A short video lecture on using the Social Media as Marketing tools

Many marketers consider the Social Media as a headache rather as an opportunity; Social Media give much power to their customers, make traditional marketing communication less effective and it is not always clear what are the options of businesses as to using these as Marketing tools.

How could the Social Media be used as part of the marketing strategy? This is the topic of a short online lecture of mine that you can follow in this link.

Social media: the silver bullet of marketing strategy?

It is a fact that most businesses are by now convinced about the potential of the social media as marketing tools and the need to integrate them into their marketing strategy. Many do this already: Look for example to the Social Media Monitor (report5): In the Netherlands the adoption of social media marketing strategies by the top 100 businesses* was 92% in 2012  up from 14% in 2008. 70% of these companies have a Social Media Manager while this position din not exist 4 years ago. In any similar report you read you see the same picture emerging: the social media is hot!

These positive news however should not detract those who are seriously working on this topic either as academics or practitioners from the real issues:

-          Do marketers really know how to exploit the full potential of the social media as marketing tools? And do they use them the right way?
-          Is social media marketing the comprehensive answer to the challenges of the marketing field today? Some of these challenges: empowerment and techno-savvy consumer, depletion of effectiveness of the traditional marketing tools, market globalization and increasing technological progress bringing new techniques and technologies to the market every day. Some of these techniques and technologies are: mobile computing, Internet of Things, wearable technologies, RFID, cloud computing and Neuromarketing.

My answer based on my personal observations to both these questions is simply “No”. I think that businesses have gone some way on the social media strategy arena but they have to go much further. Next to this I do not believe that social media marketing is the single answer to the challenges facing today’s marketers: there are many more issues to be addressed.

What these challenges and issues are and what are my personal views on the future of marketing strategy? This will be the subject of my talk in the E-Travel Summit on 30 October in Almere.

 *Based on their advertising budget

Seminar Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve in the University of Twente

On 26 January the department ISCM organized the seminar Hey Tweet, Face the Hyve
http://www.utwente.nl/mb/actueel/110126_Seminar_ISCM_social_media.doc/
Marc de Vries, the CEO of Hyves was the keynote speaker and about 100 guests followed the event. After the seminar we had a dinner and the UT premiere of the film The Social Network" with the story about the maverick father of the FACEBOOK Mark Zuckerberg. Next to Marc de Vries another interesting presentation was given by Daan Sip of Redchocolate and also a number of colleagues including myself talked about our research in the area of the Social Media in the UT.
For those interested in the seminar there are two links with the video streams:  (My presentation in Part II)
My power point presentation  is available in SlideShare
Part I 
http://videolecture.utwente.nl/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=7f2049f9b9574514847e863685b22ab21d
Part II
http://videolecture.utwente.nl/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=1fd0ae6b2dd3473f831c2242e1d0e6111d

Survey reveals that Social Networks play a limited role in the customer's decision making process in Holland

I came across a very interesting study just conducted by Fleishman-Hillard on December 2010 titled “The Digital Influence Index Study: ‘Understanding the Role of the Internet in the Lives of Consumers in the Netherlands”. The conclusions of the study:

1: The Internet is by far the most influential medium for Dutch consumers. Influence is defined as a combination of the time consumers spend on a medium and the relative importance they attach to it in their daily lives.
2: The internet is used mainly as a means to research decisions and to find supporting evidence for the decisions made. Search engines are key in the decision making process while social networks are, as of yet, hardly used. In particular when it comes to making decisions regarding durable goods and services, the Internet is viewed as the most important information source.
3: A particular remarkable conclusion is the marginal role social networks apparently play in decision making processes. The strength of social networks seems to be in emotional brand bonding rather than giving clear advice aimed at purchase decisions.
4: In general, the Dutch trust the information available on the Internet, in particular information provided by the government. The extensive amount of information available online makes it easier to learn quickly and makes it possible to make well-balanced decisions.
5: When seeking advice from others, the Dutch place a high value on the advice of friends, family and colleagues. Remarkably the majority of the respondents state that they only partly trust advice from strangers while conceding that the usefulness thereof is most likely high. The trustworthiness of content produced by sponsored or paid bloggers is extremely low.
6: Dutch Consumers are very familiar with micro blogs such as Twitter. In general the opinion is that people share too much uninteresting personal information. Consumers are also very aware of the possible implications of sharing personal information which could potentially harm their career.
7: Companies who make use of micro blogs to listen and anticipate consumers interests are appreciated more than those that don’t. Having a company keep their own micro blog is seen as less relevant. (Source: Fleishman-Hillard)

