Brand strategies in social media

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to: first, examine why companies create brand pages in social media, how they use them, what policies and strategies they follow, and what outcomes do they expect; and second – from firms’ point of view – how users are benefited from such pages. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative study approach was employed for this study. Data were collected from personal interviews with 14 marketing managers responsible for the social media activity of their company, providing preliminary evidence about the actions firms take, the motivations that led them to getting involved, and the derived outcomes. Findings – The main actions of the firm are making prize competitions, announcing new products/services, interacting with fans, providing advice and useful information, and handling customer service issues. The basic motivations are the increasing popularity of social media, competitors’ presence, headquarters’ strategy, and cost reduction pressure. Interact with customers, create/enhance relationships with customers, brand awareness, customer engagement, promote products/increase of sales, and the more targeted acquisition of new customers, were referred to as the main expected outcomes for companies. Research limitations/implications – Given the qualitative nature of the study and the emerging field of research about social media, findings should be considered as preliminary and exploratory. Interviews with companies from more sectors and also with social media users will provide a more comprehensive view of the topic. Practical implications – The paper identifies several opportunities for company managers, suggesting practices for effective social media handling. Originality/value – Considering the rapid development of social media and their penetration in business marketing actions, this paper is an exploratory step toward the ways firms utilize social media channels.

Brand Sponsorship and Social Media. Coca Cola and Carlsberg Illustrated with an Example of the European Football Championship 2016

“…Among the main actions taken up by enterprises in social media from the perspective of the discussed issue, one may enumerate information concerning special prices, announcements about new products/services, presenting advice and useful information, course of the customer service process, and, finally, getting involved various kinds of relationships with the customer. Motivations for brand activity in social media are as follows: a strategy imposed by the company's headquarters, costs--cutting, and, finally, popularity of social media and potential presence of competition in social media (Tsimonis, Dimitriadis, 2014). Deliberate and organised activity of brands in social media entails also the necessity to determine the desired results of this activity.…”

“…Deliberate and organised activity of brands in social media entails also the necessity to determine the desired results of this activity. These may include: getting involved in relationships with customers, and what is related to it, winning new clients or maintaining existing ones, building the so called brand awareness and engagement among social media users (customers) (Tsimonis, Dimitriadis, 2014). Simultaneously, it is pointed out that it is important for the relationships between the brand and the customer (social media user) to be of personal nature or for the client to have such an impression.…”

Instagram, Facebook or Twitter: Which Engages Best? A Comparative Study of Consumer Brand Engagement and Social Commerce Purchase Intention

“…(Hollebeek et al, 2014) Engagement in social platforms includes how consumers use, share and talk about the content related to brand and company (Kırcova & Enginkaya, 2015). The first expectation of brands that use social media marketing is users' adaptation and contribution to the content and engaging with the brand (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014). Nowadays most of the consumers engage with brands through social media and brands also use social media networks as customer services and as a fundamental contact point with consumers (Clark et al, 2017).…”

Social media marketing evaluation using social network comments as an indicator for identifying consumer purchasing decision effectiveness

“…7 The remarkable growth in social media users has attracted companies to create brand communities in social media, such as Facebook fan pages. 8 In addition, companies see social media as a way to spread WOM. 9 Many studies also point out that consumer behaviour in purchasing decisions is highly prone to community recommendations.…”

“…6 It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of social media marketing, and it has not been done in any systematic way. [8][9][10] Companies know the number of followers in their brand communities and how interactive the followers are with comments. Only very limited research has explored the performance of social media marketing -Yang et al 11 developed a measurement instrument for measuring blog service innovation in social media services using questionnaires for data collection.…”