your product. Ask
them. Challenge them. Present yourself to them, but do so
respectfully. As much as it’s an opportunity for them to tell you what
they love and hate about your product, it’s also their choice whether
to do so or not. Be kind, respectful and appreciate their time.
Market research has always been fundamental to marketing success.

The social web makes it much easier to find out what people are
saying about you, who you should be talking to, what they are
interested in, and what you should be talking to them about.
Tap into the online conversations to find out:
• Who is talking about you – find your “kind”
• What they are saying about you, your competitors, and your
industry in general
• Is it positive or negative
• Where are the conversations taking place
• What communities talk about you
48
• What are your competitors doing in social media and what’s the
buzz about them
• What content resonates with your audience
• Are there subjects of interest you could provide content for
• What social sites have the most conversation
• Who are the “fire-starters” you need to connect with
• Who are the influencers in these blogs or communities
• Where are the opportunities and threats
Once you have this information, you can allocate your resources
wisely. You’ll know where to start, and what social sites you should
be concentrating on. When you know the lay of the land, it’s much
easier to plot a path to your destination. A social media marketing
strategy is your roadmap.
Social networking strategies for connecting with your customers can

certainly be complex, tricky and cumbersome, so I’ll be writing up
strategies in the very near future to hopefully assist on those fronts. In
the meantime, find your customers and interact with them here:
• Myspace
• Bebo
• Friendster
• Consummating
49
5. In-person Interaction is the pinnacle form of interaction with your

customers. You’re interacting with them online, why not in person?
Does it get better than that? This is where relationships are built and
authentic conversation is had with so much more input, feedback,
collaboration and communication. Organisations can never have the
quality of a conversation online as much as a face-to-face
conversation.
It is advisable to meet customers and let them interact with other

customers. Build your community. Go to conferences…better yet,
organise your own gatherings.
To help this along, coordinating, managing attendee status, etc., there

have been several sites that can help in either finding local events or
coordinating your own:
• Meetup
• BarCamp
• Evite
• Upcoming
• Eventful
Final Thoughts
One thing about social media marketing: It’s complicated for two
reasons: no one has created a structure to work from, and there’s so
much overlap in functionality of different sites, that it can be quite
confusing as to a site’s single purpose because…well…there usually
isn’t a single purpose. Don’t let this hold you back. Get out there.
Spend time with these sites. Sign up, Use them, meet your customers,
talk to your customers, and cherish them.
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2.4 Identify social media sites that appeal to your target audience
With so many social media sites available for you to market to your
target audience, it can be difficult to know where to start. To make it
even more overwhelming, there seems to be new social networks
popping up everyday. It almost seems that if you’re not a social media
expert, you could be missing out on key marketing channels to reach
your target audience.
There are millions of online conversations daily. Once you have

collected the data, you can analyse the mentions of your brand, find
out what your share of voice is in a particular conversation, get the
ratio of positive to negative mentions, discover who talks about you
and on what platform, find fans and detractors, and identify threats
and opportunities. “Share of Voice” is defined as the percentage of the
mentions that are about your brand/company/organisation in the
particular niche or market you’re active in. Do people use a generic
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description of what you do, or do they talk about your products or

services specifically?
To aid you in your social media marketing efforts, Media Bistro an

online analytics company recently shared a helpful info graphic that
provides a detailed breakdown of user demographics on various
social networking sites. Check out some of these statistics below to
see which social networking sites you need to be active on to stay in
front of your target audience:
Facebook:
• According to updated information from the Pew Research Center,

67 per cent of Internet users are active on Facebook.
• This social networking site particularly appeals to women between

the ages of 18 and 29.
• Facebook has a higher percentage of active users in the 30 to 49, 50

to 64, and over 65 age brackets than any other social networking
site.
Twitter:

16 per cent of Internet users are active on Twitter (which has nearly
doubled since 2010).
• City dwellers are much more likely to be active on Twitter than the
rural population.
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• Twitter appeals most to the under 50 demographic, and most

specifically the 18 to 29 age bracket.
Pinterest:

15 per cent of Internet users are active on Pinterest.
• Women are 5 times more likely to be active on Pinterest than men.
Instagram:

13 per cent of all Internet users are active on Instagram.
• More women than men use Instagram.
• The majority of Instagram users are between the ages of 18 and 29.
2.5 Scenarios: Special blend of social media and traditional

marketing
Blending social media with your traditional marketing practices is

highly effective as well. Your potential customers are bombarded
with marketing in virtually all aspects of their life – it is important
that your business is noticed as a great choice when that prospect is
ready to make a decision.
Marketing encompasses multitudes of strategies and tactics. Putting

the right combination together requires careful consideration and
53
evaluation of your business goals to make sure the appropriate

marketing tools are utilised.
Here are a few scenarios to consider when looking for that special
blend of social media and traditional marketing:
• New website – Announce your new website through Facebook,

Twitter and also through a post card mailer to increase your website
traffic.
• Photography – The use of images is a long standing marketing

practice. By leveraging images in social media and creating
multimedia posts your photography investment can go much
further.
• Article “teaser” – Publish a brief article in your local newspaper or

trade magazine that discusses a particular problem that your
business can address. But do not give away “all” of the clues or
54
answers. Instead refer them to your social media accounts for more
information.
• Analytics and tradition – Social media analytics can tell you what
demographics are attracted to your brand. From there you can
tailor your print, radio and television ads to that audience.
• Contests and sweepstakes – A very effective blend of marketing is

to launch a contest on your social media site such as Facebook, and
reference that contest in all of your materials. Include in your sales
flyers, on your voice mail, with your customer service reps, and in
your email newsletters.
• Surveys – Leverage social media to get existing customer feedback

as well as acquire information about prospective customers. Also
include an offer to take the social media survey on your store
receipts or in your email newsletters.
Why is the combination of social media and traditional marketing so

effective? There are two primary reasons:
• Timing is everything and blending the methods increases your

likelihood of being available at the right time and place for your
target market.
• Ease of use – Not everyone reads everything that is on printed

paper, and many do not want to take the time to fill out an info card
then mail it.If they glance at the card, and then happen upon your
business through social media, you can have them fill out the form
online, which makes it easier for you as well as your target
customers.
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The right blend of traditional marketing with a social media approach

gives your business a delicious boost that will bring your target
audience to your door.
2.6 Techniques to blend social media with traditional marketing
Successfully marketing a small business today takes a multi pronged

approach. The latest studies show that most small business owners
still rely on traditional channels to produce effective, reliable results.
But other marketing methods – and social media marketing in
particular – are growing rapidly. If blended properly with traditional
ads, the combined effort can supercharge your sales.
It’s not a contest between different ways to market. You don’t have to
choose one or the other. Today’s customers cross easily between
online and offline worlds. Your goal is to reach them and reinforce
your message in both places, giving you greater control over your
message. How can you effectively divide your time and resources so
that you participate in the places that make the most sense for your
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business? Part of your research – listening to what’s being said online

– includes who is talking about you and where the conversations are
taking place.
It’s also important to blend channels because each one plays a

different role in influencing how customers discover you and make
their purchase decisions. For example, a print ad might stimulate a
customer to want to learn more about what you offer, causing them to
search social media for more information. The number of influencers
is growing as more and more people publish content online. It’s no
longer about how many people did we reach, it’s have we reached the
right people who want to engage and communicate with us.
This means that large networks are not always the best place to
concentrate on. There are many small social networks built around a
group that is passionate about a subject. Find the ones that are
relevant to your company or organisation.
Here are seven ways to blend social media with traditional marketing:
• Make print a social driver. If you are like many other small
businesses and your Facebook page is becoming your main online
hub, print and other traditional marketing tools can be used to help
drive people to your page. Promote your Facebook address on
counter cards, posters, invoices, receipts, brochures, napkins and
menus. Post your Twitter address in the window. Put your social
media listings on everything from cups to coupons.
• Showcase social mentions in print. Use your print ads to showcase

what others are saying about your business, products or services
through Facebook, review sites, Twitter or elsewhere. This helps
57
amplify the buzz about your business and can generate (or
reinforce) all-important word-of-mouth.
• Capture the cross-promotional power of QR codes. These handy

devices are an ideal tool for integrating print ads with your digital
presence. The website DexSocial.com has helpful articles on QR
code basics for small business.
• Create an offline promotion with an online benefit. For example, a

cosmetics store can offer a free makeover along with a photo of the
customer (with your brand or logo in the background) that the
customer and you can use on Facebook or other social media sites.
A photography business might do something similar.
• Build engagement and lists with email signup sheets or opt-in

cards.Customers are sometimes reluctant to provide an email
address, so this works best if combined with a promotion or when
they are enjoying a product or service you’ve just provided.
Remember that most customers – even your most loyal – will not
join your social media circle on their own. They need to be asked or
nudged by you. You can also use print to promote rewards for
customers who take certain actions online – such as liking you on
Facebook or sharing your posted content with others.
• Get everyone in your business involved. Every employee should

be trained to inform customers of your social media presence and
to recommend they visit you on Facebook. Think of it as pure one-
on-one offline marketing.
• Cross-sell continuously online and offline. Each time you use a

marketing channel, mention the other channels you are using and
what you are doing there. For example, your emails, direct mail
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promotions and yellow pages ads should all mention how to find
you on social media. On the flip side, your Facebook page and
Twitter tweets can tell people to be on the lookout for a special offer
that’s coming through another channel.
2.7 Developing a holistic approach
Social Networks foster collaboration, can replace intranets and

corporate directories, and can promote non-email conversation
channel, creating thus, a forum where conversation flourishes based
in part ,on experiences with the products and services that businesses
sell. Also, they amass like-minded people around shared interests
with little external force, no organisational center, and a group sense
of what is important and what comes next. Online communities
spread globally, while managing to retain regional culture and
behaviours. Social Networks contain lots of information about
prospective new hires, customers and competitors. Actually, they are
a valuable source of prospecting and lead-generation information for
sales and marketing. They can be whether personal-oriented, like
Facebook and Google+, or professionally-oriented, like LinkedIn.
Social Media Marketing is not always easy, quick or cheap. Social

media marketing involves research, strategy, implementation, team’s
implication, networking, conversing and measuring. For any type of
59
business, there exist at least one or several appropriated social media

channels to use. In general, social media networks and blogs are the
social media channels the most effective at generating real customers.
Many different types of social media channels exist. Each of them has
its own characteristics, its own advantages and disadvantages, and its
own powerful results for businesses. Marketers have to intelligently
utilise each type of social media channels: the Social Networks, the
Blogs and Micro blogs, the Media Sharing platforms, the Wikis, the
Social Bookmarking Sites, the Forums, and finally, the Social Events to
create marketing opportunities.
2.8 Short Case study: Genex Logistics
Overview
Genex offers a wide range of services likes International Freight

Management, Freight Forwarding, Contract Logistics, 3PL, 4PL,
Warehousing and Distribution, Project Logistics. Genex logistics has a
pan-India presence and has been at the forefront, setting benchmarks
for supply chain and logistics industry.
Objectives:
• To create awareness about Genex in international markets,which

would help us generate leads in near and long-term
• To remain connected with our employees, close stakeholders and

other distant stakeholders in the country
• To exhibit our thought leadership in the supply chain and logistics

management domain.
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How Turning Trends Helped Genex Logistics?
Facebook page was created to increase awareness about the brand to

national audience. Secondly, it has been a relevant platform to remain
connected with our employees who work from across the country.
Informative content in the form of images, videos, blogposts are
shared.
Twitter handle is used as an information aggregator and disseminator

of informative content and latest happenings in supply chain and
logistics industry on an international scale.
Slide share channel is used to share knowledge, i.e., insights from

brand’s projects in the form of case studies that would be helpful for
our stakeholders and supply chain community at large. Also, some
informative presentations are prepared and shared. As and when this
case study is been written the total views on this channel has been in
excess of 10,000.
Results:
• 500 followers on Twitter and growing steadily.
• More than 10,000 views on Slideshare and expected to increase fast

as more case studies are to be uploaded soon.
• Substantial number of leads from international markets through

Twitter.
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2.9 Activities
1. Browse online and research the difference between social

marketing and social media marketing. Research and note
down the five most important differences between them?
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
2. Browse the Internet and enlist and obtain more insight on the
recent outcrop of websites created purely for the function of
Identity-based Interaction and behave like an expanded business
card. 
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
2.10 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about blending traditional

marketing with social media. By integrating traditional advertising
and marketing tactics where you can control the message, with the
influence and reach of Social Media, marketers can guide the message
instead of control it. Many companies have shied away from social
media marketing because they’re concerned about losing control of
the message and fear what their brand message might become in the
hands of the public. Marketers remain in control of crafting the
strategy and executing the “official” version of the message; all of
which sets the stage for customers to base their opinions on opinions
they may choose to share.
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While social media marketing can be great for spreading your

message, it has a significant shortfall: people don’t necessarily spread
the same message you would like them to. While its authentic and
honest, it may not be a message that fits your strategy and may even
be detrimental. Traditional marketing can help to create the
foundation of information and guide the brand message as it is
passed throughout the social community. By cross promoting the
contents of one marketing effort, for example TV with another like
social media you increase the “volume” of the message, focus the
accuracy and add frequency, thereby, maximising the effectiveness of
both efforts.
Balancing the free-form messaging of social media with the control,

consistency and mass reach of traditional media can offer the best of
both worlds. Today, the focus needs to be on building an opt-in
audience in order to create community, foster loyalty and generate
conversations.
Over 73% of small business owners are now using sites like Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest to help grow their businesses. If you
are still standing on the social sidelines, there’s never been a better
time to get started, because it works. If you’re a business owner,
chances are you’ve already considered using social media to help get
the word out about your business. In a recent Survey, 95% of small
business owners reported that not only were they using Facebook to
market their business, but 82% of those people found it to be effective.
Perhaps that’s why, in that same survey, 81% of those currently using
social media marketing to connect with customers, members, and
prospects, said they expect to increase their efforts in the coming year.
Some of the reasons why social media marketing could be right for
business are as below:
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• Social media does help get the word out

• Social media sites are free
• Social media users are active
• Social media is perfect for customer service
• Social media can make a big difference for your email
marketing
We have also discussed about five pillars of social media marketing.

Any and all forms of Social Media Marketing tactics fall under at least
one of these five forms of action.
• Declaration of Identity
• Identity through Association
• User-initiated Conversation
• Provider-initiated Conversation
• In-person Interaction
With so many social media sites available for you to market to your
target audience, it can be difficult to know where to start. To make it
even more overwhelming, there seem to be new social networks
popping up everyday. It almost seems that if you’re not a social media
expert, you could be missing out on key marketing channels to reach
your target audience. Blending social media with your traditional
marketing practices is highly effective as well. Your potential
customers are bombarded with marketing in virtually all aspects of
their life – it is important that your business is noticed as a great
choice when that prospect is ready to make a decision. Marketing
encompasses multitudes of strategies and tactics. Putting the right
combination together requires careful consideration and evaluation of
your business goals to make sure the appropriate marketing tools are
utilised.
64
Successfully marketing a small business today takes a multi pronged

approach. The latest studies show that most small business owners
still rely on traditional channels to produce effective, reliable results.
But other marketing methods – and social media marketing in
particular – are growing rapidly. If blended properly with traditional
ads, the combined effort can supercharge your sales.
Seven ways to blend social media with traditional marketing are:
• Make print a social driver

• Showcase social mentions in print
• Capture the cross-promotional power of QR codes
• Create an offline promotion with an online benefit
• Build engagement and lists with email signup sheets or opt-in cards
• Get everyone in your business involved
• Cross-sell continuously online and offline
Social Media Marketing is not always easy, quick or cheap. Social

media marketing involves research, strategy, implementation, team’s
implication, networking, conversing and measuring. For any type of
business, there exist at least one or several appropriated social media
channels to use. In general, social media networks and blogs are the
social media channels the most effective at generating real customers.
Many different types of Social media channels exist. Each of them has
its own characteristics, its own advantages and disadvantages, and its
own powerful results for businesses. Marketers have to intelligently
utilise each type of social media channels: the Social Networks, the
Blogs and Micro blogs, the Media Sharing platforms, the Wikis, the
Social Bookmarking Sites, the Forums, and finally, the Social Events to
create marketing opportunities.
65
2.11 Self assessment questions
1. Explain why the Social Media Marketing is marketing that

focuses on people, not products?
2. Social Media Marketing uses what means to achieve

conventional goals?
3. From the context of Social Media Marketing why is it

important to understand the role of the customer?
4. Explain in brief the manner of the social networking

strategies for connecting with the customers.
5. Enlist and discuss any three scenarios to consider when

looking for that special blend of social media and
traditional marketing?
6. From the context of Social Media Marketing why is it

important to cross-sell continuously online and offline?
7. Identify why it’s also important to blend channels when

marketing on social media?
8. What is the effect of Social Networks in fostering

collaboration?
9. Explain why Social Media Marketing is not always easy,

quick or cheap?
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
67
DEVELOPING STRATEGIES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Chapter 3
Developing Strategies for Social Media Marketing
Objectives
After going through this chapter, you will be able to:
• identify and overcome challenges associated with a social media

marketing strategy
• understand the issues in implementation of social media marketing
strategy
• understand the B2B and B2C marketing strategies on social media
• understand the key steps to successful social media strategy
Structure:
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Identifying Challenges Associated with a Social Media
Marketing Strategy
3.3 Overcoming Challenges Associated with a Social Media
Marketing Strategy
3.4 Issues in Implementation of Social Media Marketing
Strategy
3.5 B2B Marketing Strategies on Social Media

3.6 B2C Marketing Strategies on Social Media
3.7 Key Steps to Successful Social Media Strategy
3.8 Integrating Social Media Strategies
3.9 Monitoring Ongoing Strategy
3.10 Limitations and Risks of Social Media Marketing
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3.12 Activities
3.13 Summary
3.1 Introduction
Social media marketing success doesn’t take place over night. It’s a
cumulative process that produces success with persistent and
consistent execution. The first step in social media marketing is to
develop a strategy that defines the target audience and how they can
be reached. Once a social media marketing strategy has been
developed, the success of your efforts is dependent on your execution.
Over the decade, there has been a fundamental shift in how people
access information and news. Companies traditionally used the media
to get their messages out to their audiences via marketing, advertising
or public relations. Marketing and advertising push a message out to
the masses. Companies use public relations to supply news to the
media and expert sources to provide stories about their industry. The
goal is to get media mentions of their company, products, or services
as a primary strategy.
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These methods are a one-way communication, where a company

delivers a message through the media, but individuals have no real
way of responding. Today, this one-to-many mass media model has
given way to the social web and a new way of communicating with
people has emerged. Since people, tired of receiving one-way
communications, are looking more and more for news and
information in places other than the media. This trend is likely to
accelerate — Forrester Research predicts that by 2012, half of all US
newspapers will have ceased production. People no longer rely on the
media. New tools enable them to network, read blogs, post comments
and reviews, actively gather news and information, and share this
with others.
Here are some techniques for executing of social media marketing

strategies:
1. Spend time everyday executing your social media strategy: If

you’re not investing, at a minimum, the equivalent of 25% of a
full-time employee daily to execute your social media marketing
strategy, you likely will not get the results you need and expect.
Your social media manager should be measuring, communicating,
posting, responding and analysing your social media marketing
everyday.
2. Develop a 3-month editorial calendar: Now that you know who

you want to reach and where you plan to find them, you need to
develop an editorial calendar that identifies the content and
message you want to communicate over a 3-month period. Your
social media editorial calendar should be developed hand-in-hand
with your content calendar, promoting the blog posts and content
offers that you will be publishing. While you have a 3-month
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editorial calendar, it's important to execute it daily so that your

communications are timely and reflect the current news.
3. Use the 10:4:1 Rule: Your audience will quickly tune you out if all
you talk about is yourself. While it’s entirely appropriate to share
your blog posts and landing pages on social media, you need to be
helpful above all else. This can be done by posting interesting
content from other sources (trade journals, business press, etc.)
that your ideal customers would find valuable. 
 
A formula has been developed to optimise the social media
posting called the 10:4:1 rule. For every fifteen social media posts,
at least one should be a link to one of your landing pages, four
should be links to your blog posts and ten should be helpful
content from other sources. This is a good mix of content that lets
you sell and promote your solution without coming off like a used
car salesmen.
4. Involve your sales team in your social media marketing: While

focused on optimising the company’s social media marketing
channels, have the sales and management team amplify marketing
efforts with their personal accounts. For example, if you’re
publishing a new article on your company blog, encourage your
sales team to share it on their personal LinkedIn accounts. It’s a
win-win proposition – they’re trying to sell and the content you’re
producing should help them generate leads and develop a
reputation for thought leadership.
5. Make it easy to share your content and follow your company on

social media: Social media is all about sharing. Make sure to have
"follow" buttons on the website, email signatures and marketing
collateral. Make sure to include “share” buttons on all forms of
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email marketing, landing pages and blog articles. Most email

marketing and Internet marketing software products have share
and follow modules that make it easy for you to include them.
Take advantage of them!
6. Follow your customers and key prospects on social media and

monitor regularly: What better way to learn what’s important to
your prospects and customers than to see what they say on social
media? Follow your customers on their social media networks and
see what they have to say. This will give your insight into what’s
important for them in running their business. The new signal tools
from HubSpot, which gives sales professionals insight into their
top prospects, can be used for this purpose.
7. Review your analytics monthly and adjust tactics as necessary:

Look at your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) every month to
see what’s working well and what isn’t. Some of the KPIs to
monitor include
• leads generated by social media network

• customers produced by social media network
• new followers/likes by social media network
• social media mentions
• shares/retweets by social media network
• blog posts published and views/comments/shares by blog
article
8. People are engaging in conversations: Conversation is the new

marketing strategy: Tapping into social conversations, shows
where your audience is spending time online, and what subjects
and issues are of interest to them. As of 2010, over 80% of US
companies have started using some form of social media
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marketing, and their biggest barrier to success in this new medium

is a lack of knowledge. To reach your public successfully, you need
to move your marketing activity from the traditional “push”
method, where you broadcast your messages to thousands via the
media, to a “pull” strategy, where you make it easy for people to
find your information, whenever and wherever they want it. Start
telling your stories directly, and do it in a way that sparks
conversations.
3.2 Identifying challenges associated with a social media

marketing strategy
Social media is no longer “new media” and social media marketing is

now simply “marketing”. Promoting a business via social media has
become mainstream today. Not having a social media presence is
what sets your business apart from the rest, and not in a good way.
Millions of people check into social media accounts on a daily basis
sometimes on an hourly basis. It’s where the people are and it’s where
the customers are in order to capture their attention. While it may be
easy to use social media for personal use, there are challenges
involved when it comes to using it for business.
If you ask any business owner about social media, they will
either tell you that it is
• the best tool out there for marketing your business or

• the scariest venture they’ve ever had to undertake.
There is no question that social media marketing can be challenging.

This is especially true when you don’t prepare yourself ahead of time
for the work that goes into launching a successful social media
strategy.
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Many business owners will tell you that using social networks to
market their business has been:
• Overwhelming
• Fickle
• Immeasurable
• Cut-throat
• Time consuming
We will take a look at each of these obstacles that business owners

face when they start out on a social media strategy and how you can
overcome them to get the results you want.
1. Social Media is too overwhelming: It is true that social networks

are growing daily. This new media can be a little intimidating,
especially if you’ve never been on a social network before in your
non-work life. The key to overcoming this overwhelming obstacle
is to start out slow. Don’t be afraid to wade in there and splash
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around in a few of the larger social networks like Facebook and

Twitter. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and can handle the
basics of social networking, then you can gradually add other
networks to your social media marketing arsenal.
2. Social Media is too fickle: This is very true. A social network that
is today’s darling can easily be tomorrow’s joke. Look at MySpace
and Orkut: A few years ago, everyone wanted to be a part of them
and then Facebook made them obsolete. Today, you will be hard-
pressed to find someone who is still using MySpace or Orkut.
Right now, Facebook is on top, but this is a fact that can easily
change a few years down the road. You have to be prepared for
these changes. To counteract this fickleness in social networking,
focus on creating a blog that your fans and followers can migrate
to. By turning it into a social hub, you don’t have to be too
concerned about the ups and downs of other sites.
3. Social Media results are immeasurable: If you spend all of your

time trying to determine the ‘Return On Investment’ (ROI) from
all of the effort you are putting into your social networking
strategy, then you are going to have a long and miserable time.
Instead, turn your attention to key performance indicators (KPI),
like how many new fans you have on each site, how many more
sales you have had since you started on social media, etc.
4. Social Media is a cut-throat world: This can be true. Businesses of

all sizes and industries have made their marks on social media.
The goal is to get yourself out there and build an online presence.
Even if you have a small local business, you can benefit from using
social networking to increase business. The first thing most people
do when they want to find out about a business is look it up
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online. By having a strong presence out there, you’re giving

yourself a lot of free advertising.
5. Social Media is too much time consuming: This is true only if

you don’t utilise the tools that are available to you. Social
networking can be very monotonous work when you spend hours
posting and tweeting. Thankfully, there have been a lot of
developments in creating tools that can help automate your social
networking. When you take a look around, you will find tools for
scheduling posts and tweets, scheduling newsletters, analytics and
brand monitoring. The tools are out there, you just have to know
where to find them. When you embark on a social networking
strategy to market your business, it’s important to have a clear
idea of your target audience. With so many distractions out there
on social networks, it is easy to get off track. When you have your
target lined up, though, it makes it easier to focus on what you
need to do.
6. Non-intuitive Social Media applications: When a tool is not

intuitive, it is not likely to be used. Salespeople do not have time
to read through manuals, attend training, or call a help desk. If it
takes more than a few seconds to enter data, a salesperson will
find little incentive to spend precious time tracking his or her
activities. Lower adoption results in less information in an
organisation’s CRM repository, consequently giving management
less insight into how the business is doing and what potential
opportunities and problems to pursue and address. As a result, the
cost of sales for an organisation is rising while sales effectiveness is
decreasing.
Traditional CRM is very good at managing transactional activities and

providing management insight into what is happening in the business
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– for example, what regions are underperforming, at what sales stage

deals are languishing, and what the health of the sales pipeline is. But
these features require salespeople to enter data without reaping any
direct reward. What sales representatives do use is email to gather
and share information.
While effective for one-on-one communications, email does not

leverage the collective intelligence or memory of a group to foster
ongoing collaboration or innovation. Sales representatives today do
not benefit from what other salespeople sold unless they know them
personally.
7. Gaps exist between what applications deliver vs. what

salespeople need: Very few, if any, tools exist to make an
individual salesperson more effective in their daily lives. CRM
takes a “top-down” approach to automate business processes,
collect information, and analyse data. Rather than conforming to
the way a sales representative works, the application makes the
sales representative change his or her activities to match the way
the application works.
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8. Selling has become harder: Companies are finding it more

expensive to reach prospects, effectively pursue deals, and close
business. Warm, well-qualified leads are difficult to unearth, and
salespeople are spending more time chasing any lead they can get
to make quota.
3.3 Overcoming challenges associated with a social media

marketing strategy
Social media marketing has probably never been more challenging for
marketers. Here’s why:
• Social marketers today have to ensure that their product or

company is present on multiple popular social platforms (which
changes ever so often).
• They have to keep their message consistent across platforms, while
simultaneously finding unique and personal ways to converse with
their global audience, who are increasingly more demanding and
complicated.
• They have to leverage social media such that it helps them gain an
edge over their competitors.
• They have to ensure that security and privacy issues remain their
highest priority.
• They find it really hard to accurately measure the ROI for social
media marketing.
Here are some key pointers to help marketers overcome the

challenges of using social media in today’s shifting business
environment:
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1. Develop a solid social media strategy, with well-defined and

realistic goals that are aligned to your business objectives. The
plan must clearly map out which social platforms you will target
to help you reach your end goal. Focus on those that your
audience frequent. It must also outline the analytics tools you will
use to gain the social insights you need to refine your strategy as
needed.
2. The importance of creating relevant and engaging content can

never be emphasised enough. This is the key to retaining your
audience on social media and widening your reach. Recognise that
you’re marketing to multiple demographics. Develop and
distribute content that addresses the individual needs of your
customers. Make it worth their while to hang out with you.
3. Try and involve your top management. They make ideal

spokespeople as they are respected leaders in the industry and are
considered as experts. However as with anybody who uses social
media, they too need to be educated about the proper use, timing
and types of messages.
4. Have a clear policy on how to address negative comments or

complaints on your social platforms. It’s important to respond
quickly. As embarrassing as it is, address the issue promptly and
honestly. Customers will appreciate your efforts and see you as a
company that accepts constructive criticism, cares and values
customer opinion and is willing to take steps to improve.
5. Though you need to dedicate time consistently to social media, it

is easy to get distracted and very often you will find yourself
spending too much time on it. Set a timer for the time you spend
on social platforms. This keeps you focused on the task at hand.
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6. Work together with your SEO team to drive more traffic to your
website. Build your credibility. This will not only help you make
and strengthen social partnerships and alliances with others in the
industry, but it will also prompt your audience to promote your
product and company. Nothing like word of mouth to spread the
word.
7. Make the audience’s experience on your social platforms as

interactive as possible. Images and photos will get you the most
likes, shares and comments, so use them as much as possible.
8. Develop and adhere to a sound and regularly updated set of best

practices with regard to protecting social media generated
information.Familiarise yourself with regulations that govern your
company and industry.
9. Finally measure your social media marketing success more by the

level of engagement of your audience, your reach and your
conversions and not so much by the number of fans or followers
you have.
3.4 Issues in implementation of social media marketing

strategy
The value of social business products and practices is becoming better

recognised by organisations, but many face cultural and
organisational issues that limit their ability to take advantage of those
new capabilities. That's the word from a new IBM Institute for
Business Value study, "The Business of Social Business," based on
responses from more than 1,100 individuals and interviews with more
than two dozen executives.
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According to survey respondents, social business tools are used for

promoting events/marketing campaigns (71%), generating sales leads
and revenue (51%), product and services support (46%) and direct
sales (35%). Respondents said they plan to increase their use of social
business in all of these areas in the next two years, with the most
significant jumps coming in the areas of lead and revenue generation.
Respondents also said that they plan to increase the application of
social business technologies and approaches into the day to day
activities of their workforces, as well as into collaboration with
outside customers, vendors and partners.
But all of this doesn't just happen by virtue of establishing presence

on external social networks or even by implementing an internal
social business platform, the respondents noted. According to the
report, organisations that have experienced the most success in social
business approaches have made fundamental changes in the way
employees work. Three key issues must be addressed, based on
interviews and survey responses.
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Companies need to consider how to incorporate social metrics into

their traditional enterprises and processes. IBM's research found that
only about 20% of organisations can identify the kinds of key
performance indicators that will help them determine the value of
social business efforts. The research also found that ROI in social
business circles might look different than traditional ROI measures.
Many of the companies interviewed did, at some level, try to quantify

their results, but also recognised that trying to justify social
approaches based solely on cost savings was not sufficient,” stated the
report. “Rather, they either undertook pilot projects to demonstrate
the hard and soft benefits of social projects and/or ran trials that
compared the performance of individuals or groups using social tools
against those that did not. Companies need to understand and
manage the risks associated with social business. Survey respondents
and executives interviewed by IBM noted a number of security
concerns with social business tools. These included attacks on their
brands, legal issues, data security privacy and the unintended
disclosure of company information. About a quarter of respondents
said their companies have processes in place to address these
concerns; about one-third said such efforts are under way; and one-
half said they do not have effective processes for dealing with these
issues in place.
Successful companies identify potential exposures, proactively

involve the right experts and develop risk management plans,
according to the IBM report. They think through their problems,
understand regulatory drivers and their impact on the organisation
and ask questions about why a behaviour is a risk and how to
mitigate it. But, most important, they engage the key functional
experts before problems occur, from areas such as HR, legal, IT,
communications, finance and risk.
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Change management is a critical requirement for embedding

successful social business practices in an organisation. To get all
stakeholders on board, the report suggests, the following activities are
the key to get people involved in using the tools, apply traditional
change management to support transitions and incorporate social
approaches to supporting the change. The report recommends a
number of activities for putting these actions into practice, including
training and creating opportunities to use social tools, publicly
applauding social successes, appointing social business champions/
experts, and providing support for employees, partners and
customers.
Some of the key issues are as provided below:
Lack of customisation
Companies around the globe can win on the social web by developing
a strategy, experiment and iterate. It is essential to forge relationships
with others and to put others in the spotlight. By personalising and
customising products and solutions on the social networking websites
even if you get lost, you can always get help. Use real team members
in your social media efforts. Don’t use some faceless person behind
“Brand X”. “Give to get” and be focused on serving and being useful.
Don’t send in legal right away as an initial reaction to social
dissension. Embrace personal brands; don’t worry about them getting
too popular because their allegiance is to the brand.
Digitally unsavvy team
Modern marketers need to understand social media. Companies don’t

“do social”, they “are social”. That means being savvy participants.
According to results of a Forrester Research:
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• 91% of business buyers read blogs, watching user generated

video, participate in other social media
• 55% of decision makers were in social networks
• 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles,

etc.)
B2B marketers need to use social technologies in marketing over

social media networking sites. They can learn through social media,
savvy through training, participation, listening and engagement.
Products Lacking Individuality or Confidence
Believing that people will listen to and find value in what you really
want to say requires confidence. Whether you’re right or wrong might
not matter as much as being passionate. Now, more than ever, is the
time to show leadership and conviction when it comes to social
participation and engagement.
Inconsistent Participation
Companies need to be consistent with their social participation.

Clients online prefer information and marketing from blogs which are
posting consistently and thus, become more successful. The solution
to more consistent participation is to lead from the top, get executive
buy-in. Establish goals and provide a feedback loop to contributors.
As they grow, the community will provide feedback. Set aside
resources, plan which will create content, monitor and engage. Tap
passionate community members and activate them to be brand
ambassadors. Create efficiencies through the repurposing of content.
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Onus of Social Media
As companies develop their social media programs, responsibilities

and resources need to be allocated and that leads to accountability
and “ownership”. For successful social media adoption within
organisations, it’s important to establish social media goals and
responsibilities in different parts of the organisation. As resources and
accountability are identified, the different departments can work to
cross pollinate efforts, and work together as a team. This helps
leverage combined efforts and from an implementation standpoint,
avoids conflicting representation of the brand.
3.5 B2B marketing strategies on social media
Digital marketing is gaining traction in a number of industries, and

business-to-business (B2B) marketers are in on that trend, too.
Increased spending on online marketing is driving companies to try
new and innovative means of getting the word out about their
products and services — one area that's getting a lot of buzz with B2B
marketers is social media.
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The following five case studies lend insight into how B2B marketers
can use social media to generate leads, create specialised
communities, improve SEO, become knowledge sources, and
strengthen marketing campaigns.
Five Proven Strategies for B2B Social Media Marketing:
The below provided factors are critical Let us know how your brand
uses social media for B2B marketing in the comments below.
1. Generate Leads
There are two types of marketing departments — those that are cost
centers and those that bring in leads and sales. Generally, the better
positioned marketing department is the one that can prove it's
bringing in money, not spending it without results. When adding
social media into the mix, marketing departments must be able to
prove success, and oftentimes lead generation and ROI are two
measurements that upper management wants to see.
Social media enables companies to engage directly with their target

audiences. In many instances, these audiences self-identify online as
interested in specific topics, themes, products and/or services and
congregate in groups, message boards or communities. This allows
companies to pinpoint their target audiences and engage with them in
a meaningful way — providing insights, information, education and
support. This type of focus is fertile ground for lead generation and
driving revenue for business-to-business marketing.
Social business is about participation with and by your customers and

stakeholders in pursuit of an organisation that is strongly connected
to them through participative and collaborative processes. As a result,
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a social business is often better able to respond to marketplace

dynamics and competitive opportunities than a traditionally
organised and managed firm. This may occur through participation in
a social community, a support or discussion forum, or any of a variety
of other social applications and contexts. The efforts leading to the
creation of a social business often begin with identifying or creating
an opportunity for participation with (or between) customers,
employees, or stakeholders within community or similar social
applications.
An important point to note here is that when social business practices

are approached and implemented correctly, everyone wins. By
bringing customers into the business, or directly involving
stakeholders in the design and operation of the organisations with
which they are associated, a steady flow of ultimately constructive
ideas emerges.
2. Create a Specialised Community
Building a social business starts with establishing a community or

other social presence around or in which your brand fits naturally —
whether through a casual presence on Twitter, a more involved
Facebook business presence, or your own community built for
suppliers, partners, or customers. Reaching the correct audience is
one of the most important tasks in marketing — otherwise, you're just
wasting resources on the wrong people. When you can't find the right
audience, sometimes the best idea is to create a place for them to
flock.
Regardless of who the community is intended to serve, strong

communities are best built around the things that matter deeply to the
members of the community; passions, lifestyles, causes, and similar
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fundamentally aligned needs. This applies whether the audience is

primarily business — B2B communities like the Top IT Companies,
communities or Dell’s “Take Your Path” small business owners
community form around very specific shared needs common to small
business owners or a personal interest
B2C or nonprofit or cause-related community. The core elements

powering a social business in any case need to be something to which
the community members (customers or potential customers, for
example) will spontaneously bond, and that as a result will encourage
them to invite others to join.
In the case of Dell’s “Take Your Own Path,” the common element is
the unique set of challenges faced by small businesses. If you’ve ever
met a small business owner, you know how passionate they are about
what they do. Dell has found a very effective way through the
practices of social business to tap this by identifying and serving the
needs of the small business owner, for example, by encouraging
discussion about finance and investments in business hardware.
Similarly, smaller communities, think here about the need to reach

highly defined groups of customers, where personal interests drive
strong relationships are prime opportunities for social business
initiatives. Again, take for example, Dell and their “Digital Nomads”
program, aimed at a specific segment of Dell’s customer base that
literally thrives on the availability of an online connection. Digital
nomads are productive in the office or outside it, staying in touch
with friends and updating colleagues on work in progress through
social applications as close as the nearest Wi-Fi enabled coffee shop or
hotel. One of the common factors identifying “Digital Nomads” is the
combination of lifestyle and digital tools, along with the wherewithal
to get connected in just about any situation. Dell hardware powers
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this and thereby, taps into the nomadic lifestyle of these on-the-go
professionals. It’s important here to recognise that communities like
“Digital Nomads” and “Take Your Own Path” are not defined by a
business or consumer or nonprofit motive — call this your point of
view or need — but rather by the needs and desires of the
participants within these communities.
Earlier this year Kinaxis won B2B Magazine's Social Media Award for
Best Integrated Campaign for its social media prowess. The company
started a blog, participated in LinkedIn and engaged on Twitter. But
to kick things up a notch, it built a community for supply chain
management specialists to congregate. The Supply Chain Expert
Community launched in August 2009 and is home to 3,620 members
and counting. For a niche community, that's a feat.
From 2008 to 2009, Kinaxis saw a 270% increase in web traffic to its
website and a 320% increase in conversions (customer leads), as a
direct result of introducing the community. From a business
momentum perspective, it achieved double-digit growth in its
software subscription revenue, and for the first half of 2010, as
compared to the second half of 2009, it saw the following results:
• 230% increase in community members
• 65.2% increase in web traffic to the community
• 26% increase in web traffic to Kinaxis.com, with the community

accounting for about 40% of all new visitors
This organisation believes that creating the community allowed them

to offer an online destination for professionals to bond over common
industry problems and facilitate discussion on ways to solve those
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problems, which resulted in strengthening customer relationships.

The community, along with the 21st Century Supply Chain blog, also
enabled the company to increase exposure through social media and
improve SEO, as content is shared through its social accounts.
3. Improve SEO
During the past year, a US based e-mail marketing service provider,

has invested in B2B social media marketing, including presences on
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a corporate blog. Since implementing
and maintaining these social mediums, the company has seen a 70%
increase in inbound leads, as compared to the prior year, and its SEO
rankings for major keywords have jumped over 20 pages in one year.
In this case, a blog full of useful and targeted content, enhanced by
syndication across various social sites and subsequent interactions
with its community, led to this organisation increasing SEO and
growing a reputation for trusted email marketing advice. Today
people in marketing, recommend that B2B marketers should be
realistic about their goals with social media and blogging — while
these outlets can and will drive leads, there are other intangible
benefits as well, like the SEO and brand awareness that make a
tremendous difference.
4. Be a Knowledge Source
Nowadays, for any more or less important purchase, it has almost

become vital to learn about the brand, product or service, and
compare it with the equivalent of competing brands before
considering purchasing it. While potential consumer do so, they
interact with friends, Google the products, search on Twitter and read
experiences of those who have used the brand, product or service
earlier. This section will analyse the Social Feedback Cycle, taking into
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account the effects of Social Media on consumers’ buying behaviours,

comparing it to the classic purchase funnel for traditional media.
The Internet has now become the most common tool that consumers
use to find information on products and services that they are
considering buying. Besides opinions of friends and family, people
use the Internet as first source of information when making a major
purchase decision. Whether they like it or not, people are holding
conversations on the Internet about the products and services they
have used, sharing both good and bad experiences and feedbacks.
Actually, almost two out of every three conversations online refers to
a brand, product or service. These opinions have far more weight and
value, and are considered more trustworthy, than any information
provided by marketers. Indeed, word-of-mouth is considered to be
the most trusted source of information. Therefore, Social Media
largely affects customers’ purchase decisions, because consumers
usually seek other opinions and recommendations. Indeed, 78% of
global consumers declare that they trust and believe other customers’
recommendations for products and services more than any other
medium. This is mainly due to the fact that consumers are seen as
more objective than the companies’ own marketing message.
Many global, mid-size market research and consulting firms, uses

social media to increase their reach within the market research
community, demonstrate thought leadership, and increase the
likelihood of being found via the Internet. In the past couple of years
alone a huge success has been witnessed through the combination of
blogging, Twitter, Facebook, online press releases, downloadable
reports/case studies and LinkedIn. The efforts have resulted in huge
increases to traffic on the different websites and blog resulting in a
phenomenal increase in leads coming into our sales team.
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Consistency in providing a source of useful resources has been the

key for the small sized and medium sized companies. Consistently
creating relevant content for corporate blogs, Twitter followers,
Facebook fans will help to grow the market size.
5. Strengthen a Campaign
In some recent cases, SMBs have been known to exclusively use social
media as a marketing tool, as costs are low and usually limited to the
time spent cultivating an involved community. But in most cases,
social media is being used as a supplement to existing marketing
efforts. While it's not advisable to tack on social media to an existing
marketing campaign, we recommend developing social media
strategies alongside other marketing and communication efforts. This
helps organisations maintain consistency in messaging to their
communities.
On the business perspective, user-generated content are based on the

degree to which the experience matches the expectations set. Indeed,
with the Social Media, once a customer has purchased the brand,
product or service, he will use it, experience its advantages and
disadvantages and form its personal opinion. He will then obviously
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talk about its personal experience with this brand, product and
service on the Internet, and more particularly the Social Media
platforms. He might leave a comment on the company’s website or
the company’s Social Media Sites, but also on more general forums
that the company’s marketers might never see. This conversation that
the customer is holding on the Social Media channels will be seen by
other people already aware of the brand, product or service. These
people will be in the second stage of consideration in the purchase
channel.
They will look for information about the brand, product or service on
the Internet, and will quickly and easily find the content generated by
the customer who has experienced it. As an objective source of
information, they will certainly trust the appreciation of the previous
customers and base their purchase decision on this user-generated
content. If it is recommended, they will consider buying it. If the
feedback is negative, they will certainly decide not to buy the product
and will look for an alternative.
"As a whole, marketing was asked to generate 50% of the new

business pipeline in terms of number of deals and revenue. We
exceeded that goal and viewed social as an integral part of our efforts,
although we do not feel that the success can be attributed to any one
particular activity... Every component of the strategy helped.”
The lesson here is that social media can be a venue for enhancing a
business's current marketing efforts, as long as the intention is to
create a harmony between the various arms of marketing. Coordinate
your marketing efforts so that each complements the others, and it
should be smooth sailing.
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These five case studies lend insight into how B2B marketers can use
social media to generate leads, create specialised communities,
improve SEO, become knowledge sources, and strengthen marketing
campaigns.
3.6 B2C marketing strategies on social media
Social media allows people to be more connected than ever before and
the mediums available for marketing are changing rapidly as new
technologies come available. Online users are communicating in real
time and every brand in the world is being caught up in the
conversation whether they are participating or not. Venturing into
social media means opening up your brand and company to the
world at large and giving up control over how your message is
spread. Find out how to take back some control (even as you give
some up) to make sure that your brand is being promoted in a
positive and effective way.
The Need for Strategy
For the past 100 years, companies have had the luxury of deciding
what they will produce and sell, what their brand message will be,
and how they will deliver it to their audience. The Internet has
changed that. We’re in the age of social media marketing. Strategy in
this new business environment is just as vital as it has ever been.
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Don’t get distracted from the importance of strategy by the slew of

new social media tools. Don’t get lured into spending money on
resources just because “everyone is doing it”. Social media offers you
the opportunity of doing in-depth research at virtually no cost. It is
possible to set goals and get ROI, but you have to know where you’re
going and what you want to achieve.
Planning the Social Media Strategy
PR practitioners have long known that it is important to map the

environment in which the company operates and to know who the
stakeholders are. Now social media has expanded that need. We have
to know where they are online and who they are connected to. You
have to figure out which stakeholders are most important to you –
customers, competitors, employees, the media and now a new group
– bloggers.
A key element in planning any strategy for business utilising Social

