FIGURE 1-8: Causes.com.
Chapter 2
Discovering Your SMM Competitors
IN THIS CHAPTER
Which consumers are using the social web is no longer a subject of much debate. Rather, the debate has shifted to how consumers are using the social web. How many teens are using Facebook actively, what is the true reach of Twitter, and how aggressively are Instagram and Snapchat growing? These are the more common questions today. What’s certain is that no one questions the scale or influence of the social web on culture, communications, and people’s lives around the world.
The truth is that it’s difficult to say who is using the social web and how. This is because the term social web is most commonly used to describe how people socialize and interact with each other across the web. With every passing day, many websites are becoming social platforms where visitors can interact and learn from one another. Even more critically, more and more websites allow you to log in with your Facebook or Twitter username and password. They then allow you to share your experience with the social network and, in some cases, customize the experience based on who you are and on your friends list. Those websites are becoming social, too. So how can you find out which consumers use the social web and in what way? The best way is to understand how your company fits into the big picture and how your competitors are using social media.
In this chapter, we explain how to do that. Having a firm grip on the lay of the land in the social web makes it easier to craft a marketing plan that works with it. Understanding what your competitors are doing helps you understand your customers’ expectations.
Classifying Consumer Activities
Before you launch a social media marketing campaign, you need to have a feel for what activities consumers undertake on the social web. After all, your marketing campaign is far more likely to succeed if it is in harmony with what consumers are trying to accomplish on the social web. Consumer activity on the social web is classified into these eight categories:
Information: The Internet, with its academic roots, was conceived as a virtual library and an information-sharing tool. And to this day, consumers use the Internet for finding information more than anything else. In fact, it’s no surprise that Google and Yahoo are two of the top five web destinations. (Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon are the other three.) Google and Yahoo are at the top because they’re primary search engines, helping consumers find the information they’re looking for. That hasn’t changed, and even with the Internet going increasingly social, searching and finding information remains the number-one consumer activity online. If you’re running a marketing campaign for a product or service that consumers seek, you’re most likely to get strong results. When people are in “information seeker” mode, they’re most apt to participate in campaigns.
News: One primary use for the Internet is news. More people read the news online than watch it on cable television. The instant, real-time nature of news makes it particularly suited for the Internet. Many cable television channels promote their websites to their TV audiences. But what’s even more interesting is that practically all the major news websites integrate social media functionality into their user experience. When you go to www.cnn.com, www.nytimes.com, or www.washingtonpost.com, you notice that journalists have blogs and that the articles allow for commenting and ratings. Figure 2-1 shows the blogs offered by The New York Times. News sites often integrate video clips as well. With news, your marketing opportunity differs slightly. Consumers are more receptive to the campaigns if your product or service is either contextualized in some form to what they’re reading or is directly targeted toward them. What’s more, marketing programs that have cultural relevance or that are in the context of events in the broader world do better. People simply pay more attention to what is topical versus what distracts them from the stories of the day.FIGURE 2-1: Blogs on The New York Times website.FIGURE 2-2: The Well.
Communication: The Internet continues to be a core communication medium for most people. With the advent of social media, this communication takes place within social networks versus personal websites or via email and instant messenger programs. Microcommunication technologies such as Twitter, which let you communicate in short bursts of information, are very popular. The medium allows consumers to communicate with one another in new, dynamic ways, whether it be through microblogging, leaving notes on friends’ Facebook profiles, commenting on personal blogs, or instant messaging from within websites. In fact, the explosive growth of WhatsApp and its subsequent purchase by Facebook for $19 billion dollars is testament to this trend around microcommunication on a huge scale. When consumers are communicating with each other, they’re less receptive to marketing campaigns unless the campaigns incorporate their communications with their peers in a permissible fashion. This is why social media marketing campaigns that incorporate groups of people are so important. The trickiness of marketing in this context is also why at this point, WhatsApp has no intention of incorporating advertising into its mobile app. That could change in the future, of course.
Community: Online communities and social networks have seen explosive growth in the last few years. The amount of time that people spend on community websites is significantly higher than anywhere else on the web. Online communities include social platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, and the more private online communities and forums that are often tied to company websites or niche interests.For example, The Well (shown in Figure 2-2) is one of the most famous, early online communities, just as Facebook is the most popular social network in the United States as we write this. The reasons people participate in online communities are myriad. Suffice it to say, community participation is a key type of activity online. However, when people are engaging with each other, they participate less in marketing campaigns because engaging with one another captures all their attention. They have no time for advertising because they’re busy hearing each other’s opinions. When consumers are searching for information or looking to buy a product, they are more open to advertising. This is exactly why social media marketing, with its unique approach, is important.
E-commerce: Consumers across the country continue to choose to buy more goods online. The fact that the products have to be shipped has done little to hinder many consumers from using the Internet to make retail purchases. The largest online retailer continues to be Amazon (www.amazon.com), with approximately 230 billion dollars in sales each year. E-commerce represents a growing portion of total retail sales. There are some very obvious marketing opportunities in this, especially when peers are asked to recommend products. Great social media marketing opportunities abound here.
Entertainment: