Looking under the hood

Abstract:

Chapter 1 puts the spotlight on defining some terms to clarify matters, thereby facilitating further discussion. In particular the focus is on context, such as industry or size of organization, which has a distinct effect upon what is, and what is not, feasible using social media.

Keywords

context; discrete context; inbound marketing; omnibus context; purpose using social media; social media marketing; strategy; SWOT analysis

Budget constraints, and our reasons for purchasing a car (e.g., commuting to and from work) will influence what we buy.

Before we embark on a road trip across the country, we will probably check under the hood of our car that everything looks okay. Of course, we may also have to consider other things depending upon the time of year, including ensuring the air conditioning works and deciding whether snow chains need to be installed.

The same type of check is needed before one launches an inbound marketing project or social media marketing campaign. This allows the organization to better understand where it is now and whether current business conditions, legislation and other things are conducive to the proposed project. Even if social media is already used in some departments, assessing the situation allows management to get a better feel for the landscape and how the situation may evolve over the next 12 months (e.g., consumer prices, unemployment, marketing budget).

This chapter addresses the following questions:

1. What is social media?

2. Why does context (e.g., industry & culture) matter so much?

3. What do we hope to accomplish with social media?

1.1 Social media: A workable definition

As with every new field of inquiry, before we can dive into the matter at hand we must all be using the same vocabulary and have the same understanding of terms and concepts. In other words, the word apples must indicate the same food item to all parties, while oranges should mean the citrus fruit. To illustrate, ask anybody at work to define what social media entails, and you will probably get as many different definitions as the number of people asked. Clarifying these issues beforehand will make understanding subsequent concepts, strategies and tools or techniques easier for the reader.

1.1.1 What is digital media?

In short, digital media encompasses all of the various different platforms on which people communicate. Digital or online marketing covers digitized content (text, graphics, audio, and video) that can be transmitted over computer networks, both internets and intranets.

More specifically, digital media are various types of technologies and applications that users take advantage of. In the late 1980s, that might have been the bulletin board people connected with by dialing a local number and then posted a message to. Today, it is more likely a person's Facebook wall or organisation's webpage. A few years ago it might have meant Ford maintaining a virtual showroom on the Second Life platform (Gattiker, March 26, 2008). In fact, opening an embassy on Second Life was all the rage in Spring of 2007 (Mauritius opened the first, Sweden the second), but today companies, embassies and even some Consulates are more likely to have a Facebook page that is regularly updated with content (e.g., Swiss Consulate in New York, http://info.cytrap.eu/?p=4195). In addition, or instead, associated personnel might maintain a micro-blog on Twitter (e.g., US ambassador John V. Roos assisted with the evacuation of 80 hospital patients after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster through tweets, see http://commetrics.com/?p=14978).

Digital marketing uses digital media to share digitized marketing messages. As defined below and with a different spin, social media uses digital media and its tools to engage with clients and prospects, instead of broadcasting the marketing message directly.

These days, people see digital media as a tool to accomplish what they need to, such as finding another job or completing another sale. Therefore, we also need to define what social media and social networking entail.

1.1.2 What is social media?

As an extension of the above discussion, it seems appropriate to infer that social media is a more specialized method of applying digital media (see John V. Roos, above). Specifically, social media helps foster the exchange of information, data, images, video, etc. between individuals using various tools of digital communication.

While the above makes sense, things can get really murky if we leave it all to marketers. For instance, I came across a tweet that stated:

“More than 64 percent of respondents in a Sheraton Hotels & Resorts study said they use social media to make their travel plans.” (@SocialMediaDeal – 2011-02-01, http://twitter.com/SocialMediaDel/status/ 32363800397086720)

The reported findings seem very interesting, if not exciting, indicating a trend that people increasingly use social media. But if we step back, we need to ask, Didall the respondents have the same definition of social media? The key question asked was:

Do you use social media whilst being on a business trip?

If 64 percent answered yes, what would they define as social media?

Would their instant messaging program, such as Skype, which offers text chat, voice-over-IP or internet telephony, and video, qualify as social media, or only Facebook? A bulletin board or just email? Most importantly, would this change the findings, and therefore, the interpretations of data collected?

I doubt respondents were even aware of the definition we use for clarification:

Social Media encompasses any tool or service that uses telecommunication technology, including digital media, to facilitate production and exchange of data/information and taking action, including having a conversation (see also Table I.1).

Social media empowers consumers of content to become producers of content relatively quickly and easily, without having to be geeks. For instance, one can share information using an instant messaging tool, posting it to one's Facebook wall and/or tweeting about it. One need only be willing to invest the time in producing whatever content one wishes to share, such as writing a comment to a blog post. The more insight such content provides to the interested audience, the more it will be perceived as valuable.

In part, social media shifts communication from a broadcast model of few-to-many to a model of many-to-many, as well as many-to-few (i.e. everybody wants to share, but few might want to know).

Social media means interaction (e.g., answering questions, replying to an email), through the exchange of opinions, information, feelings and emotions that hopefully result in better understanding. Unfortunately, as we have discovered using data from BlogRank.CyTRAP.eu, even bloggers have difficulty answering those who comment on their blogs. One reason why people have difficulty listening to and joining the conversation is that too many items come across your smartphone screen. It could be your Twitter feed or your Facebook friends’ updates. All these add to a never-ending stream of data that is so big, there is simply not enough time to do everything justice.

Accordingly, it is difficult to use social media effectively, considering how many platforms we may try to use to engage with our friends and associates, such as:

■ social media networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Viadeo, Xing, etc.);

■ video and photo sharing websites (i.e. Pinterest, Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo);

■ blogs, both corporate and personal (self-hosted, or hosted by Tumblr or WordPress, et al);

■ media outlets encouraging comments on their content, for example The Guardian (UK), New York Times, and NZZ (Switzerland);

■ micro-blogging (e.g., Identi.ca, Naijapulse.com, Sina Weibo or Twitter);

■ wikis and online collaboration tools (Wikipedia, Quora, et al);

■ forums and discussion boards (for example, Google or Yahoo groups);

■ video on demand (vod), interactive video technology and podcasting (i.e. a 5-minute mp3 file with a news alert);

■ online multiplayer gaming platforms (World of Warcraft, Second Life, etc.);

■ instant messaging (GoogleTalk, Microsoft Messenger, Skype, et al);

■ geo-location services and geo-tagging of content (for example, Four square or Facebook);

■ customer review sites (writing a book review on Amazon, commenting on a seller on eBay, etc.);

■ bookmarking (e.g., Delicio.us) or archiving content such as articles (e.g., Evernote or Memonic) or else several parts of content (e.g., Keeeb. com allows users to archive one sentence out of an article, a video and graphic all in one file online for later use); and

■ collecting information from tweets of those you follow and extracting content summary to publish and curate daily (e.g., using Paper.li to publish online).

The above was influenced by the smaller list prepared by the Victorian Department of Justice (March 2011 – see definitions of social media– http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/socialmedia). The...