Media Marketing is the comprehension of the challenges of finding
which social Media channels its audience and customers spend their
time and hold conversations. Also, people usually visit several social
media sites instead of sticking to only one. By reading, listening and
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analysing their target audience’s activities, marketers will be able to

determine where, when, who and how the consumers are interacting
in the Social Media Universe. It will also help marketers to define who
the influencers are and which role they play in the online community;
whether they are networkers, everyday users, trendsetters, reporters
or opinion leaders. There are tools that can be used to find the people
and figure where they are online so you can begin to evaluate who the
most important stakeholders are. Market research has always been
fundamental to marketing success. The social web makes it much
easier to find out what people are saying about you, who you should
be talking to, what they are interested in, and what you should be
talking to them about.
Crisis Management
No one likes to think about it, but it is important to have a crisis

management policy in place from the beginning. Bad press spreads
fast, but if your company is active in social media, you can take
control, contain it and counter it. By having a clear point person who
is actively monitoring the social web, you will be able to execute a
clear chain of response. The response should be same from everyone
in your company who is participating. Each crisis is unique. They can
stem from non-social media channels and you should look for
opportunity in the crisis. Very often, based on your company’s
response, you can turn detractors into fans and also use it to refine
your message to prevent future occurrences. Respond quickly and
engage your audience as soon as possible, with a well thought out
answer. Response time has to be measured in hours, not days, and
early action will help nip a crisis in the bud before it explodes into
something larger. No action or ignoring it will only inflate the issue
and if you are already active in social media, you will carry more
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credibility. The social proof you have already established will rally
more supporters to come to your company’s defence.
Link Building vs. Brand Building
The two broad goals (and, admittedly, they are related) of building a
social media presence are link building and brand building. The
purpose of link building is to drive traffic to your Website by
promoting links to it on the Web. This not only increases the number
of visitors to your site, but also builds SEO (the number of links back
to your site is one of many things that search engines look at to
determine ranking in search engine results). In addition to the core
social media presence, you should focus on link building sites like
Digg, Squidoo, Propeller, Del.icio.us and Weebly.
Brand building focuses on creating consumer awareness and is

primarily about building social proof. Attacking social media from
this angle captures mindshare and does more to encourage discussion
about your company, rather than redirecting readers to other content.
Brand building occurs on every social network (like Facebook,
MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn) and you can also find more industry
focused spaces (like the Ning network and other specialised sites).
There is absolutely no reason that you cannot do both. That requires
dedication to the goals and Web communities that your company is
building a presence through and will depend on the size and
composition of the team that is managing your social media efforts.
Should you choose to focus on one over the other, you should at least
maintain a presence with the secondary strategy as well. Both build
social proof; link building by spreading links to other networks and
brand building by growing the buzz around the company and
establishing expertise.
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Determining the Best Style of Campaign for Your Purpose
There are two primary types of social media campaigns, one with a
finite end and the other more open-ended. Social media can be used
as part of a specific, targeted campaign revolving around a singular
product, service, event or other aspect of the company or it can be put
to use as part of your company’s ongoing exposure to the Web,
covering brand building, customer service, public relations and
specific promotions. As part of an integrated marketing campaign, it
mixes with aspects of more traditional marketing. It may include
video on YouTube, promotion on Twitter, podcasts, dedicated
Facebook or MySpace groups and even a social portion on your
company’s site or a micro site. The key is to have the social media
aspect of your campaign build-up to a clear conclusion, one that your
“followers” will look forward to. Too often, integrated campaigns
assume that the event or product is enough, but with social media, the
public plays a much bigger role in determining the success of the
marketing. An anti-climactic social media campaign results in an
audience who is left with a bad taste in their mouths and may spread
word of their disappointment to other networks.
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On the other hand, social media can be a long-term aspect of your

marketing strategy in its own right. This is an ongoing effort with no
definitive climax and is built on a brand (or brands) as a whole.
Activity occurs across different aspects of social media as resources
allow and as appropriate. YouTube videos, Twitter accounts, Facebook
groups, company blogs and activity in on and off-site threaded
discussions are all positive places to participate in the larger
conversation in your industry and with consumers. Your company
can build on previous successes, crossover with and launch integrated
campaigns, run A/B campaign tests, address customer service issues
and answer questions as they come up. This kind of social media plan
can be rolled out around a single product or brand to “test the
waters” and test your approach before adding to it, or it can be
launched in one shot under a main brand, letting public participants
in the conversation determine which products and services they want
to talk about.
The integrated marketing campaign is more directed, with a clear

beginning and end. The social media plan will evolve over time, with
input from the participants on both sides. It needs to remain flexible,
allowing user-generated content to spread your company’s brand and
allowing you to introduce and remove elements to your social media
marketing strategy. Having a team that has the agility to respond to
this ever changing environment is essential to a successful social
media presence.
3.7 Key steps to successful social media strategy
The number of influencers is growing as more and more people

publish content online. It’s no longer about how many people did we
reach, it’s have we reached the right people who want to engage and
communicate with us? This means that large networks are not always
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the best place to concentrate on. There are many small social networks
built around a group that is passionate about a subject. Find the ones
that are relevant to your company or organisation.
1. Develop a Content Strategy
In a research done for ‘Social Media,’ people where asked why they
returned to a website. The overwhelming answer was “content”. This
holds true even today. Success in social media depends on the quality
of the content which is a prime factor in engaging people. In social
media, people are creating, reading, saving, tagging, and sharing
quality content. If you don’t produce the kind of content they value, it
won’t be re-published or shared. How do you know what kind of
content to create? Listen and observe. In the past, we had to rely on
agencies to have a “bright idea”. However, when you really listen to
your audience, you will discover the core content that will elicit a
response. Opportunities easily spring to mind.
❖ Practical Example
Prominent private Indian banks discovered that newly married

couples in their first home were very concerned about the housing
market and the housing loans. They were looking for information in
language they could understand. The banks realized an opportunity
to connect with these couples through the use of informative articles
and video interviews with their experts and were able to enhance the
sales of housing loans. Thus, we can understand that telling your
story online in the right place to the right people gets results.
However, you need a well thought-out content strategy based on
solid research to get those results
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2. Creating Milestones by Stating Metrics
Like in any other type of marketing the social media marketing also
requires the planners to set measurable goals. If you can’t measure it,
you can’t manage it. Work out what metrics will enable you to
measure your goals. Do not make vague goals such as “we want to
have more brand awareness.” More than what, How much and in
what time period?
In order to measure progress towards goals, you have to have a

starting place. This is your baseline. You need to take a snapshot of
where you are now with regard to the goals you have set so that you
can track your progress over time.
❖ Practical Example
A. Through interaction with its customers and hearing them, a

cosmetics company starting on a social media strategy might
discover that one of the groups that talks about hair fall is medical
workers. They listen to these conversations for two weeks,
initially.
B. Through analysing these conversations, they establish that their

leading competitor has a better influence on customer interaction.
C. Through brainstorming, they come up with an idea that will

improve this scene.
D. They set their competition’s influence on the web platform as their

benchmark and set a goal: “To increase their own influence on the
social sites by the next year”.
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E. The metric for this is “brand mentions in a desired

conversation” (in this case, “medical workers talking about hair
fall”). They can record this by using the various statistics tool
which plot the metric over time. They measure this weekly and
track their progress.
Examples of Statistics
• Number of positive brand mentions per week

• Number of comments on blog posts
• Number of retweets
• Number of clicks on links posted on Twitter
• Number of visitors to the website
• Number of followers on Twitter
• Number of coupon downloads
• Number of video views
In this process the marketers need to determine the benchmarks so

that you know what you’re potentially aiming for and measuring
yourself against. Looking at what others in your industry are doing
helps you to establish benchmarks and set realistic goals for your
business. Important questions to be asked in this context are - Are you
going to try to beat your competition outright? Or perhaps beat them
only locally, for now?
Once you have figured out where you’d like to be in the future, you
can express these ideas as goals. So long as your goals are measurable,
i.e., expressed as quantity and usually vs. time, you will be able to
move forwards and track your progress easily. Below are examples of
types of social media goals. The next section gives specific goal
examples.
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3.8 Integrating social media strategies
There’s a wide array of social media tools to choose from and the task
can be confusing. Not to mention that new tools pop up all the time.
Thus, there is a vital need to integrating social media strategies.
Nevertheless, if you have all your data analysed, and your content
strategy in place, it’s easy to pick the right tools. Your research will
tell you where to start. Every social media success case study has
excellent content that perfectly meets the needs of the people for
whom it was intended. Just as in any conversation, the right content
gets people’s interest and attention. If you are off topic or boring, you
get no positive results. Social Media has matured and most companies
are expected to have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and
LinkedIn. However, there may be other social sites you need to
include for your business.
Bear in mind that each platform requires its own strategy and you
need to know where to allocate resources. If the majority of the
conversation about your product is on Twitter, you’ll need to spend
more time connecting with the people who talk about you there. The
same is true for any of the other social networks. You need to decide
why you are using that channel, who to connect with and why, and
what content you need to produce in order to get the attention of the
right people on that network. You will need someone with technical
skills to help you get your tools in place. You will probably need a
blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn account, and a
YouTube Channel for starters.
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Here’s the list of categories of social media tools:
• News Feeds (RSS) to syndicate all your content
• “Share this” buttons, tagging, and bookmarking applications, to

make it easy to share and forward your content
• Blogs – platforms and plug-ins
• Micro blogging (Twitter)
• Podcasts
• mages – and image sharing networks
• Video – and video sharing sites
• Social Networks – Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, niche

networks
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• Social Media News Sites – Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg
• Social Media News Releases, with multimedia and social

bookmarks
• Search optimised articles, with feeds and commenting
• Widgets and Apps
• Social Media News Room – create a social media content hub on

your website
3.9 Monitoring ongoing strategy
Monitoring of the social media is as critical a job as implementing the

strategy online. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. It’s that
simple. You need to know where you are when you start, what needs
to be achieved, and as you move along the path, you have to have
tools to measure your progress. That way you can see if you are on
track and adapt fast if things go awry. Your measurement has to be
based on business objectives, and those objectives have to be set as
measurable goals. Just setting up attributes to track on a dashboard is
not enough. What you are going to monitor will depend on what
goals you have set in the initial part of your strategy. Based on
listening and research, you should have determined what actions you
need to focus on in social media. Measure what you did and what
impact it had, and then you can see what result it had. Being able to
evaluate the data and come to a conclusion you can use to tweak or
expand your program is the point.
There are many tools available today to track engagement and

effectively monitor the online social media content. In the context of
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social media, a new metric called engagement has come into existence
which includes four components:
• Involvement
• Interaction
• Intimacy
• Influence
Each of these is built from data collected from online and offline data
sources. Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of
your customers’ actions, recognising that value comes not just from
transactions, but also from actions people take to influence others.
Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will
become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to
customer understanding.
3.10 Limitations and risks of Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing offers to businesses a large variety of

resources in terms of social media channels available, and a large
variety of benefits, such as brand exposure, targeted traffic and leads
generation. However, social media marketing for businesses also
demands efforts and hard work, and has its own limitations and risks
before achieving notable success. Indeed, social media marketing is
not always easy, quick or cheap. In some cases, depending on the
business type, size and age, hard efforts need to be made in various
areas.
First, companies need to commit human and time resources to

managing their social media presence. An employee, and sometimes
even a complete social media team, needs to be able to respond to
customers’ feedbacks and complaints at least everyday. The social
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media staff needs to be extremely trained and qualified in order to

have answers to every questions and to be able to react when negative
comments are made before they get too viral and uncontrollable. Also,
this team has to produce new content regularly in order to post at
least a few times a week for small businesses, and at least once a day
for big multinationals. It is extremely important to always stay active
on the social media sites.
Besides, the results of the social media marketing strategy needs to be

controlled and measured regularly in order to understand what is
working and what is not. Some social media channels might be more
efficient than others for a business, and some might be too time-
consuming comparing to its benefits. Specific campaigns need to be
measured as well, and the impacts of each post need to be analysed.
However, it is usually quite difficult to measure the return on
investment, or should we say the return on conversation, of such a
strategy. Measuring social media return on investment is not
impossible, but it can be very complex because many of the pieces
that needs to be evaluated are difficult to track. Having specific goals
and concrete baselines is crucial to calculating the business’ return on
investment. Therefore, companies must have defined clear goals and
evaluated the baselines before measuring the results, then only,
metrics tools can be considered.
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Quantifying the value of one channel over another can be hard to

evaluate, as the measurement and analytics tools available for free are
often different from one social media channel to another. However,
some metrics for measuring web traffic have become valuable tools,
such as Google Analytics, TweetMeme Analytics or Hoot Suite. Also,
sentiment analysis using Viral Heat, Tweet Feel or Sentiment Metrics
for instance, can be relevant when positive and negative comments
cannot be distinguished.
We have seen that, while implementing their social media marketing

strategy, businesses might encounter marketing limitations affecting
the final success of their strategy. Furthermore, businesses are also
confronted to major risks in domains such as reputational, legal and
operational.
One of the main risks for businesses using social media marketing
will be to damage their reputation by using their social media sites
ineffectively. Too much advertising, presenting products and services
in a commercial way and pushing for sales without really engaging
with the audience are often very badly seen by the audience, which
might decide to turn their back on the business and its social media
presence. Moreover, employees can harm a company’s image really
quickly and easily, by showing bad behaviours on social media
channels or posting embarrassing information. Therefore,
reputational risks can easily equal or exceed the reputational benefits
of Social Media Marketing.
Secondly, social media makes a whole new world of privacy, security,

intellectual property, employment practices, and other legal risks
possible. The social media team needs to understand information
technology law before creating a social media legal strategy.
Monitoring future or existing employees using social media sites has
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legal dangers. A business can get problems from rejecting candidates

to a job based on information found online, or by monitoring their
employees’ activities when using company computers. Security and
operational risks are also high, as security breaches might occur when
malware, viruses or spyware are downloaded involuntary by the
employees through the social media sites. Also, there are some
intellectual property and media risks concerning the protection of
third-parties or the publication of fake positive reviews. The privacy
of the audience needs always to be protected.
3.11 Short Case study
Key to create Social Media Marketing Strategy for a B2B context
A B2B Social Media Plan of Action
I. Website Analytics: Any type of inbound-marketing campaign is

useless without good data analysis. So, the first thing to do is to set-
up a tracking mechanism on your website that incorporates a
platform such as Google Analytics. We will use the common goal of
many B2B-marketing efforts, a contact-form submission to sales via
the company’s website. In this case, we want to send social media
traffic to the website with the goal of maximising completions of
the website form.
II. Audience and Influencer Research: Whether you have a specific

sales list or just a general buyer persona in mind, it is crucial to
know where the relevant individuals are active on social media, in
a professional context. If your business sells to companies in the
“widget” industry, then look for populated LinkedIn groups that
focus on that sector. Maybe people discuss the topic in a Google+
community, or on a large online forum. In addition, it is possible
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that the recognised authorities on “widgets” are talking on Twitter,

answering questions on Quora, or engaging with people on their
professional Facebook pages.
In short, you want to narrow your social media focus so you know
where your efforts will effectively reach your audience.
III.Channel Optimisation: Once you know what social-media

networks will be your targets, you need to create and optimise
your company’s profiles on those outlets in line with your
messaging and positioning as well as your marketing goals. Here
are some examples:
• Facebook – Create an attractive Timeline header image and include

a page tab that, when clicked, takes the user to the form-submission
page on the website
• Twitter – Post a background image that highlights your branding

and use profile text that entices people to follow you
• LinkedIn – Create a fully fleshed-out company page that pitches

your product or service and includes links to the place where
people can submit the website form
❖ Note: Some networks – LinkedIn and Quora, most notably – allow

only individuals, and not companies themselves, to engage on the
channels. As a result, it is important that the specific person’s
profile that will be used to interact on the outlets be optimized as
well.
IV.Content Creation and Engagement: Quality, original content is the

fuel of social media. People share visual content that affects them in
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some emotional way. But long before you even begin to publish,
you want to engage on social media to build a following. For
example:
• Reply to and interact with prospects and influencers with large

followings on Twitter
• Participate in Google+ Communities, Facebook Groups, and online

forums devoted to “widgets”
• Share news on “widgets” on LinkedIn to become known as a

resource hub of information
• People will be much more likely to share your future content if they
already know you.
So, once you have a following, here are three questions to answer:
• What authoritative blog posts can you write on “widgets”?
• What graphics and videos can you produce that will interest people
in the “widgets” sector?
• How will the content be used to get people to click to our website?
Once you have a content-creation plan, it is important to place the

items on your company’s blog with a call-to-action so that people will
see the content when it is shared on social media, click the links to
your website, go to the form-submission page, and “convert.”
V. Campaign Planning: Just as campaigns are used in traditional

advertising, so can such long-term efforts be successful in social
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media – especially if your company is unable to create a lot of

original content. Here are a few examples:
• Running a contest in which Facebook fans submit their own photos

and graphics relating to “widgets” – and the post that gets the most
“likes” will win a prize
• The person who writes the tweet mentioning your company that
gets the most retweets will get your product or service for free
• A series of cryptic images to generate buzz for a future release just

like pop-stars did for a new album release
VI.Analysis: The conversion rate of various online channels is very

important to know. If it turns out that traffic from LinkedIn
“converts” (by submitting the form) 6 per cent of the time and
Facebook traffic converts at only 4 per cent, then you know to focus
more on LinkedIn and less on Facebook.
But it’s a little more complicated than that. It is also important to

know the metrics of each type of action on a given network. Facebook
as a whole may have only a 4 per cent conversion rate, but it may turn
out that posting a certain type of content at a certain time leads to a 7
per cent conversion rate. So, it is important to focus both on the best
mediums in general and the best practices of each medium
specifically.
Conclusion
Social media marketing can clearly deliver results – as long as one

proceeds in this strategic, logical way. For example, we went through
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this very process when doing social media work for a recent B2B
client. Here is just a summary of the results from the case study:
• We used social media to increase visits to the website by 894% in six

months
• The total number of website conversions and direct leads from
social media combined increased by 217% in the same period of
time
3.12 Activities
1. Apart from the five challenges discussed in this chapter, research

and write a detailed note on three other important challenges
associated with a social media marketing strategy
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—————————————————————————————
2. Browse the websites online and research on the topic of ‘Crisis

management’ in B2C marketing strategies on social media.
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3.13 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about, how to develop strategies

for social media marketing. Social media marketing success doesn’t
take place over night. It’s a cumulative process that produces success
with persistent and consistent execution. The first step in social media
marketing is to develop a strategy that defines the target audience
and how they can be reached. Once a social media marketing strategy
has been developed, the success of your efforts is dependent on your
execution. Over the decade, there has been a fundamental shift in
how people access information and news. Companies traditionally
used the media to get their messages out to their audiences via
marketing, advertising, or public relations. Marketing and advertising
push a message out to the masses. Companies use public relations to
supply news to the media and expert sources to provide stories about
their industry. The goal is to get media mentions of their company,
products, or services as a primary strategy. Some techniques for
executing of social media marketing strategies:
• Spend time every day executing your social media strategy
• Develop a 3-month editorial calendar
• Make it easy to share your content and follow your company on

social media
• Follow your customers and key prospects on social media and

monitor regularly
• People are engaging in conversations - Conversation is the new

marketing strategy
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Social media is no longer “new media” and social media marketing is

now simply “marketing”. Promoting a business via social media has
become mainstream today. Not having a social media presence is
what sets your business apart from the rest, and not in a good way.
Millions of people check into social media accounts on a daily basis
sometimes on an hourly basis. It’s where the people are and it’s where
the customers are in order to capture their attention. While it may be
easy to use social media for personal use, there are challenges
involved when it comes to using it for business. Many business
owners will tell you that using social networks to market their
business has been:
• Overwhelming
• Fickle
• Immeasurable
• Cut-throat
• Time consuming
Traditional CRM is very good at managing transactional activities and

providing management insight into what is happening in the
business, for example, what regions are underperforming, at what
sales stage deals are languishing, and what the health of the sales
pipeline is. But these features require salespeople to enter data
without reaping any direct reward. What sales representatives do use
is email to gather and share information. The reasons behind social
media marketing has probably never been more challenging for
marketers.
• Social marketers today have to ensure that their product or

company is present on multiple popular social platforms (which
changes ever so often).
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• They have to keep their message consistent across platforms, while

simultaneously finding unique and personal ways to converse with
their global audience, who are increasingly more demanding and
complicated.
• They have to leverage social media such that it helps them gain an
edge over their competitors.
The value of social business products and practices is becoming better

recognised by organisations, but many face cultural and
organisational issues that limit their ability to take advantage of those
new capabilities. That's the word from a new IBM Institute for
Business Value study, "The Business of Social Business," based on
responses from more than 1,100 individuals and interviews with more
than two dozen executives. Change management is a critical
requirement for embedding successful social business practices in an
organisation. To get all stakeholders on board, the report suggests, the
following activities are key: get people involved in using the tools,
apply traditional change management to support transitions and
incorporate social approaches to supporting the change. The report
recommends a number of activities for putting these actions into
practice, including training and creating opportunities to use social
tools, publicly applauding social successes, appointing social business
champions/experts, and providing support for employees, partners
and customers. Some of the key issues are as provided below:
• Lack of customisation
• Digitally unsavvy team
• Products lacking individuality or confidence
• Inconsistent participation
• Onus of social media
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Digital marketing is gaining traction in a number of industries, and

business-to-business (B2B) marketers are in on that trend, too.
Increased spending on online marketing is driving companies to try
new and innovative means of getting the word out about their
products and services — one area that's getting a lot of buzz with B2B
marketers is social media.
Social media allows people to be more connected than ever before and
the mediums available for marketing are changing rapidly as new
technologies come available. Online users are communicating in real
time and every brand in the world is being caught up in the
conversation whether they are participating or not. Venturing into
social media means opening up your brand and company to the
world at large and giving up control over how your message is
spread. Find out how to take back some control to make sure that
your brand is being promoted in a positive and effective way.
The integrated marketing campaign is more directed, with a clear

beginning and end. The social media plan will evolve over time, with
input from the participants on both sides. It needs to remain flexible,
allowing user generated content to spread your company’s brand and
allowing you to introduce and remove elements to your social media
marketing strategy. Having a team that has the agility to respond to
this ever changing environment is essential to a successful social
media presence.
The list of categories of social media tools:
• News Feeds (RSS) to syndicate all your content

• Podcasts
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• Search optimized articles, with feeds and commenting
your website
Monitoring of the social media is as critical a job as implementing the

strategy online. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. It’s that
simple. You need to know where you are when you start, what needs
to be achieved, and as you move along the path, you have to have
tools to measure your progress. There are many tools available today
to track engagement and effectively monitor the online social media
content. In the context of social media a new metric called
engagement has come into existence which includes four components:
• Involvement
• Interaction
• Intimacy
• Influence
Social media marketing offers to businesses a large variety of

resources in terms of social media channels available, and a large
variety of benefits, such as brand exposure, targeted traffic and leads
generation. However, social media marketing for businesses also
demands efforts and hard work, and has its own limitations and risks
before achieving notable success. Indeed, social media marketing is
not always easy, quick or cheap. In some cases, depending on the
business type, size and age, hard efforts need to be made in various
areas.
118
3.14 Self assessment questions:
1. Explain why the social media marketing success doesn’t take place
overnight?
2. Enlist and discuss any three important techniques for executing of

social media marketing strategies?
3. From the context of social media marketing explain in detail why

people are engaging in conversations?
4. Explain in brief the logic behind the statement – ‘Social media

results are immeasurable’.
5. What are the problems associated with Non-intuitive Social Media

Applications?
6. Why is change management a critical requirement for embedding

successful social business practices in an organization?
7. Identify how social media enables companies to engage directly

with their target audiences?
8. What is the key element in planning any strategy for business

utilizing Social Media Marketing?
9. Explain the process of creating milestones by stating metrics?
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
120
LEVERAGING THE POWER OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
Chapter 4
Leveraging the Power of Social Networking Sites 
Objectives
After going through this chapter, you will be able to understand:
• The key features of social network sites

• social media as a powerful customer relations management tool
• social media influence in business generation through ‘word-of-
mouth marketing’
• innovation and leveraging the power of social media through
social applications
• marketing on Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn
Structure:
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Key Features of Social Networking Sites
4.3 Social Media as a Powerful Customer Relations
Management Tool
4.4 Social Media Influence in Business Generation through
‘Word-of-mouth Marketing’
4.5 Innovation and Leveraging the Power of Social Media
through Social Applications
4.6 Benefits and Advantages of Marketing on Social
Networking Sites
4.7 Marketing on Facebook
4.8 Marketing on MySpace
4.9 Marketing on LinkedIn
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4.11 Activities
4.12 Summary
4.1 Introduction
Social networking provides an effective channel for introducing new

products and services to customers while gathering real time
feedback. Social networking also provides an effective channel for
introducing new products and services to customers while gathering
real time feedback. The reach and influence of social media is still
in its infancy today is steadily growing to become a global force.
Many enterprises, large and small are actively experimenting with
using a social media mindset and capabilities in their business
processes will transform their relationships with customers and create
high value in a multitude of ways.
To leverage social media to its fullest, organizations need to become

more nimble and entrepreneurial. Social media creates the
opportunity for much greater collaboration between departments,
engendering more experimentation, faster decision making and more
precisely tuned responses. Today, organizations have asked
employees to begin using a variety of social media applications such
as social networks, blogs, project-focused wikis and podcasts to
collaborate better across different time zones and locations. Today, the
organization routinely shares knowledge through company specific
blogs, for example, and provides tools that enable employees to
search all of the intranet’s content from one place. As a result, people
have boosted their innovation productivity, developing products and
getting them to market faster.
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Many campaigns take advantage of the real time nature of social

media to create a sense of urgency regarding limited-time offers.
Travel booking companies like Yatra and ClearTrip have begun using
Facebook and Twitter to promote fixed availability or last-minute
hotel/flight deals — tasks ideally suited to the real time environment.
Even small brands can benefit from viral marketing campaigns that
capitalize on user willingness to pass on relevant or entertaining
content.
Social media creates opportunities for companies to supplement

traditional sources of customer insight with a wealth of information
gathered by listening into community sites such as Facebook,
LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as customer forums and product review
services. Social media monitoring gives companies unique access to
unfiltered feedback from customers—and at a scale unavailable via
other means such as focus groups and surveys. There are plenty of
technical challenges, however, such as the need to understand the
context in which comments are being made and to distill key themes
and sentiments from unstructured text. To help companies take
advantage of this growing data source, new players have emerged,
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offering technologies and services such as web crawling, web

scraping (or extracting data from websites), text mining and
sentiment analysis.
Companies that want to experiment with monitoring the Web can

outsource the entire process to third parties, or build the capabilities
internally. However, the technologies are evolving rapidly, so firms
need to choose carefully and avoid locking themselves into a solution
that constrains their future capabilities. Social media also opens ways
to conduct market research more quickly and cheaply than ever
before, and to engage in a real time dialogue with a wide range of
customers, replicating the insights traditionally provided from direct
customer feedback or expensive and time-consuming focus groups.
This direct interaction with customers in social media sites can also
help companies benchmark themselves against the competition and
gather valuable input on what shoppers like about them — and what
they don’t.
The once clear-cut boundary between marketing and sales continues

to blur as online advertising and links to third-party comparison sites
allow companies to drive traffic to their retail websites. As a result,
firms can rapidly convert shoppers into buyers, and those buyers into
salespeople. Customer expectations regarding the online purchase
experience continue to climb, as leading retailers such as
Amazon.com continue to raise the bar by customizing
recommendations, providing intuitive, straightforward online
navigation and minimizing the number of clicks needed to complete a
purchase. Social media has an increasingly important role to play in
helping companies identify and address unmet customer needs.
Firms can engage employees, customers, suppliers and other third
parties as active participants in the innovation process, expanding the
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range of ideas and gathering real time feedback on their potential

take-up.
For example, Nokia operates an online lab that allows users around
the world to download beta applications and provide feedback to its
product development teams. This provides an early opportunity to
identify potential problems and alerts the developers to customer
differences across geographic markets that needs to be addressed.
4.2 Key features of Social Networking Sites
Interactive Customer Service
At the same time, one of the largest opportunities to tap the potential
of social media is in customer service. Innovative companies are using
social media to be more proactive in seeking customer feedback and
engaging customers to diagnose and resolve problems. From
Microsoft to eBay and from Wipro to Infosys, companies are using
social media to enable customers to get answers directly from other
customers or specially trained employees—empowering their most
knowledgeable customers to serve as an informal ecosystem of
answer centers. Other innovations include cloud monitoring services
such as those offered by Salesforce.com, which provide the ability to
track and respond to Twitter-borne and other online complaints
customers make.
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Companies can use social media to tap into the power and wisdom of
virtual crowds, enlisting them in support of other users and
empowering employees to act as agents for the company. Doing so
can generate a huge customer service multiplier effect, allowing
organizations to more rapidly identify, diagnose and resolve problems
while simultaneously delivering exceptional value.
Companies need to adopt new attitudes and behaviours, and to

unlearn many of the lessons of the past 20 years. Take customer
service interactions. In pursuit of efficiency, companies have made
them increasingly structured and scripted, allowing relatively low-
skilled, low-cost personnel to perform these roles. Agents follow strict
escalation rules, and the resolution of problems can take days, weeks
or even months. While this was perhaps acceptable in a world where
customer support was the first, last and only place to get help, today’s
customers will instead bypass the official systems, connect with one
another and take their problems public in a flash.
This high-speed environment clearly requires a much faster, more

flexible response from companies that want to avoid disaster. Many
MNCs worldwide curb bad publicity hoping to ground any social
media problems before they gain altitude, rigorously monitors its
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Twitter and Facebook pages, enabling the company to respond

promptly to customer complaints. With more than a million Twitter
fans and close to the same number of Facebook followers, companies
actively uses social media to interact with customers, drive sales and
build brand loyalty.
Furthermore, companies no longer have a monopoly on information.

Customers are much better informed than in the past, and in many
cases, better informed than even companies and their agents.
Conversations and situations that once took place in private, with the
company in full control of information, can now take place in the
public eye, with highly damaging consequences if the company gets it
wrong. One passenger, trapped aboard a grounded airliner at John F.
Kennedy International Airport, decided to record the saga of his flight
from London to New York, which took 16 hours rather than eight, and
post it on YouTube. After viewing the excruciating documentary, the
company’s CEO personally called the passenger to apologise, and
then refunded every passenger’s money for the flight and gave each
$100 off their next one. Integrating social media will compel
companies to make dramatic cultural changes, shifts that will
ultimately become essential for any organization hoping to thrive in
this new interactive environment.
Social media provides the information companies can use to segment

customer groups more finely than in the past, along with the tools to
tailor products, services and communication campaigns to suit the
needs and expectations of individual segments. This spells the end for
standard responses and one-size-fits-all offerings. Customers
increasingly demand to be treated as individuals and will give their
business to suppliers that provide either unique experiences or
superior value.
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4.3 Social Media as a powerful Customer Relations  

Management Tool
Customer Relations Management through the application of social

media is an approach to business that formally recognizes the role of
the customer and external influencers as a key in understanding and
managing conversations around the brand, product, or service. If the
reference to “conversations” seems to narrow the definition, consider
this: The conversation in the contemporary business context is
nothing short of a holistic, digital artifact that captures and conveys
the sum total of what your firm or organization has delivered.
Traditional CRM manages a customer relationship in a passive sense

from the customer’s point of view. The attributes defining the
relationship are all based on past transactional data — purchases,
calls, and other past-tense events. From the customer’s point of view,
the events have happened and are done, there is no ongoing role for
the individual as a customer. By comparison, Social CRM invites the
customer into your business or organization through the future-
oriented process of collaboration. It recognizes what has happened,
just as traditional CRM does, but then takes the added step of inviting
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the customer into the processes that govern what is about to happen
or may potentially happen or should never happen again by asking
“How can this product or service be made better?”
This kind of forward-looking collaboration involves the entire set of

stakeholders in the business or organization, including its employees,
partners, and suppliers. It is a whole-business, future-oriented
process, and it is core to an overall methodology and strategy that is
designed and implemented to delight customers. As an integral part
of improving the customer relationship process, following are the
steps that clearly place the customer and the conversations they are
having at the center of the Social CRM effort:
• Map the customers’ end-to-end experiences: Understand in detail

each step that a customer undertakes when doing specific tasks
that relate to your product or service. Create cross-functional teams
to relate what you learn to each point in your process that impacts
the customer experience at that point.
• Overlay the moments of truth with a feedback channel audit:

Where are the gaps? Where do the channels overlap? What
feedback do you have that shows how you are performing at these
points?
• Establish a baseline of customer experience and priorities to

improve: Based on the above, align efforts with your business
objectives and set out a plan.
• Establish a regular process for reporting: Use the associated

metrics for each step in the process along with your plan to keep
your larger (cross functional) team updated. “No surprises” is the
best surprise.
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Put these ideas together and you have the basic value proposition for
Social CRM, in the context of a new role for the customer, in a
participant-driven business:
By understanding who among your customers is influential, by

noting who is at the center of a specific conversation, and by
developing relationships with these people, you create the
opportunity to more deeply understand why they feel—positively or
negatively—the way they do. You can use this information in a
forward-looking (proactive) rather than reactive manner to drive
innovation and to ultimately shape the conversations in ways that
benefit rather than hinder your business.
You can track customers and other influencers through that same
relationship as they create content and converse on the Social Web.
This can be very enlightening and is really useful when pulled into
the product design process. Social CRM helps you understand and
apply the significant points in the conversations happening around
you. It helps you tie this information into your business, where you
can use it to build relationships with influential customers and with
influential bloggers, critics, and others who follow your firm or track
your business or industry.
You can apply this same discipline internally, too, and connect
customers and external influencers to your employees, to the
customer service manager, to brand managers, and to others. Once
connected in this way, your customers and employees can bond
further, moving toward collaboration. It’s collaboration that drives
customer centric product and service innovation, and collaboration
that leads to the highest forms of engagement with your customers. If
you now add to this your data around customer registration or
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similar information that you may have collected separately,

remember, like any other form of CRM.
Social CRM tracks specific profiles and contacts, so it can be synched

with existing customer data sets—you can begin to track what the
people who matter to you, your current and prior customers, are
saying about your product or service, or about your brand, firm, or
organization in the context of actual purchases and experiences. You
can use this same process to bring other influencers—bloggers, for
example, who may not be customers—into the Social CRM pool as
well. BuzzStream and similar tools include “influencer” dashboards
that allow the easy monitoring of conversations based on keywords
and the conversion of source data in much the same way as basic
social web listening tools works. With the influencer monitoring tools
like Buzzstream, the profiles and links of people directly contributing
to the conversation you are following are converted into contacts in
an influencer’s database that can be managed alongside your other
customer data. Note that BuzzStream provides one component of a
larger Social CRM effort: Combined with your business data, deeper
social analytics and an internal collaboration platform, BuzzStream’s
contact information provides an easy way to manage subsequent
conversations with the influencers around your brand, product or
service as you track issues, look for opportunities and introduce
innovations driven in part by these same conversations.
Profiles for Social Media Sites
At the center of the Social Web and the shared activities that define it
are the online personas of participants: More than with prior
anonymous discussion boards or cloaked personas, it’s an actual
identity that is of value in a business context, since it is generally the
motivation of an individual to be noticed as such that drives social
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participation in the first place. Though detailed personal information

is (still) generally not available except to “trusted friends” or
colleagues, the use of a real name or photo in one’s social profile is
becoming common. Along with any optionally provided information,
the result is a basis for understanding who it is that is actually
participating.
The profile is, therefore, the starting point of social interaction,

because without it the interaction that would otherwise occur is
purely transactional, between the participant and the online
application or other unknown party. The existence of a profile or
equivalent is, in this sense, what differentiates social platforms and
applications from (online) interactive applications. In an interactive
application—consider a typical website—the interaction is between
the application and the user: navigate to a help file, download a PDF,
or place an item in a shopping cart. In each of these, the primary
activity occurs between a user and an application designed to
facilitate a specific task.
Identity — beyond basic security or commerce validation

requirements — in this context is of relatively little importance.
Because the individual participant is steering the entire process, and
because this is typically a task-oriented transaction, the identity of the
participant matters little beyond the requirements of the task at hand.
In a social context, by comparison, the interaction occurs between the
participants as much or more than it does (overtly) between a specific
participant and the application or platform. It’s not just that someone
is doing something as with a transaction site: On the social web, that
person wants to be noticed (talked about) or joined with while doing
it. Basic tasks aside — uploading a photo, for example, the majority of
the interactions involve profile-based connections or exchanges:
curating a photo, extending and confirming a friend request,
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modifying a wiki document, or sharing a review. Each of these

requires a certain degree of assurance that the identity of the other
person(s) involved is reasonably well understood, and at least partly
so that the person committing the action will be noticed by someone
for having done that particular thing.
So it follows that in an online network, without a robust profile — the

central carrier of visible identity — the act of sharing is relatively
shallow. Participants in older forums and discussion boards, often
lacking a more formal or detailed description of who was who, based
identity on little more than a signature and then augmented that by
studying writing style or specific interests of various members, and
by doing so slowly pieced together an understanding of who the
other participants were. People are social, and they will seek to sort
out social order in nearly any situation. Ultimately, it is the
relationships and the interactions they facilitate that drive successful
social business applications.
By fundamentally enabling relationships, profiles dramatically speed

the process of social bonding within a network and so are very
important elements of modern forums, discussion boards, support
communities, or other online social spaces. Profiles provide human
starting points for bonding with other participants, including the
profile(s) associated with a brand, business or organization. Readily
identifiable participants are beneficial on the social web: Consider
what happens when identity is introduced into an otherwise
anonymous online application.
Among other things, with identity comes an increase in the overall

sense of individual accountability: If participants know who the
others around them are, and understand as well that their own
identity (as least as far as it exists via their profile) is equally known,
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there is a more tempered behavior than exists absent this sense of

identity and individual accountability. Flame wars, for example, are
less likely — all other things being equal — in communities with a
strong implementation of identity. It’s a lot like driving in traffic: In
the relative anonymity of a sound proof, air-conditioned cabin, it’s not
uncommon for one driver to become visibly frustrated with other
drivers. When that same driver realizes that the object of such
frustration happens to be a friend, co-worker or neighbor in the car
ahead, that knowledge often alters that driver’s attitude, for the
better. Visible identity makes a difference within an online social
community for exactly the same reason.
Opinion Leaders
It is a central idea in marketing and diffusion research that influential

people - a minimum number of individuals, which influence on a
significant number of their neighbors, play a vital role on the
formation of public opinion. The study of Lazarsfeld et al., is the
starting point for opinion leadership theory: they discovered that
voting decisions were heavily influenced by relatives, friends and co-
workers. Opinion leadership is defined by different authors. Rogers
defines opinion leadership as “degree to which an individual is able
to informally influence other individuals’ attitudes or overt behaviors
in a desired way with relative frequency” and opinion leaders as
“individuals who lead in influencing others’ options”.
Opinion leaders have a large amount of information about a variety
of products, categories, retails concepts, and markets. Experts have
been able to identify five characteristics for opinion leaders as shown
in the diagram below:
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Opinion leaders can be described as “people whose conversations

make innovations contagious for the people with whom they speak”.
Opinion leaders can be seen as consumers frequently rely upon other
people as sources of information, in addition to advertisements and
media, opinion leaders exert a disproportionate amount of influence
on the decisions of other consumers.” The base of all definitions is
people who are able to influence others. In recent years, many
research in word-of-mouth marketing investigate discovering
influential nodes in a social network.
The Profile as a Social Connector
The role of the social profile as a connector cannot be understated in

business applications of social media. Following on the prior
discussion, the social profile provides two central social elements,
both of which are essential:
• A tangible personal identifier around which a relationship can be

formed
• A framework for accountability for one’s actions, postings, and
roles taken in the relationship that forms
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Taken together, the significance of the profile is its central role in

establishing who is participating. When people have that basic
information, they will more readily enter into functional relationships
and share or transfer useful knowledge. This is, of course, the primary
objective in building a social business or supporting application.
By connecting the organization with its stakeholders — whether a

business and its customers or a nonprofit and its members — social
profiles form the basis for an accountable, productive relationship.
4.4 Social media influence in business generation through  

‘word-of-mouth marketing’
Word-of-mouth marketing which is a type of viral marketing is an

informal way of passing information among people about the
characteristics, usage, and ownership of particular products or
services. Viral marketing can be defined as the use of network value
of customers. Customer’s network value is defined as the expected
profits from sales to other customers whom he/she may influence to
buy, the customers those may influence. Word-of-mouth is a new
marketing method that uses electronic communications among a
widespread network of buyers (e.g. email) to trigger brand messages.
Social networking sites have become increasingly important in
consumer’s purchasing decisions. This is so because, they are a
powerful force in word-of-mouth marketing and they can shape the
public opinion.
The key point in word-of-mouth marketing is to identify the

influential nodes. Valente and Davis (1999) showed that diffusion is
faster when it initiates by opinion leaders instead of random people.
Social network theory links with the opinion leadership and word-of-
mouth concept can be used to identify the opinion leaders in a
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network and help the diffusion of any behavior. A three step process
can be used to help firms use social network for their marketing
activities.
In step 1, firms should first find a proper social network or build their
own social network to establish their relationship with consumers.
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Figure 4.1: A three step process for firms to use social networks for marketing
Then, step 2 includes identifying and selecting opinion leaders that

firms think they are influential among consumers. An influential node
has more links to others and can pass a message to the most of the
people in the network. Many studies on finding the most influential
nodes consider how many other influential people point to them.
They are based on the pioneering study of hubs and authorities, and
the study of Google’s PageRank algorithm. Both studies are based on
social network analysis. So, related notions of social network analysis,
like centrality and prestige can be used to indicate how opinion
leaders become influential through their relationships.
Finally, in step 3, these influential people can be considered as

initiative nodes to help diffusion of innovation, new product adoption
and spread of any behavior in the whole community. In addition,
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companies need to identify opinion leaders among customers to

advertise their products.
It has stronger creditability than other forms of marketing and
changes communication from a company-to-customer mode to a
customer-to-customer mode. Marketing techniques that apply the
social networks of consumers to increase brand awareness are called
word-of-mouth marketing. The existence of rating websites such as
Epinions, which can distribute negative or positive about products
among people in the network, reveals that marketers need to consider
the prominent effect of word-of-mouth phenomenon on their brand’s
position. In general, word-of-mouth marketing is a significant market
force that influences consumer decision making.
4.5 Innovation and Leveraging the Power of Social Media

through Social Applications
Taking the four basic building blocks together — consumption,

curation, creation, and collaboration — one possible model (there are
many) for driving engagement emerges. Engagement can be tapped
for marketing purposes by anchoring it within the context of the basic
social structures — communities, social applications, and similar and
then connecting these back to your brand, product, or service. In this
section, social applications are the focus.
The basic process of engagement begins with content consumption

and builds up to collaboration between participants in the creative
process. This is the kind of activity that binds community members
together. Taking off on this, there are specific social applications —
forums, collaborative tools, contests and games among them — that
you can implement under your own brand to lead your participants
through the steps of engagement that drive your business.
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Importantly, the social applications are not necessarily communities,

though some amounts to as much; they are more generally enablers of
an activity or outcome that is useful to the members of a community
with which an application is associated. Simply put, and critical to
understanding how to build an effective social presence, is
recognizing that most brands, products, or services will not support a
“community” by themselves. Why not? Think about the products that
you use, the organizations you support, and the real-world
community around you. What among them constitute the things you
think about daily, regularly, that you obsess over? These — and only
these — are the things that are candidates for long-lived, organically
developed “communities.”
Despite a lot of time and effort spent to the contrary, most brands,
products, and services do not command sufficient daily mindshare to
sustain a community of their own. To see why this is so, make a quick
mental list for yourself of the real-world organizations of which you
are a member. The typical individual has one, three, perhaps five or
even a few more organizations. After that, most people literally run
out of bandwidth, the combination of an individual’s time, and
attention. There are only so many social organizations one person can
effectively participate in. Online it’s no different: How many social
communities can you really belong to? More importantly, how many
will you actively participate in? For most, the answer is surprisingly
similar (or perhaps not surprising at all) to the capacity for
participation in real life.
Against that, ask yourself: “How likely are you to join a deodorant,
toothpaste, or laundry soap community?” Yet, more than a few CPG/
FMCG brand managers have undertaken to build just these types of
communities. Make no mistake: As long as the advertising spending
is happening, people join, take advantage of offers, and maybe even
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engage in light social activities. But understand that membership is

being driven by ad spending and not organic social interaction.
Organic growth — versus ad spending and incentive driven growth
— is what you need to build long-term participation in a community.
This is not to knock “awareness” communities or the application of

social media channels in awareness plays: These communities may
well be important parts of overall marketing programs and often do
deliver on some of the surface promises of the Social Web. Content
consumption certainly happens, and to an extent curation — people
voting or ranking what they see or do in these communities — may
also be happening. But above that, in the more important behaviors of
content creation and collaboration, activity generally starts to drop
off. Also as noted, when the ad spending stops, the community
generally stops growing as well.
Now, consider social applications. Social applications are designed to

facilitate accomplishing something in the context of a shared or
collaborative goal — “Look at us!” — and thereby, to provide a
specific value to a given group of participants. Social applications are
rooted in the task-orientation of many Internet activities, but then
extend beyond that, into social activities. By delivering a service and
then encouraging the sharing of results, interpersonal relationships
are created. In this way, social applications drive their own longevity
and usefulness. This is a very beneficial attribute when you are trying
to encourage repeat visits and you don’t have an unlimited supply of
funds to make up for organic interest and participation.
There is another aspect of social business and social application

design that warrants attention. A utility-oriented application by itself
is not social. This means that unless you design your social
application to be a part of the larger social framework — the
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ecosystem — in which your audience spends time, you’ll end up with

an island. What makes the “social application” social is its
connectedness to the communities in which participants are also
members. For example, if someone is a member of Facebook, Orkut,
or LinkedIn, or uses Twitter regularly and has built up 100, 1,000, or
more real connections, the larger value of your social application
comes when the application itself, or whatever it is that it produces or
does, is shared and pushed out through that person’s social graph.
4.6 Benefits and advantages of Marketing on Social  

