Hello!

It is once again time for some studying for our next PBL session. This time about Social Media Marketing (SMM). Last week we had a look at a case about Facebook Live, a similar service as Periscope is, you can live-stream video wherever you are. For this we got three learning objectives:

1. What are the most interesting social media platforms?
2. How can companies utilize SMM?
3. How to integrate SMM to companies' marketing strategies and how to monitor them?

First I'll start off by telling the most interesting platform(s) for me. The ones I use the most are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Whatsapp (yes, I consider Whatsapp as a social media platform). I do have an account in Twitter and Snapchat as well, and google plus because that comes with having a gmail account, but I don't use it.

For me the most interesting ones are Instagram and LinkedIn. Instagram is not (yet) filled with commercials and ads as Facebook is, and I hope they'll keep it that way. It's a nice and clean platform, with some ads naturally included. But the most interesting is that it's mainly about sharing pictures, not writing long texts or chatting etc.

The second one is LinkedIn. I like it because it's a professional networking app. And what makes it interesting is that it's filled with non-"click" articles that are interesting for me as a developing professional. The atmosphere is more adult and there's no pages like "The lad bible" which are just  stupid silly. You can communicate there just as well as in Facebook for example, but at the same time it's like an online CV for you, and anyone can see it and be in touch with you if they get interested. And that's actually happened to me too!

2. How can companies utilize SMM?

Utilizing SMM might sound like being an easy task to do. However, it's not just about registering yourself to Facebook or another platform and start advertising. It's something that requires time and effort. Because social media has brought companies closer to their customers, the demands of the customers have risen.

Studies show that only 1/3 of complaints received in social media are answered within 24 hours and 63% of customers are happy with the response time. Compared to other channels, that is quite bad actually. In other channels (email, telephony etc.) the amount of answers given within 24 hours varied between 44-67%. (http://www.convinceandconvert.com/hug-your-haters/new-research-shows-how-fast-companies-have-to-be-in-social-media/)

The company should also decide which platforms to use. It might be that not all social media platforms are for your company, and it should be carefully evaluated before deciding to join one of them. You wouldn't want your page to be inactive and show people you don't care, would you?

According to Christopher Litster (https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/articles/8-best-practices-to-promote-your-business-on-social-media/) a company should follow the 1-in-7 rule which means that only 1 post of 7 will promote your business, the rest should be about your community or something that gives the customer value. The posts that you do would be good to formulate as questions, that starts a conversation with the receiver and will more likely activate them.

Make your posts visual, pictures tell more than words and will get more attention. If you share videos on Facebook, use text because the videos are automatically muted. Remember to share at the right time, use analytics software to analyse at which time your posts are read the most.

Experiment with different platforms, ways of posting etc to see what interests your audience the most.

3. How to integrate SMM to companies' marketing strategies and how to monitor them?