Social Media Marketing For Dummies Pdf

This chapter provides an insight of contemporary developments in social media marketing with special reference to the emergence of online technology and its influence upon various marketing operations. The information flow through the introduction of the concept of social Media involving the synthesis of sociology and technology and creating an environment on the internet where people share experiences with each other and develop networks followed by analysis of its three main components (Publishing Technology for Everyone, Information Diffusion, and Relationship Building) highlighting its various dimensions. Further, it leads to discussion about Social Media Marketing becoming a latest and popular trend as a digital platform for social interaction between virtual communities. Next section details main social media platforms, their rankings, features, corresponding strategic actions followed by advantages and challenges for organisations using Social Media for Marketing.

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Handbook of Research on

Integrating Social Media

into Strategic Marketing

Nick Hajli

Newcastle University Business School, UK

A volume in the Advances in Marketing, Customer

Relationship Management, and E-Services

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Handbook of research on integrating social media into strategic marketing / Nick Hajli, editor.

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ISBN 978-1-4666-8353-2 (hardcover : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-4666-8354-9 (ebook : alk. paper) 1. Internet marketing.

2. Marketing--Social aspects. 3. Social media. 4. Strategic planning. I. Hajli, Nick, 1979-

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359

Chapter 21

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8353-2.ch021

Social Media Marketing

ABSTRACT

This chapter provides an insight of contemporary developments in social media marketing with special

reference to the emergence of online technology and its inﬂuence upon various marketing operations.

The information ﬂow through the introduction of the concept of social Media involving the synthesis of

sociology and technology and creating an environment on the internet where people share experiences

with each other and develop networks followed by analysis of its three main components (Publishing

Technology for Everyone, Information Diﬀusion, and Relationship Building) highlighting its various

dimensions. Further, it leads to discussion about Social Media Marketing becoming a latest and popular

trend as a digital platform for social interaction between virtual communities. Next section details main

social media platforms, their rankings, features, corresponding strategic actions followed by advantages

and challenges for organisations using Social Media for Marketing.

INTRODUCTION

The technological developments are having con-

siderable impact upon any organisation in variety

of ways. The emergence of online technology has

revolutionised the marketing operations all over

the world (Baird & Parasnis, 2011).

Now-a-days there is a high competition in

the market and the customers have opportunities

to take better decision for the available range of

goods and services. In this competitive situation,

the organizations need to be vigilant to retain cus-

tomer's loyalty. Reducing the communication gap

between the company and the consumer could be

a good way to create a better relationship which

can further be helpful to develop a better under-

standing of consumer's needs and wants. Social

media is playing crucial role in this regard and

the enterprises are taking the benefit from social

media's friendly approach to build brand relation-

Vipin K. Nadda

University of Sunderland – London, UK

Sumesh Singh Dadwal

Glyndwr University London, UK

Azmat Firdous

University of Sunderland, UK

360

Social Media Marketing

ship (Hachinski et al., 2010). Social media sites

are the communication ties being used to bind

people together. Research have proven that the

people are moving towards utilizing the social

media for getting access to information, ideas and

opportunities (Donath, 2004).

Social media technology has modified the ways

for managing the relationship between the brands

and the customers. Success of the social media lies

in a fact that it has provided the medium through

which people interact with each other. They have

been able to maintain connections with one another

(Pauwels, 2004).The marketers are using the social

media sites for fostering the brands. They employ

social media to understand customer expectations

and then develop appropriate strategies to promote

their offerings for achieving the marketing goal

(Donath, 2004).

Commutation is very crucial and valuable for

commencing the dialogues. Additionally, com-

munication is the only tool that is used to initiate,

develop and maintain the relationship between

two persons. Communication opens doors for un-

derstanding and eradicating confusion (McEwen,

2005). Social media serves as a podium for com-

munication and engagement of the large variety

of customers. Through this medium, companies

can raise awareness about their brands. They can

also promote their brands by disseminating their

specialty and point of parity (Breivik & Thorb-

jørnsen, 2008).

Social media sites made interaction and

communication so much easy those different

companies can interact with their customers and

know about their preferences which is then used

offline for developing appropriate strategy for

promoting brands.