From all these findings nr 3 is particularly interesting. Social Networks play a marginal role in decision making processes. Attention here because they talk about Social Networks and not about Social Media. Is there a difference between Social Media and Social Networks? Indeed a big one since Social Networks are only one of the (five according to me) Social Media types. Since there are four more other Social Media categories I can imagine that all these together play indeed an important role in this process. This is evident if we look to conclusion nr 1 in combination with nr 5. Advice from friends, family and colleagues can be verbal or provided through social networking; In this point the study does not make any distinction and probably consumers do not see the online conversation with friends and family as social networking. No one can be sure and more research is necessary in this point. Regarding the advice from strangers this is by all means provided online: in online communities, online forums and influential blogs. There is also a discrepancy here namely that while in general consumers say that they do not trust strangers they recognize that the usefulness of strangers advice is most likely high. This means to me that in the end the social media and the information provided online plays a critical role in the consumer’s decision making process today (see also conclusion 1). The study reveals also interesting facts on media consumption trends in Holland and several other countries, underlying the need for more serious research in this area. The study also confirms something I wrote some time ago warning about excessive euphoria regarding the Social Media phenomenon.

One week in Greece Part III (final)

After a week in sunny and warm Greece back to Holland with cold and snow as you see in this picture taken the other days from my office window (this is the university central plaza)

 The time in Thessaloniki was very interesting; I found out that the interest about Social Media Marketing is in Greece as intense as everywhere else. All of my lectures in the University of Macedonia and the CITI College (picture below) were visited by many students and also people from the field with very interesting and challenging questions.

For me it was especially challenging to give two lectures in Greek for the first time!! In any case things went well. I also had a lot of interesting discussions with colleagues and PhD students; we discussed various ideas for future cooperation.

From this blog I would like to thank once more all persons who contributed to a very nice and useful week in Greece for my students and me. My students just sent me the link for their film from Athens in YouTube

Social Media Marketing on the rise

After almost two months of silence - due to an extremely busy schedule - I am back to blogging. A lot of interesting things have happened in the meantime. I survived teaching three classes Marketing Management in 1/2 semester and tomorrow the students should demonstrate what they have learned in the mid-semester exams. With our new International Bachelor BA course things were very excited since the group assignment of this year was a bit different than usual: The students must analyze the current online presence of the New Acropolis Museum and design a new one. The museum direction was very helpful and even made a special video for the occasion. The faculty offered a trip to Athens to the winning group and our University newspaper published a nice article about this.
Furthermore my NIKOS colleagues and I have survived another relocation of the department, inside the UT campus this time. I try to cope with the (accidental) formatting of the hard disc of my notebook and the avalanche of interest about Social Media marketing. Last week I enjoyed very much speaking to the ACCENTURE Social CRM Master Class in Amsterdam. Last month I participated in a Social Media Seminar organized by BothSolutions in the Venture Lab Twente and in November I will give two seminars on Social Media Marketing to the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. Other exciting news is that one of my BA students finished his BA thesis with subject the potential of Social Media as instruments of higher education marketing (see NEW PUBLICATIONS). Very interesting findings on the online social behavior of future university students in The Netherlands. A lot of interest already for this study since it was presented in the 2010 Student Research Conference in The Hague a few days ago; It is a good basis for a couple of scientific papers (the conference paper is available at request). This is part of research we do in online behavior of Social Media users.