Networking Sites

consumer’s purchasing decisions because they can shape the public
opinion. Nowadays, customers do not have access to all information;
also they do not have enough ability to process and evaluate every
alternative available for them and choosing the best one. So, an easy
way which is economical and intellectual would be trust other people
who they know and are in relation with them in different social
networks. These trustworthy people called opinion leaders,
individuals that lead in influencing others’ options. Social network
theory joining the opinion leadership and word-of-mouth concept can
be used to identify opinion leaders in a network. Utilizing
interpersonal relationships in a social network is a powerful force in
word-of-mouth marketing. Firms and marketers through using social
networks for marketing can increase product and brand awareness.
Furthermore, they have increased access to customer service and
feedback, as well as they can find the customer needs better.
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Social networks are a very valuable marketing tool. With the recent
growth in popularity of many of the networking websites, marketers
are better able to market their brands to a mass market without
having to invest the time and money that they would by marketing
through other means. These sites are beneficial to companies both big
and small, and allow companies to market themselves in new and
creative ways. Social networks are used as a marketing tool for many
different purposes. Those marketing large companies use these sites
to gain information on their target market, and how people feel about
their products. They can also use these sites to gain information on
their competition. Small businesses may also use these sites to
promote their brand.
These networks allow thousands of people to network with each

other, meeting new people that may benefit their business or services
being offered. Networking with different people through these sites is
an excellent way to create new contacts, and potentially create new
customers or business associates. The most valuable part of marketing
using social networks is that it allows people to market their services
to a large market at no cost. Thousands of people enter these sites
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daily. Therefore, they are able reach a mass market free of charge. The
popular network Facebook offers a free classifieds section where
people are able to post things such as job listings, items for sale or
services available. Companies of all sorts are able to place
advertisements for their products or services, as well as post job
opportunities. People are also able to market themselves by listing
their skills and abilities for employers to view.
Another popular social network, MySpace, is widely used by its

members as a way of promoting themselves. Many musicians or
actors wishing to gain some free recognition will place videos and
songs on their pages for others to view. This site also allows members
to send their videos to other members, and gain more recognition and
feedback. One large benefit to marketing on social networks is the
pass along factor. Users of these networks tend to pass along items
that are of interest to them, or that they believe their friends will find
interesting. Members are also able to pass along their own postings to
other site members, whether they know them or not.
Consumers do not make their decision by evaluating every

alternative available to them and choosing the best one. Because
regarding the range of alternatives, only limited information is
available for them. Also, people do not have enough ability to process
and evaluate all that information. Moreover, the success of social
network sites like Facebook and MySpace reveals that in recent times
interaction with others plays an important role in our lives. Instead of
spending lots of time and money to analyze every option, people
usually make their decision based on trust to others who are close to
them and have common interests with. These trustworthy people are
called opinion leaders, influential people or key players in literature.
Opinion leaders can help the spread of any idea, behavior, innovation
or advertisement among the people on the community.
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Companies by using these sites or making their own social

networking sites can identify influential people, understanding
consumer’s need and employ them to promote their product.
Utilizing social networks and the relationship between people for
marketing have received more attention in recent years.
Social networks are also beneficial to companies who are wishing to

create e-mail lists to send coupons or advertisements through the
mail. Companies may post bulletins on websites encouraging people
to sign up for their daily newsletters, etc. In doing this many
companies are able to greatly increase their mailing lists. Placing paid
advertisements, such as banners, on these sites can also benefit a
company greatly based on the amount of hits the sites receive each
day. Thousands of members view these pages daily which means ads
placed on these sites will reach a mass audience. Marketers are also
able to monitor social networking sites, to read up on how people are
viewing their brands. These sites allow them to see what their
competitors are doing, and how customers view the competition.
Receiving this feedback from customers allows marketers to
understand what the target market is looking for, what people like
about their products or services, and what needs to be improved.
Social networks also allow marketers to gain information on their

potential customers. By viewing user profiles, marketers are able to
gather information regarding the demographics and psychographics
of potential customers, making them better able to identify those that
fit into their target market. This information can often be time
consuming and costly. Having social networks to help them find this
information is quite beneficial to marketers. Many of the social
networking sites allow users to create groups regarding specific
topics. This makes it much easier for marketers to find much of the
information regarding their target market and their competitors.
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The role of social networks as an important medium for the spread of

ideas, behaviors, information and diseases has been largely studied.
Many studies related to marketing explore the effect of word-of-
mouth and viral marketing in the success of new products. Moreover,
the advancement of IT technology and the Internet reduces the cost of
marketing activities such as advertising. In fact, online social
networks and virtual communities provide lots of opportunities for
marketers, managers, and researchers because they influence
individuals’ decision making process. The decisions of people can be
influenced by opinion leaders in several ways. Opinion leaders are :
1. Acting as role models who inspire imitation;
2. Spreading information via word-of -mouth; and
3. Giving advice and verbal direction for search, purchase,and use.
Word-of-mouth marketing raises brand awareness through self-

replication and message diffusion and it has more creditability than
other forms of marketing. In general, according to above studies
advantages of using social networks for marketing can be organized
as follows:
• Lower cost: Almost all social networking sites are free to use and
put you in direct contact with potential customers without you
having to pay a penny. You may only need to send an email to
current customers, asking them to join, follow, like or be friend you,
to get things under way. If you have a small budget for advertising,
you may wish to purchase an advertisement that appears on the
social networking site. The advertisement will appear on the pages
of those whose profiles fit in with your company’s style or goals.
Usually, the cost of an online advertisement is less than an
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advertisement in print or television. Regarding that consumers pay

more attention to other’s recommendations and by new
advancement of Internet and IT technology, employing social
networks for marketing activities is significantly cheaper than
paying for advertising on the media.
• Trust and credibility: Word-of-mouth and customer-to-customer

communication have stronger creditability than other forms of
marketing. As a general rule of thumb companies always think
about their own profits. So consumers seek opinions of people
whom they trust. Marketing via social networks will increase
customers’ loyalty.
• Facilitate the diffusion of information: The most striking benefit is

that social networks via relationships on the personal level can
easily facilitate the spread of any idea, information, behavior and
opinion among people. Furthermore, online social networks are
dynamic, and information can be appended and revised at any
point.
• Gain competitive advantage: Many marketers in this competitive

market have joined the social networking community. Companies
by using these sites can easily expand their market niche, advertise
their businesses, increase brand awareness and gain loyal
customers in the future.
• Understanding consumer’s needs: As a firm investigates the social

network of its consumers, it is easier to find their interest, what the
online visitors want, identifying loyal consumers, and creating a
personal relationship with them.
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• Connecting with Current Customers: Using a social network

allows you to connect with or “friend” those who already make use
of your services. Convince current customers to join your network
by posting a flier about it at your place of business. Print the web
address of your preferred network on your next batch of business
cards. If you run a store, slip small postcards in shopping bags
when customers purchase something, encouraging them to find
your business on your network of choice. Depending on the
network you use, current customers can “check in” at your
business whenever they visit, letting others know that they are
there and spreading the word about your company.
• Finding New Customers: A social network gives you the chance to

reach out to new customers. One way to use your social network to
find new customers is to reach out to current ones. Tweet or post on
your wall, offering a special discount to current customers for
every new person who follows or likes your business. Also offer
new friends or followers a discount on your services if they join
your network.
• Open Communication: A social network lets you inform friends or

followers of secret sales or special offers quickly and simply. It also
allows customers to contact you easily. If a customer has an issue,
she can post on your wall or write a short message explaining the
problem. This allows you to respond quickly and attempt to
ameliorate the situation. Customers also can post positive
experiences with your company on your page, which is one of the
best types of advertising. You also can use the site to ask your
customers what they like and dislike about your company or about
the world in general.
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Benefits of the Top Social Media Websites
Social media is a powerful tool that people use to share and connect
with one another anywhere in the world at any time. Companies have
the unique opportunity to join in this conversation by connecting
with customers through their own social media accounts. Following
are four of the biggest social media sites on the web and how each of
them can benefit your company differently.
Facebook
• Facebook is a low-cost marketing strategy
• Share basic information about your business
• Share photos and videos of your business
• Talk to existing and potential customers
• Raise brand awareness and promote word of mouth
• Target advertising/Insights
• Offer Deals
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Twitter
• Monitor real time conversations
• Extend customer service
• Offer helpful links and headlines
• Break through communication barriers with tweets
• Run special deals and promotions
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• Build your personal brand
• Keep up on news and trends
LinkedIn
• Find business partners, clients and service providers
• Get advice from industry experts
• Add your website or blog for increased exposure
• “Recommendations” increase your credibility
• “Profile” makes for better SEO opportunities
• Join groups with like-minded people
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Google+
• Improving your results in Google Search
• Your Google+ posts get indexed quickly
• Your customers and potential customers are already on
• Google+ allows for more direct and personal relationships
• Future integration with other Google products
• Growing rapidly with 500 million users
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4.7 Marketing on Facebook
Facebook is a social network for connecting people with those around

them – friends, family, coworkers, or simply others with similar
interests. Facebook started in 2004 as a closed community for college
students (requiring users to sign up with a valid university email
address) but has since expanded beyond that to schools, corporations,
and any user across the world. Facebook allows users to connect and
share information in a variety of ways.
Facebook currently has over 750 million active users, and that number
continues to grow steadily. According to Compete.com, it is currently
the second most popular website in the world (behind Google) in
terms of unique visitors, and according to ComScore, the most
popular social network overall. There are a number of good reasons
for businesses to participate in and maintain a presence on Facebook.
Here are a few:
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Generate leads for

your business
Promote other
content you create,
including webinars,
blog articles, or
Create a other resources
community
around your
business
Connect and
engage with
current and
potential
Get found by customers
people who
are searching
for your
products or
services
!
Facebook is a tool for connecting people with those around them. As
with any social media tool, marketers have an opportunity to use
Facebook to expand their online footprint and directly engage with
customers and prospects.
Think your customers are not on Facebook? There are tens of

thousands of work-related, collegiate, and high school networks.
According to InsideFacebook.com, approximately two thirds of U.S.
Facebook users are outside of the college demographic, and users age
26 to 64 make up more than half of Facebook’s U.S. user base.
Personal vs. Business Accounts
On Facebook, Profiles are meant for people, and Pages are meant for
businesses. To fully engage and leverage Facebook’s features, you
should create a personal profile. Do not create a personal Profile for
your business. Profiles are for people; Pages are for businesses.
Facebook has built significant functionality specifically for businesses,
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and all of this functionality is only available for Pages. We’ll talk
about Pages more in a later section.
There are a few key differences between Business Pages and Personal
Profiles:
• Pages allow you to designate multiple administrators so you can

have more than one person help manage the account. In addition, if
one of your administrators leaves the company, you can still have
control over the Page.
• Pages are, by default, public, and are starting to rank in Facebook

and public search results.
• Pages are split into different categories (local businesses, brands,

musicians) that help you get listed in more relevant search results.
• Personal profiles have friends, which require mutual acceptance,

whereas anyone can become a fan of your Page without needing
administrator approval.
Social media is about establishing and building relationships, whether

they are personal or business connections. In many cases, you may
find that some connections will blur the lines between the personal
and business realms. It is also important to be transparent and
authentic when using social media to market a business. People like
to connect with people, not faceless brands. Furthermore, it is these
personal connections that will lead to business, referrals, and word of
mouth marketing for your company.
If you are concerned about exposing portions of your profile to these
different connections – perhaps you still don’t want your business
connections to see your personal photos – fortunately, Facebook
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allows you to customize your privacy settings to control who sees

which portions of your profile. Facebook also recommends the setting
you should use depending on who is viewing your profile. To edit
your privacy settings, click on “Account”, then “Privacy Settings.”
Visibility of every aspect of your profile (photos, contact information,

education information) can be controlled via the Profile privacy
settings. You can set each section to be viewable by:
• Everyone
• Friends of Friends
• Friends Only
• Custom: Customize who (which networks, friend lists, or specific
friends) can or cannot access a portion of your profile.
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A great (advanced) way for customizing your privacy settings is to set

up Friend Lists. Friend Lists are a way of organizing your friends into
relevant groups. There are a few benefits of creating Friend Lists:
• Customize privacy settings by Friend List
• View News Feed updates by Friend List filters
• Invite Friend Lists to events (must be list of max 100 people)
• Send messages to Friend Lists (must be list of max 20 people)
• More to come – Friend Lists are an under-used feature that is

coming into play more across Facebook
How to Set Up a Business Page
1.Choose a Classification -: you will likely choose One of the first 3 options
highlighted to the left the category you choose will help you rank in more
relevant searches and provide relevant information field on your page.
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A Page is similar to a Profile except that it is, by default, public, and

users can Like and become a “fan” of your Page without first
requiring approval from the Page’s administrators. Creating a Page is
completely free but will require your time to build and maintain. To
get started, visit www.facebook.com/pages/create.php (Note: you
must be logged in to create a Page). Facebook will then walk you
through a simple wizard to create your Page.
Follow the next setup wizard, which will ask you to upload a photo
(use your company or brand logo), give you an opportunity to
suggest your page to friends in order to generate fans, and add some
basic info. (Note: You can always skip these steps and add these items
later.)
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Next, complete your Page like you would a Profile. Click on “Edit
Page” or “Edit Info” on your Page’s homepage to add information
about your business like your website, a short description, products,
and so on.
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!
Take advantage of some of the features of business Pages such as the
discussion board to engage your fans.
As the administrator, by default, your name and profile will not show
up anywhere on your Page. You are the behind-the-scenes manager.
When you post new information or respond to a discussion thread, it
will appear to be posted by your company rather than you personally,
even though you’ll be logged in as yourself (this can be changed in
your Pages settings). You can designate multiple administrators as
well to help with the maintenance of your Page.
In addition to being the administrator of your Page, you will want to

become a fan. Click the “Like” button on your Page to become a fan.
Once you become a fan, you will be listed among all the other fans on
your Page and all the Pages of which you are a fan will show up on
your profile, giving your business more visibility to your network.
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How to Promote Your Page
Now that you’ve built your Page, you need to focus on attracting
some fans. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
• Create an engaging Page. Use applications like the discussion board
and YouTube video box to add more interesting and engaging
content to your Page. Give users a reason to become a fan of your
Page and engage with you. More advanced Facebook users can add
custom pages to their Page using iFrames.
• Leverage the viral nature of Facebook – the News Feed. The added
benefit of creating an engaging page is that every time a fan
engages with your page – from becoming a fan to posting a
comment to attending an event – that activity is published to their
“News Feed” which can be seen by their friends on Facebook.
When a user first logs into Facebook, they see a feed of their
friends‟ recent activity, so the activity of your fans on your Page
gets shared with a greater network, giving your business more
visibility.
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• Draw on your existing network. You most likely already have email
subscribers and blog readers – so make sure they know they can
now become a fan of your business on Facebook. Consider emailing
your opt-in mailing list, including a link to your page in your email
signature, blogging about your Facebook page, and posting a link
or badge to your Page on your website or blog.
• Make your Page publicly searchable. By default, your Page will be

public so it can get indexed by search engines and give you the
opportunity to drive organic search traffic to your Page. If you
don’t notice your Page showing up in searches, make sure you have
set it to be publicly indexed and searchable. Go to “Edit Page,” click
“Manage Permissions” and make sure “Page Visibility” box is un-
checked. This will make it publicly visible.
• Use Facebook Ads for an extra push. Facebook ads allow you to
advertise a website or other properties on Facebook, including
Pages, Groups, and Events. If you’re familiar with Google
AdWords, the system for building and running ads on Facebook is
very similar. A later section will dive deeper into how to set up and
optimize Facebook Ads.
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Facebook Groups vs. Pages
In most cases, businesses should create a Page to represent their

company on Facebook. In a few cases, however, it may make sense to
create a Facebook Group instead (or in addition). The key distinction
between Groups and Pages is that a Group is for a community of
people with a common interest, while a Page represents a brand or
entity of which there are “fans.” Here are some of the differences in
functionality:
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How to Advertise on Facebook
Facebook Ads allow you to promote your business, get more fans for
your business Page, and drive more leads for your sales team.
Facebook Ads allow you to advertise a website or content you
manage on Facebook (like a Group, Page, or Event). The ad creation
and management tools are very similar to the Google AdWords
interface.
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To get started, visit http://www.facebook.com/advertising, and click

“Create an Ad”. (Note: You must be logged in to create an ad.) Follow
the step-by-step instructions to create your ad.
 
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For Facebook Ads
1. Choose your destination tab. This is the landing page that your ad
will point to.
2. Choose your ad’s title. Choose an eye-catching, concise title.
3. Create ad copy for the body. Create compelling copy to promote

your ad.
4. Choose an image. Images are highly recommended, as they

increase your ad’s click-through rate.
5. Preview your ad. Then make changes as you see fit.
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For Sponsored Stories
1. Choose your story type. You can select a “Page Like Story,” a
“Page Post Story,” or a “Page Post Like Story.” Click the question
mark icons on Facebook next to each option for further
clarification.
2. Preview your story.
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Ad Targeting Options
The second step is to choose your targeting options. Your ad is more

likely to perform better and continue running successfully if it’s being
displayed to users who are most likely to be interested in your
product or service. Select the country you would like your ad to be
displayed in.
You can choose up to 25 countries, but note that if you target more
than one country, you won't be able to refine your targeting to specific
cities. Next, choose the demographics you would like to target. You
can also target people by likes/interests, and connections on
Facebook.
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For the last step, select a payment type and budget for your ad
campaign. Scroll down to the “Pricing” section and click on the “Set a
Different Bid (Advanced Mode)” link. This will show you a suggested
range of bids that are currently winning the auction among ads
similar to yours. If you would like to set a different bid, you can do so
here as well.
Click “Review Ad” and see a preview of your ad before you publish
it.
Facebook has built-in analytics to help track ad performance in terms

of number of impressions, clicks, and click-through rate. Run multiple
ad variations at the same time and use the Ads Manager to determine
which ones deliver the best results for your business.
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Business Best Practices by Facebook
Facebook started as a hangout for college students, but now it is a

representative sample of the population. As we’ve said, Facebook
provides many business opportunities. Start implementing this list of
10 best practices, and you will be well on your way to Facebook
marketing success.
10 Facebook for Business Best Practices:
1. Be interactive, fun and helpful. When people reach your

Facebook page, they are looking for some kind of interaction.
Don’t disappoint them. As an example, a hardware company
offered their Facebook fans links, applications, and engaging
information, and within a short time, they added 26,000 fans.
2. Embed videos on your Facebook page. There is no reason why

you should send people to YouTube to watch your videos. Keep
them right on your page with embedded videos.
3. Create a connection between Facebook and the outside world. I

recently read a case study about how sales reps worked with local
retailers to promote their events through Facebook updates and
photos. Consider something similar.
4. Create contests on Facebook. Contests are a fun and engaging

way to encourage participation from fans and even generate new
fans. For example, in order to enter a contest, one company asked
people to comment on a thread announcing a giveaway in
Facebook.
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5. Integrate traditional advertising with Facebook. The Facebook

icon/logo is well known. Add it to your print ads to promote your
Facebook presence. Another great idea is to use traditional ads to
promote contests that encourage people to sign up on your fan
page.
6. Use Facebook to grow your email list, and vice versa. Use your
email newsletter to boost awareness of your Facebook page. In
addition, promote your email newsletter to your existing Facebook
fans. The end result will be growth in your email list and your
Facebook fan base.
7. Introduce new products on Facebook first. People who sign up to

be fans of your Facebook page are likely your most loyal
evangelists and customers. Reward them by giving them
information about a new product/service/feature before everyone
else. If you do it right, they will help you promote it to others.
8. Welcome new page visitors. When thinking about Facebook, a

new metric comes to mind: visitor-to-like. As a B2B company, you
ultimately want to maximize the percentage of people who visit
your Facebook Page and click the "Like" button. One important
way to achieve this goal and establish expectations with new fans
is to implement a 'welcome' landing page that invites new visitors
to Like your Page. Technically, there are many ways to execute
this.
9. Integrate social content on your Facebook Page. Facebook is the

gateway to the internet for many people. They use it as a home
base. In fact, one in eight minutes on the internet is spent on
Facebook. Because Facebook has become such an online home for
people, it is important to incorporate content from other social
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channels like YouTube and SlideShare to extend the life and reach
of that content.
10. 'Like' other businesses’ Facebook Pages. Remember that social

media is, well, social. By Liking the Pages of business partners,
valued vendors, and customers, Facebook will notify the
administrators of those Pages. In return, some of them may also
decide to Like your Page, which will also expose it to the
individual fans of their Pages. Think of this as leveraging
Facebook for co-marketing efforts.
How to Measure and Analyze Your Facebook Presence
Measuring results is a key part of any marketing strategy, and

Facebook is no different. A useful Tool like Google Analytics can be
used to measure the traffic, leads, and customers driven from
Facebook, it is important to understand that Facebook also provides
its own analytics data. Facebook Insights provides Facebook Page
administrators with analytics data about Page visits and engagement.
In the page overview section of Insights, you can take a quick look at
how many new Likes your page has received as well as the number of
your Page’s fans who are actively engaging with your content. A key
metric to note here is the per cent change of active users. Increasing
your number of active users can help drive traffic and leads to your
business.
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4.8 Marketing on MySpace
When it comes to conducting business on MySpace, organizations

have to make sure they constantly stay abreast of the rules and
regulations on MySpace. The more education they receive on how to
conduct business on MySpace, and how to solve the problems with
MySpace, the more will be the profit margins. Businesses should take
time each day to look at any changes in the MySpace format, and
consequent rules of the site. The more they know about this, the better
it will be for the bottom line.
MySpace is starting to institute a quality control system that will

frown upon commercially drawn pages, and thus you want to try to
create a MySpace page this is at least in some part not entirely
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commercial. This means toning down the offerings, and at least

pretending like you are trying to contribute something to the
MySpace community beyond attempting to sell people on goods, and
services.
Part of marketing on MySpace is, understanding the different roles of

each member, and guest on the site. For example, if you are placing a
viral video on MySpace, and you want everyone to see it, it must be
part of a friend post, not under your videos section, because your
videos section is for members viewing only. This means nobody else
will be able to see the video but members, and friends of your space.
This is one little example of how important it is to keep up with the
rules, to make sure you know how to maximize the effectiveness of
your site. The more businesses learn about MySpace the more
powerful the marketing efforts will be. Therefore, it is imperative that
marketers learn as much about MySpace as possible, from the rules to
the regulations, to the little nuances that make it such a powerful
marketing tool. Once you have a clear understanding of these rules,
you will be ready to take a step in the right direction towards making
money with MySpace.
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Conducting business on Myspace is about the profile - There are

different approaches to conduct business it through affiliate
marketing? Or is it through custom templates and additions instead?
Whatever the answer, you must realize that the main focus of
MySpace is the user profile, and no matter what the method you use
for making money on MySpace the user profile is an intricate part of
any MySpace money making scheme. Therefore, it is important that
you master the MySpace profile before truly harnessing the wealth
that is out there for those wanting to make money on MySpace.
Mastering a MySpace profile can be as easy as creating a killer profile
yourself, and then looking at what you did that was good, what
wasn’t good, and what services, or market needs are available. This
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will surely help further your understanding of MySpace, and where

the money making niches are within the system.
The first part of any MySpace profile should be the picture. While you
can upload many pictures, the one most people see is your homepage
picture. This is the picture that sits on your page for everyone else to
see, and it is imperative that this picture is not only catchy, but
intriguing. A picture of nature on MySpace might be catchy, but it
wouldn’t intrigue people to click the profile. Conversely, a picture of a
celebrity would. So think about what picture works best for you.
Maybe it’s one in an exotic place, or maybe it’s something more
relevant to your business, like a picture of a big stack of money, or a
fancy car. Whatever the MySpace main page picture is, it should be
intriguing enough for users to click.
Next make sure you have a quality group of multimedia on the site to
keep users interested, without freezing up their computers. Many
MySpace money makers have a rule of not putting any video, and
audio on the site that would compete with one and other. Also make
sure there is nothing on your page that is obscene, or would cause
users to turn away from your page.
Doing these simple steps, along with adding a lot of friends, and
giving some valuable content will help users warm up to your site,
and keep them coming back for whatever money making endeavor
you have going. This will surely be one of your secret weapons to
making more money than anyone else on MySpace in the future as
your business grows.
The Wonder of MySpace for Affiliates
What makes MySpace so ripe for affiliate related promotions is the

social networking aspect of the site. Essentially everyone is connected
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to one, and others through some type of associative group, or crew.

The more friends you get, the better you look, and thus, people strive
to accumulate massive amounts of friends and others spend hours
online doing the same. By understanding the above facts, one can
turn these networks of groups and friends into selling machines and
end up with a fat pocket full of MySpace cash in the process.
Affiliate marketing is all about selling someone else’s product for

them in exchange for a piece of the sale price. What better way is
there to sell a product then on a sight that is full of literally thousands
of people at any given time? The answer is there is no better way, and
that is why MySpace is such a powerful sales tool, because of the
sheer number of visitors per day, and the amount of time those
visitors spend each day on the site. Capturing these visitors to check
out your affiliate product page is an entirely different ball of wax all
together.
The key to affiliate marketing on MySpace is the profile. You want to

create a profile, and a mini-page that is both sales driven, and
interesting. For example if you are selling sporting goods as an
affiliate, create a profile that is intriguing to sports fans, not just a
sales page disguised as a profile. Put a good bit of sports statistics on
there, pictures, maybe a few interviews with athletes, etc. This will
help entice visitors, and then when you start to make more friends,
the process begins to take on a life of its own.
Finally, when affiliate marketing on MySpace for money, make sure to

diversify what you are offering. Create several profiles, and don’t be
afraid to be several different personas, or people. If you are selling a
cooking product, it might make sense to bill yourself as a top chef.
Creating some type of image will help increase affiliate sales, and
keep the money coming in all day long. After this process starts to
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work for you, make sure to share with others what you have learned
so they can help you market your affiliate products as well.
Selling Your Own Products on MySpace
There are hundreds of ways to make money with MySpace, and not
all of them involve doing a lot of work, one of these is selling your
own products on MySpace. If you have a band, or if you are an actor,
or a musician, or anyone that creates something, it is very possible to
create a MySpace page that sells your goods. Many people fail to
realize how many MySpace members are only on MySpace to sell
their own products, and market themselves to an entire community.
While you might think this is normal for others, but not you, the truth
is it’s worth a second look.
Selling your own products on MySpace is all about creating a large

group of responsive friends that would be interested in buying your
product, or service online. Doing this means that you should not only
try to collect large groups of friends on MySpace, but also contacting
them on a regular basis to make sure they are keeping abreast with
what you are doing, and continue to frequent your page.
Try giving away something free to spice up the visitor numbers to

your page, and get some more people on your bandwagon. This can
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mean simply having a contest on your MySpace page every once and
a while, where you give away whatever it is you are selling, or you
can do it on a weekly basis for even more attraction. The concept is to
get more people checking out your page by giving them a big
incentive to visit your MySpace page each day.
Selling your own products on MySpace is as much about you, as it is

about your product. It is imperative to brand yourself as a guru to
whatever it is you are selling, and this means building trust with your
friends. Whatever product you are selling, you should also offer free
information, and question and answer sessions with your friends on
your MySpace page as often as possible to show that your product is
full of the same useful information you are sharing with your friends.
As MySpace becomes more, and more popular amongst visitors from
all over the world, there will be limitless possibilities to sell goods on
the site, and to make a lot of money in the process by following the
steps provided above to make serious cash on a daily basis.
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One great way to market outside of MySpace is to reach out through a

note worthy blog. This will provide you with a one stop area that you
can keep people updated on what you are doing. This means your
past customers, your friends, and your co-workers will all be able to
check out this blog on a regular basis. When you start to include your
MySpace address in your blog posts, you will start to gain more
targeted traffic to your MySpace page. Further, when people are
reading your blog that you have not met, but share the same interests
you do in business, they too will be able to check out your MySpace
page, and be much more likely to make a purchase on your page than
just any old random person.
Another great way to market your MySpace page is through signature

marketing. Most people liken signature marketing to forums,
however, this can be done on any number of sites. Most websites
require users to set up a profile, and in that profile they ask for any
special links you might want to share with people that view your
profile, or see your posts, these links are called signature links. By
adding your MySpace page to the signature links of any forum you
frequent or any other social networking site you might use, will add a
good amount of free traffic to your site on a daily basis.
Marketing your MySpace page off of the site itself is a great way to
increase traffic, and get more targeted leads that are more willing, and
likely to purchase your products to your site.
Creating a Site Selling MySpace Products
Having a site that sells MySpace related products can be a big way to
profit off of the current MySpace craze online. There are literally
thousands of additions, templates, gadgets, and other things that
people use for their MySpace page on a daily basis. Similar to a
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virtual locker, users are dressing up their pages to fit their unique

personalities, while constantly trying to out show their friends. This
means that a huge willing market exists for people that want to make
money with MySpace.
What should you sell to those wanting to update their MySpace page?
The answer should be right in front of you, simply go to MySpace,
and look at what people are using, and what people are digging.
Simply look for groups of people that are using the same product, and
find out how much the product is being sold for, then simply emulate
the product, or buy the rights to resell the product, and get into the
game.
Another way to sell MySpace products to those wanting to update the

look of their sites is to create your own additions. This can be much
easier than one might think it would be to do. First, you must identify
what it is that people might enjoy for their MySpace page. This might
be an advanced jukebox or maybe some unique video hosting
services, and then create the product and build a website to sell it.
Finally, there is the ever profitable advertising one can sell for their
MySpace page. The best way to do this is to create a page, and build a
network of friends as large as humanly possible of active friends.
Once you do this, you want to utilize software that will allow you to
post to as many friends, boards as possible, and create an active
relationship with the friend group. Once this is done you will be able
to sell the top slot on your MySpace page for a pretty penny each
month, and sell subsequent spots for more money.
By servicing the MySpace community you are not only entering a

robust market, you are getting free promotion from everyone that
uses your goods, and services. This is the key to more sales, and more
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income in the future. Simply by seizing the moment by providing

MySpace users with useful additions for their site, you will be
handsomely rewarded.
4.9 Marketing on LinkedIn
LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site.

Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly
used for professional networking. As of 2nd August 2012, LinkedIn
reported it had 175 million+ professionals members in over 200
countries and territories around the world. They surpassed 5.3 billion
professional-oriented searches in 2012. That alone should be enough
to get you thinking about adding LinkedIn to your marketing
strategy. But more than that, LinkedIn has some unique features to get
you and your business/brand seen by your target market.
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This list of connections can then be used in a number of ways:
• A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections,

the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree
connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections
(termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an
introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a
mutual contact.
• It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities

recommended by someone in one's contact network.
• Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
• Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover
which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
• Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in
identification.
• Users can now follow different companies and can get notification
about the new joining and offers available.
• Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs which they would like to apply
for.
The "gated-access approach" (where contact with any professional

requires either a preexisting relationship, or the intervention of a
contact of theirs) is intended to build trust among the service's users.
LinkedIn participates in EU's International Safe Harbor Privacy
Principles.
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LinkedIn also allows users to research companies with which they

may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given
company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided.
These may include the ratio of female to male employees, the
percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the
company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a
list of present and former employees.
The feature LinkedIn Answers, similar to Yahoo! Answers, allows

users to ask questions for the community to answer. This feature is
free and the main difference from the latter is that questions are
potentially more business-oriented, and the identity of the people
asking and answering questions is known.
LinkedIn is very SEO friendly. Make your profile nice and keyword
rich and you could very well find your LinkedIn profile at the top of
google! Secondly it is a great lead generation tool. Join or start groups
to tap into the huge community of users who are looking for
professional advice.
It increases your brand visibility and won’t eat up half the time you
spend on Facebook or twitter. An hour a day making connections,
commenting in your groups and posting interesting updates will be
enough for you to grow a huge base of connections and catapult your
business.
There are many more reasons, including the very visible social proof
on your profile page in the form of endorsements and
recommendations, the fantastic facility to showcase your experience,
talents and expertise, the ability to add business pages with featured
products, create huge targeted groups and loads more.
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Business Generation by Setting Up of a Correct Profile
The whole point of LinkedIn is to make connections and engage with

those connections in a meaningful way. Unlike Facebook and Twitter
where your profiles are based on the content you’ve been sharing,
LinkedIn is very much more focused on who you are, what you do,
what you can do for others and your experience and expertise.
Remember LinkedIn was originally setup as a recruitment network

and still is the top recruitment network on the web. Therefore your
profile is like your resume. You are in effect telling people why you
are the ideal candidate for them.
Now transfer that into the B2B world and the effect is just as
powerful. Someone types my name or does a search for Social Media
experts and the first thing they land on is my ‘resume’. A full page
telling them, why I’m the ideal person to teach them how to run their
social media campaigns.
Leveraging the SEO Friendly Nature of LinkedIn
LinkedIn is very SEO friendly, so utilizing your profile to add relevant

keywords may well get you found on the first page of Google. You
must remember though that Google is changing its algorithms all the
time and moving much more towards social proof. So you need to
add to your keyword rich profile; great engagement, lots of likes,
endorsements, recommendations and connections. Keyword stuffing
may work in the LinkedIn search (and it does), but it won’t hold
much weight on its own in Google rankings anymore.
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Positioning
Creating a benefit driven summary, showcasing your experience and

expertise, plus adding your specialties and skills (plus a few more
great tips I’m going to be giving you), will begin to position you with
credibility and authority in your industry or niche. Add to that the all-
important social proof element and it won’t be long before you will
have positioned yourself as the go to expert in your particular arena.
Now before you start thinking this is beyond your reach or sounds
too much like hard work, LinkedIn lends itself beautifully to building
up connections and getting that social proof quickly and easily and it
all starts with an awesome profile.
Step-by-step guide to writing an effective summary:
1. Begin with a brief introduction to you and what you currently do/
offer
2. Follow up immediately with how you can help the visitor (always
write as if you’re speaking to one person - the person visiting your
profile)
3. Add some credentials. Why you’re the best person to help them
with this particular issue. What others have said, etc.
4. Offer a free gift - this link will lead to an option form
5. Add a personal paragraph, so they can get to know the person

behind the business
6. Add a list of your specialties - add some great keywords here!
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As you’re writing your summary please remember your objective at

all times. You are trying to compel people to connect with you, contact
you and/or engage with you. Introspect and ask yourself these key
questions:
• Is your summary compelling enough?
• Have you looked at other profiles in your niche and surveyed their
summaries?
• How can you make yours better, more benefit driven, more
compelling?
LinkedIn Projects
The Projects provide an opportunity for the marketers to open up and

tell people what they are working on. Marketers can write about a
new sales plan or organizing a webinar or event, building some new
software, launching a new product line. Whatever it is, add it to
projects, add some great and relevant keywords and lots of
anticipation and excitement. This is a chance to get people excited
about your business and showcase your innovation. Here’s how to
add projects.
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Skills and Expertise
What’s great about adding your skills and expertise is, once again it’s
a fantastic opportunity for you to use relevant keywords. Some time
back LinkedIn introduced endorsements. You may have seen them if
you have a LinkedIn account already.
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When you add skills and expertise now, people get the opportunity to
endorse you for each or every one. So if someone truly believes you
are an expert in one or more of your skills all they have to do is click a
button and their face will pop up next to your keyword giving you
that all important social proof. Here’s the best bit, all you have to do
to start getting endorsements is get out there and endorse others. It’s
the law of reciprocation. As soon as you endorse someone they will
get a notification and they will be asked if they want to endorse you.
Now, please note, if you are not an expert in any of the areas you have
included and have absolutely nothing to back it up, this isn’t going to
work.
Groups
LinkedIn supports the formation of interest groups, and as of 2012

there are 870,612 such groups whose membership varies from 1 to
377,000. The majority of the largest groups are employment related,
although a very wide range of topics are covered mainly around
professional and career issues, and there are currently 128,000 groups
for both academic and corporate alumni.
Groups support a limited form of discussion area, moderated by the

group owners and managers. Since groups offer the ability to reach a
wide audience without so easily falling foul of anti-spam solutions,
there is a constant stream of spam postings, and there now exist a
range of firms who offer a spamming service for this very purpose.
LinkedIn has devised a few mechanisms to reduce the volume of
spam, but recently took the decision to remove the ability of group
owners to inspect the email address of new members in order to
determine if they were spammers. Groups may be private, accessible
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to members only or may be open to Internet users in general to read,

though they must join in order to post messages.
Recommendations
Recommendations on LinkedIn are the most important testimonials

and work really well for Social Marketing purposes. Testimonials
from people who have worked with you, for you, have bought your
products/courses, are a customer or even a subscriber of yours.
Anyway that someone is positively associated with you is an
opportunity for a recommendation. Just like endorsements, the best
way to get recommendations is to give them. However, don’t expect
someone you have recommended to come back and do the same for
you. I know I will only ever recommend someone who I have actually
worked with or who I have first-hand experience of their work or
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services. Social Marketing won’t get anywhere if you don’t get out
there and altruistically start recommending others.
The high-end hotel website uses Facebook Ads to reach more

customers and offer them exotic trips, seeing a 100 per cent increase in
travel package purchases from Facebookers. Luxury Link is a luxury
hotel website that engages with people who love traveling, enjoy
luxury and appreciate the experience that Luxury Link offers.
Travelers can visit the site to learn more about travel destinations,
discover new places to stay and find packages that fit their desires.
Luxury Link offers Live Auction and Buy Now deals that customers
can purchase for up to 65 per cent off. The website provides hotels
and resorts to fit people’s standards.
Goals
Luxury Link wanted to drive engagement and increase brand

visibility for the well-traveled luxury customer to:
• Offer a way for people to share luxury travel experiences and new
featured destinations
• Continue to grow revenue by offering relevant deals to its
community
Approach
To create a place where people could engage in a conversation about

luxury travel, Luxury Link first created a Page:
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• Chose its logo as its profile picture and a cover photo featuring a
couple in a pool on an exotic getaway
• Added photos of getaway hotspots to its timeline to encourage
people to connect with the Page
The company also ran Facebook Ads to drive likes by offering travel
packages for people interested in upscale getaways:
• Targeted married people and words such as “Chanel,” “Fendi

official Page,” “Prada” and “Starbucks.”
• Used promotions in the ad text, such as “Get 65% off a luxury
vacation. Book your dream getaway today!”
Mindful that travel is inherently social, Luxury Link encouraged

engagement in a variety of ways, including:
• Frequent status updates offered people the chance to win getaways,

such as a beach vacation
• Live chats on the Page let people post questions and receive
answers from a travel expert
• A Photo Contest tab included posts on a weekly picture of a travel
destination, encouraging people to comment and guess its location
To reach friends of fans of its page, Luxury Link ran sponsored

stories:
• Used a sponsored story to increase distribution of a Page post by

featuring eye-catching images of a high-end hotel on Moorea Island
• Determined that tropical destinations such as Fiji and Tahiti were
generating the most engagement and featured those destinations to
its community
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Results
• 100% increase in sales for travel packages coming from Facebook

• 30% increase in site visits month over month from Facebook
• 90% of the Facebook community who purchased travel packages
were new Luxury Link customers
4.11 Activities
1. Browse online to find two current campaigns by Indian

Companies that are taking advantage of the real time nature of
social media to create a sense of urgency regarding limited-time
offers? 
—————————————————————————————
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2. Use your LinkedIn profile to create any two ‘Projects’ in your field
and invite connections to jointly work on these projects.
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4.12 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about, leveraging the power of

Social Networking Sites. Here we have seen that, to leverage social
media to its fullest, organizations need to become more nimble and
entrepreneurial. Social media creates the opportunity for much
greater collaboration between departments, engendering more
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experimentation, faster decision making and more precisely tuned

responses. Today, Organizations have asked employees to begin using
a variety of social media applications such as social networks, blogs,
project-focused wikis and podcasts to collaborate better across
different time zones and locations. Today, the organization routinely
shares knowledge through company specific blogs. The once clear-cut
boundary between marketing and sales continues to blur as online
advertising and links to third-party comparison sites allow companies
to drive traffic to their retail websites. As a result, firms can rapidly
convert shoppers into buyers, and those buyers into salespeople.
Customer expectations regarding the online purchase experience
continue to climb, as leading retailers such as Amazon.com continue
to raise the bar by customizing recommendations, providing intuitive,
straightforward online navigation and minimizing the number of
clicks needed to complete a purchase. Social media has an
increasingly important role to play in helping companies identify and
address unmet customer needs.
Some of the key features of Social Networking Sites discussed in this

chapter is Interactive Customer Service. In this we have seen that,
companies can use social media to tap into the power and wisdom of
virtual crowds, enlisting them in support of other users and
empowering employees to act as agents for the company. Doing so
can generate a huge customer service multiplier effect, allowing
organizations to more rapidly identify, diagnose and resolve problems
while simultaneously delivering exceptional value. Social media
provides the information companies can use to segment customer
groups more finely than in the past, along with the tools to tailor
products, services and communication campaigns to suit the needs
and expectations of individual segments. This spells the end for
standard responses and one-size-fits-all offerings. Customers
increasingly demand to be treated as individuals—and will give their
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business to suppliers that provide either unique experiences or

superior value.
Customer Relations Management through the application of Social

Media is an approach to business that formally recognizes the role of
the customer and external influencers as a key in understanding and
managing conversations around the brand, product, or service. If the
reference to “conversations” seems to narrow the definition, consider
this: The conversation in the contemporary business context is
nothing short of a holistic, digital artefact that captures and conveys
the sum total of what your firm or organization has delivered. Social
CRM invites the customer into your business or organization through
the future-oriented process of collaboration. It recognizes what has
happened, just as traditional CRM does, but then takes the added step
of inviting the customer into the processes that govern what is about
to happen or may potentially happen or should never happen again.
As an integral part of improving the customer relationship process
following are the steps that clearly place the customer and the
conversations they are having at the center of the Social CRM effort:
• Map the customers’ end-to-end experiences

• Overlay the moments of truth with a feedback channel audit
• Establish a baseline of customer experience and priorities to
improve
• Establish a regular process for reporting
At the center of the Social Web and the shared activities that define it
are the online personas of participants: More than with prior
anonymous discussion boards or cloaked personas, it’s an actual
identity that is of value in a business context, since it is generally the
motivation of an individual to be noticed as such that drives social
participation in the first place. Though detailed personal information
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is (still) generally not available except to “trusted friends” or

colleagues, the use of a real name or photo in one’s social profile is
becoming common. Along with any optionally provided information,
the result is a a basis for understanding who it is that is actually
participating.
Opinion leaders have a large amount of information about a variety

of products, categories, retails concepts, and markets. Experts have
been able to identify five characteristics for opinion leaders are
Influential, Knowledgeable, Communicable, Receptive, and
Innovative
The key point in word-of-mouth marketing is to identify the

influential nodes. Valente and Davis (1999) showed that diffusion is
faster when it initiates by opinion leaders instead of random people.
Social network theory links with the opinion leadership and word-of-
mouth concept can be used to identify the opinion leaders in a
network and help to the diffusion of any behaviour. A three step
process can be used to help firms use social network for their
marketing activities. In step 1, firms should first find a proper social
network or build their own social network to establish their
relationship with consumers. Then, step 2, includes identifying and
selecting opinion leaders that firms think they are influential among
consumers. Finally, in step 3, these influential people can be
considered as initiative nodes to help diffusion of innovation, new
product adoption and spread of any behaviour in the whole
community.
The basic process of engagement begins with content consumption

and builds up to collaboration between participants in the creative
process. This is the kind of activity that binds community members
together. Taking off on this, there are specific social applications —
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forums, collaborative tools, contests, and games among them — that

you can implement under your own brand to lead your participants
through the steps of engagement that drive your business.

consumer’s purchasing decisions because they can shape the public
opinion. Nowadays, customers do not have access to all information;
also they do not have enough ability to process and evaluate every
alternative available for them and choosing the best one. So, an easy
way which is economical and intellectual would be trust other people
who they know and are in relation with them in different social
networks. These trustworthy people are called opinion leaders,
individuals that lead in influencing others’ options. Social network
theory joining the opinion leadership and word-of-mouth concept can
be used to identify opinion leaders in a network. Utilizing
interpersonal relationships in a social network is a powerful force in
word-of-mouth marketing. Firms and marketers through using social
networks for marketing can increase product and brand awareness.
Furthermore, they have increased access to customer service and
feedback, as well as they can find the customer needs better.
Social networks are also beneficial to companies who are wishing to

create e-mail lists to send coupons or advertisements through the
mail. Companies may post bulletins on websites encouraging people
to sign up for their daily newsletters, etc. In doing this many
companies are able to greatly increase their mailing lists. Placing paid
advertisements, such as banners, on these sites can also benefit a
company greatly based on the amount of hits the sites receive each
day.
Social media is a powerful tool that people use to share and connect
with one another anywhere in the world at any time. Companies have
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the unique opportunity to join in this conversation by connecting

with customers through their own social media accounts. Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ are four of the biggest social media
sites on the web and how each of them can benefit your company
differently.
Facebook is a tool for connecting people with those around them. As

with any social media tool, marketers have an opportunity to use
Facebook to expand their online footprint and directly engage with
customers and prospects.
When it comes to conducting business on MySpace, organizations

have to make sure they constantly stay abreast of the rules, and
regulations on MySpace. The more education they receive on how to
conduct business on MySpace, and how to solve the problems with
MySpace, the more will be the profit margins. Businesses should take
time each day to look at any changes in the MySpace format, and
consequent rules of the site. The more they know about this, the better
it will be for the bottom line.
LinkedIn also allows users to research companies with which they

may be interested in working. When typing the name of a given
company in the search box, statistics about the company are provided.
These may include the ratio of female to male employees, the
percentage of the most common titles/positions held within the
company, the location of the company's headquarters and offices, or a
list of present and former employees.
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1. To leverage social media to its fullest, organizations need to evolve

in which ways?
2. What is an approach to business that formally recognizes the role

of the customer and external influencers?
3. State the importance of ‘Word-of-mouth marketing’ from the

context of Social Media Marketing’.
4. Explain in brief how social networks also allow marketers to gain

information on their potential customers?
5. Cite some reasons for businesses to participate in and maintain a

presence on Facebook?
6. Describe the steps involved in the setting up a Business Page on

Facebook.
7. Enlist and discuss any five Business Best Practices followed by

Facebook.
8. Discuss in detail the process of selling your own products on

MySpace.
9. Explain the process of leveraging the SEO friendly nature of

LinkedIn.
10. Explain the statement ‘LinkedIn supports the formation of interest

groups.’
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
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CREATING MARKETS THROUGH MEDIA SHARING SITES
Chapter 5
Creating Markets through Media Sharing Sites
Objectives

• key features of social media sharing sites
• benefits and advantages of marketing on social media sharing sites
• features of YouTube and marketing on YouTube
• features of Flickr and marketing on Flickr
• features of Slideshare and marketing on Slideshare
Structure:
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Key features of Social Media Sharing sites
5.3 Benefits and Advantages of Marketing on Social Media
Sharing Sites
5.4 Understanding Features of YouTube
5.4.1 Introduction
5.4.2 Features of YouTube: Video Technology
5.4.3 Features of YouTube: Content Accessibility
5.4.4 Features of YouTube: Social Impact of YouTube
5.5 Marketing on YouTube
5.6 Understanding Features of Flickr
5.7 Marketing on Flickr
5.8 Understanding Features of Slideshare
5.9 Marketing on Slideshare
5.10 Case Study
5.11 Activities
5.12 Summary
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5.1 Introduction
Media sharing sites allow marketers to share photos, videos, and

podcasts. Media sharing sites are more limited in scope in how
companies interact with consumers. They tend to be more
promotional than reactive. This means that while firms can promote
their products through videos or photos, they usually do not interact
with consumers through personal messages or responses. At the same
time, the popularity of these sites provides the potential to reach a
global audience of consumers. Video sharing sites allow virtually
anybody to upload videos, from professional marketers at Fortune
500 corporations to the average Internet user. Some of the most
popular video sharing sites include YouTube, Dailymotion.com,
Video.Yahoo.com, Metacafe.com, and Hulu. Video sharing sites give
companies the opportunity to upload ads and informational videos
about their products. A few videos become viral at any given time,
and although many of these gain popularity because they embarrass
the subject in some way, others reach viral status because people find
them entertaining.
Photo sharing sites allow you to upload your images in high quality,
where they can be viewed by other people. Many of these sites also
allow you to license out your photos under certain common usage
licenses – this means you can let other people use your images, for
example in their website, so long as they attribute it back to you and
abide by certain content restrictions. Other sites allow you to get
prints made at really competitive prices. Some of the most popular
photo sharing sites include Flickr, photobucket, imageshack and
snapfish (which allows ordering prints).
Videoconferencing, presentation, and slide sharing: While nothing

can replace a face-to-face meeting, today’s video conferencing and
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slide sharing services allow you to hold web-based meetings

whenever you need to. Companies such as Go To Meeting offer
videoconferencing services that give you “face time” with your
clients, and applications such as Slideshare and Brainshark make it
very easy to share presentations in an interactive, online format.
Social network sites, online games, video-sharing sites, and gadgets

such as iPods and mobile phones are now fixtures of the online
audience. They have so permeated the lives of the users that it is hard
to believe that less than a decade ago these technologies barely
existed. Today’s youth may be coming of age and struggling for
autonomy and identity as did their predecessors, but they are doing
so amid new worlds for communication, friendship, play, and self-
expression. The Internet and information technology have
dramatically changed the environment for business. Marketers’ new
ability to convert all types of communications into digital media has
created efficient, inexpensive ways of connecting businesses and
consumers and has improved the flow and the usefulness of
information.
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Businesses have the information they need to make more informed

decisions, and consumers have access to a greater variety of products
and more information about choices and quality. The defining
characteristic of information technology in the 21st century is
accelerating change. New systems and applications advance so
rapidly that it is almost impossible to keep up with the latest
developments. Start-up companies emerge that quickly overtake
existing approaches to digital media. When Google first arrived on
the scene, a number of search engines were fighting for dominance.
With its fast, easy-to-use search engine, Google became number one
and is now challenging many industries, including advertising,
newspapers, mobile phones, and book publishing. Social networking
continues to advance as the channel most observers believe will
dominate digital communication in the near future.
Today, people spend more time on social networking sites, such as