Social media provide flexibility to approach

huge traffic of target audience due to variety of

features (Brakus et al., 2009). Though face to face

interaction and communication is much power-

ful, yet social media tends to provide an efficient

alternative for communication. It helps to manage

the instant message communication and dialogues

between the brands and customers. The conversa-

tion between the brands and the customers can be

stored over these sites and can be used for further

improvement.

Brands can also flash their advertisements on

the social networking sites. Flashing the ads on

the pages of the target audience is like winning a

tender. Brands have to understand that they have

to win the bid in displaying their ads. They have to

clearly mention their target audience and place the

highest bids. This ends in generating the exposure

amongst many customers which may indirectly

results in significant amount of sales and huge

fan following for a brand.

Social media platforms are not just a trend that

has to be followed. Rather they have proofed their

importance in building relationship of a brand

with the customer, grabbing potential customers,

customer retention, high end promoting system,

and brand's potential growth. Companies cannot

afford to tend to ignore such a vital platform for

the development of their brand.

Conrad et al., (2010) said that the social media

and social networking websites are most modern

basis of marketing communication. The platform

is providing the marketers more open and free

way of communication. The new generation of

websites provide the customers more integrative

facilities and marketers are using these facilities.

The security of modern websites is increasing and

this is also enhancing the trust of customers on

online buying the product from the organisation.

The social networking website likes Facebook,

Twitter, and LinkedIn and similar others are at-

tracting million of users. The marketers are looking

for their customers on these social networking

platforms and using these as sources of market-

ing and communication with the customers. Here

customers are getting information from social net-

working websites at the same time they are testing

and exchanging the information with each other.

The reliability and validity of such information

is more as customers trust each other more than

the traditional ways of marketing.

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Social Media Marketing

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

Social media is basically the online content de-

veloped by a variety of people who are open for

access over the internet. In other words, social

media is the shift of people`s attention on the online

platforms where people share, discover and read

information and gain knowledge (Borgan, 2010).

Conrad et al., (2010) believes that social media

is a sort of synthesis of sociology and technology

and creating an environment or platform on the

internet where people share experiences with

each other and develop networks for a variety of

different official and unofficial reasons.

Social media has become an important plat-

form and has gone so important that nearly every

business uses social media for the marketing and

promotion of their business, products and services.

Social media is also used for sharing information

and getting in touch with their customers and

society at large.

Ahmad (2011) suggests that social media can

be divided in to 3 main components:

• Publishing Technology for everyone:

Social media is free and open for publish-

ing for everyone and the technological

advancement has made it even more con-

venient. Social media is online therefore

they are not restricted to any physical set

up. Previously social places used to be like

pubs, clubs, gardens where people used

to interact with one another and share in-

formation. Advancement in the technol-

ogy and the development of virtual social

platforms enable people to interact and

develop network with one another, online

social media has become the new talk of

the town. On online social media everyone

can be the publishers and generator of the

content for which the information is shared

(Ahmad, 2011);

• Information Diﬀusion: The rate at which

social media diﬀuses information, no other

medium is capable of doing so because

other media like TV, newspapers and mag-

azines are not that faster in ﬁltering and

spreading information. Online social me-

dia like Facebook, Twitter are faster in the

transmission of information and relatively

far less expensive than the rest. Barefoot

and Szabo (2010) suggest that previously

companies used to market their products

or services through advertising on TV and

newspapers; making it a one way communi-

cation. Through the development of online

social media, companies interact with their

customers and take feedback and sugges-

tions from them for further developments.

Social media has made the information

open and equally accessible for all. Online

social media has bought democracy in the

sharing of information (Ahmad, 2011);

• Relationship Building: Social media has

become a powerful medium for the devel-

opment of relationships through sharing

valuable information and creating won-

derful ideas. Social media helps people in

connecting with one another. A person is

connected and shares information from UK

with a man in New Zealand; all because of

online social media.

Gunelius (2011) states that social media has

gone so powerful that it is now used for not only

business and personal relationships but also for

political developments.

All this clearly highlights the various dimen-

sions and importance of social media. The rise

and advancement of technology and the shift

from traditional media to online social media has

made it more significant. There are many other

reasons due to which people, businesses and even

the political parties are shifting and using social

362

Social Media Marketing

media for the development of the achievement of

their objectives.