So far so good but that’s not all; many exciting things have happened recently (and keep happening) in the Social Media domain. In the next weeks I will try to present some interesting cases of Social Media marketing in reference (whenever possible) to my Social Media Marketing Model - based on my 2008 JDDDM paper - that despite its age is becoming more and more actual. Those interested stay tuned.

Social Media Research Day in Utrecht

Last week our Social Media Research Center (SOMERE) in cooperation with SOGETI organized the SOMERE Day that takes place every half year. We were guests of the Crossmedia Lab of the Hogeschool Utrecht. Many of the students doing research in Social Media in the University of Twente and many students from Utrecht as well as people from the field attended the session. The afternoon meeting included a short speech of the Lab Lector Harry van Vliet and my colleague and initiator of SOMERE Sjoerd de Vries. I must say that the work of the colleagues in Utrecht is impressive and their web site (fully in English) was a surprise for me. I gave also a short presentation about my research, together with two of our students who spoke about the findings in their Master Thesis on social Media and knowledge management and politics. A representative of the ABNAMRO bank told us about the banks plans to introduce Social Media as knowledge management platform and a presentation of Erik Hekman about the Lab’s research on cultural heritage and Social Media. A panel discussion followed moderated by Menno van Doorn from SOGETI. A very interesting day indeed.

26% of marketers willing to invest in Twitter

The Twitter hype is growing fast: According to BizReport quoting WebBizIdeas.com 265 of marketers are willing to commit marketing budgets to Twitter (43% were unsure and 31% said no). Interesting views indicating the booming interest of marketers about the Social Media. My humble opinion however is that these marketers should start working with the Social Media as marketing tools in a more simple yet important way namely by creating the proper organizational infrastructure that will tap the online customer voice before they start adding their own voice to it. Even better if they also try  to learn bit more about these customers, an issue not covered by the study. In the paper we submitted to the HTSF 2010 Conference we will present the results of a market segmentation of the Social Networking Sites users in NL.

Crowdsourcing: What is this?

My attention on the potential of crowds as business asset dates back to 2005 when I read the book of James Surowiecki "The Wisdom of Crowds" . (Visitors of this blog have also read about this subject here.) My interest in Crowdsourcing has been increasing ever since and Crowdsourcing has become one of the standard elements of my model (where I describe it as "Tapping Customer Crestivity) outlining the role of the Social Media as marketing tools. One of my recent research projects is an effort to understand the origins and limits of Crowdsourcing by means of a thorough literature review in cooperation with one of my graduating students. A working paper will be hopefully available in spring.
For those who would like to have a taste of what crowdsourcing is all about I advise the Crowdsourcing Examples blog and an introductory video by Jeff Howe, journalist of the WIRED Magazine, and author of the book Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business

Social Media Marketing Case: the Dominos Pizza Effect II

The Dominos Pizza Effect is on of the favorite posts for many new visitors of this blog for some reason. Maybe because the search term "Dominos Pizza" is popular (see the advantage of using the right labels!). Today another story of Dominos Pizza and Social Media: it is about how Ramon DeLeon, a social media savvy Dominos Pizza manager in Chicago turned a potential (social media) publicity disaster to a textbook social media marketing case study. 
It all started when a customer in Chicago (who happened to be none less than Amy Korin also known as Interactive Amy) received the wrong pizza after an hour delay. The details of the story you can read in the Social Media Examiner ; the video of Ramon setting the record straight is quite interesting. For those of the blog visitors who have followed my lectures on Social Media Marketing the situation must be familiar. (Remember the Passive and Active ways of engaging Social Media as Marketing tools?).
My thanks to Sander Duivestein for his post that put my attention to the case.

Mediterranean Conference of Information Systems (MICS)

I am just back from the 4th MICS, a fast growing new conference in the already crowded IS conference domain. The conference was held in Athens Greece and attracted about 250 participants (from just 65 two years ago). Maybe the Mediterranean destinations are attractive but I met very few participants from N. Europe and none from any other continent. Athens had for us a very nice weather and the conference offered to the participants an excellent dinner in the foot of Parthenon.