Facebook, than they spend on email. In this chapter, we first provide
some key definitions related to social media sharing and marketing
and social networking. Next, we discuss using digital media in
business and digital marketing. We look at marketing mix
considerations when using digital media and pay special attention to
social networking. Then we focus on digital marketing strategies —
particularly new communication channels like social networks — and
consider how consumers are changing their information searches and
consumption behavior to fit emerging technologies and trends.
Digital marketing uses all digital media, including the Internet and
mobile and interactive channels, to develop communication and
exchanges with customers. Digital marketing is a term we will use
often, because we are interested in all types of digital
communications, regardless of the electronic channel that transmits
the data. Digital marketing goes beyond the Internet and includes
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mobile phones, banner ads, digital outdoor marketing, and social

networks. The Internet has created tremendous opportunities for
businesses to forge relationships with consumers and business
customers, target markets more precisely and even reach previously
inaccessible markets at home and around the world. The Internet also
facilitates business transactions, allowing companies to network with
manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, suppliers, and outsources firms
to serve customers more quickly and more efficiently. The
telecommunication opportunities created by the Internet have set the
stage for digital marketing's development and growth.
The phenomenal growth of digital media sharing sites has provided

new ways of conducting business. Given almost instant
communication with precisely defined consumer groups, firms can
use real time exchanges to create and stimulate interactive
communication, forge closer relationships, and learn more accurately
about consumer and supplier needs. Consider that Amazon.com, one
of the most successful electronic businesses, ranked number 78 on the
Fortune 500 list of America’s largest corporations. Amazon is a true
digital marketer and was one of the early success stories in the
industry, getting 50 per cent of its revenue from international sales.
Many of you may not remember a world before Amazon because it
has completely transformed how many people shop. Since it is fast
and inexpensive, digital communication is making it easier for
businesses to conduct marketing research, provide and obtain price
and product information, and advertise, as well as to fulfill their
business goals by selling goods and services online.
Even the U.S. government engages in digital marketing activities—

marketing everything from Treasury bonds and other financial
instruments to oil-drilling leases and wild horses. Procter & Gamble
uses the Internet as a fast, cost-effective means for marketing research,
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judging consumer demand for potential new products by inviting

online consumers to sample new-product prototypes and provide
feedback. If a product gets rave reviews from the samplers, the
company might decide to introduce it. By testing concepts online,
companies can save significant time and money in getting new
products to market.
New businesses and even industries are evolving that would not exist
without digital media. Hulu is a video website that lets consumers
watch a broad collection of premium videos from more than 350
content companies, any time and from anywhere. The company has
partnered with several companies to advertise on their sites,
including Johnson & Johnson and Best Buy. In fact, Hulu’s growing
popularity is allowing it to compete with YouTube.
5.2 Key features of Social Media Sharing sites
Many Marketing Research studies have revealed that consumers now

spend more time on social networking sites than they do on email,
and social network use is still growing. The most avid online social
networkers are users from Israel, followed by the United States and
India. With digital media, even small businesses can reach new
markets through these inexpensive communication channels. Brick-
and-mortar companies like Wal-Mart utilize online catalogs and
company websites and blogs to supplement their retail stores. Internet
companies like Amazon.com and zappos.com
Interactive and Speedy Communication
While digital marketing shares some similarities with conventional

marketing techniques, a few valuable differences stand out. First,
digital media make customer communications faster and interactive.
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Second, digital media help companies reach new target markets more
easily, affordably, and quickly than ever before. Finally, digital media
help marketers utilize new resources in seeking out and
communicating with customers. One of the most important benefits
of digital marketing is the ability of marketers and customers to easily
share information. Through websites, social networks, and other
digital media, consumers can learn about everything they consume
and use in their lives, ask questions, voice complaints, indicate
preferences, and otherwise communicate about their needs and
desires.
Many marketers use email, mobile phones, social networking, media

sharing, blogs, video conferencing, and other technologies to
coordinate activities and communicate with employees, customers,
and suppliers. Twitter, considered both a social network and a micro-
blog, and illustrates how these digital technologies can combine to
create new communication opportunities that lack physical stores let
customers post reviews of their purchases on their web-sites, creating
company-sponsored communities.
One aspect of marketing that has not changed with digital media is
the importance of achieving the right marketing mix. Product,
distribution, promotion, and pricing are as important as ever for
successful online marketing strategies. Nearly one-third of the
world’s population now uses the Internet. That means it is essential
for businesses large and small to use digital media effectively, not
only to grab or maintain market share but also to streamline their
organizations and offer customers entirely new benefits and
convenience. Let’s look at how businesses are using digital media to
create effective marketing strategies on the web.
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Consumer Needs Anticipation
Like traditional marketers, digital marketers must anticipate

consumer needs and preferences, tailor their products and services to
meet these needs, and continually upgrade them to remain
competitive. The connectivity created by digital media provides the
opportunity for adding services and can enhance product benefits.
Some products, such as online games, applications, and virtual
worlds, are only available via digital media. The more than 500,000
applications available on the iPad, for instance, provide examples of
products that are only available in the digital world. Businesses can
often offer more items online than they could in a retail store.
Additionally, Netflix offers a much wider array of movies and games

than the average movie rental stores, along with a one-month free
trial, quick delivery and easy returns, online video streaming of some
movies, and no late fees. Netflix also prides itself on its
recommendation engine, which recommends movies for users based
on their previous rental history and how they rate movies they have
seen. As Netflix demonstrates, the Internet can make it much easier to
anticipate consumer needs. However, fierce competition makes
quality product and service offerings more important than ever.
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Specialized Channel of Distribution
The media sharing sites are a new distribution channel for making
products available at the right time, at the right place, and in the right
quantities. Marketers’ ability to process orders electronically and
increase the speed of communications via the Internet reduces
inefficiencies, costs, and redundancies while increasing speed
throughout the marketing channel. Shipping times and costs have
become an important consideration in attracting customers,
prompting many companies to offer consumers low shipping costs or
next-day delivery. For example, Wal-Mart is attempting to take
market share away from e-marketers like Amazon.com by reducing
delivery time and creating a “site to store” system that eliminates
shipping costs for consumers who pick up their deliveries in the store.
This offer has the increased benefit of getting customers into the store,
where they might make add-on purchases. Wal-Mart is also testing
the concept of delivering groceries to individual homes. Through
even more sophisticated distribution systems, Wal-Mart hopes to
overtake online retailers to become the biggest online.These changes
in distribution are not limited to the Western world. In a
revolutionary shift in Asian countries like India and China, where
online shopping had not been widely adopted by consumers,
businesses are now realizing the benefits of marketing online.
Accessible Communication Backbone
Digital media sharing sites can also improve communication within

and between businesses.
In the future, most significant gains will come from productivity

improvements within businesses. Communication is a key business
function, and improving the speed and clarity of communication can
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help businesses save time and improve employee problem solving

abilities. Digital media sharing sites can be a communications,
backbone that helps to store knowledge, information, and records in
management information systems so co-workers can access it when
faced with a problem to solve. A well-designed management
information system that utilizes digital technology can, therefore, help
reduce confusion, improve organization and efficiency, and facilitate
clear communications. Given the crucial role of communication and
information in business, the long-term impact of digital media on
economic growth is substantial, and it will inevitably grow over time.
Medium for Improving Promotion
Perhaps one of the best ways businesses can utilize digital media
sharing sites is for promotion purposes—whether they are increasing
brand awareness, connecting with consumers, or taking advantage of
social networks or virtual worlds (discussed later) to form
relationships. Thanks to online promotion, consumers can be more
informed than ever, including reading customer-generated content
before making purchasing decisions. Consumer consumption patterns
are radically changing, and marketers must adapt their promotional
efforts to meet them. Marketers that choose to capitalize on these
opportunities have the chance to significantly boost their firms’ brand
exposure. The popular media sharing sites like ‘YouTube and
Dailymotion’ play a vital part in forming relationships and generate
positive publicity or “buzz” about their products.
Using Digital Media to Reach Consumers
We’ve seen that customer-generated communications and digital

media connect consumers as never before. These connections let
consumers share information and experiences without company
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Interference so they get more of the “real story” on a product or

company feature. In many ways, these media take some of the
professional marketer’s power to control and dispense information
and place it in the hands of the consumer. However, this shift does not
have to spell doom for marketers, who can choose to utilize the power
of the consumer and Internet technology to their advantage. While
consumers use digital media to access more product information,
marketers can use the same sites to get better and more targeted
Information about the consumer — often more than they could gather
through traditional marketing venues. Marketers increasingly use
consumer-generated content to aid their own marketing efforts, even
going so far as to incorporate Internet bloggers in their publicity
campaigns. Finally, marketers are also beginning to use the Internet to
track the success of their online marketing campaigns, creating an
entirely new way of gathering marketing research.
The challenge for digital media marketers is to constantly adapt to

new technologies and changing consumer patterns. Unfortunately, the
attrition rate for digital media channels is very high, with some dying
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off each year as new ones emerge. Social networks are no exception;
the earliest ones, like Six Degrees, disappeared when it failed to catch
on with the general public, and Friendster, though still active, has
been far surpassed by newer networks. As time passes, digital media
are becoming more sophisticated so as to reach consumers in more
effective ways. Those that are not able to adapt and change eventually
fail. Mastering digital media presents a daunting task for businesses,
particularly those used to more traditional means of marketing. For
this reason, it is essential that marketers focus on the changing social
behaviors of consumers, the ways in which they gather and use
information.
5.3 Benefits and advantages of Marketing on Social Media

Sharing sites
A new survey from Social Media Examiner reports 89% of small and
medium-sized businesses report increased exposure and 75% report
increased traffic as the top two greatest benefits of social media. But
most businesses are still new to using social media with only 55%
using social media to grow their business for two years or less. With
that said, two years is barely enough time to learn the ins-and-outs of
being successful with social media marketing and understanding all
the possibilities. If you are new to social media, or still just testing the
waters, you should consider the numerous advantages of social
media marketing for your business.
Ease of Uploading Digital Content
Video sharing sites allow virtually anybody to upload videos, from

professional marketers at Fortune 500 corporations to the average
Internet user. Some of the most popular video sharing sites include
YouTube, Video.Yahoo.com, Metacafe.com, and Hulu. Video sharing
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sites give companies the opportunity to upload ads and informational

videos about their products. A few videos become viral at any given
time, and although many of these gain popularity because they
embarrass the subject in some way, others reach viral status because
people find them entertaining. Photo sharing sites allow users to
upload and share their photos and short videos with the world. Well-
known photo sharing sites include Instagram, Smug Mug, Picasa,
Photo-bucket, and Flickr. Flickr is owned by Yahoo! and is one of the
most popular photo sharing sites on the Internet.
A Flickr user can upload images, edit them, classify the images, create
photo albums, and share photos with friends without having to email
bulky Image files or send photos through the mail.
Photo sharing represents an opportunity for companies to market

themselves visually by displaying snapshots of company events,
company staff, and/or company products. Keller Williams, for
example, has used Flickr to show photographs of employees
performing philanthropic services in their communities, a type of
cause-related marketing. Companies can direct viewers to their
photostreams (their sets of photographs) by marking their pictures
with the appropriate keywords or tags. Many businesses with
pictures on Flickr have a link connecting their Flickr photostreams to
their corporate websites.
Podcasts are audio or video files that can be downloaded from the
Internet via a subscription that automatically delivers new content to
listening devices or personal computers. Podcasting offers the benefit
of convenience, giving users the ability to listen to or view content
when and where they choose. It is estimated that by 2013, more than
37 million U.S. consumers will be downloading podcasts every
month. Most current podcast users are between 18 and 29 years of
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age, making podcasts a good marketing tool for reaching this

demographic. For instance, the podcast Mad Money, hosted by Jim
Cramer, gives investment advice and teaches listeners how to analyze
stocks and other financial instrument and these are important topics
for young adults who do not have much investment experience. As
podcasting continues to catch on, radio stations and television
networks like CBC Radio, NPR, MSNBC, and PBS are creating
podcasts of their shows to profit from this growing trend. Many
companies hope to use podcasts to create brand awareness, promote
theft products, and encourage customer loyalty.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing occurs when a message gets sent from person to

person to person. It can be an extremely effective tool for marketers—
particularly on the Internet, where one click can send a message to
dozens or hundreds of people simultaneously. Marketers are taking
advantage of the viral nature of video sharing sites like YouTube,
either by creating their own unique videos or advertising on videos
that have already reached viral status. For Instance, McDonald’s
partnered with YouTube to have advertisements posted during videos
by YouTube’s partners. With YouTube’s biggest partner generating
more than 5 million subscribers, such exposure guarantees that
McDonald’s will reach a large audience.
Businesses have also begun to utilize consumer-generated video

content; saving money they would have spent on hiring advertising
firms to develop professional advertising campaigns. GoPro was
transformed from a small camera firm into a $250 million company
due to the videos consumers took of themselves using GoPro
cameras. The company is partnering with YouTube to create its own
network for consumer-generated GoPro videos. Marketers believe
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consumer videos appear more authentic and create enthusiasm for

the product among consumer participants.
Insight about the Customers
This is one of the biggest advantages of using social media. Social

media provides limitless opportunities for you to interact with
current and potential customers. You have the ability to engage
customers in real-time conversations about your mission, products,
events, and services. Also since most social media users are there to,
you guessed it, socialize, they are more than willing to talk to you.
Reduced Marketing Expenses
One of the greatest things about participating in social media sharing

sites is that your budget and results are not linear. For example, if you
spend $1 on YouTube video ads, you could generate 1 result, but if
you spend $2 on targeted YouTube video ads, you could generate 3
results. That’s because of earned media (which is a whole other topic).
Overall, social media is an extremely cost-efficient marketing choice
when compared with other budget-draining advertising techniques.
And as you’re starting to learn, provides many more opportunities to
grow your business than just through marketing.
Competitive Advantage
Everything that happens on social media platforms happens in real

time. That means social media participation gives businesses the
opportunity to engage in advertising that is timely and relevant
which gives you a distinct competitive edge. Since everything is also
happening in a public forum, you can monitor exactly what your
competitors are doing. You can also see exactly what’s working for
your competitors (and what’s not). If you’re smart enough, you’ll pay
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close attention and jump in to grab new business when the timings
right. But be careful, this means your competitors can also monitor
you – so make sure you keep your proprietary secrets off social
media.
Strengthen Customer Loyalty
Social media can help you put a personal face on your business.
Instead of just a company name, customers see you as a real person
who listens to their concerns and delivers helpful feedback. This is
where the quality of your social media posts really matters. For
example, if you only post about your newest inventory or latest sales
event, customers are going to feel like they are being force fed your
company advertising. If, however, you post interesting information or
insight into your industry, customers will feel like you respect them
and will be more likely to remain loyal to your company. Sites like
YouTube and Dailymotion can be used to effectively market the
products or services through the use of videos.
Increased Website Traffic
All of these factors combined – customer loyalty, lead generation,

exposure, etc. – will greatly increase the number of potential and
current customers viewing the websites. If you have excellent website
design that’s mobile optimized and content to compliment your social
media engagement, you’ll be more likely to make generate leads that
your sales team can turn into sales.
Regardless of the current size of your business, social media

marketing sharing sites can help businesses experience and maintain
growth. Social media management services and social media
dashboards are an excellent way to make social media work for you.
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There are millions of potential customers using social media right

now.
5.4 Understanding features of YouTube
5.4.1 Introduction
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal

employees in February 2005 and owned by Google since late 2006, on
which users can upload, view and share videos. YouTube uses Adobe
Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display a wide variety of user-
generated video content, including video clips, TV clips, and music
videos, and amateur content such as video blogging, short original
videos, and educational videos. Most of the content on YouTube has
been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS,
the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their
material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program.
Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload
an unlimited number of videos. Videos considered to contain
potentially offensive content are available only to registered users
affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old. YouTube, LLC was
bought by Google for US$1.65 billion in November 2006 and now
operates as a Google subsidiary.
5.4.2 Features of YouTube: Video Technology
Playback
Viewing YouTube videos on a personal computer needs the Adobe

Flash Player plug-in to be installed on the browser. The Adobe Flash
Player plug-in is one of the most common pieces of software installed
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on personal computers and accounts for almost 75% of online video

material.
In January 2010, YouTube launched an experimental version of the

site that uses the built-in multimedia capabilities of web browsers
supporting the HTML5 standard. This allows videos to be viewed
without requiring Adobe Flash Player or any other plug-in to be
installed. The YouTube site has a page that allows supported browsers
to opt into the HTML5 trial. Only browsers that support HTML5
Video using the H.264 or WebM formats can play the videos, and not
all videos on the site are available. YouTube experimented with
Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH), which is an
adaptive bit-rate HTTP-based streaming solution optimizing the
bitrate and quality for the available network. Currently they are using
Adobe Dynamic Streaming for Flash.
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Uploading
All YouTube users can upload videos up to 15 minutes each in

duration. Users who have a good track record of complying with the
site's Community Guidelines may be offered the ability to upload
videos up to 12 hours in length, which requires verifying the account,
normally through a mobile phone. When YouTube was launched in
2005, it was possible to upload long videos, but a ten-minute limit
was introduced in March 2006 after YouTube found that the majority
of videos exceeding this length were unauthorized uploads of
television shows and films. The 10-minute limit was increased to 15
minutes in July 2010. File size is limited to 2 GB for uploads from the
YouTube web page, or 20 GB if up to date browser versions are used.
YouTube accepts videos uploaded in most container formats,
including .AVI, .MKV, .MOV, .MP4, DivX, .FLV, and .ogg and .ogv.
These include video formats such as MPEG-4, MPEG, VOB,
and .WMV. It also supports 3GP, allowing videos to be uploaded from
mobile phones. Videos with progressive scanning or interlaced
scanning can be uploaded, but for the best video quality, YouTube
suggests interlaced videos be deinterlaced before uploading. All the
video formats on YouTube use progressive scanning.
3D Videos
In a video posted on July 21, 2009, YouTube software engineer Peter

Bradshaw announced that YouTube users can now upload 3D videos.
The videos can be viewed in several different ways, including the
common anaglyph (cyan/red lens) method which utilizes glasses
worn by the viewer to achieve the 3D effect. The YouTube Flash
player can display stereoscopic content interleaved in rows, columns
or a checkerboard pattern, side-by-side or anaglyph using a red/cyan,
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green/magenta or blue/yellow combination. In May 2011, an HTML5

version of the YouTube player began supporting side-by-side 3D
footage that is compatible with NVidia 3D Vision.
5.4.3 Features of YouTube: Content Accessibility
Media Sharing
YouTube offers users the ability to view its videos on web pages
outside their website. Each YouTube video is accompanied by a piece
of HTML that can be used to embed it on any page on the Web. This
functionality is often used to embed YouTube videos in social
networking pages and blogs. Users wishing to post a video
discussing, inspired by or related to another user's video are able to
make a "video response". On August 27, 2013, YouTube announced
that it would remove video responses for being an underused feature.
Embedding, rating, commenting and response posting can be
disabled by the video owner.
YouTube does not usually offer a download link for its videos, and
intends for them to be viewed through its website interface. A small
number of videos, such as the weekly addresses by President Barack
Obama, can be downloaded as MP4 files. Numerous third-party
websites, applications and browser plug-ins allow users to download
YouTube videos. In February 2009, YouTube announced a test service,
allowing some partners to offer video downloads for free or for a fee
paid through Google Checkout. In June 2012, Google sent cease and
desist letters threatening legal action against several websites offering
online download and conversion of YouTube videos. The default
settings when uploading a video to YouTube will retain a copyright
on the video for the uploader, but since July 2012, it has been possible
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to select a Creative Commons license as the default, allowing other

users to reuse and remix the material if it is free of copyright.
!
Platforms
Some smartphones are capable of accessing YouTube videos,

dependent on the provider and the data plan. YouTube Mobile was
launched in June 2007, using RTSP streaming for the video. Not all of
YouTube's videos are available on the mobile version of the site. Since
June 2007, YouTube's videos have been available for viewing on a
range of Apple products. This required YouTube's content to be
transcoded into Apple's preferred video standard, H.264, a process
that took several months. YouTube videos can be viewed on devices
including Apple TV, iPod Touch and the iPhone. In July 2010, the
mobile version of the site was re-launched based on HTML5, avoiding
the need to use Adobe Flash Player and optimized for use with touch
screen controls. The mobile version is also available as an app for the
Android platform. In September 2012, YouTube launched its first app
for the iPhone, following the decision to drop YouTube as one of the
preloaded apps in the iPhone 5 and iOS 6 operating system.
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A TiVo service update in July 2008 allowed the system to search and
play YouTube videos. In January 2009, YouTube launched "YouTube
for TV", a version of the website tailored for set-top boxes and other
TV-based media devices with web browsers, initially allowing its
videos to be viewed on the PlayStation 3 and Wii video game
consoles. In June 2009, YouTube XL was introduced, which a
simplified interface has designed for viewing on a standard television
screen. YouTube is also available as an app on Xbox Live. On
November 15, 2012, Google launched an official app for the Wii,
allowing users to watch YouTube videos from the Wii channel. An
app is also available for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, and videos can be
viewed on the Wii U Internet Browser using HTML5. Google made
YouTube available on the Roku player on December 17, 2013.
According to GlobalWebIndex, YouTube was used by 35% of
smartphone users between April and June 2013, making it the third
most used app.
5.4.4 Features of YouTube: Social Impact of YouTube
YouTube, by providing a video hosting service, has been involved

with popularizing Internet trends in popular culture. Its users
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represent of society and it is part of a set of social networking sites

that people and organizations often maintain a presence on. YouTube
has created some internet celebrities in its own right. It has been
recognized and honored as a global archive and bulletin board of
socially valuable video messages. Some aspects of how the site
operates, such as its video ranking system, have sometimes have been
the subject of criticism as users vie to achieve a maximum number of
views for their videos.
YouTube Gatherings
YouTubers periodically hold public gatherings to celebrate the video

sharing community. One of the earliest of such gatherings, the
recurrent and international ‘As One’, was first held in January 2007, in
Los Angeles by Cory Williams of smpfilms. The second ‘As One’, also
hosted by Cory Williams, was held on February 17, 2007, at Pier 39 in
San Francisco, managed to attract many of YouTube's highest viewed
individuals. A third gathering took place on July 7, 2007, at
Washington Square Park in New York City. A singing invitation to the
event, posted on YouTube by Christine Gambito, YouTube's
Happyslip, gained over 2.6 million views. Yet another took place in
Washington D.C. on September 8, 2007. An As One gathering was
held in Melbourne, Australia on December 1, 2007, at Federation
Square. Another two gatherings were planned by smpfilms at the
beginning of 2008. The largest gathering in the United States is
VidCon with the UK equivalent being summer in the City. Both are
held annually and feature thousands of attendees.
YouTube Associates
On June 28, 2012, Google has launched a new feature in Webmaster

Tools that allows webmasters to add "associates"— trusted users who
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can act on behalf of your site in other Google products. Unlike site
owners and users, associates can't view site data or take any site
actions in Webmaster Tools, but they are authorized to perform
specific tasks in other products. For this initial launch, members of
YouTube's partner program that have created a YouTube channel for
their site can now link the two together. By doing this, your YouTube
channel will be displayed as the "official channel" for your website.
5.5 Marketing on YouTube
Organizations and individuals can make the most informative and

entertaining video on YouTube, but that alone won't guarantee them
an audience of potential customers. They will still need to promote
their video in as many ways as possible to help spread the word
about their products and services.
Steps to Successful Marketing Tactics
Below provided are some of the most successful marketing tactics for
promoting a new YouTube video:
1. Connect to social media: Mention the new videos regularly in

tweets and status updates, and link to or embed them in the
messages. Facebook, for instance, allows the embedding of
YouTube videos in the status updates. Just paste the URL into the
status update and Facebook will put the video in the News feed.
Twitter doesn't allow the embedding of videos, but they can be
linked to them from your tweets.  
 
Videos can also be promoted on social bookmarking and news
sites such as Reddit and StumbleUpon. When you post a link to
your video on these sites, you can broaden the viewership beyond
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your existing customers and social media followers. Note,

however, that self-promotion is often frowned upon on many of
these sites, so do so as sparingly and subtly as you can.
2. Promote it on the company blog: The company blog is the perfect

place to promote your video to your loyal customer base. Talk up
each new video in its own blog post, linking to it or even
embedding it in the post.
3. Tell your email list: When you upload a new video to YouTube,
send a message and link to your entire email list. If you send out a
periodic email newsletter, mention your new videos in it, too.
4. Use traditional public relations: While most companies focus

their promotional efforts on the web, marketers shouldn't neglect
traditional public relations. This means issuing a press release
when uploading a new or particularly important video, and also
picking up the phone or sending emails to target specific news
outlets, such as the industry's trade groups, publications and
blogs. Ensure the inclusion of a video link in the press release to
help online news sources link directly from their coverage to your
video on YouTube.
5. Advertise on YouTube: If you can afford it, you can advertise your
videos on YouTube, using parent company Google's Ad Words for
Video program. Called TrueView ads, they appear on the YouTube
site, targeting potential viewers and linking back to the selected
video or your YouTube channel page. TrueView ads are pay-per-
click (PPC) ads, just like traditional AdWords text ads. So, you pay
only when someone clicks your ad. Start by logging into your
Google AdWords account and linking it to your YouTube account.
Set a daily budget for the maximum budget. Then, select a video
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to display in your ad and choose the type of ad you want to run.

Google offers four types of TrueView ads. In-search ads appear at
the top of the search results page when users search for the
keywords you select. In-display ads appear in the related videos
section on the viewing pages for similar videos.
In-stream ads are short video messages that play at the beginning or
end of other videos. And in-slate ads are commercials that play before
or in the middle of longer videos. In-search ads are the best choice for
many companies because most YouTube videos are found through
searches. So, just like your website, you want your video showing up
on search results pages. The next step requires you to set a maximum
cost per view (CPV). This is the maximum amount you're willing to
pay for each click. You can start with just $1 per day but what you
spend is really dependent on your budget. You then choose how to
target your ad -- through demographics and interests or via
keywords. Keyword targeting is often best for in-search ads. Once
your campaign is up and running, you can use the AdWords
Dashboard to measure the performance of your ads -- including but
not limited to number of views. Depending on the results, you may
need to tweak your strategy and possibly create new ads.
Monitoring Success on YouTube
Uploading a video to YouTube is just the start of a continuing process.

You need to measure the effectiveness of each of your videos to learn
how you can improve the next one. YouTube provides its own
performance-tracking tool that examines the key metrics for all videos
on its site. YouTube Analytics puts some of the most important
metrics right on the video viewing page. More detailed metrics are
presented when you click the Analytics button beneath each video.
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Tracking the performance of the videos posted to the company's

YouTube page can be done in the following manner:
1. Track views: The first metric marketers look at is also the most
basic: measuring the number of people having viewed your video
in a given period of time. YouTube also enables the analysis of the
demographic composition of those views, by gender, age and
location. How many views is a good number? It depends on the
goals. If the video gets a million views overnight, that's the sign of
a viral video. But not every business needs or wants such huge
viewership. For certain types of videos and businesses, a total of
100 views might be good -- as long as they're from the targeted
audience. You have to judge performance based on your own
parameters, and with realistic expectations.
2. Track traffic sources: You can more effectively promote your
videos if you know how viewers found them. They can be linked
to other videos, searched for on the YouTube site or connected
through another source. 
 
For example, if you find that the majority of viewers discover a
video by searching on YouTube, you know you need to optimize
future videos for search. YouTube Analytics can help you by
showing the keywords that were searched for, so you can include
the most popular ones in the descriptions of subsequent videos. 
 
You also can use the traffic sources metric to determine why a
particular video didn't perform well. Look at how viewers did – or
more important, didn't – find the video. If, for example, a video
didn't pull well via search, then you know you need to pay more
attention to keywords in future video descriptions.
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3. Track engagement: Merely viewing a video isn't enough. You

want viewers to engage with it, talk about it and share it with
friends. To help you monitor engagement, YouTube offers a
number of different reports. You can track how many people
subscribe to your YouTube channel, how many likes and dislikes a
given video received, how many people have given it a "favorite"
tag, how many comments were received about it and how many
times it was shared on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. The greater
the level of engagement with your video, the better you're
connected with your customers and the more word-of-mouth
promotion they're likely to provide.
4. Track audience retention: Just because someone starts a video, it

doesn't mean he or she will watch all the way through. Audience
retention is an important metric showing how long, on average,
viewers watch each video and when they lose interest and tune
out. YouTube's audience retention metric lets you see viewership
on a second-by-second basis. It's a useful tool for fine-tuning your
videos and producing ones that pack a punch from beginning to
end. 
 
If you find that most of your viewers are watching only the
opening moments of your video, you know you're not grabbing
them. If a large percentage of viewers quit watching at a later
point in the video, you can try to determine what turned them off
at that juncture.
5. Track conversions: YouTube Analytics can't help you here. You

will have to examine the number of conversions a video generates
on your own linked-to website. The conversion metric, of course,
depends on what type of response you want. Is the video designed
to generate sales, or is it meant to drive traffic to your website? If
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you hope to boost revenue, you would simply measure how many
sales you made to video viewers who linked to your site. You
might find that a video with a relatively small viewership actually
delivers a higher conversion rate – and that's true success.
5.6 Understanding features of Flickr
Flickr (stylized as Flickr and pronounced "flicker") is an image hosting

and video hosting website, and web services suite that was created by
Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo in 2005. In addition to being
a popular website for users to share and embed personal
photographs, and effectively an online community, the service is
widely used by photo researchers and by bloggers to host images that
they embed in blogs and social media.
The Verge reported in March 2013 that Flickr had a total of 87 million
registered members and more than 3.5 million new images uploaded
daily. In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6
billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according
to reporting sources. Photos and videos can be accessed from Flickr
without the need to register an account but an account must be made
in order to upload content onto the website. Registering an account
also allows users to create a profile page containing photos and
videos that the user has uploaded and also grants the ability to add
another Flickr user as a contact. For mobile users, Flickr has official
mobile apps for iOS, Android, PlayStation Vita, and Windows Phone
operating systems.
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Some of the important features of Flickr are as follows:
• It’s free (with a little bit of advertisement)

• There is enough space available (1TB)
• It’s easy to use, if you know how
• You can upload your photos in original size (e.g. as a backup)
• You can tag all your photos at once
• You can change the copyright settings on all photos at once
• You can create sets, collections and galleries
• You can easily search for other photos
• You can easily see the photos from other people you like
• You can discuss and share opinions in different groups
• You can access them from other sources like a personal web site
• There are a lot of API’s available (some of them as open source)
There are three kinds of accounts to choose from at Flickr, and all of
them are awesome in their own way.
Free
• 1 Terabyte of photo and video storage

• Upload photos of up to 200MB per photo
• Upload 1080p HD videos of up to 1GB each
• Video playback of up to 3 minutes each
• Upload and download in full original quality
• Unlimited monthly bandwidth
Ad Free
• $49.99 per year

• No ads in your browsing experience
• All the benefits of a free account
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Doublr
• $499.99 per year

• 2 Terabytes of photo and video space
• All the benefits of a free account
You should get familiar with the Flickr options and define some
things before you start uploading any photos. Go to http://
www.flickr.com/account and work from top to bottom and left to
right in order to define everything which is important.
Your Account/Personal Information
You should upload your buddy icon as of the beginning. No matter

what you upload; anything is better than the standard buddy icon.
You can use one of your Flickr photos or upload something from your
computer. You can also change your screen name here. The screen
name is the small text listed below your Flickr profile name. You
should edit your profile in order to define your Profile name (First
Name/Last Name), your description, website, hometown and so on.
In general there are photos and videos you can upload to Flickr. There
are people you can follow while marking them as a Contact. A
Contact can be just a Contact or marked as Friend or Family (more
about this later). There are thousands of Groups you can become a
member of. In Groups you have a discussion board and you can post
photos. A group can be private or public and everyone can create
groups.
The interface consists of just five tabs: ‘You – Following –

Communities – Explore – Upload’.
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In the ‘You’ tab there is everything about your own profile. You may
go through all the entries of the ‘You’ tab to see what it is all about.
Probably the biggest content is located in Organize. There you can
manage your photos in a very good and efficient way. You can change
several things like Tags, Titles, Description, Licensing, etc., for several
photos at once. You first choose your photos and then you apply the
change. You can even select content, which is not yet in a set, doesn’t
contain tags or is not geo-tagged. Flickr makes the organization of
your photos very easy.
Organizr
There is an easy way to organize your photos when you go to ‘You/

Organize’. The Organizr is the place to manage your photos and to
see certain lacks, like untagged photos, photos not in sets and non-
geo-tagged photos. It’s very easy to select them. On the lower left you
can choose between all your content and some pre-defined options.
You can choose by date, set or group. If you want to see, which photos
you have uploaded into one of the groups you are a member of, you
can just choose the group and you see them. The same is also
applicable; if you want to see which photos you have uploaded on a
certain date. The selected photos will be shown in the lower part of
the screen. Pressing Reset will show all your content again.
After you have selected the photos you want, you drag them into the
middle where it says Drag items here to edit them as a batch. These
photos you can now change in many ways through a batch job. You
can send them all to one group, if you like to do that. You can add all
possible Tags to all selected photos at once. Especially when you have
not set any Tags, this is very handy. In the Organizr, we can open the
map, zoom into a city and see all the places where photos have been
taken. When you click on Explore this map on the top left corner, you
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can see the tagged photos of the contacts, the groups or even
everybody's upload.
Following
One of the central areas in Flickr is ‘Following’. Friends are the

connections you have with other people on Flickr. There can be a two
way or just a one way contact. You can follow someone, someone can
follow you or both can follow each other. So there are three types of
connections:
The amount of contacts shown on your Profile is the amount of
people you follow. You can be followed by many people who are not
visible. You can see your Followers/Friends on the List you choose in
Following. There you see the list of the people you are following. The
total amount you see in brackets at the bottom of this list. You can also
see, how many public photos, those contacts have, when you have
added them and how you list them. When you click on ‘Who is
following you’? You will see all the people who follow you. Also here
you can see an amount of people who follow you, with the same
information listed. Those two lists can be very different from an
amount perspective, when you follow only the people you know, or
when people don't really follow you.
Groups
Groups are especially at the beginning a very important thing to get

some recognition. When you upload your first photo to Flickr and
you don’t put it into any of the groups, nothing will happen. Nobody
will see this photo and you will get 0 Views on it. So the first thing is
to join some relevant groups, which are representing your kind of
photography. At the beginning it might be quite some effort to get
your best groups.
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One option is to ‘go to Communities/Search Groups’ and enter

keywords like “Street Photography”. The result is by default shown
by relevance. For me it’s important to join only large and active
groups. Therefore you first click on Activity and then on Size. In both
sections you look for groups with a lot of members and photos. This
means that the group is active. The only disadvantage would be that
your photo is on top for only a few moments while other photos are
being posted. Join only the groups where you think your photos will
fit in. It doesn’t make sense to add photos to the wrong group. You
will neither help yourself nor the group.
A better way to find good groups is to look in the profile of other

photographers, where you can see only 50 groups no matter how
many someone is member of. But this is a good start to get into some
of the groups. You also see on this 50 groups list, how many photos
and members the groups consist of. Another way of finding good
groups is to look underneath a photo which has been posted on Flickr.
There is a section called ‘This photo also appears in’ where you see
where this photo shows up. In brackets you see, if it’s a group or a set
with the number of other photos in that group/set. When you upload
a photo, you can add it to a maximum of 60 groups. You find the ‘Add
to groups option’ in the Flickr Web Uploadr. At the beginning it is
very essential that you use those 60 groups and you upload any photo
to the most active and biggest groups in your photography genre.
Galleries
For whatever you find interesting, fascinating, or mind-blowing on

Flickr, galleries are a way to curate up to 18 public photos or videos of
your fellow members into one place. It’s an opportunity to celebrate
the creativity of your fellow members in a truly unique way around a
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theme, an idea or just because. While ‘Sets’ and ‘Collections’ are for
your own photos, ‘Galleries’ are something you apply to photos from
others. It's like a Favorite, but in a Gallery you can bring several
Favorites together and add a title and description to it. Since this is a
feature not a lot of people are using, you will be more recognized,
when you add a photo to a Gallery. This will be shown below the
amount of views on every photo. If a photo is not in a gallery, there is
nothing shown.
Galleries can be created and maintained in ‘You/Galleries/Your
Galleries’ and you can even see the Galleries with your Photos there.
When I look at those photos and who has added them, I see that there
is a bunch of people using this feature. There is also a section called
Explore/ Galleries where you can see the most popular Galleries.
There are Galleries with several thousand views. So there is an
opportunity to gain some fame there as well. You could even start
making one Gallery per week with the best photos from your
contacts. This would be your curated Top 18 gallery of your Contacts
of photos uploaded in the past week.
The Explore Tab
The ‘Explore’ section on the home page now revolves to show what is
happening in different areas of the site. You might see recent
‘uploads’, a glimpse of groups, a piece of places, or something new
you wouldn't have stumbled across otherwise. There is a lot
happening on Flickr everyday and we hope this lets you see a little
more of it.
The ‘Explore/Recent Photos’ section is the "Centre Court" of Flickr.

The Top 500 photos per day are shown on this page. Don't expect to
see the best photos of the day. It's only the top ranked photos based
on Interestingness. This means how many View, Favorites,
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Comments, Galleries, etc., a photo has compared to your followers

and in a certain time frame. Basically the whole Explore thing is being
overrated and everyone tries to get in there. For me it was a good way
to find new photographers making photos which I like. I was
browsing through Explore to find people to follow. That's the only
thing that matters.
Of course when you make it into Explore with one photo, you get
about 5-10 times more views which is nice. For the sake of fame it
makes sense. Your basic Flickr strategy should not be based on
Explore. You should know what it is and how to get in there. And you
should understand that quality has nothing to do being in Explore or
not. There are different criteria to enter Explore which are more
arithmetical than logical. Don't be frustrated, if you don't make it.
Third Party Tools
• Flickriver - http://flickriver.com: Flickriver is the best third party

tool which uses some features, Flickr doesn't provide. When you
want to search for the most interesting photos of a user or a group,
many times these are not found on Flickr, but on Flickriver.
• Fluidr - http://www.fluidr.com: Fluidr is very similar to Flickriver

from a functional perspective. Fluidr provides the possibility that
you see all the Meta information on the side of every photo.
• Scout - http://bighugelabs.com/scout.php: Scout is the "official"

source to check your Explore state. You can see which photos are
and were in Explore. You have a simple overview showing a lot of
details. The small symbol on the top right corner of every photo
shows the current state (Up/Down/Added/No Change/Dropped).
You can even click on this little symbol and it shows you a position
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history (only with current photos). In order to get your status being
shown, you have to enter your Flickr ID or your display name, but
not the name in the Flickr URL.
• ID Gettr - http://idgettr.com: ID Gettr is a very simple tool to just

get your Flickr ID from your Flickr URL. The Flickr ID is being used
by some tools like Scout.
• EXIF Statistics - http://stats.ghusse.com: When you were
wondering how many of your photos was taken with which lens,
you should have a look at EXIF statistics. It will scan your whole
Flickr stream and shows you a nice statistics about your EXIF data.
• ffffl*ckr - http://fffflckr.com: ffffl*ckr uses a very interesting

concept to find other photographers you may like. Based on your
favorites it will look for the favorites of your favorites. Meaning
that the person you like some photos probably has a similar interest
as you have. Therefore, you would probably find some interesting
stuff in his favorites. You just click on the photo you like and start
your journey.
• Juicebox - http://www.juicebox.net: Juicebox is a HTML5 viewer

which can be used on websites to show the photo portfolio. The
photos shown are based on a Flickr Set. It is pretty simple to use
and users don't have to take care of the website content anymore.
The content of the Flickr Set needs to be changed and everything is
fine.
Third Party Scripts
As there are tools, there are also scripts, which help you using Flickr.
Those scripts are made mainly for Firefox with the necessary
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extension called Greasemonkey. Some scripts can affect the

performance of your browser.
• Hide Yahoo toolbar on Flickr – http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/

172417: This tool will make the Yahoo toolbar vanish on Flickr.
• Flickr Non-Reciprocal Contacts Finder-http://userscripts.org/

scripts/show/83638: “This script will highlight non-reciprocal
contacts in your contact list by turning their usernames red.” This is
a very handy script to get rid of people who are not following you
back. Depending on your Flickr strategy, you may not use this
script.
Using videos on Flickr
Using videos on Flickr it would be a bit special, as you don't see a lot
of videos here. There is only one problem; the video playback is
limited to 3 minutes per video, although you can upload Full HD
1080p. Explaining something in 180 seconds is pretty tough and will
not work for everything.
Flickr on your mobile device
Flickr is available on iOS and Android. The mobile apps are a bit
different than Flickr experience on your Computer. Even the apps on
these two platforms are very different to each other. It seems that
Flickr for iOS is much better. The Flickr app can be used to download
uploaded photos to mobile devices. This gallery can be normally used
to show photos to people who are interested. People also use the
Flickr app to upload a photo when they are out and it's time to
publish. Then they take it from the Drop box and export it to Flickr.
This all happens from the mobile phone or tablet.
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Flickr on Android
First of all you can scroll down your contacts and then scroll to the
right of a certain contact to see the photos of that person. This is a
very nice feature. The only problem is that you see all your following
contacts and you cannot narrow it down to Friends or Family only. In
the same nice way you can browse through the groups you are a
member of. If you don't have too many groups, there are group
recommendations shown.
You can use your mobile device also to take photos which you can
directly up-load to Flickr. If you want to keep a backup of your
mobile phone photos, Flickr would be a good option. You can keep
those photos private, which you would not share with anyone. You
can also upload a photo to Flickr which you transfer through a cloud
service (Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, etc.). This feature can be
used when people are not at home or don't have a computer around.
Flickr on iOS
On the iPhone app, the Gallery presentation (4th tab with a human
icon) can be used to see all your pictures as thumbnails and you get
some interesting features (number of views, favorite and comments).
In the Activity tab, you can read the comments and accept invitation
to post a photo in a group. Then the Explore tab is interesting and you
can easily add people with whom you share the same kind of
photograph. To post quickly to a big number of groups, just go to
‘I’ (info) of a picture, then 'modify', go the group section and just press
the groups you want to post your picture. It's very KISS (Keep it
simple & stupid). This also works on Android.
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Mobile Phone Backup
You could also use Flickr to backup all your photos from your mobile
phone very easy. You can setup the Flickr app to upload your photos
only on Wi-Fi and privately. Like that you can come home after a
party and backup your photos to Flickr or you always use the Flickr
app to shoot your photos with the mobile phone. You can also add
filters (like on Instagram) and edit your photo before you upload it.
Sharing Your Photos
If you don't want to protect, but to share your work, you can do
several things. The first and best thing is to change your default
license to Creative Commons here. There are 6 different license types
under Creative Commons. You can choose which level of sharing you
want to allow. I use the lowest one, which is Attribution. This means
that everyone can use my photos as long as he mentions my name.
Here are all the options available under the Creative Commons
license:
Attribution
• Attribution-NonCommercial
• Attribution-ShareAlike
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Attribution-NoDerivs
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
If you don't want to share all your photos or if you want to selectively
change the license of a single photo, you can do this on every single
image or in the Organizer in Batch Organize/ Permissions. When you
have decided to share your photos, you should upload them in the
highest available resolution and enable all the options we have
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switches off in the chapter above. It will save you time, to send out
photos and anyone can just download it from Flickr.
Per default you can share your photos on Email, Facebook, Pinterest,
Twitter and Tumblr (and more) by clicking on the sharing symbol and
then on the icon provided. Obviously you have to connect to those
services before you can share any photos through those channels. In
Sharing & Extending you can see all the connections you have already
established. Most often there are a lot of unused connections here, if
you are a long term Flickr user. You should remove the permission of
the unused connectors (especially the ones which have write or delete
rights). The interesting thing is that there are not all the linked
accounts being shown on the main page. You have to click on edit in
order to see all the connections.
Slideshow Sharing on Your Webpage
You can even link to any of your photo from your website, a bulletin
board or a forum, not having to store the file again. Every photo on
Flickr is available per HTML code in several resolutions. Choose Grab
the HTML/BBCode in the sharing menu and choose the size of your
photo. Depending on the place you want to publish it, you have to
differentiate between HTML and BBCode. HTML is for normal links
like websites. BBCode is for posting in certain forums. Sometimes you
have to try out which code is the right one.
5.7 Marketing on Flickr
Enhancing Methods for People to Find Photos
The first thing every new Flickr user realizes is that when he uploads
a photo nothing happens. This is normal at the beginning and you
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have to start to understand how and where people will see your
photos. No matter how good your photo is, it is possible that it will be
on Flickr and no one will see it at all. In order to change the visibility
of your photos, you have to perform all the following tasks.
In general and before you start uploading any photos:
• Get as many contacts as possible

• Join as many relevant groups as can be found
• Define some sets which help in grouping photos
• Define the photos under the Creative Commons License
• Ensure that Privacy Settings are set correctly
During the Upload
• Add a powerful title to the photo (remove the file name.)