Social Media Marketing

Marketing through social media is the latest and

popular trend in the market. Traditional marketing

tools such as TV, newspapers, magazines have

been very expensive and cover a limited targeted

market. The traditional marketing strategies were

based on focusing on specific markets individu-

ally. Even now it is difficult for businesses to

target and market their products and services to

the big geographical position through one single

campaign such as covering the entire Asia through

one newspaper advertisement; because not every

country in Asia watches the same TV channels

(Evans, 2012).

The social media has entirely changed that

approach towards marketing. When we see the

basic definition of marketing it says to maximize

the usage of resources of the business and develop

products and services to satisfy customer needs.

(Hajir, 2012) The social media marketing has in

reality enabled the businesses to take the feedback,

comments, and suggestions from their customers

through blogs, pictures and ratings and improve

their products and services so that customer needs

could be addressed in a more proactive manner.

So the advertising and marketing has entirely

changed due to social media.

Jaoker, Jacobs and Moore (2009) state that

through social media, customers are building

information about everything from insurance to

career; from pet food to electronic appliances and

through this customers are beating out marketers

in their game. They are sharing their experiences

with one another which now a days is directly

making an impact on the business. This is the era

of information; therefore it has become necessary

that there is a spread of positive information about

the company offerings out in the social platforms.

This positive word of mouth at the social platforms

will help them to retain customers and generate

more sales.

Kabani and Brogan (2010) say that the biggest

comfort with the social media is that it helps the

businesses in marketing their brand to the wider

'global' community. The social media platforms

are open and accessible for everyone from every

country and therefore they provide companies with

tremendous opportunities to communicate with

communities and build relationships with their

target audience. The social media marketing is

different all together than the traditional marketing.

Social media in marketing is all about using

the natural conversational platforms of people for

building relationships with them in order to satisfy

their needs. Social media platform are helping

businesses to spread a positive word of mouth

for themselves and their goods so that customers'

needs could be addressed effectively. Social media

involves a number of different social channels

as traditional media has offline channels. Social

media keeps changing over time and therefore

it gets better and better. Social media is highly

participative and the participants of the conversa-

tion are the key people that generate the content.

In traditional marketing on TV and newspapers

the marketing and communication is one sided

whereas social media is a collective approach

that enables the collection and sharing of infor-

mation. This information becomes very essential

for businesses to actually revise their business and

marketing plans in order to maximize customer

attraction and retention (Evans and McKee, 2010).

Social Media Platforms

A social media operate as a digital platform upon

which social interaction occurs. Social networking

platforms help in building virtual communities, or

social networks, for individuals with similar at-

titude, interests, education, opinion and lifestyles.

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Social Media Marketing

Burke (2006 in Bolotaeva, 2011) defines social

networking platform as: "… a loose affiliation

of people who interact, communicate and share

contents through platforms building relationships

among communities of practices. A social platform

management is a social and technological process

that enables the development, deployment, use

and management of social media solutions and

services. In social aspects a 'social platform'

enables communities of users in, posting, editing,

and sorting, co-creating and sharing a variety

of contents. Thus it enables to communicate

implicitly or explicitly with specific person or

broadcast to all. Its other features aid in adding

friends into the network, setting privacy controls

and other native social media network features

(Leonardi, 2013). In its technological aspects, a

social platform consists of dimensions of social

mark-up language for creating native applications,

an application programming interface (API) for

third party application integration and a back-

end admin console for managing the entire user

base and preferences, etc. It provides continuous

visibility and persistence to people and content.

SOCIAL PLATFORMS AND

USER BEHAVIOURS

Thus a social platform enables creating social

media websites and services with complete social

media network technical, user specific and social

functionality. These are second generation (Web

2.) websites / platforms that provide users the

ability and tools to create and publish their own

mini web sites or web pages using the "bottom up

approach" — using a many-to-many model. Such

platforms provide features such as; user created

contents, high degree of user participation in com-

munities of practice and ability to integrate with

multiple sites or networks (Campbell, 2010). Thus

a social platform include things like social net-

working (Facebook, Google+ MySpace, twitter,

LinkedIn); photo and video sharing sites (Flickr,

Vimio and YouTube); blogs (such as Blogger,

WordPress, Typepad), social bookmarking (Deli-

cious, Stumble Upon) news sharing (Digg, Yahoo!

Buzz) (Campbell, 2010). The social networked

platforms can attract traffic by managing touches

of 4Ps; Personal, Participatory, Physical, Plausible

(Clemons, 2009. cited in Bolotaeva, 2011).

