Social Media as a Function in Relation to Content MarketingALLISHA ANDERSON – SOCIAL MEDIA METRICS – SPRING 2015

What is content marketing?

“Content marketing is the marketing and business process for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

Focus on:

Electronic word of mouth (eWOM)

Engagement

Analytics

EWOM

According to Vander Lans (2010) electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is something that marketers immensely value. Companies use tweets, videos, interactive sites and games to help their viral marketing campaigns.

Berger and Iyengar (2010) discuss how campaigns should focus on different aspects based on the channel markets which they are hoping to generate discussion in. “If the goal is to get more online discussion, framing the product in an interesting or surprising way should help (p. 571). They add that if these ads or online content surprise people, exceed expectations or evoke interest, they will be more likely to be shared, giving them a higher chance of going viral.

EWOM

While campaigns can try all they want to get a customer to test their product, it has been shown that messages from friends have more impact than messages posted by a brand trying to promote themselves (Vander Lans, 2010).

If a blogger or friend posts something pertaining to a specific product, people are more likely to try that product than if the company posts about it.

Engagement

For potential customers to want to engage with your business or brand you need to provide value to your customers. This value, according to Quesenberry (2014), can be achieved by inviting people to share their information, thoughts or opinions about your brand. If these people say positive things in the online world it is more likely to boost sales, new customer acquisitions and spread the word about your product or business more quickly (Burger, 2010).

Engagement

When people are talking about interesting things, they’re more likely to engage with people they don’t know.

Example: a person talking about a new brand that a Twitter follower is interested in, the interested person may reach out to the unknown person. This would show engagement as well as word of mouth.

A brand needs to be involved with its consumers because it show’s they are listening. If they’re not involved, consumers are likely to be less pleased with the brand.

As Evans (2011) states, “On the social web, transparency is everything (p. 26).”

Analytics

Over 200 million Tweets are published each day.

Brands have to watch their analytics to continue to stay relevant.

Using sites like Topsy, TweetReach and others can help businesses know the key time for them to share content.

Attaching a photo or video helps to draw attention to specific content.

One study suggests that the number of followers or how active a user is does not have an effect on what becomes trending, it is typically a community effort and it’s based on the topic (Asur, 2011). Vander Lans (2010) states that “An important feature of viral marketing campaigns is that marketers are able to accurately measure the actions of customers, such as when they open an email and which pages they visit” (p. 355).

Research Questions

RQ 1: How do retailers like Walmart and Target use engagement to create an online community?

RQ 2: How do Walmart and Target rank in terms of analytics versus where they are in the stock market?

RQ 3: When referring to eWOM, who influences keeping Walmart and Target in the eyes of the people?

Using engagement to create an online community: Walmart

Keeps their social media open and honest.

Video posted Facebook in February about the changes for employees.

Had hundreds of comments. Social media team helped customers and informed employees about who to talk to for further questions.

Twitter is more of a community, with Walmart reaching out to customers to thank them for shopping.

Using engagement to create an online community: Target

Target uses Facebook similar to promote current sales and talk about upcoming releases at the retailer.

Social media team keeps up with consumers by responding to their issues right away and helping them have a more positive experience.

Twitter is used for promoting things they’re excited about.

Target effectively uses media and hashtags to promote themselves and their brands.

Analytics and the stock market: Walmart

According to Alexa, Walmart.com is ranked 37th in the US and 171st in the world, with over 52,000 sites linking in.

Topsy Sentiment Score: 61

Twitter followers: 657,000 and counting

Facebook likes: 32.8 million and counting

Stocks as of April 15, 2015: $79.25

Analytics and the stock market: Target

According to Alexa, Target.com is ranked 52nd in the US and 264th in the world, with over 50,000 sites linking in.

Topsy Sentiment Score: 90

Twitter followers: 1.2 million

Facebook likes: 22 million

Stocks as of April 15, 2015: $81.91

EWOM Influencers: Walmart

Week of April 12th: Shawn Mendes (@ShawnMendes) and his fan club (@shawn_access) were both in the top five influencers for Walmart.

Tweets tagged Walmart, talked about going to the retailer to purchase CD’s.

One Tweeter (@huntervespinosa) posted a picture of her purchasing the CD at Walmart and that increased engagement.

Other influencers include @listentolina, a lifestyles and home blogger.

EWOM Influencers: Target

Target’s Twitter is number one for influencers, with Shawn Mendes’ Twitter following in second.

Mendes and his fans Tweeting about Target (and Walmart) should increase traffic both in stores and to the websites of the brands.

Body Armor, a new sports drink, was the number three influencer for Target after announcing a partnership to distribute the drink in Target locations.

This is beneficial to both Target and the Body Armor drink brand.

Conclusion

Likes and followers don’t matter, engagement and sharing content does.

EWOM drives people to Twitter pages, websites and stores.

If Walmart and Target continue to post frequently, engage with customers and share relevant content, they will easily stay in the eyes of people in the online world.

Future Research

Look deeper into the online relationship of musicians/product suppliers with retailers like Walmart and Target to see how their EWOM effects one another.

Compare the likes and comments on a Facebook status to the favorites and replies of a Tweet of similar content to determine which method of social media works best for the specific company.