• Add a description to the photo (e.g. where was it taken)
• Add the maximum of 75 tags to your photo
• Add people who were with you to the photo
• Add the photo to 1 or more of your defined sets
• Add the photo to the maximum of 60 relevant groups
After the Upload
• Geo tag your photo to show where your photo was taken
Getting More Contacts on Flickr
One of the main possibilities of people taking notice of you as a Flickr

member is the ‘Following section’. You can have as many followers as
you like. A follower can be one way or both ways. So you can follow a
lot of people while nobody is following you. If your main goal is that
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a big amount of people is following your Flickr stream, you have

several possibilities to achieve that. If you are not interested in more
contacts, you may skip the next bullets. More contacts also mean more
work or more photos in your stream, which could be a helpful in
marketing the photos. In order to achieve this you should:
• Upload a certain amount of photos before you add someone -

People want to see your work before they add you. Nobody would
follow an empty Flickr stream.
• Only upload your best photos to your Flickr stream - People want
to see the best photos only. It's not about quantity, it's about quality.
The better your photos are, the bigger the likeliness that someone
will follow you.
• Add people as contact who does the same kind of photos as you
do - When you add someone, this person will get a notification and
probably will look at your stream. If the person likes your photos,
he or she will start following you work.
• Add your photos to as many relevant groups as you can - When

you add your street photos to a street photography group, people
will get notice of your presences and will start following you.
Best Practice for Marketing Photos on Flickr
Be sure that you upload on a regular base and not more than one
photo per day, because people will not look at your photos with the
same amount when there are too many. Furthermore your quality will
increase, when you sort out the bad ones and think about what you
upload. Uploading all your photos in the highest quality and the best
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resolution is highly recommended to ensure that organization buy the

photos.
Flickr is, compared to Facebook, a photo platform where quality

matters. People on Flickr like to see your photos in the best way
possible. If you are afraid of theft, shoot analog and stay away from
the Internet. Regarding theft, don't even think about adding
watermarks, logos or frames to your photo graphs. Upload the photos
in the way you would print it to show it to your friends and family.
When you add a meaningful title, it will increase the popularity of

your photos. When your photo looks good as a thumbnail, people
will easier click and view it. There was proof that photos which look
interesting as a thumbnail will make it easier to explore. In order to
give Explore the chance to "pick-up" your photo, don't add it to any of
the groups and don't add any tags to it for the first 48 hours. If it
didn't make it to Explore, you can add it to the maximum of groups
and add all the possible tags to it.
If you want to reach as many followers as possible, upload your

photo at the most busy time of the day. Depending on your followers
this might be another time. Follow back every person which follows
you. This will increase the Following value which is visible in your
profile. The higher this number, the more important of popular you
look. Keep commenting other photos, add them to your favorites and
use Flickr socially. The more you get in contact with others, the more
views you will get.
The Interestingness Factor
There are lots of elements that make something 'interesting' (or not)
on Flickr. Where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments
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on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more
things which are constantly changing. Interestingness changes over
time, as more and more fantastic content and stories are added to
Flickr.
The interestingness factor is being calculated based on your

Followers, Views, Comments, Favorites, Notes, Galleries and
probably other things (geo-tag, EXIF). It’s a value per photo, which
you can compare with a number between 1 and 10. Every photo has
this value and it can change over time based on changing values of
the above-mentioned things. It is not clear what affects the
‘Interesting Factor’, but as you can see very different photos in
Explore, you can think of an even chance for everyone getting
explored based on Interesting ness.
It looks like the Interestingness Factor is somehow changing over

time, but photos will stay in Explore on the same rank after one
month or so. Since you don't see this magical figure, it is difficult to
understand it. The only way to see the order of your photos based on
the Interestingness Factor is in Popular/Interesting. There you can see
that it's not the amount of views only, but also in combination with
Favorites, Comments, etc.
Enhancing Sales through Getty Images
There is the possibility to get invited by Getty Images to publish and

sell some of your photo on their stock photo web site. You will get
20% of the sale without doing "anything". The only thing you have to
provide is a model release contract where the person's face is visible
on the photo. After handing in the photo, Getty is taking care of the
selling and everything else. Users need to sign up to a contributor
agreement and uploaded the requested photos. The photos provided
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to Getty cannot be made available through Creative Commons

anymore. One thing to remember is that you cannot really use those
photos freely at all anymore. At least you cannot sell them somewhere
else.
If you ever get an email from Getty Images asking for some of your
photos, be sure to know what you want to reach with your photos
and to read the full contributor agreement. There are quite a lot of
terms you have to agree to. There is not a lot of money to be earned
by an average photographer. Of course everyone should try it, in
order to get a personal experience with this service. There are other
services from other companies where you may get more return on
your photos. Of course, Getty Images is a major brand in stock
photography and your photos will be among the good ones. But still,
you should bear in mind, that it is a big step to sell your soul to Getty
Images and there is no way back, at least for the photos you have sold
to them.
5.8 Understanding features of Slideshare
SlideShare is a Web 2.0 based slide hosting service. Users can upload
files privately or publicly in the following file formats: PowerPoint,
PDF, Keynote or OpenDocument presentations. Slide decks can then
be viewed on the site itself, on hand held devices or embedded on
other sites. Launched on October 4, 2006, the website is considered to
be similar to YouTube, but for slideshows. The website was originally
meant to be used for businesses to share slides among employees
more easily, but it has since expanded to also become a host of a large
number of slides that are uploaded merely to entertain.
Although the website is primarily a slide hosting service, it also

supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars. SlideShare also
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provides users the ability to rate, comment on, and share the
uploaded content. The website gets an estimated 58 million unique
visitors a month, and has about 16 million registered users. SlideShare
was voted among the World's Top 10 tools for education and e-
learning in 2010. SlideShare's biggest competitors include Scribd.com,
Issuu and Docstoc. Some of the notable users of SlideShare include
The White House, NASA, World Economic Forum, State of Utah,
O'Reilly Media, Hewlett Packard and IBM.
Welingkar distance education department has a strong presence on

SlideShare with a multitude of presentations.
Zipcasts
In February 2011, SlideShare added a feature called Zipcasts. A

Zipcast is a social web conferencing system that allows presenters to
broadcast an audio/video feed while driving the presentation
through the Internet. Zipcasts also allows users to communicate
during the presentation via an inbuilt chat function.
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!
Zipcasts do not currently support screen sharing with the presenter, a
feature available in competing paid services like WebEx and
GoToMeeting. Additionally, presenters using Zipcasts are not able to
control the flow of a presentation allowing viewers to navigate back
and forth through the slides themselves. Many people want an easy-
to-use, free web meeting platform. Members of the SlideShare
community gave the company specific feedback about the user
experience of hosting a Zipcast, and about the features that are
needed. Here is an update on some significant changes that have been
made based on the user recommendations. The ability to schedule
Zipcast meeting in advance and sending of email invitations to
prospective attendees has been added. Users can also now view their
Zipcast activity, including upcoming and past Zipcasts.
Attendees can RSVP to their invitation, giving a sense of who and

how many will attend. A reminder email will be sent to each attendee,
and the Zipcast can now be added to their calendars.
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Any registered member of the SlideShare community can schedule

and conduct a public Zipcast. Pro members can choose to make their
Zipcasts private by adding a password.
Below provided are some methods to to use Zipcasts:
• Share ideas with colleagues: You want to share an idea with

colleagues, e.g., you want to share product specs with remote
colleagues. Or you want to just share a presentation that you saw
on SlideShare, e.g., latest technological developments. Just start up
a private Zipcast and invite your colleagues by giving them the link
over IM.
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• Launch your next product using Zipcast: You are a startup with no
marketing budget – but you know how to build buzz on Twitter
and Facebook. Start a Zipcast (or informal webinar) about your
technology that will change the world. Ask friends, users, anyone
you can to join in using
• Facebook and soon you will have a gathering that is growing

virally.
• Give a remote talk at a conference: You have been invited to

Australia but don’t have 5 days to make the trip. We know you
want to visit Melbourne, but sometimes, you just can’t make it. But
you can sit at your desk, or even on your couch, and do the talk
(make sure to ask the conference to project you on a large screen).
• Teach anyone, anywhere: Are you a professor and want to do a

lecture remotely to your students while travelling? Zipcast can let
you engage your students without cost or complexity. Plus, your
students already have Facebook logins.
• Pitch a client: Are you a design, marketing firm and want to pitch a
potential client on a project proposal? Invite the client team to your
meeting room and present your idea to them. Invite your whole
team on your end, so that the client does not just get to hear the
proposal, but meets the people who will work on it via video.
• Walk people over your sales deck – build trust by using video:
You are a sales person looking to walk a prospect over your sales
deck. Give them a link to your Zipcast room and get straight to
pitching (don’t waste time downloading the meeting software).
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• Support your customers: While on the phone, simply give your

customers the link to your meeting room and talk them through the
problem. Show them presentations, or drop links to documents or
videos on SlideShare in the Zipcast chat. Consider keeping your
meeting room open during support hours for customers to join in.
• Run a non-profit fund raiser using Zipcast: You are a non-profit

looking to raise funds for the next year. You have already put your
pitch deck on SlideShare. Next time you are on the phone with a
potential donor, invite them to your SlideShare meeting room. Walk
them over your deck.
• Share your trip photo album with your friends: You went on
vacation to Italy and took a lot of pictures of historical buildings.
Now you want to share with your friend who is interested in
architecture. Start a Zipcast to share and discuss these pictures with
your friend.
• Do PowerPoint Karaoke with friends: Zipcast is not just all work.

It can be used for fun things like PowerPoint Karaoke when you
choose a random presentation and someone who has never seen
that deck before presents it. It can be a fun way to spend an
evening. With Zipcast, you can choose a random slide deck on
SlideShare and have your friend present to it. Then it’s your turn
and they get to choose the slide deck.
5.9 Marketing on Slideshare
Marketing Your Content through SlideShare Monetization
Monetize content by attracting buyers with quality, engaging content.

The lines between marketing and selling have blurred. Today’s sale
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person must provide value for a buyer prior to any reasonable

likelihood of a successful closing. It the best answer to how to make
money online easy in today’s highly competitive environment.
How to Make Money Online SlideShare Memberships
The Basic Slideshare membership is free. One may upgrade to

addition features with one of three pro membership: Silver, Gold and
Platinum. Silver is $19 per month, Gold $49 and Platinum is an
enterprise solution that is quoted on an case by case basis. How to
make money online from home or office is well supported by
SlideShare.
Pictures and video command attention: More people will look at

slides or video presentation before they will take time to read an
article. Use Skype to connect in a more interesting a unique fashion.
It is a known fact today that nothing can be sold without consumer
attention. Today, online social marketing requires capturing a buyer’s
attention, engaging them, entertaining them and then closing the sale.
How Businesses Can Use SlideShare
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The following 3 points will help you generate leads with SlideShare.
1. Make a Compelling Presentation
• SlideShare accepts videos and various types of documents;

however, slideshows tend to perform best and earn more views.
To increase the effectiveness of your presentation:
• Compose with SlideShare in mind. Slide decks created for live

presentations may fail on SlideShare. Your slides should “speak for
themselves.” Revisit and revise slides that are likely to require
explanations.
Slide decks that "speak for themselves" work best on SlideShare.
• Design with care. Highly viewed presentations tend to feature

attractive graphics.Your presentation should include powerful
images and quality fonts that are easy to read on small screens
and maintain a high degree of professionalism on every slide.
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Communicate your point with simple, arresting design.
• Keep it simple. Presentations may be viewed quickly and in small

spaces, so it’s wise to create a deck with a laser-focused
message and present your ideas in small bites using as few words
as possible.
Present data in small, easily understood bites.
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• Tell a story. Employ classic storytelling practices with a logical

sequence and an obvious beginning, middle and end. Break longer
works into chapters.
Use storytelling conventions and tactics such as chapter markers to

deliver a lesson.
Employ content marketing best practices. Your presentation will be

valued most when its content reflects that you understand your
market’s challenges and deliver helpful advice for overcoming them.
It won’t hurt to be entertaining too.
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Slide decks that blend education and entertainment perform best on

SlideShare
• Take risks. Presentations stand out from the crowd when they are
provocative, funny or bold. Don’t shy away from edgy ideas with
the rationale that you’re trying to conduct serious business. A
playful sense of humor helped make “The eBook is the Stud in Your
Content Marketing Stable” an extremely popular presentation.
• Understand the capabilities of SlideShare. Your uploaded content

will be converted for presentation. Animations will not convert. The
best way to ensure the integrity of your work is to save it as a PDF
for uploads to SlideShare.
• Invest in talent and quality. If you lack writing or design talent,

outsource the work. Plan to spend the time or money it takes
to secure the rights to strong photography and illustration.
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Increase your impact with professional design featuring quality

photography and illustration.
You’ll find rich libraries of free design templates built

into PowerPoint and Keynote. For even more templates, search for
“free PowerPoint (or Keynote) templates” to locate sites such
as fppt and DezineGuide.
Also, services such as SlideRocket and PhotoSnack offer free online

slideshow creation tools.
2. Capitalize on SlideShare Features
• On the site’s page, the company points out:
• SlideShare features a professional and educational community that

regularly comments, favorites and downloads content.
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• Content spreads virally through blogs and social networks such as

LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
• Individuals and organizations use SlideShare documents to share

ideas, conduct research, connect with others and generate leads for
their businesses.
Consider using features such as:
Sharing — you can edit the settings for any uploaded

presentation to make it available publicly or privately per your
project’s objectives.
Privacy options enable you to make your presentations public or private
Embedding—code is provided, which makes it very simple to embed

your SlideShare assets on your website and blog. Users can also
embed your work, which often exponentially expands the exposure of
your presentations.
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SlideShare gives you (and viewers) HTML code to easily embed your
presentation on your site or blog.
• Video and audio — you can embed YouTube videos in your

presentations or “slidecast,” meaning you can sync an MP3
soundtrack. Upload wizards are provided in your My Uploads
menu.
!
User settings offer options for adding audio or YouTube video to
presentations.
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Social sharing — it’s easy to share content or promote the sharing of

your content on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest.
In fact, a LinkedIn app allows you to have your SlideShare content
fed to your LinkedIn profile page. You might consider targeting a
specific social medium because the SlideShare home page features
documents that are hot on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
A LinkedIn app makes it easy to embed your presentations on your

LinkedIn profile page.
• Go “pro”— a trio of paid Pro plans are specifically designed to

enable you to include customizable lead capture forms, create
company branded channels, and collect detailed analytics including
performance metrics, user identities and interaction details.
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• Following — you can follow other users, mark presentations as a

favorite, email content and comment. So, like other social media,
you are offered tools to build a community, interact and recognize
others.
Paid account holders have news feeds with updates including

follower activity and presentations marked as favourites.
• SEO—the content of your slides is automatically made into

transcripts, which accompany your presentations. When
you understand and smartly apply keywords, your SlideShare
material can do very well on search engines. (By recent
measures, SlideShare amassed 3 billion slide views per month.)
3. Make Lead Generation Your Objective
Remember, SlideShare may get filed under “social media,” but you’re
taking it seriously because its users are serious about research and
discovery.
Remind yourself of this while creating content for SlideShare and be

deliberate about generating leads. Consider these additional tips for
generating leads:
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• Repurpose with purpose — if you’ve been active in content

marketing and social media and have a strong grasp of what works
for your business and its objectives, reuse and repurpose your
most engaging content for the SlideShare site.
Examples and testimonials — don’t forget opportunities to deliver

proof of concept. That is, highlight real-world success stories and
feature testimonials in a fair and objective way when you can.
• Leverage authority — if you’re on a mission to establish authority,

draw from the ideas of thought leaders. Cite their work. Endorse
their ideas and they might just return the favor.
Leverage ideas from established leaders to increase authority.
• Share — SlideShare is a social medium. Follow the content creators

you admire and share their work.
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SlideShare promotes sharing and reports what's "hot" on social

networks.
Provide contact information and links — your presentations

can include links throughout to generate traffic to your site, media
outlets and landing pages. At the end of your presentation, provide
the relevant contact information and make it easy to continue the
conversation.
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Embed links to make it easy for viewers to contact your company.
Call to action — if a viewer has made it to your final slide, he or she is

interested in what you have to say and is likely to have questions,
want more information or want to do business. Don’t be coy. Provide
the call to action you seek.
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Marketers are increasingly folding SlideShare into their content

marketing strategy because the website has proven effective for
building brands and generating leads.
5.10 Case study
YouTube is a video content search engine owned by Google that has

been aggressively targeted by digital marketers. Most people don’t
think of YouTube as a search engine. However, it is the second largest
search engine, running second only to the king of search engines,
Google. It’s also considered a social media network as well. Whether
you consider it a social network or a search engine, it is the third most
visited website on the internet. And that’s saying something
considering there are billions of websites and networks out there.
Is video right for your target market?
YouTube Case Study: Dove Showeroke
Dove was challenged to expand their consumer base to include

vibrant younger women and they wanted to do so with a new
product called “Dove Go Fresh”. Seeing how music is considered to
be an influence in the daily lives of younger women and how women
are more comfortable singing in the shower while alone, Dove’s
strategy was to create an online contest for women to perform and
own their shower experience online, giving every woman a chance to
be a star. They called the campaign Dove Showeroke. Showeroke is
pronounced like Karaoke.
Dove created a microsite where users customized their shower

experience by selecting different designs and as they remixed the
shower experience the music changed along with it. Users uploaded
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YouTube videos of themselves performing with Dove in the

background. Fans voted for their favorite. The contest ended with the
top performers singing live with a band and shower design behind
them. The crowd at the live show picked the winner.
The results of the Showeroke YouTube campaign were as follows:
• Showeroke video and blog entries were picked up by several blogs,

generating a readership of 18,000 people
• Dove bar annual penetration went up from 13.7% to 18.4%
• Dove body wash loyalty went up from 24% to 27.6%
• Dove won Best Creative Campaign ICON Award
• Leveraging Video Content to Represent Your Brand
Your digital marketing agency should leverage the power of video

content to represent your brand, show that your brand cares and that
you are a leader in your chosen field. If your business is not listed on
the second most popular search engine then it might be time to think
about what your brand can contribute to YouTube. Not having a
video presence on YouTube means you are missing out on valuable
online traffic.
Based on the case study following are some recommendations for

your brand’s YouTube videos:
• Always brand YouTube videos with your logo

• Customize your YouTube background with your brand colour
• Display company information such as website URL, phone number,
address and email
• Show off a product or service but remember to keep it low key
• Demonstrate how to do something related to your business
• Engage users with fun
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• Offer helpful advice, tips and expertise
5.11 Activities
1. In this chapter we have discussed some of the prominent features

of YouTube. Research and note down three other features that
have not been discussed here? 
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2. Use your LinkedIn profile to create any two ‘Projects’ in your field
and invite connections to jointly work on these projects.
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5.12 Summary
In this chapter we have discussed about how to create markets

through media sharing sites. Here, we have seen that media sharing
sites allow marketers to share photos, videos, and podcasts. Media
sharing sites are more limited in scope in how companies interact
with consumers. They tend to be more promotional than reactive.
This means that while firms can promote their products through
videos or photos, they usually do not interact with consumers
through personal messages or responses. At the same time, the
popularity of these sites provides the potential to reach a global
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audience of consumers. Video sharing sites allow virtually anybody

to upload videos, from professional marketers at Fortune 500
corporations to the average Internet user. Some of the most popular
video sharing sites include YouTube, Dailymotion.com,
Video.Yahoo.com, Metacafe.com, and Hulu. Photo sharing sites allow
you to upload your images in high quality, where they can be viewed
by other people. Many of these sites also allow you to license out your
photos under certain common usage licenses – this means you can let
other people use your images.
Digital marketing uses all digital media, including the Internet and
mobile and interactive channels, to develop communication and
exchanges with customers. Digital marketing is a term we will use
often, because we are interested in all types of digital
communications, regardless of the electronic channel that transmits
the data. Digital marketing goes beyond the Internet and includes
mobile phones, banner ads, digital outdoor marketing, and social
networks. The Internet has created tremendous opportunities for
businesses to forge relationships with consumers and business
customers, target markets more precisely and even reach previously
inaccessible markets at home and around the world. The Internet also
facilitates business transactions, allowing companies to network with
manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, suppliers, and outsources firms
to serve customers more quickly and more efficiently.
We have also discussed some key features of Social Media Sharing

sites, such as:
• Interactive and speedy communication

• Consumer needs anticipation
• Specialized channel of distribution
• Accessible communication backbone
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• Medium for improving promotion

• Using digital media to reach consumers
Some of the benefits and advantages of marketing on social media

sharing sites discussed here are:
• Ease of uploading digital content

• Viral marketing
• Insight about the customers
• Reduced marketing expenses
• Competitive advantage
• Strengthen customer loyalty
• Increased website traffic
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal

employees in February 2005 and owned by Google since late 2006, on
which users can upload, view and share videos. YouTube uses Adobe
Flash Video and HTML5 technology to display a wide variety of user-
generated video content, including video clips, TV clips, and music
videos, and amateur content such as video blogging, short original
videos, and educational videos. Most of the content on YouTube has
been uploaded by individuals, but media corporations including CBS,
the BBC, Vevo, Hulu, and other organizations offer some of their
material via YouTube, as part of the YouTube partnership program.
Unregistered users can watch videos, and registered users can upload
an unlimited number of videos. YouTube offers users the ability to
view its videos on web pages outside their website. Each YouTube
video is accompanied by a piece of HTML that can be used to embed
it on any page on the Web. This functionality is often used to embed
YouTube videos in social networking pages and blogs. Users wishing
to post a video discussing, inspired by or related to another user's
video are able to make a "video response". Below provided are some
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of the most successful marketing tactics for promoting a new YouTube

video:
3. Connect to social media

4. Promote it on the company blog
5. Tell your email list
6. Use traditional public relations
7. Advertise on YouTube
Some of the important features of Flickr are as follows:
• It’s free (with a little bit of advertisement)

• It’s easy to use, if you know how
• You can tag all your photos at once
• You can create sets, collections and galleries
• You can easily see the photos from other people you like
• You can access them from other sources like a personal website
Flickr is, compared to Facebook, a photo platform where quality

matters. People on Flickr like to see your photos in the best way
possible. If you are afraid of theft, shoot analog and stay away from
the Internet. Regarding theft, don't even think about adding
watermarks, logos or frames to your photo-graphs. Upload the
photos in the way you would print it to show it to your friends and
family.
The basic Slideshare membership is free. One may upgrade to

addition features with one of three pro membership: Silver, Gold and
Platinum. Silver is $19 per month, Gold $49 and Platinum is an
enterprise solution that is quoted on a case by case basis. How to
make money online from home or office is well supported by
SlideShare.
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1. Describe how social media can help you put a personal face on
your business?
2. State the process of getting more contacts on Flickr.
3. Discuss how sales can be enhanced through Getty Images.
4. There are three kinds of accounts to choose from at Flickr. Enlist

the features of any two of them.
5. State the process of Slideshow sharing on your webpage in Flickr.
6. Explain in brief the SlideShare feature called as Zipcasts.
7. Cite details on marketing your content through SlideShare

monetization.
8. Describe the steps involved in capitalizing on SlideShare features.
9. Enlist and discuss any three aspects of making lead generation

your objective?
10. Discuss in detail the process of ‘call to action’ in Slideshare?
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
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ACQUIRING CUSTOMERS THROUGH BLOGS AND TWITTER
Chapter 6
Acquiring Customers through Blogs and Twitter
Objectives
• how to use Blogs and Twitter for marketing?

• advantages of using micro blogging
• discuss the process of leveraging Twitter to enhance business
growth
Structure:
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Background and History
6.3 Inbound Marketing: Through Blogs
6.4 Corporate Blogging Essentials
6.5 Steps to Blogging your Way to Business Success
6.6 Introduction to Micro Blogging Through Twitter
6.7 Leveraging Twitter to Enhance Business Growth
6.9 Activities
6.10 Summary
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6.1 Introduction
A blog (a truncation of the expression web log) is a discussion or

informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting
of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse
chronological order (the most recent post appears first). Until 2009,
blogs were usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a
small group, and often covered a single subject. More recently "multi-
author blogs" (MABs) have developed, with posts written by large
numbers of authors and professionally edited. MABs from
newspapers, other media outlets, universities, think tanks, advocacy
groups and similar institutions account for an increasing quantity of
blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "microblogging" systems
helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into societal new
streams. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add
content to a blog. The emergence and growth of blogs in the late
1990s, coincided with the advent of web publishing tools that
facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users. (Previously,
knowledge of such technologies as HTML and FTP had been required
to publish content on the Web.)
A majority of blogs are interactive; allowing visitors to leave

comments and even message each other via GUI widgets on the
blogs, and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other
static websites. In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social
networking service. Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to
post on their blogs, but also build social relations with their readers
and other bloggers. Many blogs provide commentary on a particular
subject; others function as more personal online diaries; others
function more as online brand advertising of a particular individual
or company. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other
blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of
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readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important

contribution to the popularity of many blogs. Most blogs are
primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blogs), photographs
(photoblogs), videos (video blogs or "vlogs"), music (MP3 blogs), and
audio (podcasts). Microblogging is another type of blogging,
featuring very short posts.
In education, blogs can be used as instructional resources. These blogs

are referred to as edublogs. On 16 February 2011, there were over 156
million public blogs in existence. On 13 October 2012, there were
around 77 million Tumblr and 56.6 million WordPress blogs in
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existence worldwide. According to critics and other bloggers, Blogger

is the most popular blogging service used today.
6.2 Background and history
The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.

The short form, "blog", was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly
broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his
blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan
Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog",
meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and
devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger
product, leading to the popularization of the terms.
Origins
Before blogging became popular, digital communities took many

forms, including Usenet, commercial online services such as GEnie,
BiX and the early CompuServe, e-mail lists and Bulletin Board
Systems (BBS). In the 1990s, Internet forum software, created running
conversations with "threads". Threads are topical connections
between messages on a virtual "corkboard". From 14 June 1993 Mosaic
Communications Corporation maintained their "What’s New" list of
new websites, updated daily and archived monthly. The page was
accessible by a special "What's New" button in the Mosaic web
browser.
The modern blog evolved from the online diary, where people would
keep a running account of their personal lives. Most such writers
called themselves diarists, journalists, or journalers. Justin Hall, who
began personal blogging in 1994, while a student at Swarthmore
College, is generally recognized as one of the earlier bloggers, as is
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Jerry Pournelle. Dave Winer's Scripting News is also credited with

being one of the older and longer running weblogs. The Australian
Netguide magazine maintained the Daily Net News on their website
from 1996. Daily Net News ran links and daily reviews of new
websites, mostly in Australia. Another early blog was Wearable
Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life
combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable
computer and EyeTap device to a web site in 1994. This practice of
semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was
referred to as sousveillance, and such journals were also used as
evidence in legal matters.
Early blogs were simply manually updated components of common

Web sites. However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production
and maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse chronological order
made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical,
population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online
publishing that produces blogs we recognize today. For instance, the
use of some sort of browser-based software is now a typical aspect of
"blogging". Blogs can be hosted by dedicated blog hosting services, or
they can be run using blog software, or on regular web hosting
services. Some early bloggers, such as The Misanthropic Bitch, who
began in 1997, actually referred to their online presence as a zine,
before the term blog entered common usage.
Rise in Popularity
After a slow start, blogging rapidly gained in popularity. Blog usage

spread during 1999 and the years following, being further
popularized by the near-simultaneous arrival of the first hosted blog
tools:
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Bruce Ableson launched Open Diary in October 1998, which soon

grew to thousands of online diaries. Open Diary innovated the reader
comment, becoming the first blog community where readers could
add comments to other writers' blog entries. Brad Fitzpatrick started
LiveJournal in March 1999. Andrew Smales created Pitas.com in July
1999 as an easier alternative to maintaining a "news page" on a
Website, followed by Diaryland in September 1999, focusing more on
a personal diary community. Evan Williams and Meg Hourihan (Pyra
Labs) launched Blogger.com in August 1999 (purchased by Google in
February 2003).
Mainstream Popularity
By 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political

consultants, news services, and candidates began using them as tools
for outreach and opinion forming. Blogging was established by
politicians and political candidates to express opinions on war and
other issues and cemented blogs' role as a news source. Even
politicians not actively campaigning, such as the UK's Labour Party's
MP Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents.
In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers whom

business people "could not ignore". Israel was among the first
national governments to set up an official blog. Under David Saranga,
the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs became active in adopting Web
2.0 initiatives, including an official video blog and a political blog. The
Foreign Ministry also held a microblogging press conference via
Twitter about its war with Hamas, with Saranga answering questions
from the public in common text-messaging abbreviations during a
live worldwide press conference. The questions and answers were
later posted on Israel Politik, the country's official political blog. 
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The impact of blogging upon the mainstream media has also been
acknowledged by governments. In 2009, the presence of the American
journalism industry had declined to the point that several newspaper
corporations were filing for bankruptcy, resulting in less direct
competition between newspapers within the same circulation area.
Discussion emerged as to whether the newspaper industry would
benefit from a stimulus package by the federal government. U.S.
President Barack Obama acknowledged the emerging influence of
blogging upon society by saying "if the direction of the news is all
blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious
attempts to put stories in context, then what you will end up getting
is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of
mutual understanding”.
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Types of Blogs
There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the type
of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written.
• Personal blogs 
 
The personal blog is an ongoing diary or commentary written by an
individual.
• Micro blogging 
 
Micro blogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital
content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other
media—on the Internet. Micro blogging offers a portable
communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many
and has captured the public imagination. Friends use it to keep in
touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share
useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists)
microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour
schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables
sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications, and
the resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new
possibilities for this type of communication. Examples of these
include Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
• Corporate and organizational blogs 

 
A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business
purposes. Blogs used internally to enhance the communication and
culture in a corporation or externally for marketing, branding or
public relations purposes are called corporate blogs. Similar blogs
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for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by
similar names; typical use is to inform members and other
interested parties of club and member activities.
By Genre
Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs,

health blogs, travel blogs (also known as travelogs), gardening blogs,
house blogs, fashion blogs, project blogs, education blogs, niche blogs,
classical music blogs, quizzing blogs and legal blogs (often referred to
as a blawgs) or dreamlogs. Two common types of genre blogs are art
blogs and music blogs. A blog featuring discussions especially about
home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog and one
made popular is by Erica Diamond who created
Womenonthefence.com which is syndicated to over two million
readers monthly. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the
sole purpose of spamming is known as a Splog.
By Media Type
A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is

called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a
sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with
shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs that
are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or
typecast blogs; see typecasting (blogging). A rare type of blog hosted
on the Gopher Protocol is known as a Phlog.
By Device
Blogs can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose

it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA
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could be called a moblog. One early blog was Wearable Wireless

Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining
text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer
and EyeTap device to a website. This practice of semi-automated
blogging with live video together with text was referred to as
sousveillance. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal
matters.
Reverse Blog
A Reverse Blog is composed by its users rather than a single blogger.

This system has the characteristics of a blog, and the writing of
several authors. These can be written by several contributing authors
on a topic, or opened up for anyone to write. There is typically some
limit to the number of entries to keep it from operating like a Web
Forum.
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Community and Cataloging
• The Blogosphere: The collective community of all blogs is known

as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition,
they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked,
through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks (refbacks, trackbacks or
pingbacks) and backlinks. Discussions "in the blogosphere" are
occasionally used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on
various issues. Because new, untapped communities of bloggers
and their readers can emerge in the space of a few years, Internet
marketers pay close attention to "trends in the blogosphere”.
• Blog search engines: Several blog search engines are used to search
blog contents, such as Bloglines, BlogScope, and Technorati.
Technorati, which is among the more popular blog search engines,
provides current information on both popular searches and tags
used to categorize blog postings. The research community is
working on going beyond simple keyword search, by inventing
new ways to navigate through huge amounts of information
present in the blogosphere, as demonstrated by projects like
BlogScope, which was shut down in 2012.
• Blogging communities and directories: Several online

communities exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to
other bloggers, including BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Interest-
specific blogging platforms are also available. For instance, Blogster
has a sizable community of political bloggers among its members.
Global Voices aggregates international bloggers, "with emphasis on
voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream
media.”
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• Blogging and advertising: It is common for blogs to feature

advertisements either to financially benefit the blogger or to
promote the blogger's favorite causes. The popularity of blogs has
also given rise to "fake blogs" in which a company will create a
fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product.
• Popularity: Researchers have actively analyzed the dynamics of

how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of
this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity through
affiliation (i.e., blogroll). The basic conclusion from studies of the
structure of blogs is that while it takes time for a blog to become
popular through blogrolls, permalinks can boost popularity more
quickly, and are perhaps more indicative of popularity and
authority than blogrolls, since they denote that people are actually
reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in
specific cases. The blogdex project was launched by researchers in
the MIT Media Lab to crawl the Web and gather data from
thousands of blogs in order to investigate their social properties.
Information was gathered by the tool for over four years, during
which it autonomously tracked the most contagious information
spreading in the blog community, ranking it by recency and
popularity. It can therefore be considered the first instantiation of a
memetracker. The project was replaced by tailrank.com which in
turn has been replaced by spinn3r.com.
Blogs are given rankings by blog search engine Technorati based on

the number of incoming links and Alexa Internet (Web hits of Alexa
Toolbar users). In August 2006, Technorati found that the most linked-
to blog on the internet was that of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei. Chinese
media Xinhua reported that this blog received more than 50 million
page views, claiming it to be the most popular blog in the world.
Technorati rated Boing Boing to be the most-read group-written blog.
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6.3 Inbound Marketing: Through Blogs
Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing
method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound
marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for
leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that
pulls people toward your company and product, where they
naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your
customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can
then convert, close, and delight over time.
There are four essential actions (Attract, Convert, Close, Delight)

inbound companies must take in order to obtain visitors, leads, and
customers. Provided at the bottom are the tools companies use to
accomplish these actions. (Note the tools are listed under the action
where they first come into play, but that’s not the only place they’re
applicable! Several tools, like blogs and email, can be essential in
several stages of the methodology.)
The Basic Structure of a Blog
Blogs are normally made up of the following main elements:
1. Dashboard: This is the back-end area of your blog where you

make changes and edits. This area is only accessible to logged in
blog administrators, editors, authors, contributors or subscribers.
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2. Theme: Usually one of the first things bloggers do is pick out a

theme. This is the template or look of the blog that people see
when they visit your blog. This is what gives it your personal
touch
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3. Theme layout: Blog themes normally include a header, a content

area (for your posts), sidebar area (for your widgets) and come in
several standard layouts:
• Single column with no sidebar (widgets are located at the bottom

of the blog)
• Two column – normally a wide column for content and narrower

sidebar
• Three column – with sidebars side-by-side on one side of the blog

or either side of the wider content column
• Four column – one content column and three sidebars. The content
column is often the same width as the other columns. This type of
layout tends to be cluttered looking and less suited to reading
lengthy content.
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4. Header: The header is the area at the top of a blog where the blog
title, graphics, and possibly navigational links appear. Using your
own custom image header means you can obtain a much more
customized look and feel adding your “own personal touch” to
your blog.
5. Posts: Posts are where you normally publish the latest update or
new article on a blog. They are commonly displayed in reverse-
chronological order with the most recent post at the top of the
page. Most of the content published on a blog is normally written
as Posts.
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E.g., information on what’s happening in your classroom,

assignment instructions, homework and discussion topics are
normally published as Posts and not on Pages. Blogs are designed to
have only one Post page which normally displays on the homepage of
the blog.
6. Comments: Posts commonly allow readers to publish comments

on the posts they read. This is where the reader can share their
thoughts, connect with the blogger and interact with other
readers.
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7. Pages: You normally use pages for information that you want to
share with your readers but don’t expect to update frequently. Not
all blogging software includes the ability to add Pages. The most
common type of page you’ll find on a blog is an About Page.
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8. Sidebar: The location and even existence of sidebars depend on

your theme. Some themes even have three or more sidebars. You
can add and rearrange widgets in your sidebars using your blog
dashboard. The most common theme layout is two columns with
one sidebar and on content area.
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9. Widget: These are the blocks that make up sidebars. Popular

widgets include the ability to subscribe to a blog, user statistics,
and suggested links.
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10. RSS: RSS is an acronym which stands for Really Simple

Syndication. In simple terms, RSS is a simple and effective way of
keeping in touch when new information is added to a website
without having to visit the website to check for new updates. How
it works is you subscribe to your favorite website using the RSS
feed in a RSS feed reader such as Google Reader (http://
www.google.com/reader/). Whenever new information is added
to the website it is automatically sent to your RSS feed reader
where you can read it at your convenience.
For example, whenever your favorite blogger publishes a new post it

is automatically sent to your Feed reader. Sites with RSS feeds are
normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon.
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Blogs on all standard blogging platforms automatically include RSS

feeds and don’t necessarily use words or an icon to indicate the
presence of the RSS feed. For all Edublogs, the RSS feed is found by
going to yourblog.edublogs.org/feed. RSS lets you do lots of cool
stuff including adding latest updates from your favorite blog(s) or
news website(s) to your own site using RSS widgets like FeedWind’s
RSS widget.
6.4 Corporate Blogging essentials
Many organizations have faced in recent years as they consider

whether their own blog content will be of value to their bottom line.
While it depends on your organization and what specifically you
focus on and hope to achieve, blogging can be a great opportunity for
some organizations to enter the social media world, present their
company as people rather than marketing or P.R. and create a unique
opportunity to get their name out there. But before you jump
headfirst into blogging with your organization, it's important you
weigh the pros and cons and develop a strategy highlighting what
exactly you'd like to achieve. For those who have made the decision
to "blog full speed ahead" here are just a few pointers to help your
organization create compelling and buzz worthy content that's sure to
grab the reader's attention.
• Grab the readers' attention immediately – Start your post off with
something provocative that will make your audience want to read
and learn more. This is not a new strategy, as journalists have
known for years that you only have a few sentences to pique the
readers' interest. Pick up any newspaper and read the first few
sentences of any article. Time is limited, especially in the working
world, so start of your post off strong.
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• Breakup your text with bullets and numbered lists – If there is a

way to organize your post with bullets and numbers, do it! This
makes it easier for readers to skim over your post and get a general
idea of what the blog is about before they decide if they want to
read it in full.
• Keywords matter – For the sake of search engine optimization

(SEO), the keywords and phrases you use matter significantly,
especially in the title of your blog post. Try to brainstorm phrases
you might want associated with your blog or company's website.
You can even try searching phrases before you write a title to see if
anyone else has claim to them.
• Write about what you know – Everyone's an expert in something

— what are your areas of strength? What do you have to share with
the world that you think others would find valuable? Write about
what you know, what you are passionate about, or what you feel
most compelled to tell others. You've got the megaphone, use it
wisely!
• Refer to other blog posts and articles – Mentioning other people's

content can not only create a "starting point" for your own blogs but
it is also a great social media practice and a way to get other
authors' attention. Find something that caught your eye and you'd
like to comment on? Write a blog post about it. You don't have to
agree with the other post you are referring to — some of the best
posts I've read have been rebuttals to other blogs.
• What do you read – Shape your own blog posts and articles around
things that you find interest in reading. Read blogs related to your
industry and see what information you find most valuable.
Chances are someone else will find the topic just as valuable.
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• Be controversial – Not every blog needs to be controversial, but

certainly don't avoid it if you think what you are saying might
ruffle some feathers. Not only does controversy grab a reader's
attention but it will encourage them to leave comments or feedback
if they disagree.
• Ask questions – Encourage interaction. Write something that will

get people enthusiastic about commenting. Blog posts can take on a
life of their own when lots of people respond and comment.
• Sharing is caring – The work doesn't stop once you finish writing
your blog. It's important to actively drive traffic to your blogs.
Whether you share by email, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, it's a
great way to get your content out there and in front of others. What
good is a blog that no one ever reads? You can also share your
content with various blog aggregators, or even pitch a guest post on
blogs with a similar audience.
• Check back and often – It's important to check in on your blog

from time to time and see if there are any new comments you
should respond to. Some commenting systems will also allow you
to set up alerts when someone else has commented. You can also
see what's being said about your blog on Twitter by searching for a
link to your blog at search.twitter.com.
It's important to remember that if you're just starting a corporate blog

that these things take some time to be truly successful. Like anything
else, you have to build up an audience, and that's something that will
take time, no matter who you are or how stellar your content may be.
Some of the saddest websites on the internet are corporate blogs that
have been abandoned after only a couple blogs have been written.
Post on the regular, share your content and people will come.
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6.5 Steps to Blogging your way to business success
In a world where small businesses with corporate blogs receive 55 per

cent more traffic than small businesses that don't blog, companies
should be taking note on how to improve their blogs, attract more
readers and get more results.
But still, a lot of companies with corporate blogs seem to be bogged

down in uniformed policies and simply aren't thinking outside the
box. Afraid to take on colorful personalities or step a bit outside of
their company's happenings, many corporate blogs employ an official
tone announcing the play-by-play updates of company news. This is
just one mistake that businesses are making in the blogging world.
There is an exhaustive list of issues that need to be addressed when it

comes to improving corporate blogs, but here we've narrowed down
the key elements that companies should focus on. Below provided are
important tips for corporate bloggers to generate business online:
Personalize your content: Always keep in mind that your blog is

about people connecting and conversing with people, not a
corporation. Eliminate the "corporate" concept, to market products in
a better manner. A company blog is a suitable place to speak about
products and service benefits and get to know your customers. Think
of it as a conversation between people, not between a brand and one
person. In order to have a conversation, you need two people — a
blogger and a reader. Give the corporate bloggers the freedom to be
themselves. Encourage them to have their own personalities and
writing styles. This type of diversity is more representative of your
company than any monotonous tone that you could manufacture on
your own.
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If maintained correctly, your blog will act as a repository of real

analysis and opinions provided by your company's fine employees.
The type of insight and expertise that a blog can demonstrate is far
more useful than any PR pitch that you could post. Stay away from
trying to sell your readers. There are appropriate venues for that, and
your blog shouldn't be one of them.
Promote your social presence on your blog: Make sure your blog is
open for comments and utilizes share tools, such as Facebook, Twitter
and Digg. Share tools allow your users to pass along your content.
Why not allow your readers to promote your work? Put forth an
effort to respond to comments or forward them on when a specific
employee could offer the best expertise in that area. Make sure each
employee maintains a personable tone when responding to
comments, so that readers know that your bloggers are genuine.
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Lastly, if you haven't done so already, implement a social media

strategy for your blog, creating the appropriate profiles across social
networks that your readers and customers are active on. Usually,
Facebook and Twitter are a good start, and YouTube is a must for
video-sharing. When you post on your blog, announce the new post
on your social networks and ask for your readers' opinions on the
subject. Promote your social presence on your blog, by implementing
links, buttons and widgets that link to your social profiles. This will
enable readers to stay connected with you across platforms. Whole
Foods' blog, Whole Story, for example, displays its social links
prominently at the top of the blog.
Avoid PR and Marketing: If maintained correctly, your blog will act as

a repository of real analysis and opinions provided by your
company's fine employees. The type of insight and expertise that a
blog can demonstrate is far more useful than any PR pitch that you
could post. Stay away from trying to sell your readers. There are
appropriate venues for that, and your blog shouldn't be one of them.
Continue to add to the conversation, adding value for your readers.