The companies have used social platforms

for internal and external communication and

branding. Its use can be attributed to demand side

factors (the fact that social media give us that we

can't get offline and let us meet our social needs)

and supply side factors (websites such as Face-

book, Twitter, and LinkedIn have more than 1.2

billion users and account for almost 25 per cent

of Internet use). To get full advantaged of social

media, companies need to develop and harness

their social strategy (Piskorski, 2014).

Over 1.7 billion people use social platforms

on the Internet. Some social platforms, such as

Twitter, MeetUp and eHarmony, enable strang-

ers to connect. eHarmony alone is estimated to

account for one in six new marriages in the U.S.

LinkedIn helps one expand business relationships.

Other social platforms, like Facebook or Renren

in China, creates more relationships with other

known peoples. In fact, Facebook boasts stag-

gering 750 million users, and valuation in excess

of $100 billion (Piskorski, 2014). Different plat-

forms have different levels of restrictions to users'

choices. This is puzzling that, some platforms like

e-Harmoney(dating site), WhatsApp (social one

to one texting on phone), headhunting (recruit-

ment) etc., are successful even with restrictive

access and a user fee. On the other hand platforms

like Facebook (social networking), Monster (job

hunting), Lastminute.com (travel and tourism),

YouTube etc. that offers unlimited free access

are also successful. The understanding becomes

more complex when even platforms with middle

grounds on access like twitter (limited in words

with unlimited in access to network) and LinkedIn

etc. are also growing. Thus, It can be argued that

the value of participation in a social platform

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Social Media Marketing

often depends on the number of choices offered,

and a platform offering unrestricted access (yet in

user's control) could quickly displace a platform

that restricts choice or provides restricted access.

SOCIAL PLATFORMS

AND KIND OF USERS

In June 2014, Ebiz/MBA has ranked top 15 plat-

forms by comprehensively average of integrating

rankings from others ranking evaluators (Alexa

Global Traffic, compete and Quantcast) (Ebi-

zMBA, 2014). In 2013, a study by Pew Reserch

found that in the US around 73% of online adults

use a social networking site of some kind, 42%

of 2% of online adults now use multiple social

networking sites but Facebook at 71% remains

as top platform of the choice. The study by Pew

research also found that users segments of different

platforms are not same. Facebook is preferred by

diverse mix of demographic segments and who

also visit site daily many times. Pinterest has

four times high appeal to female users, LinkedIn

has more college graduates with higher income

households. On the other hands the segments

of Twitter and Instagram are overlapping with

younger adults, urban dwellers, and non-whites

(Duggan, 2013). Further 90% of Twitter users, 93%

of instagram and 83% of linkedin users also use

facebook. A small number of users use only one

type of plateform; 8% LinkedIn, 4% Pinterest, and

2% Instagram or Twitter only (Duggan, 2013). This

pattern shows high level of similarities between

user needs to visit social platforms on one hand

and also put forward a question that why people

visit many platform if one platform can meet their

social needs! Do people have different motives at

each platform or do they have different network

of connections at each of the platform or they

want to exhibit different personalities and roles

at different platforms? The features of different

platforms are used to segment platforms. There

are a variety of Social Media platforms that are in

use with their corresponding features (Table 1).

Nearly one in four people worldwide (1.7bil-

lion people) use social network sites (SEOPres-

sor, 2012). There can be seven kinds of social

media users. The Deal Seeker follow a company

for bargain or value deals, so companies should

always offer them deals along with a request to

refer more friends to the brand; the Unhappy Cus-

tomer has potential to do harm to a company by

creating stream of negative words of mouths, so

company should solve their problems immediately;

The Loyal Fans spreads positive word of mouth

and recommend the brand to their network and

even defends their brand, so the company should

reward their behaviour; a Quiet Follower neutral

and is just there because his friends are there, so

the company should call them to engage in actions;

The Cheerleader is top fan of the brand and likes

everything a company does, hence the company

should keep him fresh and inspiring with updated

information; and lastly the Ranter goes for virtual

fights with strong opinions about everything, so

the company should react cautiously and very

selectively (SEOPressor, 2012). Hence in overall

the company should have a customised social

platform strategy and the contents of the messages

should be engaging with a sense of community,

inclusive in action, newsworthy, and contents from

all followers be allowed and recognised.