Very good organized by the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), the university I graduated 30 years ago! I was glad to give a lecture in the place I followed lectures as student back in the 70s. Many interesting sessions and presentations. The program was including a visit to the amazing new Acropolis museum ( below me standing on the terrace of the building). The missing (or rather stolen) "Elgin Marbles" are replaced by copies that will be removed if the originals will ever return to Athens. Many in Greece and abroad hope that some day this act of cultural vandalism will be reversed; the 150 million Euro museum was build also to put more pressure to the custodian of the sculptures the British Museum to return them to Greece.

My presentation for those interested is available in SLIDESHARE. The paper is available at request!

Virtual Touch and virtual Scent: Next steps in Virtual Reality?

Looking for killer apps? This can be the Touchable Holography developed by researchers of the University of Tokyo. If this really works (and it seems from the YouTube videos that this is an interesting area of research) and in combination with virtual scent could bring the e-shop a step closer to the consumer who wants to touch and smell before buying. I will keep following and update on this.

Social Media Marketing: Twitter as promotional tool

Twitter becomes more and more a promotional tool rather than a personal communication tool as I predicted some time ago. Twitter is a new (and most probably effective) way of reaching customers with low airline fairs by Jetblue (that as you maybe remember I found to be the most "social" airline) and United Airlines . A quick test confirms that Jetblue is still far ahead of United as to its social presence, with micro-blogging (in fact Twitter) being the reason for this.

Public Crowdsourcing Portals (PCP*): Harnessing the collective (or rather the individual) intelligence

You are a big or small company and you are confronted with problems like the following: You look for a method of specifically binding DNA, you need urgently a new method for hair root removal or you are desperate to find how to sample leaf tissue**! You do not have the expertise in-house so what do you do? You try to find another company having the solution and make a deal about royalties to use their technology (something that can be quite costly)or you find and hire someone who can find a solution for you, right?

Wrong! You can get tens or hundreds of solutions and choose the best by placing a challenge in the crouwdsourcing site INNOCENTIVE; this will cost you between $ 5.000 to maybe $ 100.000 that is the fee you decide to pay to the one who will find the best solution for you.
Does this work? Just go to the Innocentive site and look for yourself.

This form of crowdsourcing becomes very popular in a fast pace. Next to proprietary crowdsourcing focused on customer creativity an increasing number of Public Crowdsourcing Portals like Innocentive match the supply and demand for very specific technical or non-technical knowledge. Some more examples of this new type of Social Media (I will update my Social Media Strategies model with this new Web 2.0 application soon) are Yet2Come, Innovation Exchange and the Dutch Battle of Concepts targeting creative students that I mentioned in an earlier post.

Is this development good or bad news for professionals? I think both depending how you look to it. I have the idea that this will be soon an issue of more general concern soon. Let's wait and see. *Do not look for this term in Wikipedia, this is a term I thought of it just now!
**All these are real problems of real companies

Study: Social Media as marketing strategy pays off

One of the standard reviewer comments whenever I submitted a paper about Social Media Marketing is the lack of data backing the claim that Social Media Marketing positively helps the marketing strategy and therefore is necessary for strategists to include these media into their marketing toolbox. The reviewers are in principle right, there are no academic studies yet providing any ROI measurements of Social Media strategies or other similar data.
Yet there are some interesting very recent publications from the practitioners’ quarters; the co-author of the Groundswell Charlene Li released a new report she wrote in co-operation with Wetpaint titled "ENGAGEMENTdb“ making the point that Social Media pays off. The study looked at how the 100 most valuable brands — as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands classification — engaged in 11 different online social media applications. The interesting thing is that the study next to measuring the "breath" and "depth" of the engagement of these brands across the different online social media channels has also found a connection between high social media engagement and an average revenue increase of about 18% over the last year versus an average revenue decrease of 6% of the least socially engaged companies. Time for us academics to look to the issue in more depth and breath.

Tweets for treats

A new usage for Twitter, not a bad idea! From CNN