Your opinions will be priceless. And for the times that you don't have
an opinion on an important topic, gauge your community's opinion
by taking a poll or interviewing key people. Lululemon Athletica, a
yoga-inspired athletic apparel company, constantly adds value to its
community through its blog by providing posts on topics that their
core followers would appreciate. Some of the most recent posts were
on how to do a handstand, protect the lower back, and explore a new
city. Readers will get a taste of the massive knowledge bank available
at your company. Take your mind off of marketing, and you'll find
that the analysis that you provide sells your company better than a
press release ever could.
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Choose a Blogging Team and Process: Choose a team of core bloggers

to begin your blogging adventure. Select individuals that are
knowledgeable and comfortable writing about the areas you would
like to cover. Also, it's key to choose people who write well and have
a great online presence. Train your bloggers on the editorial
guidelines and decide what type of writing and editing process you
would like to put in place. Some companies prefer to elect an editor or
group of editors to have a final look at all blog posts, while other
companies allow their bloggers to publish directly. Figure out the
level of comfort you have with your blogging, editing and publishing
process and implement a procedure that works well for your team.
Establish a Content Theme and Editorial Guidelines: When creating a

product or service, you must be able to define the value that it's
bringing to consumers. In the case of a blog, you need to clearly
define the focused theme that your team will follow. Choose a blog
name and theme that fits well with your company's expertise, but
don't be afraid to branch out into a larger space. Your blog should
provide pertinent information for consumers interested in your area
of business. Once you've chosen an area to cover, create a set of
editorial guidelines that your bloggers will follow. Guidelines can
include appropriate verticals and topics to cover, as well as how and
when posts should be written. A clear goal and theme for your blog
will make it easier for users to know what to expect.
6.6 Introduction to Micro blogging through Twitter
What Is Micro Blogging?
Micro-blogging is defined in Wikipedia as “a form of blogging that

allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and
publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group
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which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by

a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging,
email, MP3 or the Web”. Popular examples of micro blogging services
include Twitter and FriendFeed. In additional the status feature of
social networking services such as Facebook provides another
example of micro blogging.
What Benefits Can Micro Blogging Provide?
Rather than seeking to describe potential uses of micro blogging tools

such as Twitter, it may be preferable to provide analogies for their use.
As described at micro blogging tools such as Twitter can be regarded
as:
• The bar where everybody knows your name.
• An interactive business card.
• A room of experts who can respond to your queries.
• A room of friends who can listen to your concerns.
• A room of strangers who can sometimes surprise you.
• A digital watercooler, particular useful for home workers to share

office gossip.
Other potential benefits include:
• Listening into announcements, discussions or informal

conversations about your organization or the services provided by
your organization.
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• Providing business intelligence related to your peers, your funders

or, in some circumstances, perhaps, competing organizations.
Micro blogging can be regarded as a tool which can support a

community of practice by providing a forum for work-related
discussions and informal chat.
What Is Video Micro Blogging?
Video micro blogging is the multimedia equivalent, whereby short

video posts can be published. The best-known example of a video
micro blogging service is Seesmic.
Micro Blogging through Twitter
A superficial look at Twitter might lead to the conclusions that micro

blogging services such as Twitter provides nothing more than trivial
content and has no relevance to the information professional.
However many Twitter users who have chosen to spend time in
exploring its potential benefits. Twitter, like blogs, can be used for a
variety of purposes although it also has the potential to be used as a
communications medium, with Twitter users asking questions and
discussing issues. In this respect Twitter has some parallels with chat
rooms. But as with chat rooms, instant messaging, email and Websites
such tools can be counter-productive if used for inappropriate uses
and if used excessively or to the detriment of other work activities.
Developing Good Practices for Micro Blogging
A simplistic response to potential misuses of micro blogging tools

would be to ban its use. However this approach would result in staff
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missing out on the benefits of making use of informal contacts and

your organization exploiting the benefits described above.
If you feel there is a need to establish a policy covering use of micro

blogging you might wish to ask whether you trust your staff to use
such technologies in an appropriate fashion. Also if you feel there is a
need to implement such policies remember that staff can misuse their
time at work in other ways which do not need access to technologies.
Perhaps the best advice would be to ensure that you keep up to date
with examples of effective use of micro blogging and ways of
appreciated its benefits. Managers should also encourage their staff to
be innovative.
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6.7 Leveraging Twitter to enhance business growth
How to Use Twitter for Business and Marketing
About Twitter
Twitter is a short message communication tool that allows you to

send out messages (tweets) up to 140 characters long to people who
subscribe to you (followers). Your tweets can include a link to any
web content (blog post, website page, PDF document, etc.) or a
photograph or video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, adding
an image to a tweet greatly expands what you can share to beyond
the 140-character limit for tweets.
People follow (subscribe) to your Twitter account, and you follow

other people. This allows you to read, reply to and easily share their
tweets with your followers (retweet).
How Twitter Is Unique
In the social media world, Twitter falls into the category of micro
blogging tools because of the short, disconnected messages it
distributes. Other micro blogging tools include Tumblr, FriendFeed
and Plurk.
Twitter shares some features with the most common social media
tools (Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube).
However, the differences really define Twitter.
• Facebook: A tweet is like a short Facebook status update. However,

with Twitter, every tweet arrives at every follower’s feed, unlike the
filter of Facebook’s EdgeRank.
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• Pinterest: Twitter allows you to share photographs and provide

commentary in your tweet. However, with Twitter, it’s much easier
to have conversation around a shared image than with the
comment feature on Pinterest.
• LinkedIn: A tweet is like a short LinkedIn status update. While

LinkedIn is based on trust relationships (and two-way agreements),
Twitter allows you to follow anyone, including strangers. This is
helpful when you target potential customers.
• Google+: A tweet is like a short Google+ status update. Twitter also

allows you to organize people into lists that organize conversations
similar to Google+ groups.
• YouTube: A tweet can contain a link to a video. However, Twitter

doesn’t allow you to create a channel or organize your videos for
easy location and commentary.
Now let’s look at how Twitter can be used for business.
Step 1: Present Your Brand
Your Twitter account and profile are the foundation of your Twitter
experience. It’s your chance to tell your business story to the Twitter
community. It is important that your Twitter presence have the same
look and feel as your other online tools. This helps people identify
your business and builds trust. Choose an account name and images
consistent with your other online presences and your brand.
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Choose Your Twitter Username
Nothing expresses your brand on Twitter more than your account

username. This name appears next to all of your tweets, and is how
people identify you on Twitter.
Profile photo and cover example: An example of a small business

with a Twitter username that matches their website domain. Choose
between your personal name (best for professional individuals) and
your business name. Avoid using punctuation to keep your name
easy to type on mobile devices. If your exact business name is not
available, choose a similar name for consistency.
Profile Images: Twitter uses two different images to represent your

account. It’s important that you take advantage of both of these
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images to tell your business story. You upload these images under
Profile in your account settings.
Your Twitter profile photo is a square photo that appears next to every
tweet you send. You can use either your company logo or your
headshot for your profile photo.
Profile photo example
An example of a Twitter user with a headshot for his profile picture.
Note: Many small businesses use their business name for the account
and a personal photo for the profile photo. This adds a personal touch
to your Twitter account.
Your Twitter profile header is a large background photo where you

can tell a story about your business. Similar to the Facebook cover
photo, your header photo appears at the top of your profile page.
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Profile and header example
An example of a header photograph that tells the brand’s story.
You can also customize the background that people see when they
visit your Twitter account. You can create a graphic file so it matches
your business branding. You upload this image under Design in your
profile settings.
Twitter background example
Example of a small business user who has updated his Twitter

background with his company branding.
Step 2: Build a Strong Foundation
It’s important that you complete your Twitter account profile

completely. Each feature gives more details about your business that
contribute to your business story. Don’t miss these three important
features under Profile in your account settings.
Twitter profile options
The location, website and bio portions of your profile provide

important information about your business to other Twitter users.
• Location. Tell people where they can find you. But remember,
people may be visiting your profile from another city, state or
country and won’t recognize your neighborhood or community
name. Give them enough information so they can find you.
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• Website. You can share a web address with your community. You
can give them your website or blog, but consider using a special
Twitter landing page. This is a great way to provide additional
information of interest to Twitter users looking into your business.
• Bio. You only get 160 characters to tell people who you are and
what you do. Skip the mission statement and talk about the benefits
you deliver. And add in a little personality to bring your profile to
life.
Step 3: Start Following People
When you follow another Twitter user, you subscribe to read what
they share. So be selective about whom you follow, especially at first.
To follow a user, you find their user profile and click on the Follow
button.
Twitter follow this user
One simple way to follow new people is to locate their profile and
click the Follow button.
Twitter has strict rules about what they call aggressive following and
aggressive following churn, so be careful and take it slow. You don’t
want to get your account suspended in your first week because of
suspicious activity.
Note: Your Twitter experience is defined by whom you follow, not by

who follows you. Pay attention to your follow choices to give yourself
a great Twitter experience.
In general, start following people in these categories:
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• Your customers
• Your business partners, suppliers, contractors and vendors
• Your competitors or peers
• Trade organizations or professional organizations for your industry
• Businesses in your neighborhood
• Businesses run by people you know (your professional network)
• Twitter can help you find people you know by scanning your email
address book.
Twitter find friends
Use the Find Friends menu option on the Discover page to have
Twitter scan your email address book for people you know on Twitter.
While you are out following people, you may notice that people are
starting to follow you. Don’t worry if you don’t know these people.
Stay focused on whom you follow for now.
Step 4: Start Talking
Talking on Twitter is different from every other social media site. It’s a
fast-paced smorgasbord of ideas and sentence fragments. It’s hectic,
but it’s also fun.
Give yourself a little time to get your feet wet. Listen to others. Jump
in when you feel comfortable. Start talking as you get your bearings.
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In general, there are five types of Twitter messages:
• Tweet: a message you send out to everyone who follows you. This
is the heart of Twitter communication.
Twitter regulartweet
A tweet is a short message sent out to everyone who follows your

Twitter account.
• @Reply: a message you send out as a reply to a message you

received. The @reply is a public message that mentions the Twitter
username of the person. It shows up in the tweet stream of
everyone who follows both of you, and on the @connect (mentions)
page of the Twitter user.
Twitter reply tweet
An @reply tweet is a message you send in response to a tweet from

another person.
• Mention: a message you send out that mentions another Twitter

username.
Twitter mention tweet
A mention tweet includes the name of a Twitter user but is not a reply
to a previous tweet from that person.
Direct message (DM): a message you send privately to another

Twitter user. You can only send a DM to someone who follows you.
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Twitter DM example
A DM is a private message sent to someone who follows you on

Twitter.
• Retweet (RT): a message created and sent by someone else that you
share with the people who follow you. Twitter makes it easy to
share tweets.
Twitter retweet example
A retweet is a message sent by another person that you share with

your followers. 
 
Step 5: Talk Smarter
After you master the five types of tweets, you are ready to attack the
big question: What should I talk about on Twitter?
For every business, the answer is different. In general, you want to

find the sweet spot between what your target audience wants to hear
and things that promote your business. For many businesses, the
answer is to focus on how your products and services benefit your
customers.
Give people useful information and answer their questions, and they
will consider you a valuable member of their community. That’s an
important first step to winning a new customer.
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There’s a real art to writing a headline-style message on Twitter.

Experiment with different ways to say the same thing, and see what
gets the most response. With only 140 characters, it’s important that
every word pull its weight in your messages.
Over time, the quality of what you share will help you grow a strong
Twitter following. Now, you are ready to take a step back and come
up with a Twitter communication plan. Your plan focuses your
Twitter conversation on topics designed to draw in potential
customers and publish your tweets at the times you are most likely to
engage people.
Step 6: Drive Traffic to Your Website and Blog
Twitter is a great tool for driving traffic to your website and blog. To
do this, you create a tweet around a link, writing a message that
compels people to click to learn more.
Tweet with link
Write a compelling headline-style message to get people to click on

the link in your tweet.
Because space is at a premium in a tweet, there isn’t room to post the

entire web address. That’s why all of the Twitter tools allow you to
shorten your web addresses using a URL shortener.
Twitter URL shortener
When you paste a web address into a tweet, Twitter automatically

shortens it, giving you more space for your message.
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When you use Twitter.com, the Twitter URL shortener uses just 20
characters for your web address, no matter how long the actual web
address.
Step 7: Connect Your Online Presence
Now that you have Twitter rolling along, it’s time to integrate it into
your overall online business presence.
There are three ways to do this:
Add your Twitter account information to the social media account

information on your website and blog. Most of the social follow tools
used on websites and blogs allow you to add your Twitter account
easily and quickly to your list of social media accounts.
Note: Twitter offers a Follow button you can add to your website or
blog.
Twitter social media button
Most social follow tools make it easy to add Twitter to your list of
social media accounts.
Add a timeline of your Twitter messages to your website and blog.

Twitter provides widgets that allow you to share a tweet timeline on
your website and blog. This can be a great way to share your Twitter
conversations with your website visitors, getting double exposure
from the same effort.
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Twitter widget example
An example of a Twitter widget using Twitter lists (explained in this

article) added to a company website.
Note: You want to make sure that the tweets you share contribute to
your business story, so be selective about which tweets you share on
your website.
Make it easy for people to share your website and blog content on
Twitter. There are several ways you can add a Tweet This button to
your blog posts and website pages, including a tweet button from
Twitter. This allows your visitors to easily write a tweet about your
content and share it with their followers.
Tweet button on SME
The Tweet button at the top of every Social Media Examiner post
makes it easy for you to share our articles with your Twitter followers.
Another way you can move the Twitter conversation to your blog or
website is by embedding a tweet. This allows you to select any tweet
and insert it into a blog post, for example. By embedding the tweet,
you allow people who visit your blog post to jump into the Twitter
conversation.
Embed tweet example
Hover over any tweet you want to embed, click on the More link that
becomes visible and choose Embed Tweet.
Here’s how an embedded tweet looks:
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Step 8: Get Mobile With Twitter
Nearly every cell phone can connect you with your Twitter audience.
Smartphones (iOS, Android, Windows and Blackberry) allow you to

use the Twitter app and Twitter mobile website to easily send and
receive tweets.
Non-smartphones with texting service (SMS) allow you to use Twitter

using text messages.
Twitter iPhone app
The Twitter app on the iPhone allows you to perform nearly every
Twitter activity from your phone that you can do on twitter.com.
Twitter allows you to set up push notifications to your smartphone so

you know when selected activities happen on Twitter:
People mention you
• Someone retweets or favorites a tweet you sent
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• You get a new follower
• Someone sends you a direct message
With Twitter, a speedy response is best, and push notifications make it

easy for you to know when things are happening for you on Twitter.
Step 9: Share Photographs in Your Tweets
People love to look at pictures, so include photographs in your tweets

whenever possible. You don’t have to be a professional photographer
or have a fancy camera. All you need is a smartphone.
You can share your photograph from your desktop on Twitter.com or

from the Twitter app on your mobile phone. Get into the habit of
taking photos of your business activities that you can share with your
Twitter community.
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• Twitter integrates into your smartphone’s camera roll. This allows

you to easily share photos you have taken with your Twitter
followers.
• Twitter post photo from mobile
• You can tweet directly from the photos stored on your smartphone,
as shown here on an iPhone.
• Twitter adds the photo to your tweet and makes it available for
everyone to see.
• Tweet with photo hidden
• Click on View photo to see the attached photo with any tweet.
Tweet with photo online
A tweet with a photo allows your followers to view the photo within
their tweet timeline.
Twitter adds every photo you share to a photo (and video) gallery.
The first six appear on your profile page. Take advantage of this
feature to share pictures that tell your business story.
Twitter photo gallery
Twitter shares the six most recent photos or videos you share in the
gallery on your profile page.
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Step 10: Add Video to Your Twitter Timeline
Video is another powerful way to tell people about your business.
You can add videos to your Twitter timeline, but you cannot add
them directly from Twitter. You must first upload them to another
service like YouTube, and then link to them in your tweet.
Twitter video in a tweet
Here’s a tweet with a video inserted by linking to YouTube. Click

View media to open the video inside Twitter.
When a tweet contains a link to a video, Twitter allows you to play

the video within the tweet. Click on View media to open the video
player.
Twitter allows you to play videos without leaving the platform.
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Recently, Twitter launched a new video service called Vine that allows
you to take short, 6-second videos from the Vine app and play them
on an endless loop inside Twitter.
Vines tweet
• Click View media to view an attached Vine video.

• Like other videos, simply click View media to start playing the Vine
video attached to a tweet.
• Vines tweet open
• A tweet with a Vine video. Twitter plays the video on an endless
loop.
• Twitter also adds your Vine videos to your profile gallery.
If you are not sure how your business can take advantage of this
exciting new information-sharing tool, check out these examples of
how businesses are using Vine to tell their story.
Step 11: Organize Your Followers Into Conversation Lists
As you follow more people, it can be challenging to focus on the

information coming from specific people and groups. That’s where
Twitter lists come in.
A Twitter list allows you to separate the Twitter accounts you follow
into groups. You might create separate lists for:
• Customers
• Potential customers
• Neighborhood or community businesses
• Trade or professional organizations
• People who inspire you
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• People you talk with the most
A list allows you to see the tweets from the list members as a separate
Twitter timeline. This distinguishes them from the crowd so you can
pay attention to what these people say. You can also share tweets from
a list on your website using a widget (explained in this article).
You can organize your lists in any way that helps you. You can create
one or many lists. You can also make your lists public or private.
When you create a public list, list members see when you add or
delete them from the list, and anyone can choose to follow your list.
When you create a private list, people don’t know they appear on it
and only you can see the list’s tweet timeline.
To review the public lists created by any Twitter user, display their
profile page. Then click Lists in the left menu. Their public lists
appear in the right column.
Twitter lists example
Here’s a Twitter account with many public lists. Click on Lists on the
left to see their public lists in the main column.
To view the tweet timeline for the members of a list, click on the list
name.
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Twitter list timeline
Here’s an example of a Twitter timeline for people contained in a

public list called SmallBiz Most Influential created by Twitter user
D&B Credibility.
To add someone to a list, display his or her profile. Click the gear icon
and choose add or remove from lists. Then check or uncheck them
from your list of Twitter lists.
Twitter add person to list
You can add any person to your lists, even if you don’t follow him or
her.
Step 12: Expand Your Audience With Hashtags
Most people’s Twitter experience is limited to the people they follow.

It’s always a good idea to keep looking for new, fresh voices to follow
to keep expanding your online conversations.
There are two great ways to expand your Twitter audience beyond
your circle.
Hashtags appear in tweets to identify a common topic or theme. They

use the pound (or hash) sign followed by a unique identifier. For
example:
• #sxswi is the hashtag for the conference, South by Southwest

Interactive
• #NCAA is the hashtag for the US college sports association
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• #VZW is the hashtag for Verizon Wireless
• #FF is the hashtag for Follow Friday, a way to promote people on

Twitter
• Scroll through your timeline to spot tweets with a hashtag.
Twitter GetGlue hashtag
An example of a tweet with a #GetGlue hashtag.
When you see a tweet with a hashtag, click on the hashtag to see a list
of all tweets that include the same hashtag. You will see tweets from
people you do not follow.
Twitter GetGlue hashtag list
When you click on a hashtag or do a search on it, you get a list of

tweets from all Twitter accounts that use the hashtag.
If you attend a conference, the conference may ask all of the attendees
to include the conference hashtag in their tweets. This way, hashtags
pull together the conference tweets into one huge conversation, even
though you may not be following all of those people.
You can create a hashtag unique for your business and use it in your
marketing to help people find your company and the conversations
around it. In fact, hashtags are a great way to use Twitter for customer
service and support.
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Step 13: Pinpoint Potential Local Customers
People often think that social media allows you to connect with
people outside of your local geography. And while that is true, one of
the great strengths of Twitter is the ability to focus on people in your
own backyard.
Most businesses need local customers. You can use Twitter to help
you find potential customers who live and work near your business.
Use Twitter Advanced Search to find people near your location.
Twitter advanced search
• Use the Advanced Search feature to find people by city and zip
code.
• Use the Places feature to identify your location by city or zip code.
Twitter displays a list of people who are tweeting near that location.
Twitter local search
An example of a local search for “Tempe, Arizona” and the list of

tweets in that area.
Use this tweet timeline to find people who may be potential

customers. You can follow them or add them to a potential local
customer list. It’s the first step to engaging them in conversation.
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Take Your Twitter Use for Business to the Next Level
After you master these Twitter skills, there are still more ways you
can use Twitter to meet your business goals. Here are a few of them to
inspire you.
Start measuring your Twitter performance. It’s much easier to get

better results when you have solid data about how your Twitter
strategies are working.
Focus on building your Twitter community. There are tools that allow
you to analyze who is following you and reach out to your target
audience. Together, these can make your Twitter marketing far more
effective.
Learn which tweets are most effective with your audience. Use
Twitter tools to test alternative tweets to see which one really gets a
better response.
Expand your Twitter conversation topics. Add more variety to your

conversations and pull in more audience engagement. Fine-tune your
Twitter presence to get better results. When you hit a slump, it’s time
to make small adjustments that add up to a stronger Twitter presence.
Nissan Terrano Unveiled on Twitter during Live Webcast
Brand Name: Nissan Terrano
Agency Name: Magnon / TBWA
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Objective:
• Create a buzz around the unveiling of Nissan Terrano in Social

Media Space.
• Develop Awareness, Information and Conversations.
• Drive interaction, Engagement and Participation.
• Harness the current Nissan/Datsun fanbase.
• Generate a degree of momentum online for Terrano that can be

sustained later on as well.
Execution:
Twitter Campaign:
Day 1: 5 rounds of 1 hour each.
The live webcast of the #TerranoBlockbusterShowcase will start at 12

PM on http://nissanterrano.in/. Tweeples just have to watch the
webcast and live tweet the events as they unfold using the hashtag
#TerranoBlockbusterShowcase.
Day 2: 5 rounds of 1 hour each.
On 19th August whenever @Nissan_India tweets ‘The

#TerranoBlockbusterShowcase is on‘, tweeples have to start tweeting
with the contest hashtag and RT tweets of @Nissan_India.
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Results:
• Generated 10,000 conversations on FB around the campaign.
• Around 700 friends participated in FB contests in less than 2 days.
• More than 28,000 invitations were sent to friends for live webcast
through FB.
• Garnered around 300 followers on Twitter in less than 48 hrs.
• FB campaign reached more than 7,00,000 fans.
6.9 Activities
1. In this chapter we have discussed the process of promoting your

social presence on your blog. Research online for corporate blogs
to understand, how they have enhanced their social presence
online? 
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2. Browse the web to research on the Hashtags used in Twitter and

enlist five practical applications of using them for marketing
purposes. 
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6.10 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about how to acquire customers

through Blogs and Twitter. A blog is a discussion or informational site
published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries
typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent
post appears first). Until 2009 blogs were usually the work of a single
individual, occasionally of a small group, and often covered a single
subject. More recently "multi-author blogs" (MABs) have developed,
with posts written by large numbers of authors and professionally
edited. MABs from newspapers, other media outlets, universities,
think tanks, advocacy groups and similar institutions account for an
increasing quantity of blog traffic. The rise of Twitter and other "micro
blogging" systems helps integrate MABs and single-author blogs into
societal new streams. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to
maintain or add content to a blog. The emergence and growth of
blogs in the late 1990s coincided with the advent of web publishing
tools that facilitated the posting of content by non-technical users.
The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.

The short form, "blog", was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly
broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his
blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan
Williams at Pyra Labs used "blog" as both a noun and verb ("to blog",
meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog") and
devised the term "blogger" in connection with Pyra Labs' Blogger
product, leading to the popularization of the terms. Early blogs were
simply manually updated components of common Websites.
However, the evolution of tools to facilitate the production and
maintenance of Web articles posted in reverse chronological order
made the publishing process feasible to a much larger, less technical,
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population. Ultimately, this resulted in the distinct class of online

publishing that produces blogs we recognize today.
Micro blogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital

content — which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other
media — on the Internet. Micro blogging offers a portable
communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many
and has captured the public imagination. Friends use it to keep in
touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share
useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists)
microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour
schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables
sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications, and the
resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new
possibilities for this type of communication. Examples of these
include Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.
Since 2006, inbound marketing has been the most effective marketing
method for doing business online. Instead of the old outbound
marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, and praying for
leads, inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content that
pulls people toward your company and product, where they
naturally want to be. By aligning the content you publish with your
customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can
then convert, close, and delight over time.
There are four essential actions such as Attract, Convert, Close, and
Delight inbound companies must take in order to obtain visitors,
leads, and customers. Provided at the bottom are the tools companies
use to accomplish these actions. Many organizations have faced in
recent years as they consider whether their own blog content will be
of value to their bottom line. While it depends on your organization
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and what specifically you focus on and hope to achieve, blogging can
be a great opportunity for some organizations to enter the social
media world, present their company as people rather than marketing
or P.R. and create a unique opportunity to get their name out there.
Micro blogging is defined in Wikipedia as “a form of blogging that

allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and
publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group
which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by
a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging,
email, MP3 or the Web”. Popular examples of micro blogging services
include Twitter and FriendFeed. In additional the status feature of
social networking services such as Facebook provides another
example of micro blogging.
A superficial look at Twitter might lead to the conclusions that micro

blogging services such as Twitter provides nothing more than trivial
content and has no relevance to the information professional.
However many Twitter users who have chosen to spend time in
exploring its potential benefits. Twitter, like blogs, can be used for a
variety of purposes although it also has the potential to be used as a
communications medium, with Twitter users asking questions and
discussing issues. In this respect Twitter has some parallels with chat
rooms. But as with chat rooms, instant messaging, email and Websites
such tools can be counterproductive if used for inappropriate uses
and if used excessively or to the detriment of other work activities.
Twitter is a short message communication tool that allows you to
send out messages (tweets) up to 140 characters long to people who
subscribe to you (followers). Your tweets can include a link to any
web content (blog post, website page, PDF document, etc.) or a
photograph or video. If a picture is worth a thousand words, adding
an image to a tweet greatly expands what you can share to beyond
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the 140-character limit for tweets. People follow (subscribe) to your

Twitter account, and you follow other people. This allows you to read,
reply to and easily share their tweets with your followers.
We have also discussed about the steps for how Twitter can be used
for business, and those steps are:
• Step 1: Present Your Brand
• Step 2: Build a Strong Foundation
• Step 3: Start Following People
• Step 4: Start Talking
• Step 5: Talk Smarter
• Step 6: Drive Traffic to Your Website and Blog
• Step 7: Connect Your Online Presence
• Step 8: Get Mobile With Twitter
• Step 9: Share Photographs in Your Tweets
• Step 10: Add Video to Your Twitter Timeline
• Step 11: Organize Your Followers Into Conversation Lists
• Step 12: Expand Your Audience With Hashtags
• Step 13: Pinpoint Potential Local Customers
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1. Explain the functionality of the rise of Twitter and other "micro

blogging" systems.
2. Write a short note to describe the process of promoting your social

presence on your blog.
3. Describe any one step in detail as to how Twitter can be used for
business?
4. Explain why Twitter is a great tool for driving traffic to your

website and blog.
5. State the process of getting Mobile with Twitter.
6. Explain in brief the procedure to organize your followers into

conversation lists in Twitter.
7. Explain in brief the procedure to expand your audience with

Hashtags in Twitter.
8. What needs to be done to focus on building your Twitter

community?
9. What needs to be done to pinpoint potential local customers?
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
Video Lecture
333
MARKETING THROUGH SOCIAL NEWS AND BOOKMARKING SITES
Chapter 7
Marketing through Social News and Bookmarking
Sites
Objectives

• advantages of using social news sites (Digg)
• advantages of using bookmarking sites
• features of delicious bookmarking sites
• marketing aspects of delicious bookmarking sites
Structure:
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Advantages of Using Social News Sites
7.3 Social News Site
7.3.1 Digg
7.3.2 Reddit
7.4 Advantages of Using Bookmarking Sites
7.5 Social Bookmarking Site
7.5.1 StumbleUpon
7.5.2 Delicious
7.5.2.1 Features of Delicious
7.5.2.2 The Marketing Aspect of Delicious
7.6 Short Case Study: Semantic Tags
7.7 Activities
7.8 Summary
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7.1 Introduction
A social news website features user-posted stories that are ranked

based on popularity. Users can comment on these posts, and these
comments may also be ranked. Since their emergence with the birth of
web 2.0, these sites are used to link many types of information
including news, humor, support, and discussion. Social news relies on
crowd sourcing to shape focus in a bottom-up fashion, forming a type
of collective intelligence. Social news sites facilitate democratic
participation on the web.
All social news websites allow the users to submit the content in some
way. Each site differs in how the content is moderated. On Slashdot
and Fark, for example, the administrators of the site decide which
articles make it to the front page. On Reddit and Digg, the articles that
get the most votes from the community will make it to the front page.
Many social news websites also feature a comment system, where
users can form a discussion based on each article. Some of these sites
have also applied their voting system to the comments, so that the
most popular comments are displayed first.
In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that

they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually
public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people
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or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another

combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can
usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags or
via a search engine.
Most social bookmark services encourage users to organize their

bookmarks with informal tags instead of the traditional browser-
based system of folders, although some services feature categories/
folders or a combination of folders and tags. They also enable viewing
bookmarks associated with a chosen tag, and include information
about the number of users who have bookmarked them. Some social
bookmarking services also draw inferences from the relationship of
tags to create clusters of tags or bookmarks.
The concept of shared online bookmarks is believed to have

originated in around April 1996 with the launch of itList, the features
of which included public and private bookmarks. Another system
known as WebTagger, developed by a team at the Computational
Sciences Division at NASA, was presented at the Sixth International
WWW Conference held in Santa Clara on April 7-11, 1997. WebTagger
included several advanced social bookmarking features including the
ability to collaboratively share and organize bookmarks using a web-
based interface, provide comments and organize them according to
categories. Within the next three years, online bookmark services
became competitive, with venture-backed companies such as
Backflip, Blink, Clip2, ClickMarks, HotLinks, and others entering the
market.
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They provided folders for organizing bookmarks, and some services

automatically sorted bookmarks into folders (with varying degrees of
accuracy). Blink included browser buttons for saving bookmarks;
Backflip enabled users to email their bookmarks to others and
displayed "Backflip this page" buttons on partner websites. Lacking
viable revenue models, this early generation of social bookmarking
companies failed as the dot-com bubble burst — Backflip closed citing
"economic woes at the start of the 21st century". In 2005, the founder
of Blink said, "I don't think it was that we were 'too early' or that we
got killed when the bubble burst. I believe it all came down to
product design, and to some very slight differences in approach.”
Founded in 2003, Delicious (then called del.icio.us) pioneered tagging

and coined the term social bookmarking. Frassle, a blogging system
released in November 2003, included social bookmarking elements. In
2004, as Delicious began to take off, similar services Furl, Simpy,
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Spurl.net, and unalog were released, along with CiteULike and

Connotea (sometimes called social citation services) and the related
recommendation system Stumbleupon. Also in 2004, the social photo
sharing website Flickr was released, and inspired by Delicious it soon
added a tagging feature. In 2006, Ma.gnolia (later renamed to Gnolia),
Blue Dot (later renamed to Faves), Mister Wong, and Diigo entered
the bookmarking field, and Connectbeam included a social
bookmarking and tagging service aimed at businesses and
enterprises. In 2007, IBM released its Lotus Connections product. In
2009, Pinboard launched as a bookmarking service with paid
accounts. As of 2012, Furl, Simpy, Spurl.net, Gnolia, Faves, and
Connectbeam are no longer active services. Digg was founded in 2004
with a related system for sharing and ranking social news, followed
by competitors Reddit in 2005and Newsvine in 2006.As of 2011, both
Digg and Reddit are ranked in the top 300 websites in terms of web
traffic by alexa.com.
A simple form of shared vocabularies does emerge in social

bookmarking systems (folksonomy). Collaborative tagging exhibits a
form of complex systems (or self-organizing) dynamics. Although
there is no central controlled vocabulary to constrain the actions of
individual users, the distributions of tags that describe different
resources have been shown to converge over time to stable power law
distributions. Once such stable distributions form, the correlations
between different tags can be examined to construct simple
folksonomy graphs, which can be efficiently partitioned to obtain a
form of community or shared vocabularies. While such vocabularies
suffer from some of the informality problems described below, they
can be seen as emerging from the decentralized actions of many users,
as a form of crowdsourcing.
From the point of view of search data, there are drawbacks to such
tag-based systems: no standard set of keywords (i.e., a folksonomy
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instead of a controlled vocabulary), no standard for the structure of

such tags (e.g., singular vs. plural, capitalization), mistagging due to
spelling errors, tags that can have more than one meaning, unclear
tags due to synonym/antonym confusion, unorthodox and
personalized tag schemata from some users, and no mechanism for
users to indicate hierarchical relationships between tags (e.g., a site
might be labeled as both cheese and cheddar, with no mechanism that
might indicate that cheddar is a refinement or subclass of cheese).
7.2 Advantages of using Social News Sites
One of the benefits of social media is that it can help your

organization more visible to the public you’re trying to reach. And
one of the ways you can make it easier for more customers to take
notice is to share great content, whether informative articles, photos
or videos. Social news sites such as Digg, Reddit and Delicious
provide ways to promote this content in a way that can attract more
traffic, link love and, hopefully, interested new customers to your
website. In a nutshell, here’s how social news sites work: users post
content to a social news website, and other users can choose to
promote content they like further.
The specifics, including how popular articles are determined and

displayed, will vary from site to site, but the underlying concept is the
same. Social news sites facilitate a participatory culture, eliminating
the gatekeeping of mainstream news sources and allowing the public
to decide what counts as "news." In addition to the characteristic of a
collective intelligence, social news websites “implies the technical,
economic, legal, and human enhancement of a universally distributed
intelligence that will unleash a positive dynamic of recognition and
skills mobilization.”
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That is to say that this collective intelligence that social news websites
possess, share a collective vision and awareness of how their actions
are integrated with those of other individuals. Social news websites
provide a new and innovating way to participate in a community that
is constantly being flooded with new information. These social news
websites “include opportunities for peer-to-peer learning, a changed
attitude toward intellectual property, the diversification of cultural
expression, the development of skills valued in the modern
workplace, and a more empowered conception of citizenship.” With
that said, these websites can function collectively to shape and
reshape democratic opinions and perspectives. Social news sites also
support democratic participation by allowing users from across
geographic boundaries the ability to access the same information,
respond to fellow users views and beliefs, and create a virtual sphere
for users to contribute within.
7.3 Social News sites
7.3.1 Digg
Digg is a news aggregator with an editorially driven front page,

aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as
science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was
launched in its current form on July 31, 2012, with support for sharing
content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
Formerly, Digg had been a very popular social news website,
allowing people to vote web content up or down, called digging and
burying, respectively. Quantcast had estimated Digg's monthly U.S.
unique visits at 3.8 million. Digg's popularity prompted the creation
of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting
systems such as Reddit.
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In July 2008, the former company took part in advanced acquisition

talks with Google for a reported $200 million price tag, but the deal
ultimately fell through. Four years later, on July 12, 2012, Digg was
sold in three parts: the Digg brand, website and technology were sold
to the current owner, Betaworks, for an estimated $500,000; 15 staff
were transferred to the Washington Post's "SocialCode" for a reported
$12 million; and a suite of patents were sold to LinkedIn for about $4
million. Digg started as an experiment in November 2004 by
collaborators Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay
Adelson. The original design by Dan Ries was free of advertisements.
The company added Google AdSense early in the project but
switched to MSN adCenter in 2007.
The site's main function is to let users discover, share and recommend
web content. Members of the community can submit a webpage for
general consideration. Other members can vote that page up ("digg")
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or down ("bury"). Although voting takes place on digg.com, many

websites add "digg" buttons to their pages, allowing users to vote as
they browse the web. The end product is a series of wide-ranging,
constantly updated lists of popular and trending content from around
the Internet, aggregated by a social network.
Additions and improvements were made throughout the website's

first years. Digg v2 was released in July 2005, with a new interface by
web design company silverorange. New features included a friends
list, and the ability to "digg" a story without being redirected to a
success page. One year later, as part of Digg v3, the website added
specific categories for technology, science, world and business, videos,
entertainment and gaming, as well as a "view all" section that merged
all categories. Further interface adjustments were made in August
2007.
By 2008, Digg's homepage was attracting over 236 million visitors

annually, according to a Compete.com survey. Digg had grown large
enough that it was thought to affect the traffic of submitted webpages.
Some pages experienced a sudden increase of traffic shortly after
being submitted; some Digg users refer to this as the "Digg effect".
Digg's v4 release on August 25, 2010, was marred by site-wide bugs
and glitches. Digg users reacted with hostile verbal opposition.
Beyond the release, Digg faced problems due to so-called "power
users" who would manipulate the article recommendation features to
only support one another's postings, flooding the site with articles
only from these users and making it impossible to have genuine
content from non-power users appear on the front page. Frustrations
with the system led to dwindling web traffic, exacerbated by heavy
competition from Facebook, whose Like buttons started to appear on
websites next to Digg’s.
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In July 2012, Digg was sold in three parts: the Digg brand, website
and technology were sold to Betaworks for $500,000; 15 staff were
transferred to the Washington Post's SocialCode project for $12
million; and a suite of patents were sold to LinkedIn for around $4
million. Digg v1 launched a day early on July 31, 2012. It features an
editorially driven front page, more images, and top, popular and
upcoming stories. Users can access a new scoring system. There is
increased support for sharing content to other social platforms such as
Twitter and Facebook.
Features of Digg
In response to the announced shutdown of Google Reader, Digg

announced on March 14th, 2013 that it was working on its own RSS
reader. Digg Reader launched on June 28, 2013 as a web and iOS
application. An Android app was released on August 29, 2013.
The Digg algorithm samples a diverse group of users to identify

trending content, but in the past it was much more dependent on
flocking behavior. In 2006, an anonymous user wrote a blog post
accusing an O'Reilly writer of stealing Digg's CSS and HTML. It has
been possible for users to have disproportionate influence on Digg,
either by themselves or in teams. These users are sometimes
motivated to promote or bury pages for political or financial reasons.
Serious attempts by users to game the site began in 2006. A top user
was banned after agreeing to promote a story for cash to an
undercover Digg sting operation. Another group of users openly
formed a 'Bury Brigade' to remove "spam" articles about US politician
Ron Paul; critics accused the group of attempting to stifle any
mention of Ron Paul on Digg. Digg hired computer scientist Anton
Kast to develop a diversity algorithm that would prevent special
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interest groups from dominating Digg. During a town hall meeting,

Digg executives responded to criticism by removing some features
that gave super users extra weight, but declined to make "buries"
transparent. However, later that year Google increased its page rank
for Digg. Shortly, many 'pay for Diggs' startups were created to profit
from the opportunity. According to TechCrunch, one top user charged
$700 per story, with a $500 bonus if the story reached the front page.
Social Marketing on Digg
Members of the Digg community can submit and share content to the
Digg network under the main categories of Business, Entertainment,
Gaming, Lifestyle, Offbeat, Politics, Science, Sports, Technology, and
World News. These broad categories allow for almost any area of
content to be submitted. When content is voted upon by other
members of the Digg community (also known as getting diggs or
being dugg), it gets the chance to be discovered not only by your own
followers, but also the community at large by making it to the Holy
Grail – the Digg homepage (or when you’re logged in, the Top News
section). While the exact formula to what gets on the homepage is a
mystery, the general theory is that a submission which receives a high
number of votes within a short amount of time will likely make it to
the top of the list. Digg is also a little bit more marketing friendly than
their main competition Reddit.
If you want your submissions to get views and diggs, the best place to
start is by having a strong Digg following. Getting followers on Digg
is a bit trickier than getting followers on Twitter. My best tips on the
matter are as follows.
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• Digg and comment on submissions in your area of interest - The

more active you are, the more your profile will be seen by others
and followed by people with similar interests.
• Link to your Digg profile everywhere - This includes your email

signature, forum signature, website, blog, and social networks that
allow you to have links to your other social profiles such as Google
+ and Facebook. Give your Digg profile a tweet every now and
again too so you can get new followers off of your Twitter
connections.
• Follow people in hopes that they follow you back - If you want to
find new people to follow on Digg, including the top users based
on most promotions, rising stars, and top commenters, you will
want to visit the Find People page. You can find people based on
who you are currently connected with on Twitter, Google, and
Facebook too.
• Add the Digg Button to your content - Digg offers a few styles to
choose from – you can add the JavaScript code directly onto pages
you want dugg or, for self-hosted WordPress and other CMS driven
sites, you can add the JavaScript code into your theme’s template.
• Share your submission on Twitter - If you’re not sure people will

get the hint by just directing them to your piece of content with the
integrated Digg Button, your next option is to send them directly to
the submission itself on Digg. To get a link to your submission, just
click on the comments for it and share the direct URL which usually
looks like digg.com/news/category/your_submissions_title.
• Reach out to people directly via Instant Messenger and email -

Some of the most successful pieces of content (besides the ones that
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naturally get diggs) are the ones marketed by people with a

network. Know who your connections are that use Digg and send
them a friendly request to give your submission a vote if they like
it.
7.3.2 Reddit
Reddit is a social news and entertainment website where registered

users submit content in the form of links or text posts. Users then vote
each submission "up" or "down" to rank the post and determine its
position on the site's pages. Content entries are organized by areas of
interest called "subreddits". Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman
and Alexis Ohanian. It was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in
October 2006 and became a direct subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent
company, Advance Publications in September 2011. As of August
2012, Reddit operates as an independent entity. Reddit is based in San
Francisco, California.
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The site is a collection of entries submitted by its registered users,

essentially a bulletin board system. The name "Reddit" is a
portmanteau of "read/edit" and of "read it", e.g., "I read it on Reddit".
The site is split into numerous categories, known as "subreddits". As
of 2013, the default subreddits are a combination of educational
subreddits (news, science, technology, worldnews), entertainment
subreddits (gaming, movies, music, television, videos), discussion
subreddits (askreddit, askscience, books, explainlikeimfive, iama,
todayilearned) and humour and image sharing subreddits
(adviceanimals, aww, earthporn, funny, gifs, pics, wtf) along with the
meta subreddit "bestof". In total 23 subreddits are visible on the front
page to new users and those who browse while not logged in with an
account.
When items (links or text posts) are submitted to the site, redditors
(users) can vote for or against them (upvote/downvote). Each
subreddit has a front page that shows newer submissions that have
been rated highly. Redditors can also post comments about the
submission, and respond back and forth in a conversation tree of
comments; the comments themselves can also be upvoted and
downvoted. The front page of the site itself shows a combination of
the highest rated posts out of all the subreddits a user is subscribed to.
Front page rank, for both the general front page and for individual
subreddits, is determined by the age of the submission, positive
("upvoted") to negative ("downvoted") feedback ratio and the total
vote count. Dozens of submissions cycle through these front pages
daily. As of June 2013, commentary on the site is particularly active,
with several communities generating thousands of comments per day.
Registering an account with Reddit is free and does not require an

email address to complete. Users are referred to as "redditors", a
portmanteau of "reddit editor". When logged in, users have the ability
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to vote on submissions and comments to increase or decrease their

visibility and submit links and comments. Users can also create their
own subreddit based around any topic of their choosing, and
interested users can add it to their front-page by subscribing to it. For
example, As of November 2013, the Wikipedia subreddit - focused on
discussion and news on and about Wikipedia - has over 126,000
subscribers. Reddit comments are often abbreviated and filled with
terms that are understood within the Reddit community ranging from
CCW (for “comments and criticisms welcome”) to SO (for “significant
other.) Users earn "link karma" and "comment karma" for submitting
popular links and comments, which accumulate as point values on
their user profile. The points do not lead to a prize as they are meant
to stand in as a badge of honor for the user among their peers,
although redditors have attempted to redeem their points before.
Reddit also allows submissions that do not link externally. These are
called "self posts" or "text submissions". Many discussion-based
subreddits allow only text-only submissions such as "AskReddit" -
where users are only allowed to pose broad, discussion based
questions to the community at large. Self posts do not accumulate
karma points for the submitter, but they can still be voted on like
other content. Reddit communities occasionally coordinate to skew
polls on other websites, such as in 2007, when Greenpeace allowed
web users to decide the name of a killer whale it was tracking. Reddit
users voted en masse to name the whale "Mr. Splashy Pants", and
Reddit administrators further encouraged this by changing the site
logo to a whale during the voting. In December of that year, Mister
Splashy Pants was announced as the winner of the competition.
Within the site, Redditors commemorate their "cake day" once a year,
which is the anniversary of the day the user's account was first
created. The "cake day" offers no special benefit, except a small icon
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representing a slice of cake appears next to that user's name for 24

hours.
Redditors can "friend" one another, which gives a redditor quick

access to posting and comments of their friend list. The commenting
system and friend system, along with a certain "Reddit ethos" (called
reddiquette on Reddit), lend Reddit aspects of a social network,
though not to the extent of Facebook, Google+, and other websites
aimed at social networking. The Reddit community socialize at local
parks and bars around the world, and there are many localized
subreddits for local meetings.
Subreddits
Reddit entries are organized into areas of interest called "subreddits".

Historically, the front page was the main subreddit, and other areas
were "subreddits". There is now no main subreddit. Instead, there are
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multiple default subreddits dealing with topics such as books,

television, and music. Any registered user may create a subreddit,
although a link to do so does not appear on the user's homepage until
after thirty days. There are over 5,400 active subreddits to peruse,
with a default set of 20 put in place in October 2011. The default
subreddits were changed again in July 2013, bringing the total to 22.
Users may customize what is shown on their personal front page by
subscribing to individual subreddits through a page that shows all
subreddits available. The site's general front page is also accessible via
a link to "all" at the top of the individual user's customized front page.
One of the most popular subreddits is IAmA ("I Am A") where a user
may post "AMAs" (for "Ask Me Anything"), or similarly
"AMAAs" (for "Ask Me Almost Anything") – prompts for others to
ask questions about any topic. AMAs are open to all Reddit users, and
use the site's comment system for both questions and answers. A
number of notable individuals have participated in the IAmA
subreddit, including President Barack Obama (while campaigning for
the 2012 election), Madonna, Chris Hadfield (who answered
questions from the International Space Station), Bill Gates, Psy,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, and many others as of October 2013, Barack
Obama's AMA is the highest rated on the site; the increased traffic
brought down many parts of the website when the AMA occurred on
August 29, 2012
The Reddit Effect
Also known as the "SlashDot effect", the Reddit effect is when a

smaller website has a high influx of traffic due to Reddit. Since Reddit
is such a large site, the traffic is immense and can easily crash smaller
sites. In order for users to see crashed websites, several Reddit bots
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have been created that take a snapshot of the website before large
amounts of traffic flood the affected website.
• Be active in the community: Marketers need to become an active

part of related reddit communities. There are thousands of different
“subreddits” or categories, which are communities based around
different topics. Due to the popularity of reddit, there is a subreddit
for just about everything. It is very important that you follow the
rules at every subreddit that you frequent. Some of the subreddits
don’t allow users to post image links. Other places only allow
image links. If you break one of these rules, you probably will
receive a warning or have your submitted link removed. 
 