DETAILED SOCIAL

STRATEGIES FOR SOCIAL

NETWORK PLATFORMS

In his study of 60 companies, Piskorski, (2012)

found that companies that simply posted their

digital strategies onto the social environments,

failed to succeed on social platforms. These

companies were merely trying to broadcast their

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Social Media Marketing

commercial information to customers, intruding

with unwanted advances and yet expecting cus-

tomers to give feedback. In contrast, successful

companies were able to go beyond the trap of

'maximising number of followers' and implement

their social strategies. Social strategies at stage

one, advises business to build better relation-

ships between people and provide incentives if

people undertake corporate tasks for free. Only

at second stage, consistent with user behaviour,

the company should make non-intrusive attempt

to build relationship between companies and

consumers. A social strategist will call this social

network of 'many to many interaction' as social

platforms (all equal to co-create and share freely)

and should never limit ones thought by calling

this social network as social media (medium to

broadcast or dump contents with commercial

messages). For instant, it has been found that the

cardholders who used open Forum functionalities

are more likely to recommend Amex credit card

to others. The Nike Plus platform, that allows its

5 million customers of Nike's digital products to

interact with their friends; has contributed up to

30% increase in sales. Cisco's social platform is

not only protecting the company from aggressive

Table 1. Variety of social media platforms

Social Media Platforms Main Features

Social networking sites- Facebook, Google Plus,

CafeMom, Gather, Fitsugar

Allows users to connect and share with people who have similar interests and

backgrounds

Micro-blogging sites- Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous Allow the users to submit short written entries, which can include links to

product and service sites, as well as links to other social media sites

Publishing tools- WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace Allows users engage in conversations by posting and responding to community

message

Collaboration tools- Wikipedia, WikiTravel,

WikiBooks

Apps or software based social platforms where users can work together

(synchronously or asynchronously) to create, modify and manage content.

Rating/Review sites- Amazon ratings, Angie's List Using web2. The platforms allow reviews to be posted about people, businesses,

products, or services. It is a social strategy tool professionally designed and

written to maximize conversions sales.

Photo sharing sites- Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest Enable users to upload, transform edit, publish and share pictures and videos etc.

Video sharing sites- YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler allow users to share different types of media, such as pictures and video

Personal broadcasting tools- Blog Talk radio,

Ustream, Livestream, tumbler

Is a way of participatory journalism and synonyms to personal publishing?

Virtual worlds- Second Life, World of Warcraft,

Farmville

Is a 3D computer based online community environment in which users are

represented on screen as themselves or as made-up characters and interact in real

time with other users using texts, or 2D or 3D models, knows as Avatars.

Location based services- Check-ins, Facebook Places,

Foursquare, Yelp

Apps on gadgets and mobiles that uses geographical position (GPS) and link it

with information, entertainment, or social media service that is available nearby

location. E.g. gas prices and services or restaurants near your location.

Widgets- Profile badges, Like buttons A small helpful software program or Apps, which gives extra power and control

to the user when embedded directly into a web page. These can be used to add

features like, weather, clock, local news, Twitter widget, Mailing list, gossips

and joke of the day etc.

Social bookmarking and news aggregation- Digg,

Delicious, StumbleUpon

Allow users to save and organize links to any number of online resources and

websites

Group buying- Groupon, Living Social, Wowcer,

Crowdsavings

Latest trend in money saving, with the power to pull in big discounts.

Source: Decidedlysocial, (2012); SEOPressor, (2012); About.com, (2014)

366

Social Media Marketing

moves of Chinese giant Huawei but also it has

enabled engineers to interact with each other,

achieve a number of certifications and become

more effective on their jobs (Olensky, 2014).

The effective companies needs to ask them-

selves, what is their core capability and how they

can use customer profiles and social platforms to

let the customers chat about their brands. It is about

helping people connect with other people (and not

company to consumers at first stage). To under-

stand online user behaviour on social networks it

is important to know, what they do when they are

on social platforms. Piskorski, (2012) found that

there are three-folds schemes of actions: Class,

Action and Object. There are seven classes of on

line actions namely: Ego, actions that the user

can do to change the content of his or her profile;

Alter, actions to change the content of others'

profiles; Graph, actions of changing users' on-line

networks; Info, is related to viewing information

on others'profiles;Group, group related activities;

Interact, all communications and; Miscellaneous

actions, e.g. to add someone as a friend. Each of

these 7 classes can have further actions, such as

Add, Approve, Delete, Edit, Reject and 'Objects'

such as Photo, Comment. Piskorski, (2014) found

that 79% of all users activity is related to Info i.e.

viewing other's profiles, 7% of activities realted

to Ego i.e. adding content to one's own profile.

Only 1% of all actions are in the Alter i.e. to

change the content of other's profiles and 8%

of action related to Graph, actions of changing

user's on-line networks i.e. adding and deleting.

Interact category, of communication is just 5%

and group related activities are miniscule 0.1%.

Further exploration of info class found that 44%

viewed profile and picture of known friends and

equal percentage that of strangers. Remaining

12% of all Info activities was about people view-

ing their own profile analogous to behaviour of

looking at daily looking at mirror before going

it. The study also found that Men 67% off all

additions or deletions to profiles (class Ego) as

compared to 33% in case of women. This may be

due to fact that men usually get less viewing so in

order to boost their profile views they put more

information, other reason may be social roles of

men vs. women in a society. Men who are older,

have public (not private only) profile, not disclose

their corect age, have more online friends and who

are for longtime on network are more likely to look

at womens they did not know. (Piskorski, 2014)

in his reserch at harvard business school, cites

literature that supports three kinds of pardigms in

which social platforms impact markets. The first

pardigm is, 'the pipes view', it conciders social

networks are conduits which transfer trustworthy

information about exchange opportunities between

interested parties. The second paradigm is 'prisms

view' and posits that a platform offers a network

tie between two parties, it has implications not

only for the parties but also for third-parties not

involved in the exchange. A third pardigm is 'net-

works as cover', that posits that interactions with

friends and acquaintances give actors an excuse

to engage in other kind of prying activities, while

still maintaining plausible deniability that they

are not engaging in such behaviors. A 'cover'

is any social action that allows 'Ego' to signal

to 'Alter' that he is of type A personality, when

in reality they are of type B. Such covers allow

actors of type A to mix with actors of type B, by

being virtually indistinguishable from actors of

type B. For instant, LinkedIn allows users who

are currently employed to go on the job market

without apearing that they are on the job hunt,

and facebook networks can allow people to look

for new parteners without others realising this

explicitely. Similaraly on social networking sites

people can peek into other users privacy that social

norms may not allow in physical world. The study

found that, only 50 per cent of profile and picture

views are of friends, the remaining 50 per cent is

of strangers (Piskorski, 2012).

In another reserch Deighton (2007) found five

emerging paradigms governing marketing using

digital intercativity and and five ways that firms

interpose themselves into these lives. These five

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Social Media Marketing

pardigms are responses to the diminution of mar-

keting's power relative to the consumer. The five

pardigms are Thought tracing, Ubiquitous con-

nectivity, Property exchanges, Social exchanges,

and Cultural exchanges.

The above findings clearely have implications

in social strategy in general and in toursim sector

in particular. Hotel or toursim products should try

to become part of 'pictures' – ego of the users and

this information will stretch amongst networks.

The next section details main platforms, their

rankings, features and coressponding social

startgic actions.

Facebook

Facebook is the biggest social network of the

current era with 1.1 billion registered users and

estimated 750 million unique monthly visitors

(SEOPressor, 2012). Facebook can be utilised by

the companies to build strong base for getting in

touch with the potential customers. the business

need to develop their brand profile through creating

a stellar Facebook page which is worth the attention

on the platform and then share information with

the people that are interesting, and newsworthy to

the consumers. Then the content can be enriched

with information related to the products and ser-

vices, new launches, or company happenings etc.

make sure that Facebook is not a broadcasting

media rather it is a social platform for consumers

and you can be guest there with invitations only.

The company needs to help consumer meet their

social needs and let them fulfil their other needs.

Do not intrude or be pushy like salesman, be so-

cietal oriented marketers and act as facilitator for

community of practitioner -prosumer. Those with

account on Facebook can conveniently join the

company profile and exchange information and

updates provided but it is important that you first

invite your close friends or missionary custom-

ers, they can create budge. Do offer incentives or

recognitions for new needs. Do act according to

kind of Internet users as mentioned in preceding

sections. It gives a great opportunity to enhance

a company`s visibility and image in the virtual

world. Do respond to comments and weave into

your comments and posts to continually extend

this. Individuals interested in the company can

easily share ideas with the actual or potential

customers. They can also create discussion forums

to have feedback about their products and services

(Treadway and Smith, 2010).