Reddit advises users to, “Give feedback to others, talk about issues
that interest you, and be a good member of the community.
redditors don't care that you have something to promote, they care
what you think and that you have interesting things to say.” You
need to take this advice to heart. If you want success, you will need
to spend time with the reddit communities that are relevant to your
content.
• Don’t promote your submitted links: When you submit a link to

reddit, you must then leave it alone. Don’t ask for your Facebook
followers or Twitter followers to up-vote your content on Reddit. If
you do, you are breaking the rules. Marketers should not ask for
votes on reddit, even on your twitter or blog or forum - it will get
your account banned, and in extreme cases can get your domain
banned.” Reddit means business regarding this rule. They have
banned websites in the past. and will ban more websites in the
future. So, resist the urge to ask people to upvote your link. The
content you submit to reddit needs to stand on its own merits.
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7.4 Advantages of using bookmarking sites
A social bookmarking service is a centralized online service which

enables users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web
documents. Many online bookmark management services have
launched since 1996; Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the
terms "social bookmarking" and "tagging". Tagging is a significant
feature of social bookmarking systems, enabling users to organize
their bookmarks in flexible ways and develop shared vocabularies
known as folksonomies. Unlike file sharing, social bookmarking does
not save the resources themselves, merely bookmarks that reference
them, i.e. a link to the bookmarked page.
Descriptions may be added to these bookmarks in the form of

metadata, so users may understand the content of the resource
without first needing to download it for themselves. Such
descriptions may be free text comments, votes in favor of or against
its quality, or tags that collectively or collaboratively become a
folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, "the process by
which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared
content".
Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of
bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers
to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and
tagged by other users. It also helps to promote your sites by
networking with other social book markers and collaborating with
each other. As these services have matured and grown more popular,
they have added extra features such as ratings and comments on
bookmarks, the ability to import and export bookmarks from
browsers, emailing of bookmarks, web annotation, and groups or
other social network features. Social bookmarking helps Internet
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users to store, manage and search for their favorite web pages never
easier as well as enables them to share this bookmark with friends
based on classified keywords. Users can view all the links that have
been grouped according to keywords, topics or thanks to the support
of search engines.
Nowadays, social bookmarking has become a powerful tool for SEO

experts for its unique features as following:
• The first feature lies at bookmark share which not only enables the
marked link to be public to everyone but brings a respectable
number of visitors back to your site as well. A highly interesting in
Social Bookmarking is its interconnection. For example, when you
share any link in a social bookmarking like Digg, it will
immediately be connected to your friends via other social accounts
such as Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, etc. Obviously, only one click can
make your link available in multiple social networks, pushing the
connection value many times up.
• The more bookmarks a link gets, the better value. Also it is a signal
for search engines to pay special attention to your site, then
improving its rank in Google. There are two kinds of link: Internal
link to the articles on Gizmodo & the other link redirected to your
post named Dofollow link which is in connection with the title of
your article; therefore, such a link can put influence on the ranking
of your page. If you don’t yet have a social account, it’s high time
for you to join as many social networks as possible. First, you are
required to create an account in social networks so that you can
login and manage your links more efficiently. After that, you can
freely submit your favorite links onto these websites.
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7.5 Social bookmarking site
7.5.1 StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that

finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow
users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are
personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and
social-networking principles. Toolbar versions exist for Firefox,
Google Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari. StumbleUpon
also works with some independent Mozilla-based browsers. Native
mobile StumbleUpon apps exist for Windows, iOS, Android, and the
Amazon Appstore.
StumbleUpon was founded in November 2001 by Garrett Camp,

Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd during Garrett's time in
post-graduate school in Calgary, Canada. The idea of creating a
company was established before the content: of the five or six ideas
for products, StumbleUpon was chosen. Garrett describes in a BBC
interview the moment for him in which he felt the company had
really taken off: "When we passed the half a million mark (in
registered users), it seemed more real.”
The popularity of the software attracted Silicon Valley investor Brad

O'Neill to take notice of the company and assist with a move to San
Francisco, as well as bringing in subsequent fund-raising totaling $1.2
million from other angel investors. StumbleUpon was owned by eBay
from May 2007, when it was acquired for $75 million until April 2009,
when Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and several investors bought it
back. StumbleUpon is now an independent, investor-backed startup
once again, with offices in San Francisco and New York City.
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StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering (an automated process

combining human opinions with machine learning of personal
preference) to create virtual communities of like-minded Web surfers.
Rating Web sites update a personal profile (a blog-style record of
rated sites) and generate peer networks of Web surfers linked by
common interest. These social networks coordinate the distribution of
Web content, so that users "stumble upon" pages explicitly
recommended by friends and peers. Giving a site a thumbs up results
in the site being placed under the user's "favorites". Furthermore,
users have the ability to stumble their personal interests like "History"
or "Games". Users rate a site by giving it a thumbs up, thumbs down
selection on the StumbleUpon toolbar, and can optionally leave
additional commentary on the site's review page, which also appears
on the user's blog. This social content discovery approach automates
the "word-of-mouth" referral of peer-approved Web- sites and
simplifies Web navigation.
In the settings section of Stumbleupon you can further filter the types
of webpages you may come across. There are interest filters which
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allow you to include only content for all ages, R rated content, or X
rated content. There are also content filters in which you can choose to
allow stumbles with audio, video, flash, and images. On October 24,
2011, StumbleUpon deleted years’ worth of user-generated content,
and removed HTML blogging, standalone blog posts, and
photoblogging capabilities. Additionally, all previous blog posts were
converted from HTML to plain text, and all photos were deleted from
previous blog posts. StumbleUpon stated, "Over time, we’ve come to
realize that we are not able to support and scale a blogging platform,
in addition to our recommendation engine." Content that is "stumbled
upon" is informed by user's stated preferences, the thumbs up and
down of their friends, and demographic information, among other
factors the company does not fully disclose.
StumbleUpon Video
On December 13, 2006, StumbleUpon launched their StumbleVideo

site at http://video.stumbleupon.com/. The new site allows users
without a toolbar to "stumble" through all the videos that toolbar
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users have submitted and rate them using an Ajax interface. The site
currently aggregates videos from CollegeHumor, DailyMotion,
FunnyOrDie, Google, MetaCafe, MySpace, Vimeo and YouTube.
StumbleUpon launched a version of StumbleVideo for the Internet
Channel Web browser that runs on the Wii console on February 12,
2007. This version of StumbleVideo is optimized for the Wii's smaller
screen resolution and offers similar functionality to that of the original
version.
StumbleThru
In April 2007, StumbleUpon launched the StumbleThru service,

allowing users of the toolbar to stumble within sites such as YouTube,
The Onion, Public Broadcasting Service and Wikipedia. According to
the announcement of the feature, StumbleUpon plans on adding
additional Web sites in the future. As of June 13, 2010, sites using
StumbleThru include BBC.com, Blogger, Break.com, CNN.com,
Collegehumor, Flickr.com, FunnyorDie.com, Howstuffworks.com,
HuffingtonPost.com, Metacafe.com, Pbs.org, PhysOrg, Rolling Stone,
Scientific American, The Onion, Wikipedia, Wired.com, Wordpress,
and YouTube. The StumbleThru service allows registered users to
stumble on specific sites like the ones listed above, rather than the
entire Web.
Paid Discovery is StumbleUpon’s ad system. StumbleUpon’s platform

lets users surf the web by Stumbling to sites that match their interests,
simply by hitting a button on their browser or mobile device. With
Paid Discovery, an advertiser’s URL (website, video, etc.) becomes
part of that stream. Up to 5% of all stumbles are reserved for Paid
Discovery where the advertisers directly insert their web page into
the user experience. This means the audience lands directly on their
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web pages, videos, and photos. Users can also provide feedback
(thumbs up / thumbs down) on this content.
Since Paid Discovery sends visitors directly to the advertiser’s page,

there’s no need to create an ad; the advertiser’s entire web page is the
ad. When an ad is delivered a user, a green icon or “Sponsored” will
appear in the toolbar or mobile app, denoting a paid stumble.
StumbleUpon doesn’t serve typical display ad formats, such as pop-
ups/interstitials, banners, etc. Advertisers have different options for
how quickly and how many users they can reach with their content,
depending on their marketing objectives. Serving priority dictates the
order with which their web page is considered for placement, based
on available inventory.
Marketing on StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is website that helps you to “stumble upon” articles,

posts and photographs that match your interests. After reading the
article presented to you, you can choose whether or not to “like” it.
The more likes an article receives, the more times it will be presented
to future stumblers, which in turn means more page views for that
website owner.
Many website owners and bloggers encourage the sharing of their

articles to StumbleUpon in hopes of driving traffic to their sites.
StumbleUpon can be a very powerful tool; when used correctly, some
stumblers have garnered up to several thousand hits on a single post,
in a single day.
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How to Get Started on StumbleUpon
Before you can enjoy the additional traffic that StumbleUpon may
bring, you first need to create an account and find other users to
follow. Like with many other social media and social bookmarking
sites, you are given the option to search among your current contacts.
As you find and follow other users, be sure to check the box beneath
the Follow button that reads, “Accept Shares from the Toolbar”. This
extra action will come into play when sharing your own content with
others.
The StumbleUpon Toolbar
The best way to use StumbleUpon is to download the toolbar to your

browser (For all available browser options, visit
StumbleUpon’s toolbar download page.)
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This is the toolbar that Google Chrome users see. If you are using
StumbleUpon to find new content to read, click the Stumble! button at
the far left. You’ll then be presented with a new article to check out.
For those who use StumbleUpon as a potential traffic driver, you’ll

mainly be focused on the Thumb Up (I like it!) and Share buttons on
the toolbar.
How to Thumb Up a Post
StumbleUpon’s Thumb Up button is similar to a Facebook Like. By

clicking it, you are telling StumbleUpon that you give that post your
vote.
If the post you thumbed up has been liked before, the Thumb Up
button will turn green and you’ll remain on that web page.
But if you are the first person to thumb up a particular post, it is

considered a “Discovery” and you’ll be prompted to complete a
review of that post. It is important for every thumbed up post to
receive a review, and a review pop-up is only presented after a
discovery. So be sure to take a few moments to mark the required
fields and add tags for all posts that you discover.
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Adding Your Own Content
Once a post is discovered, it’s added to the extensive StumbleUpon

database, giving it a chance at another user stumbling upon it.
StumbleUpon wants its database of articles to be based on unbiased
readers’ suggestions of enjoyable, worthwhile posts, so excessively
thumbing up your own content is frowned upon.
That’s not to say that you can never thumb up your own content.
Many stumblers use the 10% approach, meaning that for every 10
articles they thumb up, only 1 is their own content. Also, you can use
the toolbar’s Share function, which is a way to suggest your content
to your followers in hopes they’ll read it, enjoy it and click the Thumb
Up button.
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How to See Your Favorites
As you start thumbing up others’ content (and hopefully receiving

some thumb ups of your own), you may want to check on how those
articles have fared.
From your Profile page, click on the Favorites tab to see the number of

views, reviews, likes and tags of each article you’ve thumbed up.
Paid Discovery delivers an engaged target audience directly to you:

no clicking through ads or links. 100% engagement, 100% of the time.
StumbleUpon provides two plans – Standard and Add-On.
The Standard plan is ideal for Brands and marketers looking to make
big impact and is priced at $0.10+ Per Unique Visitor. Some of the
salient features of this plan are:
• Priority Serving in content streams
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• Allows brands and marketers to target by gender, device, and

interest bundles
• Advanced reporting includes robust site performance and visitor

data, traffic analysis, and website quality score
• Integration with Google Analytics
The Add-On plan is ideal for Brands and marketers seeking to engage
target audience and is priced at $0.12+ Per Unique Visitor. Some of
the salient features of this plan are:
• Priority serving in content streams
• Allows brands and marketers to target by one or more targeting

add-ons such as:
• Age
• Precise interest
• Geo
• Engaged visitors
• Pricing will increment based on number and type of targeting

parameters chosen
• Advanced reporting includes robust site performance and visitor

data, traffic analysis, and website quality score
• Integration with Google Analytics
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7.5.2 Delicious
Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking web service

for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was
founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo in 2005.
By the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users
and 180 million unique bookmarked URLs. The site was sold to AVOS
Systems on April 27, 2011 and relaunched in a "back to beta" state on
September 27 that year.
Delicious uses a non-hierarchical classification system in which users

can tag each of their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms
(generating a kind of folksonomy). A combined view of everyone's
bookmarks with a given tag is available; for instance, the URL http://
delicious.com/tag/wiki displays all of the most recent links tagged
"wiki". Its collective nature makes it possible to view bookmarks
added by other users. Delicious also allowed users to group links
with similar topics together to form a "Stack", and include title and
descriptions for the Stack page. Stacks could be worked on
collaboratively with other users, and could be followed and shared
with other users. Stacks were added in September 2011 and removed
in July 2012.
Delicious has a "hotlist" on its home page and "recent" pages, which
help to make the website a conveyor of Internet memes and trends.
Users can also explore stacks on the home page by navigating
categories like Arts and Design, Education, et cetera. To facilitate
newcomers, Delicious provides an option to import bookmarks from
the web browsers to its site so that new users can quickly get started
with the site. Delicious is one of the most popular social bookmarking
services. Many features have contributed to this, including the
website's simple interface, human-readable URL scheme, a novel
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domain name, a simple REST-like API, and RSS feeds for web
syndication. Use of Delicious is free. The source code of the site is not
available, but a user can download his or her own data through the
site's API in an XML or JSON format, or export it to a standard
Netscape bookmarks format.
All bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable by default,

although users can mark specific bookmarks as private, and imported
bookmarks are private by default. The public aspect is emphasized;
the site is not focused on storing private ("not shared") bookmark
collections. Delicious linkrolls, tagrolls, network badges, RSS feeds,
and the site's daily blog posting feature can be used to display
bookmarks on weblogs.
7.5.2.1 Features of Delicious
1. Introducing the Delicious-Facebook Connector: Finding links

that have been shared on Facebook can be a pain, which is why
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Delicious is thrilled to announce the introduction of the new

Facebook Connector for Delicious! Much like the Twitter
Connector that was rolled out in March, the new connector
imports every link ever shared on the user’s wall, and can even
maintain the original privacy settings given to the links on
Facebook!
The Facebook Connector can be found on the sources page of the

user’s account settings.
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2. Consolidating tags and stacks: Stacks were introduced last year as

a visually rich way to think about the links and have been blown
away by the amazing content users has created. But given the
upcoming launch of new products from Delicious’ parent
company, AVOS, and the focus on simplifying the Delicious site,
the management has realized the value of stacks is limited for the
users moving forward.
For this reason, has Delicious decided to simplify how users organize
links on Delicious by consolidating stacks into tags. Users will no
longer be able to create stacks on Delicious starting in early August,
2012.
So what does this mean for existing stacks?
• Users will not lose their links.
• All stacks will be converted automatically into tags. Stack titles will
transition into new tag names, and will be applied to all links
currently in a stack.
• Stack-specific descriptions, categories, comments, link order, and

stack followers will not be included as part of the migration.
• The existing links, tags, and notes outside of stacks will not be
affected.
3. Marketing on Delicious: Delicious is a pretty new social media

platform with a brand new way for people to share what they are
surfing, particularly their bookmarks, which are the sites that they
frequent the most, so before we go into marketing with Delicious
let’s take a look at what it is exactly first.
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Delicious describes itself as a Social Bookmarking service. We all love

to bookmark our favorite sites, but we all know how difficult it is to
manage all of our bookmarks, share them our friends, and we
definitely can’t access them from different computers than our own.
With Delicious we can do all of those things with one service.
Delicious serves as a cloud for all of our bookmarks.
Delicious’s homepage looks pretty similar to Digg, but after further

speculation users can see why marketing with Delicious was
essential. When you view an article on Digg or Reddit, you may take
a look at it once or twice and then be finished, but with Delicious
you’ll visit the site over and over again, because that’s just what you
do with bookmarks. They’re your favorite sites and you will always
come back for more. So marketing with Delicious done right, can
really bring you the ROI you want. Instead of having different
bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a
single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers.
Even if you’re not on a computer you own, you can still get to your
bookmarks on the Delicious website.
If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting

bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of
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course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find
interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features
to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most
interesting.
See what’s hot with Delicious users by checking out our popular tags.
By looking at popular bookmarks for a tag, you’ll be able to discover
the most interesting bookmarks on the topics you’re most interested
in. Browse bookmarks on just about anything from the best
programming tips to the most popular travel sites, all in an easy to
read format.
The big appeal of marketing with Delicious is that its users can make
friends and see what they bookmark as well. So when we are talking
about marketing with Delicious, what we really need to do is find
users with influence. Sounds difficult, but Delicious separates its
material into areas of interest, so if you can somewhat base your
contacts on a popular area of interest, then are on your way to
marketing with Delicious.
7.5.2.2 The marketing aspect of Delicious
People don’t look at Delicious the same way as Facebook, but

nonetheless they both have friends and friends influence the
popularity of your bookmark. So make sure you share your links
with your friends, and you’ll be one step closer to front page status.
Marketing with Delicious can start with your own friends and move
forward from there.
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Create Focused Content
One thing that you have to realize when marketing with Delicious is
that you need to keep your content consistent. People bookmark sites
to find up to date related content, so you’ll need to keep it fresh and
focused on one particular area, or it will go largely ignored. You’ll
also want to give a lot of consideration to the title of your post,
because most Delicious users post their new bookmarks to their
personal walls on a daily basis. So marketing with Delicious requires
captivating headers. You may want to also consider using your
company name in the title, so that when you appear on the front page
again and again then people will associate it with your company.
7.6 Short Case study: Semantic tags
General Description
Faviki is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to annotate the

contents of web pages by Wikipedia concepts. Using Wikipedia as a
source of a universal controlled vocabulary, it provides so-called
‘semantic tags’ which are standardized and computer-interpretable.
In this way, Faviki is able to solve some common problems related to
classic ‘folksonomy’ tags, in particular: polysemy, synonymy, different
lexical forms, and lack of a commonly agreed meaning of terms. In a
wider perspective, Faviki aims to speed up the transition from Web
2.0 to the Semantic Web.
The Problem
Tags represent keywords used to describe a web resource. They have

been introduced by Del.icio.us to a wider audience in 2003, and soon
after they became an extremely popular way of organizing and
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sharing large collections of data in online social communities.

Compared to previous organization methods (categories/folders),
tags are simple to add, flexible, and can designate membership in
more than one category at the same time. When used collectively they
become a powerful categorization tool.
However, tags have some considerable disadvantages. They do not

provide information about their meaning, the semantics of the words
tags may be composed of polysemy (the same word can refer to
different concepts), synonymy (the same concept can be pointed out
using different words), different lexical forms (different noun forms,
different verb conjugation, acronyms, different languages),
misspelling errors are some problems that arise when using tags.
For example, the tag ‘orange’ might refer to the fruit or the color, and
the different tags ‘movie’ and ‘film’ can be used to describe the same
concept. This lack of semantic distinction leads to inappropriate
connections between items, making them hard to search and browse
through. Tags are essentially a full text search mechanism, not graph
linkages that machines can understand. Simply put, the same reason
that makes tags difficult to process also makes them so popular - they
are just random words.
The Linked Open Data effort provides sets of referencable,

semantically interlinked resources with defined meaning. However,
motivating people to use these resources for publishing structured
data is still a great challenge, as applications that would allow them to
do that are still overly complex and not user-friendly. On the one
hand there are flexible tags with little structure or semantics widely
accepted as a way of organizing information on the Web, and, on the
other hand, there exist highly formalized and complex semantic
technologies and standards struggling to find their way into the
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mainstream. Finally, the problem is — how to add meaning to the

tags, or, from the other perspective, how to bring Web 2.0 practices to
semantic technologies and make them more flexible and easier to use.
The Application
Faviki is a social bookmarking tool which allows users to use

common, predefined tags to annotate web pages. Using the Wikipedia
collection of articles as a source of a universal controlled vocabulary, it
provides so-called ‘semantic tags’. In this way, web pages saved by
users are not just described by random words but connected to
uniquely defined concepts.
Bookmarks in Faviki are saved through a simple bookmarklet

interface. Here, users can add tags and edit information about
bookmarks, such as a title of the web page, users’ notes, a quote from
the web page, or the privacy options. Adding tags in Faviki is slightly
different from classic tagging because semantic tags must correspond
to some Wikipedia concept. Faviki allows users to add tags in more
than one way by starting to type in the input field and choosing a
suggested Wikipedia concept from the autocomplete list by clicking
on auto-suggested concepts. Auto-suggestion is accomplished by
means of the Zemanta API which analyzes the content of a page and
finds the most relevant Wikipedia concepts. by searching for
Wikipedia concepts by means of an integrated Google search
restricted to the domain en.wikipedia.org. by browsing through the
user‘s tags entered for the previously bookmarked web pages.
Bookmarks can be browsed in Faviki via tag clouds or the retrieved

by search. Moreover, Faviki automatically shows related semantic
tags based on previously added bookmarks in the system. Faviki
helps users to expand their knowledge by providing more
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information on tags, such as short abstracts, images, homepage URLs

and links to original Wikipedia articles. Faviki experiments with
Wikipedia categories used in Wikipedia for classification of articles. In
Faviki, categories allow users to track bookmarks by broader topics. It
automatically classifies tags and thus it is able to ‘know’ that, for
instance, ‘RDFa’, ‘Web Ontology Language’ and ‘Controlled
vocabulary’ belong to the common category ‘Knowledge
representation’.
Faviki exploits another dimension of semantic tags that has not been
possible before — multilingual semantic tagging. It allows users to
tag in 14 different languages, keeping web resources connected to the
main English version and translating tags into the users’ languages.
This means that, for instance, a resource that is tagged by different
users in Japanese, French, and German tags, can be still found by
using tags in Russian, because English is used as an universal
reference.
By combining several services, namely Zemanta API, Google

Language API and DBpedia, Faviki connects non-English contents to
English Wikipedia concepts. The whole process from the fetching the
core text of a web page to suggesting relevant tags in various
languages. Faviki’s features go beyond those of classic social
bookmarking tools thanks to the fact that it is based on a consistent
system containing the same collection of tags for every user. The
improved search and organization of data makes Faviki significantly
more effective, especially in the long run.
The Solution
In order to be computer-interpretable, tags have to be unique,

standardized, and their names have to be agreed upon. Moreover, the
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set of tags has to be huge. Is there a source of such tags? Fortunately,

there is. The tremendous job of creating definitions of a huge number
of terms has already been done and the result can be found in the
‘central knowledge source of mankind’ — Wikipedia. Besides
displaying articles in a standardized (semi-structured) way, Wikipedia
also has a standardized way of uniquely naming titles and the URLs
of associated articles which have been created and are constantly
perfected by thousands of contributors.
Polysemy is solved in Wikipedia by adding additional information

directly into names. ‘Orange (colour)’ and ‘Orange (fruit)’ both have a
clear meaning now. In addition, take an often used example of a word
with plenty of meanings — ‘java’. The article ‘Java’ represents an
island in Indonesia, ‘Java (programming language)’ is a popular
programming language, ‘Java coffee’ is a coffee produced on the
island of the same name, ‘Java (cigarette)’ refers to a brand of Russian
cigarettes, etc. Note that an article with the name consisting solely of
the term in question (in this case - ‘Java’) tends to be the most
representative one, if there is any. Synonymy, on the other hand, is
solved in Wikipedia by the system of redirects. Try to type ‘http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movie’ into the address bar. You will be
automatically redirected to the article named ‘Film’.
Thanks to DBpedia, it is possible to use the information from

Wikipedia in an elegant way. DBpedia is a project that extracts
structured information from Wikipedia and makes it accessible on the
Web in the form of RDF triples, under the GNU Free Documentation
License. As Wikipedia contains articles about many general-purpose
concepts, DBpedia can also be seen as a huge ontology that assigns
URLs to a large number of concepts. This knowledge base can serve
as the universal controlled vocabulary we are looking for.
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Put into context, tags referring to DBpedia are not just words
anymore, they act as objects with properties specified further by
literals or typed links to other objects. In DBpedia there are some
properties common to all tags, such as: an abstract, a picture, labels in
multiple languages, and several properties dealing with classification.
For example, if we look at the DBpedia page for ‘Keith Richards’, we
can learn some additional properties about him such as his year of
birth, his type of voice, the genre of music he plays, as well as his
connections to other tags, such as that he is: born in ‘Dartford’, a
current member of the band ‘The Rolling Stones’, plays ‘Fender
Telecaster’ and ‘Gibson Les Paul’, and has occupations of ‘Music
producer’, ‘Musician’, and ‘Songwriter’.
Of course, the creation of a rich ontology out of Wikipedia data

defining all these properties in a consistent fashion is a great
challenge. The current state is not perfect, but this data is much more
useful compared to classic non-semantic tags. DBpedia tags have
great potential for supporting information integration and for
enhancing the ‘intelligence’ of the Web. Faviki currently uses 5.6
million DBpedia concepts — 2.7 million English titles and 2.9 million
titles from other 13 languages. Some of DBpedia datasets that are
used frequently, such as titles and links to categories, are imported
into Faviki. Other data, like additional information about concepts
(multilanguage descripitons, images, homepages) is accessed via
simple SPARQL queries. To ensure that Faviki is up to date with
Wikipedia, it is periodically synchronized with new DBpedia releases.
Moreover, It uses different APIs for finding Wikipedia articles in order
to help users find most appropriate and most recent concepts.
Key Benefits of Semantic Technology
• Enabling a tag standardization by adding a meaning;
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• Connecting Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web with semantic tags;
• Connecting Wikipedia and social bookmarking;
• Re-using RDF data available on the Web;
• Facilitating information integration and knowledge discovery
• Facilitating communication between different services;
• Enabling auto-classification and multilingual semantic tagging;
Conclusion
Web 2.0 showed that it is possible to have successful systems based on

decentralized creation and collaboration of big online communities.
Despite all its disadvantages, tagging emerged as a (good enough)
way to integrate and organize the data. Semantic tags, as an
intersection point of the two worlds, have the potential to enable
much faster evolution of the Web by providing a solid foundation
from which the Semantic Web can grow soundly.
We believe that Faviki’s approach demonstrates a number of benefits

compared to classic social bookmarking systems, thanks to the fact
that semantic tags are just parts of a much more powerful system. By
providing consistency, additional useful information about tags, auto-
organization using Wikipedia categories, and the ability to
‘understand’ tags in different languages, it just scratches the surface of
the possibilities that continuously emerge.
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7.7 Activities
1. In this chapter we have discussed the two prominent social news

websites. Research online to create a list of five other prominent
social news websites and their role in sale of digital media.
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2. In this chapter we have discussed the two prominent social

bookmarking websites. Research online to create a list of five other
prominent social bookmarking websites and their role in sale of
digital media. 
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7.8 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about Marketing through Social

News and Bookmarking sites. A social news website features user-
posted stories that are ranked based on popularity. Users can
comment on these posts, and these comments may also be ranked.
Since their emergence with the birth of web 2.0, these sites are used to
link many types of information including news, humor, support, and
discussion. Social news relies on crowd sourcing to shape focus in a
bottom-up fashion, forming a type of collective intelligence. Social
news sites facilitate democratic participation on the web.
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In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that

they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually
public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people
or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another
combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can
usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or
via a search engine.
One of the benefits of social media is that it can help your

organization more visible to the public you’re trying to reach. And
one of the ways you can make it easier for more customers to take
notice is to share great content, whether informative articles, photos
or videos. Social news sites such as Digg, Reddit and Delicious
provide ways to promote this content in a way that can attract more
traffic, link love and, hopefully, interested new customers to your
website. In a nutshell, here’s how social news sites work: users post
content to a social news website, and other users can choose to
promote content they like further.
Digg is a news aggregator with an editorially driven front page,

aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as
science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was
launched in its current form on July 31, 2012, with support for sharing
content to other social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.
Formerly, Digg had been a very popular social news website,
allowing people to vote web content up or down, called digging and
burying, respectively. Quantcast had estimated Digg's monthly U.S.
unique visits at 3.8 million. Digg's popularity prompted the creation
of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting
systems such as Reddit.
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Members of the Digg community can submit and share content to the
Digg network under the main categories of Business, Entertainment,
Gaming, Lifestyle, Offbeat, Politics, Science, Sports, Technology, and
World News. These broad categories allow for almost any area of
content to be submitted. When content is voted upon by other
members of the Digg community, it gets the chance to be discovered
not only by your own followers, but also the community at large by
making it to the Holy Grail – the Digg homepage. While the exact
formula to what gets on the homepage is a mystery, the general
theory is that a submission which receives a high number of votes
within a short amount of time will likely make it to the top of the list.
Digg is also a little bit more marketing friendly than their main
competition Reddit. Some of the tips that can be used to make
followers on Digg are:
• Digg and comment on submissions in your area of interest

• Follow people in hopes that they follow you back
• Add the Digg Button to your content
• Reach out to people directly via Instant Messenger and email
Reddit is a social news and entertainment website where registered

users submit content in the form of links or text posts. Users then vote
each submission "up" or "down" to rank the post and determine its
position on the site's pages. Content entries are organized by areas of
interest called "subreddits". Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman
and Alexis Ohanian. It was acquired by Condé Nast Publications in
October 2006 and became a direct subsidiary of Condé Nast's parent
company, Advance Publications in September 2011. As of August
2012, Reddit operates as an independent entity. Reddit is based in San
Francisco, California. Reddit also allows submissions that do not link
externally. These are called "self posts" or "text submissions". Many
discussion-based subreddits allow only text-only submissions such as
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"AskReddit" - where users are only allowed to pose broad, discussion

based questions to the community at large. Self posts do not
accumulate karma points for the submitter, but they can still be voted
on like other content. Reddit communities occasionally coordinate to
skew polls on other websites, such as in 2007 when Greenpeace
allowed web users to decide the name of a killer whale it was
tracking. Reddit users voted en masse to name the whale "Mr. Splashy
Pants", and Reddit administrators further encouraged this by
changing the site logo to a whale during the voting. In December of
that year, Mister Splashy Pants was announced as the winner of the
competition.
A social bookmarking service is a centralized online service which

enables users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web
documents. Many online bookmark management services have
launched since 1996; Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the
terms "social bookmarking" and "tagging". Tagging is a significant
feature of social bookmarking systems, enabling users to organize
their bookmarks in flexible ways and develop shared vocabularies
known as folksonomies. Unlike file sharing, social bookmarking does
not save the resources themselves, merely bookmarks that reference
them, i.e., a link to the bookmarked page.
StumbleUpon is a discovery engine (a form of web search engine) that

finds and recommends web content to its users. Its features allow
users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos that are
personalized to their tastes and interests using peer-sourcing and
social-networking principles. Toolbar versions exist for Firefox,
Google Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, and Safari. StumbleUpon
also works with some independent Mozilla-based browsers. Native
mobile StumbleUpon apps exist for Windows, iOS, Android, and the
Amazon Appstore. StumbleUpon is website that helps you to
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“stumble upon” articles, posts and photographs that match your

interests. After reading the article presented to you, you can choose
whether or not to “like” it. The more likes an article receives, the more
times it will be presented to future stumblers, which in turn means
more pageviews for that website owner. Many website owners and
bloggers encourage the sharing of their articles to StumbleUpon in
hopes of driving traffic to their sites. StumbleUpon can be a very
powerful tool; when used correctly, some stumblers have garnered up
to several thousand hits on a single post, in a single day.
Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) is a social bookmarking web service

for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. Delicious uses a
non-hierarchical classification system in which users can tag each of
their bookmarks with freely chosen index terms. Its collective nature
makes it possible to view bookmarks added by other users. Delicious
also allowed users to group links with similar topics together to form
a "Stack", and include title and descriptions for the Stack page. One
thing that you have to realize when marketing with Delicious is that
you need to keep your content consistent. People bookmark sites to
find up to date related content, so you’ll need to keep it fresh and
focused on one particular area, or it will go largely ignored. You’ll
also want to give a lot of consideration to the title of your post,
because most Delicious users post their new bookmarks to their
personal walls on a daily basis. So marketing with Delicious requires
captivating headers. You may want to also consider using your
company name in the title, so that when you appear on the front page
again and again then people will associate it with your company.
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1. Explain the applications of a social news website.
2. Write a short note to describe the applications of a social

bookmarking website.
3. From the point of view of search data, what are the drawbacks to
tag-based systems?
4. Discuss some of the advantages of using Social News Sites.
5. Describe in your own words the concept of the ‘The Reddit Effect’
6. State the process of used by StumbleUpon to to create virtual

communities.
7. Explain in brief the procedure to conduct marketing on

StumbleUpon.
8. Discuss the process of consolidating tags and stacks in Delicious.
9. Explain in brief the procedure to conduct marketing on Delicious.
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
Video Lecture
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QUANTIFYING SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING EFFORTS
Chapter 8
Quantifying Social Media Marketing Efforts
Objectives
After going through this chapter, you will be able to:
• understand the critical engagement metrics and track process of

on-site metrics
• measure the impact of social media
• calculate the return on investment in social media marketing
• understand practical measurement methods for social media
marketing
Structure:
8.1 Introduction
8.2 Understanding the Critical Engagement Metrics
8.3 Track Process of On-site Metrics
8.4 Measuring the Impact of Social Media
8.5 Calculating the Return on Investment in Social Media
Marketing
8.6 Practical Measurement Methods for Social Media
Marketing
8.7 Short Case study: Crowdsourcing by Crowdspring
8.8 Activities
8.9 Summary
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8.1 Introduction
You’ve done everything right: You have a decent and growing social
media presence. You have even been able to generate some revenues
from your social media efforts. So how do you take it to the next
level? In the social world, the best way to market your products and
services is to have others do it for you. Your goal is to create brand
advocates who believe enough in your brand to help you sell your
products and services. Your social media marketing goals may or may
not be tied to the purchasing process, which involves strengthening
your brand, acquiring contacts, generating sales and gaining brand
advocates. Whatever your goals may be, it is important to use a goal-
based approach for evaluating your social media marketing efforts’
ROI. It is not until you fully understand your objectives that you will
know whether social media is working for your business.
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Measurement is critical to building social media acceptance within an

organization beyond the marketing department. Facebook pages and
Twitter profiles are useful as marketing extensions, no doubt about it.
The really big levers of social technology (reshaping products and
services; creating a robust, two-way, collaborative relationship with
customers; and using what is learned throughout your organization)
are starting to become apparent. Throughout this chapter is an
underlying theme of the value of measurement and its role in
determining a return on investment (ROI). A fact that needs to be
considered by Social Media sites is not to overly focus on ROI unless
you’ve first established that ROI is actually the appropriate end
measure for your intended use of social technology.
For example, a key performance indicator, or KPI may be more

appropriate and more informative if there is not a clear “investment”
or financial return in the form of new, incremental revenue or costs
avoided as a an expected outcome of your project. ROI is important,
but determining why (and when) ROI is the appropriate measure can
make even more difference to your success.
8.2 Understanding the critical engagement metrics
When defining the metrics program, Social Media Organizations

should be clear about the difference in the types of end results you are
seeking. In addition to ROI — which is nearly always measured in
financial terms like increased revenue, cost savings, or cost avoided as
a result of an investment — you should also define target KPIs —
numerical “key performance indicators” like conversions or new
registrations — as well as intangible values associated with simply
having a presence in specific social channels. 
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What should be clear is that without meaningful and quantitative

measurement you stand essentially no chance of ever seeing social
media and Web 2.0 technologies adopted through your organization.
Why not, and why the central role for metrics? Without the
coordinated, committed help of the entire organization you stand no
chance of winning, and without quantitative measurement — the
universal language throughout most organizations — you’ll face an
essentially undoable job in trying to rally your larger team to
understand why their participation — beyond marketing—is
essential.
Social media engagement analytics is at the core of putting the social

web to work in business. When time is taken to understand the
quantitative tools and measurement points, the social web is
transformed from a source of largely unstructured qualitative data to
a conversational framework that can be viewed and tracked
quantitatively. It is this quantitative discipline that enables two
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essential best practices when it comes to applying social media to

your business or organization:
• Making sense of what people are talking about in a way that leads
to prioritized insights in the context of competing capital efforts
• Connecting these conversations and the results of your programs

designed to change these conversations for the better by addressing
adverse conversations and building on beneficial ones.
In traditional communications, the activities that parallel the study of

conversations via social media analytics include press clipping and
reporting, focus groups and consumer research, so-called pre- and
post-campaign marketplace surveys, and similar. In each of these,
there is a specific collection/identification/result process that
underlies a fundamental learning process. This learning process is
designed to anchor the brand, product, or service in the desires,
needs, and reactions of customers, influencers, and others whose
opinions matter with regard to what is talked about in the
marketplace. In each of these measurement practices, there is a
distinct set of metrics or an accepted method of stating a learned or
observed outcome.
Social media analytics is built around many of the basic practices

applied to traditional media — who’s talking, what are they saying —
now applied to the (digital) conversations happening on the social
web. So what’s different? For starters, because social media is defined
in some way as leveraging the massively scalable publishing
capabilities afforded to each social web participant — in simple terms,
recognizing that it is easy for reasonably well connected people to
command a reach that rivals TV within local markets or to reach more
accurately defined niches and social circles. This means that the well
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connected homemaker, or the hobbyist blogger, or anyone else with a

defined passion and a basic command of social media publishing can
amass a real audience and can exert real influence within it.
Quantitatively measuring this reach and impact is just as important
on the social web as it is any place else. Further, because each
conversation is literally time and date stamped, signed by what is
more often than not a real person and associated with a specific URL
that is forever discoverable, these conversations form a robust body of
information that is very useful in managing your business. This is
what social media analytics is all about.
8.3 Track process of on-site metrics
Understanding what is driving the measurements you collect is

essential to running your social media program and connecting what
you learn to your business. The application of web analytics to your
business should provide insights into how your online assets — your
website, blog, or community site, for example — are driving your
business and contributing to the achievement of business objectives.
In turn, understanding these business drivers should inform or
connect to your internal intelligence processes.
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By connecting the measurements to business processes, and by

understanding how the process results drive the measurements
themselves, you can use the trends you observe to steer your business
or organization in ways that ensure success with regard to your
business objectives. The necessary requirement here — especially as
teams that span functional areas of a business or organization are
brought under the increasingly large umbrella of social business and
Social CRM — is a quantitatively based understanding of how
processes translate into results. The measurements you observe are
indicators of results but are not themselves the results. By taking the
steps to connect the measures to the business objectives, you ensure
that you are tying what you’ve observed or learned through listening,
for example, to the processes that create the conversations in the first
place. In this way the social web efforts — whether outreach,
listening, participation, or other forms of engagement — become
measurably tied to the ongoing operation of your business or
organization.
Don’t Overcomplicate - Note here that “going beyond the basics”

doesn’t necessarily mean moving to advanced or exotic
measurements, but instead combining core metrics in ways that
provide deeper insights and that show you how to tie actions and
results to your business objectives. Again, the key insight in
measurement is taking the time to understand how relatively simple
measurements can be combined, trended, and reinterpreted to
provide useful information. This means that it is important, especially
in the early stages of any social business program, to measure
aggressively. Measure everything you can. Sure, you may end up
discontinuing the collection of some items, but you will surely
discover others that are surrogates or even direct indicators that
provide the data you need to make sense of newer social web-based
consumer behaviors.
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Consider a metric like bounce rate, the relative measure of visitors

who land on your site and then leave immediately, without looking at
anything else. Dig into bounce rate, slice it by source, slice it by date,
trend it over time, and run correlation analysis against it. What’s
driving it? Do adjacent trends in blog activity or conversations on
Twitter correlate strongly with the trends in bounce rate that you
observe? These are the questions you really want to answer, because
when you know what is driving your bounce rate rather than
knowing only the number itself, you can actually develop a plan to
reduce it — or to understand why further reduction has a diminishing
economic payback.
8.4 Measuring the impact of Social Media
Moving beyond the basics of data collection is the difference between

“12 people visited last week, up from 8 the week before” and
“qualified visitors to our site increased following the release of the
latest podcast program.” Counting visitors is important, no doubt
about it. Studying the ways in which people traverse your site, for
example, before they choose to make an actual purchase gives you a
way to spot “qualified” visitors earlier in the process and thereby the
ability to implement specific practices that drive these conversions
further. Connecting the next step — connecting the changes in
qualified traffic to specific Social Web-based programs — enables
another level of understanding. This is, of course, the path to
understanding ROI, and in the larger sense being able to make the
case across your organization for meaningful spending on social
business efforts. It’s all about connecting the dots. Like the silos that
exist inside organizations, data that is collected in isolation is less
useful than data that is connected and thereby, reflects holistically
across processes.
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This leads to the larger question of “How are web analytics related to
or indicative of interactions originating on the social web?” The
connections between the two are found by linking the sources of
social web conversations, influencers, and the incoming traffic to your
website, support forum, or community application.
Correlation has an application in connecting social media analytics

and other web and business analytics. First, it’s easy to do: Collect
your listening results, clean them to remove noise and irrelevant
results, and then attempt to correlate the listening results volume and
sentiment with web traffic. If the patterns match — if the correlation
is high — you’ve got an indication that some deeper connection is at
work. This is not proof of such a connection! But it is an indication
that looking further might be worthwhile, that what happens on the
social web might be impacting what you observe at your website. The
connection in this case is fairly intuitive, to be sure, but consider how
this technique might be used to uncover relationships that are not
immediately obvious,
Try shifting the dates, too: Lag the website traffic by a day or two
days or a week and see if the relative measure of correlation
improves. If so, you are seeing an indication that what happens on the
social web has a lifetime, or a transit time, across the social web. This
is certainly the case with brand advertising, for example, where a
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build-up time in awareness is observed. This is very different from,

say, TV-based direct response or impulse buying (think QVC) where
running a spot immediately triggers a known (or certainly knowable)
buying response. It makes sense that these same conditions apply
between the social web and your online purchase points or
conversion funnels: It’s worth your time to sort out the relationships.
If correlation is important, causation is the extremely critical as well.
When you nail down causation, you’ve got real power as the
implication is that you can actually drive a particular outcome. The
test for causation is tougher, and rigorous, systematic A/B testing
should be at the core of your analytics practices because of it. This is
as applicable to your use of the social web as it is to your use of any
other marketing technology that can be optimized.
By testing and comparing, you’ll separate cause from correlation and

identify the key activities and practices that will drive your business.
Take the time to examine the “usual suspects” in the context of web
analytics — bounce rate, page views, time spent, and unique users —
and connect these to your social media program by selectively
changing elements of the social media program and noting the
results. Building on what you learn, add your conversion results to
the mix: Using Google Analytics, for example, set up conversion goals
and then compare the results of your A/B testing around your social
programs with your conversions. The result will be a quantitative
understanding of your business, and the way in which your social
programs support your overall business objectives.
Following is a quick look into five specific examples of how social

media and social business best practices are being used now to build
better organizations.
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• Listening: Always begin with a listening program, and incorporate

this into each of the following items. This provides the starting
platform to keep you on track.
• Customer-driven design: Focus your listening, and invite

customers to provide specific inputs. Use this to evolve your
product or service offering and to connect your customers deeply
into your business organization.
• Crowdsourcing: Rather than trying to make sense of 10,000 ideas,

let your customers sort out the list. They’ll vote for what they want
and pass on the rest. You can focus on what they want.
• Knowledge exchange: How much faster can problems be solved

when everyone involved — including your customers and your
employees — work together to solve them? Collectively solving
problems is a great way to show your customers you love them.
• Gaming: Incentive for sharing - A lot actually can be learned from a

gamer. Adding a game-based challenge to basic activities like
content posting can turn spectators into participants.
8. 5 Calculating the Return on Investment in Social Media

Marketing
The ‘Return on Investment’ is extremely critical to any business and

Social Media Marketing is no different. In a recently survey done on
online customers to learn more about their challenges and goals with
social media three critical factors came to the fore. According to the
survey respondents, their largest social media challenges are:
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1. Lack of time
2. Uncertainty about how to determine ROI
3. Lack of knowledge about social media
There is clearly a need for sharing and learning more about social
media marketing and its ROI. Many social media marketers look to
transfer their familiarity with email marketing to social media
marketing. This is a good first step, but to really take your social
media marketing to the next level, you need to deeply analyze social
media and its ROI.
It is very easy to jump in and start measuring your ROI by counting

how many Facebook fans and Twitter followers you have. Or you
could get more advanced and measure retweets and likes. Although
these are important social media components to track, a goal-based
approach to ROI will help you better understand the “why” behind
the “how” of your marketing initiatives. Like email marketing, there
is no universal rule for how to measure the ROI of your social media
efforts. The return on your investment in social media marketing,
however, should directly tie in to the goal of your social media
presence and messages. Most respondents focus on strengthening
their brands, generating sales, and acquiring contacts.
There are two important facts in these results that are worth
highlighting:
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1. Survey respondents are more interested in using social media to

“talk” than to “listen.” Note that the top three goals focus on
engaging with social audiences. The two least-favored goals
(collecting competitive intelligence and monitoring business) gear
more toward using social media to “listen” to the market.
2. The top three goals are similar in that they are all phases in the
customer purchasing process. A typical purchasing process starts
with becoming aware of a brand, then showing enough interest to
become a contact, and finally, deciding to make a purchase. It is
important to understand your role in the purchasing process. The
diagram below shows the roles in purchasing process:
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8.6 Practical Measurement Methods for Social Media

Marketing
Business Analytics
The business application of social media is — or should be — driven

by its connection to business. In the previous sections, the links
between social media analytics and web analytics were examined,
with the result being a systematic testing process aimed at finding the
relationships (correlation) that drive results and then extracting the
key (causation) that you can replicate to grow your business. Initially,
these techniques may be limited to marketing and your use of the
social web as a marketing platform, as is often the case with social
media marketing programs designed to create additional outreach
points or places where people within your organization can
participate with customers on behalf of the brand. Business analytics
takes the techniques that are useful in marketing and applies them to
the business as a whole. In particular, in the case of social media and
the social web, there is a measurable connection to business,
expressed through a result against a set of established business
objectives. That level of understanding needs to be the end goal, and
you need to be relentless about getting there.
In social business applications, the connection to the business itself is

an order of magnitude more fundamental. In the simplest sense, it is
operations more than marketing that drive the conversations:
Therefore, it is the way in which the business is managed that
becomes the focus, as opposed to how well the business is marketed.
In true social business applications, the social processes and the
software or technology that supports them are more likely to be paid
for by the operations or information systems budgets than they are by
the marketing department. The marketing department, by
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comparison, may pay for the programs associated with talking about
the ways in which customers are benefiting from the implementation
of a social business program, or in building the outreach or listening
platforms that drive them.
Looking at social business technology and software as a business

infrastructure expense rather than as a marketing expense makes
clear the ways in which the analytics are required to roll up. Social
media analytics, web analytics, and influencer assessments must all
be viewed in the context of their relationship to fundamental business
analytics because they are the metrics that matter to the owners of the
budgets and cost centers that are more likely than not going to be
paying for the cost of implementing a social business program.
Business analytics joins with social, influencer, and web analytics on
two fronts:
• Business analytics, especially as related to commerce applications,

provides an additional set of metrics that can be used in the overall
effort to document success and provide insights for improvement.
• Business analytics provide the stepping-off point into Social CRM.

Since business analytics relate to the actual business operation,
connecting business analytics to social and web analytics provides
an end-to-end picture of the customer experience — manifesting
itself as conversations on the social web — with the internal
business processes that created the conversations.
Closest to web analytics are the business metrics associated with your
online commerce pipeline (assuming you have one). For businesses
that do some part or all of their business online (“pure online plays”),
the commerce pipeline offers a number of measurement points. Social
commerce platforms excel in not only improving close rates,
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increasing checkout value and the cross-selling of related products,

but also in providing continuous, real-time quantitative feedback you
can use to guide and evolve your business offering.
Offline and Nonbusiness Processes
For businesses that do not have a specific online commerce process —

for example, for a cause that is collecting signatures or a business-to-
business pre-sales funnel — the thought process and the approach to
business analytics is still largely the same: The commerce pipeline is
simply replaced with the defined conversion process. Tools like
Google Analytics offer well-developed conversion analysis support
that you can use to refine your online programs in the same ways you
would any other commerce process. The connection is this: The
objective is to pull together your various sources of data that supports
measurement against KPIs along with the business process metrics
around your established business metrics. This can be tied back to
what you are observing on the social web. This basic metrics-driven
methodology is what closes the feedback loop that the social web sets
in place: It is this basic feedback loop that will drive a social business.
The feedback loop defined in the basic relationship between the

purchase funnel and conversations that impact conversion is the
connection between the operation of the business and its marketing
effectiveness. This is equally true — though specific metrics may
change — for commerce applications, for nonprofit and cause-related
groups, and for other types of organizations. The remaining aspect of
measurement and metrics is, therefore, to identify the key business
analytics that can be shared across the organization and used to guide
the overall processes driving continuous improvement in your
products or services. Business analytics can be pulled from a variety
of places within the organization.
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Covered here are two of the more immediately useful sources of

business analytics when setting out to create a social business
program. These areas are commerce analytics — after all, at the end of
the day we generally are in business to sell something (even in some
abstract manner) — along with measures of acceptance or rejection.
The latter is particularly important as a class of metrics because it is
very often a near direct measure of what underlies the conversations
observed on the social web, in support forums, ideation platforms,
and traditional CRM systems. Between these two, a significant
portion of what defines and drives a social business program can be
found. This makes these ideal starting points.
Commerce and pipeline analytics are an obvious first choice: To the

extent that one can directly tie social media analytics and (where
applicable) web analytics to sales, for example, a very tight reporting
loop is established. In these cases, it is very likely that the study of
correlation and causation—identifying the specific relationships
between various measurements and the economic performance of the
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business—will yield a fundamental set of metrics that can be used to

guide the business vis. a vis. social media analytics.
What about nonbusiness applications of social business or its use by

organizations where the direct connects are less obvious? This is
where the studies of correlation and causation, combined with your
own domain expertise around the processes that drive your
organization, are valuable. You can employ correlation, for example,
to literally find or discover useful quantitative measurements, and to
then press deeper into the understanding of why these particular
observations are correlated. Not only is this directly useful, you can
often find new business fundamentals — especially as they relate to
the emerging marketplace defined by the social web — that will help
ensure that you achieve your business or organizational objectives.
Turning to the acceptance and rejection measures —take defect
reports or calls abandoned as examples — a second and equally rich
measurement area is found.
Tracking a defects report, the issues that result in difficult or repeated

service calls or call satisfaction are very powerful in identifying those
specific aspects of a product or service that are likely to be talked
about. In addition, these types of measures are very likely to be
indicative of what will be said, and so can be expected to correlate
strongly with the conversations observed and tracked through the
social media analytics programs. The net of the measurement
discussion is this: Given that you already have a solid understanding
of your business and your business objectives, begin an aggressive
measurement program that ties social media analytics to your
business. The eye candy — the sentiment charts, trend lines, and
radar plots — are all cool. But the connection to business is what
matters: Connect up web analytics and business analytics to get more
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out of your social media measurements, and more out of your social
media and social business programs.
8.7 Short Case study: Crowdsourcing by Crowdspring
Crowdspring attracts artists — designers, typographers, CSS wizards,

and more — who compete for projects. Unlike eLance, where project
awards are made before the actual deliverable is prepared,
Crowdspring participants see the actual designs as they are evolving
— in public and in view of competing designers — as the process
occurs. If you’ve never tried a true crowdsourcing application, here’s
your chance. For a couple of hundred dollars, you can get a snappy
new logo and card design for your upcoming birthday party...or just
about any other event that you wanted “branded.” Of course, if your
business needs a visual makeover, you can use Crowdspring to do
that too and you pay after the fact.
What really makes Crowdspring work, however, is the participation

of the buyer in collaboration with the designers. Take a logo design as
an example: Imagine that you want a logo for your new business.
First, you create an account and define what you want — color
preferences, style choices, and maybe some examples of logos you
like. At this point the designers review the project, and those wishing
to compete jump in and start offering design ideas. Now, if the buyer
doesn’t participate beyond this point, the designers will offer a range
of styles and the buyer may pick one, but this isn’t the optimal path.
One of the Crowdspring rules is that buyers have to pick a winner
based on what is offered: This means it’s in the direct interest of the
buyer to improve what’s offered. The best way to do this is to
participate alongside the designers, not as a designer but rather
through feedback on the designs being produced. As the buyer
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actively signals which of the submitted designs is favored, the

designers will all start shifting in that direction.
The more the buyers participate, the more the designers participate. If
you want people to participate — in any social application — show
them you are serious by participating yourself. After ten days, buyers
choose the design they like, and the logo (or whatever design work
you requested) is delivered. It’s really quite amazing how well
Crowdspring works.
8.8 Activities
1. Five specific examples of how social media and social business

best practices are being used now to build better organizations
have been discussed in this chapter. With the help of the Internet
research at least three more social business best practices
examples. 
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2. In this chapter we have discussed the concept of ‘Crowdspring’.