Twitter

Twitter is very popular micro blogging site

amongst the celebrities and Politicians, due to

which it attracts a wide variety of fans of such

personalities from around the globe. It has 500

million registered users and 400 million tweets are

sent each day (SEOPressor, 2012). It allows each

user to post messages of 140 characters or less

at one time. A business should create its unique

profile. People at twitter share their ideas and

link with one another. So it provides an excellent

opportunity to businesses to market their brand.

Companies have also created their profiles on

Twitter in order to get in touch with the audience

Thomases, (2010). The message or tweet can

be personal thoughts, quotes, news and picture

links, brand, and product and service links. The

users starts a Twitter account in order to follow,

and feel connected to, their favourite celebrities,

media personalities, opinion leaders, role models,

sports figure, politicians etc. business can sign

up for a Twitter account to keep up-to-date about

industry leaders, stakeholders and keeping cus-

tomers updated with newsworthy tweets. Invite

friends or brand cheer leaders and follow opinion

leaders or media channels that are of interest to

your customers & followers. Each registered user

has an average of 208 followers that can retweet

if your content is relevant to them and touches

their life or something they care about. The chain

can grow exponentially provided tweet is worth

tweeting repeatedly. Everything that can be ap-

plied to Facebook can also be applied here with

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Social Media Marketing

some alteration. Your followers are following you

as role models or reference groups or your power

authority due to rank, expertise; referrals, coercive

etc. ensure that you continuously perform your

role. Tweet yourself and retweet from higher ups

in industry, media, consumer groups, government

reports and news channels etc. sensible uses of

hash tags (# brandname) are very important to

create brand budge. It is about what is happening

right now in the world? So keep up to date but

avoid controversial contents.

LinkedIn is social networking platform mainly

focused on the professional and business network-

ing segments. It has 225 million registered users

and on the average 110 million unique monthly

visitors. This platform strategy also starts with

creating a LinkedIn company page. The accounts

on LinkedIn can help in expanding business or

professional or employment related connections

thus ultimately a platform to gain access to

customers and professionals (Hendricks, 2010).

Remember to follow principles of AIDA – atten-

tion- interest- desire and action. Request cheerlead-

ers and opinion leaders for testimonials. Promote

company through 'follow' button and remember

to link your other social media accounts to your

LinkedIn Company Page. Make the information

engaging and varied but also remember pictures

speak more than words.

The basic functionality of LinkedIn allows

users (workers and employers) to create profiles

and "connections" to each other in an online

social network, which may represent real-world

professional relationships. Users can invite anyone

(whether a site user or not) to become a connec-

tion. However, if the invitee selects "I don't know"

or "Spam", this counts against the inviter. If the

inviter gets too many of such responses, the ac-

count may be restricted or closed.

This list of connections can then be used in a

number of ways:

• Obtaining introductions to the connections

of connections (termed second-degree

connections) and connections of second-

degree connections (termed third-degree

connections);

• Users can ﬁnd jobs, people and business

opportunities recommended by someone

in one's contact network;

• Employers can list jobs and search for po-

tential candidates;

• Job seekers can review the proﬁle of hir-

ing managers and discover which of their

existing contacts can introduce them;

• Users can post their own photos and view

photos of others to aid in identiﬁcation;

• Users can follow diﬀerent companies and

can receive notiﬁcations about the new

joining and oﬀers available;

• Users can save (i.e. bookmark) jobs that

they would like to apply for;

• Users can "like" and "congratulate" each

other's updates and new employments;

• Users can see who has visited their proﬁle

page.

YouTube

YouTube with 1 billion registered users at which

videos are viewed 4 billion times per day is largest

media sharing site in the world. With inception

in 2005 this platform has been used to entertain,

educate, share thoughts, provoke, and inspire

people. It is accessible to everyone, with or without

registering an account. A business can register

as a corporate account using Google mail only.

Once registered a business can upgrade with a fee

to get YouTube's 'branded channel' option. It is

important to bring in traffic use SEO keys and

tags that are consumer segment and your brand

related. A business can add as many relevant key

words using the auto body example from the Pin-

terest. If one cannot create video to start with, the

business can upload loyal / missionary customer

videos or can search YouTube for your brand

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Social Media Marketing

relevant videos from other channels or industry or

education etc. and link them to your site or social

platform pages. Business should stay current and

follow the rules of movie making and education.