Research online to find actual uses of Crowdspring to generate
revenue for digital products. 
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8.9 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about, Measurement is critical to

building social media acceptance within an organization beyond the
marketing department. Facebook pages and Twitter profiles are useful
as marketing extensions, no doubt about it. The really big levers of
social technology (reshaping products and services; creating a robust,
two-way, collaborative relationship with customers; and using what is
learned throughout your organization) are starting to become
apparent. Throughout this chapter is an underlying theme of the
value of measurement and its role in determining a return on
investment (ROI). A fact that needs to be considered by social media
sites is not to overly focus on ROI unless you’ve first established that
ROI is actually the appropriate end measure for your intended use of
social technology.
When defining the metrics program, Social Media Organizations

should be clear about the difference in the types of end results you are
seeking. In addition to ROI — which is nearly always measured in
financial terms like increased revenue, cost savings, or cost avoided as
a result of an investment — you should also define target KPIs —
numerical “key performance indicators” like conversions or new
registrations — as well as intangible values associated with simply
having a presence in specific social channels.
Social media analytics is built around many of the basic practices

applied to traditional media — who’s talking, what are they saying —
now applied to the (digital) conversations happening on the social
web. So what’s different? For starters, because social media is defined
in some way as leveraging the massively scalable publishing
capabilities afforded to each social web participant — in simple terms,
recognizing that it is easy for reasonably well connected people to
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command a reach that rivals TV within local markets or to reach more

accurately defined niches and social circles. This means that the well
connected homemaker, or the hobbyist blogger, or anyone else with a
defined passion and a basic command of social media publishing can
amass a real audience and can exert real influence within it.
Quantitatively measuring this reach and impact is just as important
on the Social Web as it is any place else. Further, because each
conversation is literally time and date stamped, signed by what is
more often than not a real person and associated with a specific URL
that is forever discoverable, these conversations form a robust body of
information that is very useful in managing your business. This is
what social media analytics is all about.
Understanding what is driving the measurements you collect is

essential to running your social media program and connecting what
you learn to your business. The application of web analytics to your
business should provide insights into how your online assets — your
website, blog, or community site, for example — are driving your
business and contributing to the achievement of business objectives.
In turn, understanding these business drivers should inform or
connect to your internal intelligence processes.
Moving beyond the basics of data collection is the difference between

“12 people visited last week, up from 8 the week before” and
“qualified visitors to our site increased following the release of the
latest podcast program.” Counting visitors is important, no doubt
about it. Studying the ways in which people traverse your site, for
example, before they choose to make an actual purchase gives you a
way to spot “qualified” visitors earlier in the process and thereby the
ability to implement specific practices that drive these conversions
further. Connecting the next step — connecting the changes in
qualified traffic to specific social web-based programs — enables
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another level of understanding. This is, of course, the path to

understanding ROI, and in the larger sense being able to make the
case across your organization for meaningful spending on social
business efforts. It’s all about connecting the dots. Like the silos that
exist inside organizations, data that is collected in isolation is less
useful than data that is connected and thereby reflects holistically
across processes.
The ‘Return on Investment’ is extremely critical to any business and

Social Media Marketing is no different. In a recently survey done on
online customers to learn more about their challenges and goals with
social media three critical factors came to the fore. According to the
survey respondents, their largest social media challenges are:
• Lack of time
• Uncertainty about how to determine ROI
• Lack of knowledge about social media
Looking at social business technology and software as a business

infrastructure expense rather than as a marketing expense makes
clear the ways in which the analytics are required to roll up. Social
media analytics, web analytics, and influencer assessments must all
be viewed in the context of their relationship to fundamental business
analytics because they are the metrics that matter to the owners of the
budgets and cost centers that are more likely than not going to be
paying for the cost of implementing a social business program.
Business analytics takes the techniques that are useful in marketing

and applies them to the business as a whole. In particular, in the case
of social media and the social web, there is a measurable connection
to business, expressed through a result against a set of established
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business objectives. That level of understanding needs to be the end

goal, and you need to be relentless about getting there.
In social business applications, the connection to the business itself is

an order of magnitude more fundamental. In the simplest sense, it is
operations more than marketing that drive the conversations:
Therefore, it is the way in which the business is managed that
becomes the focus, as opposed to how well the business is marketed.
In true social business applications, the social processes and the
software or technology that supports them are more likely to be paid
for by the operations or information systems budgets than they are by
the marketing department. The marketing department, by
comparison, may pay for the programs associated with talking about
the ways in which customers are benefiting from the implementation
of a social business program, or in building the outreach or listening
platforms that drive them.
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1. Which technique is at the core of putting the social web to work in

business?
2. What is the importance of meaningful and quantitative

measurement in the context of the social media and Web 2.0
technologies?
3. From the point of view of social media, what are the results
achieved by connecting the measurements to business processes?
4. Explain the statement ‘Correlation has an application in

connecting social media analytics and other web and business
analytics’.
5. Enlist and explain any three specific examples of how social media
and social business best practices are being used now to build
better organizations?
6. Identify the need for sharing and learning more about social
media marketing and its ROI.
7. Explain in brief why in social business applications, the connection

to the business itself is an order of magnitude more fundamental.
8. Discuss the process of offline and nonbusiness processes from the

context of social media.
9. Explain in brief why commerce and pipeline analytics are an

obvious first choice from the context of social media.
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REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
Video Lecture
409
INNOVATIVE TRENDS AND BEST PRACTICES OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTS
Chapter 9
Innovative Trends and Best Practices of the  
Social Media Experts
Objectives
• Three key social media trends for 2013

• How to optimize social media marketing strategy for the future
• Social cloud: social networks and cloud computing connections
• Social media marketing best practices
• Techniques to improve social media marketing efforts
Structure:
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Three Key Social Media Trends for 2013
9.3 Optimizing Social Media Marketing Strategy for the Future
9.4 Social Cloud: Social Networks and Cloud Computing
Connections
9.5 Social Media Marketing Best Practices
9.6 Techniques to Improve Social Media Marketing Efforts
9.8 Activities
9.9 Summary
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9.1 Introduction
Social media is changing the face of our personal interactions, with an

unprecedented rate of adoption that outpaces previous innovations
such as the radio, telephone, television, and even the iPod. These tools
are intuitive to use and allow people to share information, collaborate,
discuss common interests and build relationships. With this trend
well underway, businesses are beginning to explore how social media
can help them grow and improve profits, not just with common
practices such as outbound marketing, but to enhance business
interactions as part of the innovation and product development
process. An increasing number of companies are trying to make sense
of the world of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, social media applications and
social computing technologies, and align their innovation and
strategic product development priorities with social initiatives. How
can companies improve product innovation by leveraging this
fundamental communications shift in our society today?
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While many companies are familiar with using social media for
outbound marketing and communication efforts, leveraging social
media for product innovation is a new concept for most. the
intersection of innovation and social media has been evolving into a
busier, more crowded place. The pace at which companies of all sizes
and all stages are tapping the potential of social media to make
innovation happen has accelerated dramatically. It is time to examine
the growing link between (open) innovation and social media rapidly
evolving topic.
In open innovation your company works with external companies

(everyone from suppliers, partners, innovation intermediaries and
even competitors) as well as users, consumers, customers and
institutions such as universities during the innovation process. Open
innovation is often about soliciting ideas from outside, but it goes
deeper than just involving others in the idea generation phases; the
contribution from outside your company must be significant. It is also
more than just a partnership where you pay for specific services.
Everyone involved in an open innovation process focuses on
problems, needs, and issues and works them out together. External
input can also come in the form of selected partnerships, entrepreneur
days, supplier summits, town hall meetings, facilitated networks,
alliances, consortia and joint ventures.
The key is that companies need to first understand the many different
kinds of external resources they can bring into their organization and
must focus on those that are most appropriate to their specific
situation. Also, in the context of entrepreneurial companies, you need
to understand the tremendous opportunities open innovation offers
your organization for partnering with larger corporations by being
the source of great ideas that respond to problems they’re trying to
solve. These opportunities, of course, are in addition to the value you
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can obtain from using open innovation as part of your own process
for identifying solutions that will help you get to market faster.
Social media, in contrast, is something almost everyone knows of. We

might not share the same definition, but we have a good idea of what
it is. Social media can be viewed as digital tools and services that
facilitate involvement and interactions between different
stakeholders, whether they are users or business partners, individuals
or crowds, known or unknown. When it comes to open innovation,
social media open up a whole new world of possibilities in terms of
who you can collaborate with to solve problems and bring new
products and services to market. With social media, your ability to
extend your network of contacts who may be able to assist in your
innovation process widens dramatically.
These people can come from anywhere in the world, and right now
you might not even know that they exist. At the same time, for
smaller, entrepreneurial companies, the increased use of social media
for open innovation will increase your ability to identify
opportunities for connecting with larger entities to help them with
their open innovation agendas. Over the past decade, social media
has grown tremendously in variety and has been adopted by
hundreds of millions of people. During this time span, businesses
have recognized that the business uses of these tools are extremely
broad-based.
Over the past decade, social media has grown tremendously in

variety and has been adopted by hundreds of millions of people.
During this time span, businesses have recognized that the business
uses of these tools are extremely broad-based. Initially, many
companies viewed social media in terms of its potential as an exciting
new marketing tool. Then, customer service began to recognize the
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potential of responding quickly to customer complaints via Twitter

and other social media. And more recently, the possibility of
integrating social media into innovation has taken hold.
9.2 Three key social media trends for 2013
1. Google+
A recent Wall Street Journal post says it all, "There's No Avoiding

Google+." Whether you like it or not, the search engine giant is
making it difficult for you to keep ignoring their growing social
network. Why does this tool make sense for your brand? For starters,
Google+ integration now extends to many Google properties, such as
YouTube, Gmail, Blogger, and Search. For Blogger bloggers, you now
have an option to share your posts on your Google+ page with one
easy click, among other features. While it might be difficult to fit
Google+ into your daily routine, it's a good idea to start doing so in
2013.
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There are three reasons to get on Google+," Guy Kawasaki explains to

me in an email. The well-known author of many business books,
including What the Plus! Google+ for the Rest of Us, writes "First,
your activity on Google+ increases the likelihood of people finding
your business via search. Second, Hangouts on Air is an excellent way
to economically reach large audiences via video. Third, the recent
addition of communities enables you to easily organize groups of
people based on shared passions. What's not to love?”
2. Social Media and Aspect of Privacy
Last year we saw the start of what is bound to continue in 2013: your
personal data is a delicious way to attract advertisers. Whether it's
Instagram toying with the legal ownership of your images or
Foursquare forcing you to display your full name, it's getting harder
to manage your own online privacy without doing your homework.
There are two takeaways here. If you're an end user, there are tools
out there to check up on your privacy settings on a regular basis. For
example, PrivacyFix is an easy way to see what type of information
you're putting out to the public. In terms of data ownership, reading
terms of service is a smart, but often daunting way to know your
rights. Another option is to follow some of the top social media blogs,
such as Mashable, to stay up to date on social network policy
changes. For business, privacy blunders are not tolerated well online,
(e.g., one area where companies tend to falter is when they're
launching apps and dip into address books and other places where
they shouldn't be). There is no better way to get in hot water in the
digital space than to lose the trust of your audience.
3. Near Round-the-Clock Monitoring Is a Reality
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It's becoming increasingly important to know what your community

is saying during most hours of the day. For years now there have been
examples of big brands ducking out of the digital world for days at a
time, which is often detrimental to their reputation when a customer's
complaint goes viral. If any one of these businesses were closely
watching conversations in the digital space, they would have quickly
pulled these specials, recognizing that their potential customers were
deeply offended at such questionable timing, and sharing their
disappointment with the online world. Marketers can use Google
online reputation-monitoring services to learn more about services
that follow what's said about you and your company online. They
typically report on your business ratings and reviews, and mentions
of your name on social media and local news sites.
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9.3 Optimizing social media marketing strategy for the

future
Social media has the potential to be a game changer for how

companies innovate and companies need to pay full attention to the
intersection of open innovation and social media if they want to out-
innovate their competitors. This might be unchartered territory, but it
is full of interesting opportunities. The reason why open innovation
and social media are becoming inseparable relates to the fact that the
two are linked by the need for interactions between people both
inside and outside an organization. Interaction and involvement are
key elements for both open innovation and social media.
Companies need to build strong capabilities at this intersection if they

want to out-innovate their competitors. Innovators need to
understand this intersection now, and the purpose of this book is to
provide insights on how you can leverage the tremendous potential of
social media as a key element in your open innovation efforts. As yet,
it is not possible to provide lots of solutions that have been tested by
other companies because the field is just emerging. Developments on
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the intersection of innovation and social media are occurring rapidly,

and as always, social media only works if the conversation is two-
way.
As a part of developing the future strategy to identify those who

possess the knowledge we need to move forward with innovation. If
you have a well-built LinkedIn profile with 300+ connections and
membership in relevant groups, it will take you less than five seconds
to identify people having the specific knowledge you seek. You just
have to type in a keyword in the advanced search function. For those
working at young entrepreneurial companies, LinkedIn opens up the
opportunity to let others know about the expertise held within your
organization. This is possible because everyone wants to be connected
and LinkedIn leverages this desire by providing services that can
really help us with innovation and with business in general.
Also, with the growth of social media like Twitter, we have grown
accustomed to reaching out to and interacting with complete
strangers, not just in other parts of our own country but in countries
on the other side of the world. This is a notion that was unheard of
just a short time ago. The fast pace of developing social media
services and tools is unprecedented. As researchers from Kalypso, a
global innovation consulting firm, noted in their report on a survey
they did on the use of social media in product innovation, the rate of
adoption of social media far outpaces previous communications
innovations such as the radio, telephone, and television.
The three leading social media platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, and

YouTube – each have over 100 million users, with Facebook having
over 800 million with projections calling for over a billion Facebook
users by the end of 2012. Bear in mind that none of these companies
existed a decade ago. The fourth most prominent platform, Twitter,
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also claims to have over 175 million users, but the number of active
users is probably below 100 million, but still impressive given that the
company was only founded in mid-2006. All of these media are
global, of course, meaning that geographic barriers have been erased
(although political barriers to social media still exist in some
countries). Furthermore, we have no idea what tools and services will
be available two years from now. But we do know that innovation
through interaction and involvement is getting easier and easier and
thus, innovators need to seed today in order to reap future benefits.
The use of social media as part of the innovation process is still in its
very early stages but this trend is gaining momentum everyday, and
there is no turning back. Given social media’s incredible reach and the
potential for new and even more amazing platforms to quickly
evolve, companies must begin to figure out how to leverage this
tremendous power. The starting point is to understand that a multi-
target approach is needed because most open innovation efforts lie in
three different circles. There is often a significant overlap, but we still
need to look at each of them separately.
These circles are:
• The innovation community: Here we have thought leaders,

academics, consultants, service providers and corporate voices on
innovation. This community can bring credibility to the innovation
capabilities of a company and this credibility can turn out to be
very important in the next circle, the innovation ecosystem.
• The innovation ecosystem: This is the most important circle for

companies serious about open innovation as this is where things
actually happen. The ecosystem includes the partners (primarily
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other companies, institutions and universities) that help create the

innovation output. It is very much about business-to-business.
Today, very few companies are limited to just one choice when it
comes to picking innovation partners and it is important for aspiring
innovation leaders to become the “preferred partner of choice” within
their industry when it comes to innovation. This takes us back to the
credibility that can be earned in the innovation community. Let’s say
that a potential partner googles your company and discovers that
your company is mentioned in blogs, articles and that you or your
colleagues talk at conferences.
• Customers and users: Some companies and industries more than

others need to pay serious attention to the third circle, which
includes their own customers and users as well as those of their
partners in the innovation ecosystem. This is more about business-
to-consumer than the business-to-business focus we see in the
innovation ecosystem and this is also where we have the
crowdsourcing like initiatives. The importance of each circle varies
from company to company and so does the overlap between the
circles. Companies need to find out how this works for them and
since the circles are different, they also need to apply different
social media tools to them. The key to developing these circles is
through interaction and involvement, which is exactly what social
media offer you the ability to do. With social media you can reach
out to new topic experts, create communities of people interested in
solving a problem, and showcase your company’s innovation
leadership. These are all worthy objectives, but integrating social
media into your innovation efforts also provides hard-core business
benefits.
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9.4 Social Cloud: Social Networks and Cloud Computing  

Connections
Millions of people are connected to the Internet and a lot of those

people are connected on social networking sites. Social networks have
become an excellent platform for sharing and communication that
reflects real world relationships. Social networking plays a major part
in the everyday lives of many people. Facebook is one social
networking site that has more than 400 million active users. The
possibility of social media and cloud integration is compelling. Social
networks are being more than an online gathering of friends. It’s
becoming a destination for ideation, e-commerce and marketing. For
instance, there are some organizations and integrated applications
that make use of Facebook credentials for authentication rather than
requiring their own credentials (for example the Calgary Airport
authority in Canada uses Facebook Connect2 to grant access to their
Wi-Fi network).
Basics of Cloud computing: Cloud computing is the use of computing

resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over
a network (typically the Internet). The name comes from the common
use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex
infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing
entrusts remote services with a user's data, software and computation
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End-users access cloud-based applications through a web browser or

a light-weight desktop or mobile app while the business software and
user's data are stored on servers at a remote location. Proponents
claim that cloud computing allows companies to avoid upfront
infrastructure costs, and focus on projects that differentiate their
businesses instead of infrastructure. Proponents also claim that cloud
computing allows enterprises to get their applications up and running
faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and
enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and
unpredictable business demand. In the business model using software
as a service, users are provided access to application software and
databases. Cloud providers manage the infrastructure and platforms
that run the applications. SaaS is sometimes referred to as "on-
demand software" and is usually priced on a pay-per-use basis. SaaS
providers generally price applications using a subscription fee.
Proponents claim that the SaaS allows a business the potential to

reduce IT operational costs by outsourcing hardware and software
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maintenance and support to the cloud provider. This enables the

business to reallocate IT operations costs away from hardware/
software spending and personnel expenses, towards meeting other IT
goals. In addition, with applications hosted centrally, updates can be
released without the need for users to install new software. One
drawback of SaaS is that the users' data are stored on the cloud
provider's server. As a result, there could be unauthorized access to
the data. Cloud computing relies on sharing of resources to achieve
coherence and economies of scale similar to a utility (like the
electricity grid) over a network. At the foundation of cloud computing
is the broader concept of converged infrastructure and shared
services.
The Social Cloud: Chances are you’ve heard of the cloud by now, or
even used the term yourself, but haven’t really stopped to give it a lot
of thought. If you’ve logged into Google, bought a book on Amazon,
“liked” an article on Facebook or updated your resume on Monster,
you’ve seen cloud computing in action – yet probably weren’t even
aware of it.
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There is a certain report which aims to create a Social Storage Cloud

that looks at probable mechanisms to be used in creating a dynamic
cloud infrastructure in a social network environment. It is believed
that combining the pre-established trust with suitable incentive
mechanisms can be a way to generate sustainable resource sharing
mechanisms. Social network is a dynamic virtual organization with
inherent trust relationships between friends. This dynamic virtual
organization can be created since these social networks reflect real
world relationships. It allows users to interact, form connections and
share information with one another. This trust can be used as a
foundation for information, hardware and services sharing in a Social
Cloud.
Typically, cloud environments provide low level abstractions of

computation and storage. Computation and Storage Clouds act as
building blocks where high level service clouds and mash-ups can be
created. Storage Clouds are often used to prolong the capabilities of
storage-limited devices and provide transparent access to data from
anywhere. A large number of Commercial Cloud providers like
Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2/S3, Google App Engine, and smaller
scale open clouds like Nimbus and Eucalyptus provide access to
scalable virtualized resources. Through pre-dominantly posted price
mechanisms, these computation, storage, applications resources can
be accessed.
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Thus, a Social Cloud is a scalable computing model wherein

virtualized resources contributed by users are dynamically
provisioned amongst a group of friends. Users may choose to share
these resources freely and make use of a reciprocal credit-based
model; This compensation free model is similar to the Volunteer
computing approach, where guarantees are offered through
customized SLAs. However, accountability through existing friend
relationships exists in this model. By leveraging social networking
platforms, people can gain access to huge user communities, exploit
existing user management functionality and rely on pre-established
trust formed through user relationships.
9.5 Social media marketing best practices
Facilitating Conversations
Word of mouth has long been a critical part of marketing, and is

proving useful in Social media marketing as well. Peer reviews,
opinions, and comments are now the number one influencer prior to
425
purchase or decision online. Not only do you want people engaged

with you, but also you want them talking positively about you to each
other. Facilitating these conversations should be your ultimate goal.
Make it easy for them – provide excellent content that they will want
to share and discuss. Then give them tools to make it easy to do this:
send to a friend buttons, share this, bookmark this, subscribe, discuss,
comment, like, and tweet buttons. Since word of mouth, online
conversations, reviews, and comments are regarded as the most
trusted forms of information today, getting people to talk about your
product is the goal.
426
Donning the Role of a Visionary
Social media should offer five key aspects that support open
innovation:
1. Better interaction with customers, consumers and other partners
2. Idea generation and feedback loops for the ideas that are being
developed
3. Business intelligence that helps you better understand your

ecosystem
4. Identification of new people who can assist in your innovation

efforts, and
5. Branding, promotion and marketing of innovation outcomes as

well as corporate innovation capabilities
Many social media skeptics do not see much value in this today. This
is fair enough as it is indeed hard to find good cases and evidence on
such efforts, but please remember that we are still in the very early
phases on this intersection of social media tools and open innovation.
As years pass by we all get more experience with tools and services
that continue to develop at a fast pace and in directions that are hard
to foresee. Corporate innovation leaders need to look years ahead and
also to be the visionaries in their companies as well as in your
industry. Expose your employees and your external stakeholders to
social media and learn as you go. Yes, there will be initiatives that do
not work and you might feel as the only one playing in the sandbox,
but others will join, you will adapt and the experiences gained can
bring competitive advantages in the short, mid and long-term.
427
Similarly, if you are working in an entrepreneurial environment, you

need to stay abreast of what is happening in the social media/open
innovation space because of the opportunities that might arise for you
to introduce yourself into the innovation ecosystem of corporations
that are looking for the types of solutions you can offer. With more
and more corporations adopting social media as a way to reach out to
potential partners, the world of opportunities open to entrepreneurial
companies will grow and grow.
Adding Value
One starting place for determining how to use social media to add
value to your innovation efforts is to consider what you hope to
achieve. This list can give you some inspiration for developing
objectives for your use of social media:
• Psion gets better access to and interaction with their stakeholders

through their IngenuityWorking.com community. SAP gets similar
benefits with their SAP Community Network.
• A key benefit of crowdsourcing initiatives like Dell IdeaStorm or

prize competitions like Cisco’s I-Prize are idea generation and
feedback loops on ideas and projects.
• Twitter is a great tool for doing business intelligence on an industry,

competitors or to get a better understanding on how the innovation
community or ecosystem talks about your company.
• Marketing and promotion of projects and innovation outcomes is

an already established way of using social media, and scores of
companies do this.
428
9.6 Techniques to improve Social media marketing efforts
Nevertheless, if you have all your data analyzed, and your content
include for your business. Bear in mind that each platform requires its
own strategy and you need to know where to allocate resources. If the
majority of the conversation about your product is on Twitter, you’ll
need to spend more time connecting with the people who talk about
you there. The same is true for any of the other social networks.
Developing Interactive Content: It’s not enough just to push out

content. Social media is not just another marketing channel you can
use to reach your target audience. Content should be created with a
429
view to inspiring, and participating in, conversations about your

brand. Social media is about a two-way flow of conversation. People
are no longer willing to be passive bystanders. They want to take an
active part in the conversation. Customer engagement can get you
through the toughest of times – it’s both a customer acquisition and
retention strategy.
Engaging Your Audience: Followers and traffic are good and well,
but are they engaging with you? 94% of Internet users active in social
media say they expect a company to have a social media presence,
and to be able to actively engage with them. Despite all their
marketing and PR efforts, Microsoft was still perceived as a faceless
corporate giant. When Robert Scoble started blogging, he put a
human face on the company and engaged with their users and
developers. Microsoft now has thousands of employees blogging and
it has changed those perceptions. Dell has also demonstrated how to
engage and succeed with social media. The Forrester Research report
“Social Media Playtime is Over” clearly shows that dabbling or
experimenting is not enough. You have to deliver genuinely
interesting and valuable content that meets the needs of your
audience and actively engages them.
Choice of Channel: You need to decide why you are using that
channel, who to connect with and why, and what content you need to
produce in order to get the attention of the right people on that
network. You will need someone with technical skills to help you get
your tools in place.
430
You will probably need a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a

LinkedIn account, and a YouTube Channel for starters. Here’s the list
of categories of social media tools:
• News Feeds (RSS9) to syndicate all your content
• “Share this” buttons, tagging, and bookmarking applications, to

make it easy to share and forward your content
• Micro blogging (Twitter)
• Podcasts
• Images – and image sharing networks
431
• Social Networks – Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, niche

networks
• Social Media News Releases, with multimedia and social

bookmarks
• Search optimized articles, with feeds and commenting
• Widgets and Apps

your website
Here’s a look at how you can use the four leading social media tools –
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube – to advance your
innovation agenda. The use of social media to promote and market
the outcomes of innovation (products and services) is widespread.
Here we focus on how corporate innovation units can use social
media in their efforts to create these products and services. Keep in
mind also as you read these descriptions that no single social media
tool is going to enable you to attain all of the goals I’ve talked about
that can be supported through social media. You are going to need to
develop a mix of tools and you will need to determine the right mix
for your company through experimentation.
Twitter
Description: Twitter is a micro blogging site via which users share

updates in “tweets” that are limited to 140 characters. Users build
audiences of “followers” and also choose to follow other users, read
432
their content and then share some of it with their own followers
through what are called re-tweets. Think of Twitter as the global
water cooler, where people come to share information and opinions,
to keep up on breaking news, and to hear what others have to say.
According to Alexa, a Web information company that tracks site

popularity and demographics, it is a pretty crowded water cooler.
They say Twitter is the world’s ninth most popular website, with over
10 per cent of Internet users visiting Twitter each day. Estimates for
the number of people who have Twitter accounts are as high as 360
million. However, it is widely acknowledged that the majority of
these people are not active users. Although Twitter has carefully
guarded its user figures, in September 2011, they did announce that
they had reached a major milestone by having 100 million “active”
users. By March of 2012, they revealed that this number had grown to
140 million. At that time Twitter said that one billion tweets are
posted every three days. They define “active” as signing on to the site
at least once a month.
Innovation uses:
• Business intelligence: The key benefit you can extract from Twitter
is business intelligence. It is a great tool for monitoring keywords
and since many tweets include links to articles and more, you get
access to a wealth of information. You need to use a filtering service
such as HootSuite or TweetDeck in order to be able to sort through
the information available. Once this is done, you simply use a
keyword search to find what you are looking for. You can also use a
mechanism known as hashtags to track tweets related to topics that
interest you. A hashtag is a keyword or phrase that has the symbol
# added in front of it. Tweeters add hashtags to their tweets to
make it easy for people to follow a conversation on their topic.
433
Thus, if you’re interested in tracking open innovation as a topic, the

hashtag to search for would be #openinnovation. By going to
twitter.com/search, you can search for all types of topics.
• Broadcast your ideas and insights: You can tweet about new
developments in your innovation program or simply share ideas
and insights. Here you can include links to websites allowing
readers to read further. When you tweet like this, you hope others
will pick up on your messages and re-tweet to their followers.
Twitter has strong viral opportunities, but you need to have some
patience and be prepared to spend significant time to build up your
reputation - and the number of followers – before you can expect
this to happen. It is my experience that you need thousands of
followers before you will see real activity based on your tweets.
Thus, it makes sense to work with corporate accounts allowing
colleagues to share the work burden of building a Twitter account
worth following for others.
• Conduct Twitter chats: Business intelligence and broadcasting are

by far the best ways in which you can use Twitter for your
innovation efforts. Another idea could be a Twitter chat. This occurs
when you set a date and time when you’re going to be on Twitter
talking about a specific topic. You develop a hashtag for the topic
and then you invite people to join you at the appointed time and
tweet about the topic. You can use Twitter chats to talk with any
group you wish to involve in your open innovation effort. For
example, companies cover “internal” topics in the sense that it
starts out as a chat for employees, but since this is public to
everyone, they hope for others to jump in on the discussions.
434
LinkedIn
Description: LinkedIn is the largest professional network with more

than 150 million members in over 200 countries and territories. Fifty-
nine percent of LinkedIn members are located outside the United
States, making it a truly global network. According to LinkedIn, the
network is growing at a rate of more than two new members per
second. LinkedIn has become so pervasive in the business world that
it is often the first place people search when they are looking for
information on a specific person. LinkedIn members post professional
profiles and build their own networks of direct connections, people
with whom they have some degree of relationship. Also in each
member’s connections are the connections of each of their connections
(called second degree connections) and the connections of second-
degree connections (called third degree connections). These mutual
contacts can be used to gain an introduction to someone who might
be useful in job hunting, obtaining new business or other purposes.
In addition, members can join the special interest groups that have
been formed on LinkedIn. There are approximately one million of
these groups, covering a wide range of topics, including professional
and career issues. There are also affinity groups such as alumni
associations. In these groups you can share content, such as your blog
posts, and also comment on content provided by other people.
Innovation uses:
• Identify and connect with people: Knowledge is the key element

to innovation, and LinkedIn is a great tool for identifying people
with knowledge. If you are working on a project and you need to
get in touch with experts or just others with an assumed interest in
your topic, you can use LinkedIn’s advanced search function to
435
identify these people by searching on keywords. This is not the

same as having access to this knowledge, but knowing who to get
in touch with is the second best thing.
• Engage in special interest groups: This is a double-edged sword.

There are so many groups so you are almost certain to find some
that fit your needs and interests. You will most likely also be able to
build relationships with relevant people in these groups. However,
there is a considerable amount of spam (non-relevant information
and self-promotion) in most groups and thus many good
discussions almost get lost in the clutter of (irrelevant) information.
• Create your own special interest groups: If you want to create your
own group, you will run into the above-mentioned challenges of
spam and irrelevant information. To fight this, it helps if you
consider two things. First, you need to ask yourself if there really is
a need for your group and then you need to make sure you have
the resources needed to facilitate and moderate the group in a way
that everyone benefits if you decide to go ahead. You might get
better interaction if you run a private group in which members
need to be approved to join. However, you need to bear in mind
that the key issue here is time. Not many people have time to
engage in such groups so if you want good results, you really need
to deliver on your end.
• Use LinkedIn answers to post questions you’d like the LinkedIn

community to answer: This is a good way to draw attention to your
interest in a topic and encourage people to interact with you. You
also can answer questions others have posted, which is another
good way to demonstrate your knowledge and establish yourself as
a thought leader on a given topic. Answers get rated and a best
answer chosen, so it does build credibility if you do a good job with
436
it. In addition, answering LinkedIn questions or posting your own

questions enables you to connect with people outside your own
circle of connections. Quora.com offers a similar service in which
the quality of the replies seems higher.
• LinkedIn polls let you post a poll within a discussion group: This
is just one more way to draw attention to your area of interest or get
feedback on specific issues. Develop your policy for connecting
with others. Building on the above, you need to consider what your
policy is going to be about connecting with people who ask to
connect with you. You can choose to only connect with people you
have actually met, people who you’ve exchanged emails or phone
calls with but haven’t met in person, or with people who don’t
know you specifically but who are known to several of your
contacts. You can even decide to connect with absolutely everyone
who reaches out to you via a LinkedIn invitation. This is a policy
that can evolve over time; you can always change your mind and
broaden the range of people you accept invitations from.
Facebook
Description: Facebook, of course, is the most prominent of social

media that has become a daily part of life for millions of people
around the globe. As of mid-2012, this social networking service had
more than 900 million active users. Facebook Pages allow businesses
and brands to connect with any Facebook users, who must click on
“like” button on a Page to access the information provided and to
have the ability to make comments on the Page. Anyone who is an
official representative of an organization can create a Page.
All types of companies have created Facebook Pages, although the

majority are consumer-oriented companies rather than business-to-
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business companies. These companies want to reach out to their

customer bases and form stronger relationships by sharing company
news, gathering customer opinions and generally creating buzz that
will build brand interest and loyalty. In other words, the chief use of
Facebook by businesses is limited to marketing, but that does not
mean it does not also have the potential to be used for innovation
purposes.
Innovation uses:
• Listen: Like other social media, Facebook is an excellent place to

“listen” to your end users. While it is probably unwise to base
product development decisions solely on input from Facebook
users who have “liked” your Page, this forum does give you a way
to hear the unvarnished opinions of consumers, viewpoints that
aren’t guided by questions asked in a focus group, for example.
• Spread the word about your innovation events: You can invite
your Facebook community to the event and track RSVPs. And you
don’t even have to have a corporate Facebook Page to alert people
to an event your company is having. Any user can use the “Create
Event” function to alert their Facebook friends of an event.
Obviously, these events can be virtual events as well as live events.
For example, Dell hosts Storm Sessions, which are hyper-focused
idea-generating sessions. Such events can easily be promoted
through a Facebook Page.
• “Like” Facebook Pages related to innovation: For example, some

innovation intermediaries have formed communities on Facebook,
such as the InnoCentive Open Innovation Network, which shares a
steady stream of interesting information about innovation with
over 5,000 Facebook users. This can be another spot where you not
438
only learn interesting information but also make contacts for your
innovation ecosystem while also gathering business intelligence.
When setting up your Facebook Page (or any time thereafter) you
have the ability to check a box that allows people to write or post
content on the Page’s Wall. You can also allow people to post
photos or video. If you’re going to use Facebook as a real listening
post, you should be as open as possible; this may result in some
negative comments appearing on your Page, but negative
comments enable you to interact with aggrieved consumers and
create a dialogue that may be productive.
It is impossible to say you want to be open and then turn around and
limit people’s ability to interact with you via social media. Be aware
that you can set up a spam filter to filter out spammers and other
troublemakers.
YouTube
Description: YouTube is the hugely popular, Google-owned video-

sharing website where everyone from individuals to media
companies to global corporations can upload videos that can be up to
15 minutes in length. The site garners four billion video views per
day, with users uploading an hour of video each second. Anyone can
view the site, but you need to set up a free public channel to upload
video. Many YouTube videos go viral, garnering a million or more
views in a very short period of time.
Innovation uses:
• Reach new global audiences: People obviously enjoy watching

videos and if you can create compelling content, there is no reason
439
why you can’t build an audience on YouTube that will want to be

engaged in your innovation efforts.
• Get new insights: You might have products – or challenges related

to these products – that are easier to explain by video rather than
words. Here YouTube offers an interesting opportunity to show –
rather than just describe – how innovation can make a difference.
This can be very relevant in some industries although the process of
making videos that people want to watch is more difficult than
“just” creating good content.
• Share insights and inform people of your open innovation

program and events: For example, GE uses YouTube for its
Ecomagination Challenge (http://www.youtube.com/user/
ecomagination).
• Establish thought leadership: Posting a series of informative,

thought provoking YouTube videos is a great way to establish
thought leadership in your field. These can be leveraged through
your other social media outlets to attract new people who might be
interested in becoming part of your innovation ecosystem.
9.7 Short Case study: Destination Imagination
Introduction: Educators face the challenging job of keeping students,

parents and the larger education community up to date and engaged
with all the activity in their programs. In an attempt to increase
transparency and encourage participation, many education programs
are turning to Social Media to facilitate communication in their
community. Using Hoot Suite, these educators are able to easily
spread messages and celebrate their students’ accomplishments.
Destination Imagination (D.I.) recently launched a At Hoot Suite, we
440
offer a robust set of social media tools to help education social media
initiative aimed organizations effectively and securely connect their
larger education at sharing the story of their largest competition, the
community. You can use Hoot Suite to listen and track your social
Global Finals, to people conversations, collaborate with team
members, listen and engage with your around the world. They
followers, schedule messages, and analyze your social media metrics.
recognized the importance of keeping their community. The
Challenge informed and saw an opportunity to use social media to
celebrate the D. I. wanted to share the story of their largest
competition, Global Finals, accomplishments of their among people
from around the world. Their social media initiative set out to
students. Through their social reach the following goals: media
initiative, D.I. was able to connect their community.
• Efficiently monitor and engage with a diverse group of people. This

and create awareness about group includes parents, educators,
potential sponsors, 38,000 their program volunteers and 1.5-million
alumni.
• Effectively share the story of Global Finals to their worldwide

community in an engaging manner.
• Extend the reach of Destination Imagination.
• Maintain a consistent social media voice as one entity, while at the

same time decentralizing communication to all of the various
educators and teams.
441
9.8 Activities
1. The concept of ‘the innovation ecosystem’ has been discussed in

this chapter. With the help of the Internet research practical
examples where organizations have created such ecosystems?
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————-
2. Research online to find case studies of marketers using Google

online reputation-monitoring services. 
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
—————————————————————————————
9.9 Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed about, innovative trends and Best

practices of the social media. Social media is changing the face of our
personal interactions, with an unprecedented rate of adoption that
outpaces previous innovations such as the radio, telephone,
television, and even the iPod. These tools are intuitive to use and
allow people to share information, collaborate, discuss common
interests and build relationships. With this trend well underway,
businesses are beginning to explore how social media can help them
grow and improve profits, not just with common practices such as
outbound marketing, but to enhance business interactions as part of
the innovation and product development process. Social media is
something almost everyone knows of. We might not share the same
definition, but we have a good idea of what it is. Social media can be
viewed as digital tools and services that facilitate involvement and
interactions between different stakeholders, whether they are users or
442
business partners, individuals or crowds, known or unknown. When

it comes to open innovation, social media open up a whole new world
of possibilities in terms of who you can collaborate with to solve
problems and bring new products and services to market. With social
media, your ability to extend your network of contacts who may be
able to assist in your innovation process widens dramatically.
Social media has the potential to be a game changer for how

companies innovate and companies need to pay full attention to the
intersection of open innovation and social media if they want to out-
innovate their competitors. This might be unchartered territory, but it
is full of interesting opportunities. The reason why open innovation
and social media are becoming inseparable relates to the fact that the
two are linked by the need for interactions between people both
inside and outside an organization. Interaction and involvement are
key elements for both open innovation and social media.
The three leading social media platforms – LinkedIn, Facebook, and

YouTube – each have over 100 million users, with Facebook having
over 800 million with projections calling for over a billion Facebook
users by the end of 2012. Bear in mind that none of these companies
existed a decade ago. The fourth most prominent platform, Twitter,
also claims to have over 175 million users, but the number of active
users is probably below 100 million, but still impressive given that the
company was only founded in mid-2006. All of these media are
global, of course, meaning that geographic barriers have been erased
(although political barriers to social media still exist in some
countries). Furthermore, we have no idea what tools and services will
be available two years from now. But we do know that innovation
through interaction and involvement is getting easier and easier and
thus innovators need to seed today in order to reap future benefits.
443
Millions of people are connected to the Internet and a lot of those

people are connected on social networking sites. Social networks have
become an excellent platform for sharing and communication that
reflects real world relationships. Social networking plays a major part
in the everyday lives of many people. Facebook is one social
networking site that has more than 400 million active users. The
possibility of social media and cloud integration is compelling. Social
networks are being more than an online gathering of friends. It’s
becoming a destination for ideation, e-commerce and marketing. For
instance, there are some organizations and integrated applications
that make use of Facebook credentials for authentication rather than
requiring their own credentials.
Cloud computing is the use of computing resources (hardware and

software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the
Internet). The name comes from the common use of a cloud-shaped
symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in
system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a
user's data, software and computation.
A Social Cloud is a scalable computing model wherein virtualized

resources contributed by users are dynamically provisioned amongst
a group of friends. Users may choose to share these resources freely
and make use of a reciprocal credit-based model; This compensation
free model is similar to the Volunteer computing approach, where
guarantees are offered through customized SLAs. However,
accountability through existing friend relationships exists in this
model. By leveraging social networking platforms, people can gain
access to huge user communities, exploit existing user management
functionality and rely on pre-established trust formed through user
relationships.
444
We have also discussed that social media should offer five key aspects
that support open innovation:
1. Better interaction with customers, consumers and other partners

2. Idea generation and feedback loops for the ideas that are being
developed
3. Business intelligence that helps you better understand your
ecosystem
4. Identification of new people who can assist in your innovation
efforts, and
5. Branding, promotion and marketing of innovation outcomes as
well as corporate innovation capabilities
Nevertheless, if you have all your data analyzed, and your content
include for your business. Bear in mind that each platform requires its
own strategy and you need to know where to allocate resources. If the
majority of the conversation about your product is on Twitter, you’ll
need to spend more time connecting with the people who talk about
you there. The same is true for any of the other social networks.
Twitter is a micro blogging site via which users share updates in
“tweets” that are limited to 140 characters. Users build audiences of
“followers” and also choose to follow other users, read their content
445
and then share some of it with their own followers through what are
called re-tweets. Think of Twitter as the global water cooler, where
people come to share information and opinions, to keep up on
breaking news, and to hear what others have to say.
LinkedIn is the largest professional network with more than 150

million members in over 200 countries and territories. Fifty-nine per
cent of LinkedIn members are located outside the United States,
making it a truly global network. According to LinkedIn, the network
is growing at a rate of more than two new members per second.
LinkedIn has become so pervasive in the business world that it is
often the first place people search when they are looking for
information on a specific person. LinkedIn members post professional
profiles and build their own networks of direct connections, people
with whom they have some degree of relationship. Also in each
member’s connections are the connections of each of their connections
(called second degree connections) and the connections of second-
degree connections (called third degree connections). These mutual
contacts can be used to gain an introduction to someone who might
be useful in job hunting, obtaining new business or other purposes.
Facebook, of course, is the most prominent of social media that has

become a daily part of life for millions of people around the globe. As
of mid-2012, this social networking service had more than 900 million
active users. Facebook Pages allow businesses and brands to connect
with any Facebook users, who must click on “like” button on a Page
to access the information provided and to have the ability to make
comments on the Page. Anyone who is an official representative of an
organization can create a Page.
446
1. Write a brief note to describe how social media is changing the

face of our personal interactions.
2. In open innovation your company works with which kind of

entities?
3. From the point of view of smaller, entrepreneurial companies, the

increased use of social media for open innovation will bring out
what kind of outcomes?
4. What are the three reasons to get on Google+?
5. Explain the logic behind the statement social media has the
potential to be a game changer for how companies innovate?
6. Identify the need for companies to build strong capabilities at this

intersection if they want to out-innovate their competitors.
7. Explain in brief the concept of ‘the innovation community’.
8. Discuss the concept of ‘the innovation ecosystem’ from the context

of social media.
9. Explain in brief why it is important for aspiring innovation leaders

to become the “preferred partner of choice”?
447
REFERENCE MATERIAL
chapter
Summary
PPT
MCQ
Video Lecture
448

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Program Design and Advisory Team

Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Mr. Manish Pitke

Prof. Kanu Doshi Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Prof. Dr. V.H. Iyer Mr. Smitesh Bhosale

Prof. B.N. Chatterjee Prof. Vineel Bhurke

Prof. Venkat lyer Dr. Pravin Kumar Agrawal

Prof. Dr. Pradeep Pendse Mrs. Margaret Vas

Prof. Sandeep Kelkar Mr. Anuj Pandey

Prof. Dr. Swapna Pradhan Course Editor

Prof. Bijoy B. Bhattacharyya Prof. B.N. Chatterjee

Mr. P.M. Bendre Course Coordinators

Mr. Ajay Prabhu Ms. Kirti Sampat

Mr. A.S. Pillai Mr. Kishor Tamhankar

COPYRIGHT © by Prin. L.N. Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research.

NOT FOR SALE. FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY.

1st Edition, May,2014) 2nd Edition (Mar-2016)

Chapter No. Chapter Name Page No.

Chapter 1 Basics of Social Media Marketing 3

Chapter 3 Developing Strategies for Social Media 67

Chapter 5 Creating Markets through Media Sharing Sites 200

Chapter 7 Marketing through Social News and 333

After discussing this chapter, you will be able to:

• deﬁne and explain the concept of social media marketing

Social networks are communities of people who typically share a

Social networks provide a medium for people to interact with others

Social Media Marketing is marketing that focuses on people, not

International marketers need to recognise the power and critical

Also, what is important about Social Media Marketing is that

industry. The goal is to get media mentions of their company,

These methods are a one-way communication, where a company

the run-of-the-mill online campaigns. Suppose you work for a charity

This is where social marketing blends with social media marketing.

To make your social marketing venture a success, you need sizzling

1.2 BASICS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

business is not using right marketing strategies or not changing

It is possible for a business to have an online presence all on own but

Nowadays, for any more or less important purchase, it has almost

Indeed, word-of-mouth is considered to be the most trusted source of

The effects of Social Media are really important as a social feedback

• Facebook - Facebook is the most popular social media marketing

• Twitter - Twitter allows businesses to broadcast short messages to

• LinkedIn - LinkedIn is used by businesses to share business

1.3 THE BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Nowadays, Social Media Marketing is widely used by businesses

Social Media Marketing can be using unconventional means to

For every business using Social Media Marketing, the challenge is to

Whether it is concerning large multinationals or small and medium-

• Direct communication: Social media marketing facilitates one to

• Brand exposure and awareness: The main beneﬁt acquired by

• Ability to advertise more effectively: Setting up pages and proﬁles

• Cost effective: One of the biggest advantages of Social Media

• Save up on time: Ever need to reach out to your customer round

• Increasing organisational visibility: Social Media Marketing

• Leads generation: Leads are deﬁned as potential customers or sales

prospective customers somewhere on these sites. But how are

• Targeted trafﬁc: With millions of users, social media sites makes a

define targeted traffic, we should provide a definition of traffic first.

In contrast, targeted trafﬁc is trafﬁc that reached a website thanks to

• Effective monitoring of competitors: Besides, Internet and Social

First, it is worth examining how active the competitors are on their

• Target speciﬁc Information: The data available on the social media

• Blogs and Microblogs: e.g., WordPress Blogger, Twitter…  