People like seeing more than reading but it must

be something for them (SEOPressor, 2012).

Google+

Google+ has 343 million registered users, who

visit 65 million times per month. This social

platform includes number of features that are

very relevant for social platform marketing. For

instance share button can be used to share links,

videos, and photos with segmented and filtered

Google circles. One more feature is option for

bigger and clear cover picture. Business should

use key words strategically. Business can link

this with other websites and social platform and

invite contacts. Other features like story, events,

hangouts, Google+ community are really worth

utility for a business but it is responsibility of the

business to be responsive, empathetic and trust-

worthy to your community (SEOPressor, 2012).

Starting in November 2011, Google+ profiles

are used as the background account for many

Google services including YouTube, Gmail,

Google Maps, Android, Google Play, Google Mu-

sic, Google Voice, Google Wallet, Google Local

and more. As of January 2012, Google Search is

customized with a feature called Search Plus Your

World, which inserts content shared on Google+

profiles and brand pages under Web Search results,

if one is logged into their Google+ account while

using it. The feature, which is opt-in, was received

with controversy over the emphasis of Google+

profiles over other social networking services. The

feature builds upon the earlier "Social Search"

feature which indexes content shared or published

by authors; "Social Search".

A Google+ User profile is a public visible

account of a user that is attached to many Google

properties. It includes basic social networking

elements like a profile photo, about section, back-

ground photo, previous work and school history,

interests, places lived and an area to post status

updates. It also includes several identity service

sections, such as a contributor and other profiles

area that let one link their "properties across the

web". These section optionally link to other social

media accounts one has, any blogs one owns or

have written or sites one is a contributor to. This

area is used for Google Authorship. Customized

or Vanity URLs were made available to the public

starting on October 29.2013 to any account that

was 30+ days old, has a profile photo and at least

10 followers. Google removed author photo from

search results in June 2014 and in August 2014

Google will stop showing authorship in search

results both photo and author name.

Circles

Circles is a core feature of the Google+ Social

Platform. It enable users to organize people into

groups or lists for sharing across various Google

products and services. Organization of circles is

done through a drag-and-drop interface. Once a

circle is created, a Google+ user can share specific

private content to only that circle. For example,

work themed content can be shared with only

work colleagues, and one's friends and family

could see more personal content and photos. The

option to share Public or with Everyone is always

available Since September 26, 2011 users can share

Circles; it's a one-time share, so if the creator of

the Circle updates the members, people's shared

copies won't be updated.

Another function of Circles is to control the

content of one's Stream. A user may click on a

Circle on the left side of the page and the Stream

portion of the page (the center) will contain

only posts shared by users in that Circle. For the

unsegmented Stream (includes content from all

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Social Media Marketing

of a user's Circles), each Circle has a "slider"

configuration item with four positions: nothing,

some things, most things, and everything. The

nothing position requires the user to select (click

on) the Circle name explicitly to see content from

users in that Circle. The everything setting as its

name implies filters nothing out from people in

that Circle. The remaining two positions control

the quantity of posts which appear in one's main

Stream, but the algorithm controlling what shows

has not been disclosed.

Stream

In the "Stream", which occupies the middle of

three columns on the page, users see updates from

those in their Circles. There is an input box which

allows users to enter a post. Along with the text

entry field there are icons to upload and share

photos and videos. The Stream can be filtered to

show only posts from specific Circles.

Instagram

Instagram is very popular photos and videos shar-

ing platform and recently purchased by Facebook.

It has 130 million active monthly users. The busi-

ness can upload photos or videos and can link with

other social platforms and invite people to click

for favourite ones. To keep always in the trend

continuously upload new actions photos about

your actions that would be of interest to users.

That addresses their social, rational, emotional and

epistemic needs. Promote photo-sharing contests

of different themes, offer discount codes, invite

testimonial and use hashtags (SEOPressor, 2012).

Blogs

Blogs can be updated on a frequent basis. Blogs

can also be regularly developed for a variety of

different purposes. They are an active source of

promoting products and services and spreading

information (Khare, 2012). There are many dif-

ferent blogs that cover and attract people from

specific industry. Marketers generally develop

their profile and carry on updating them so that the

fans and connected users are kept well informed.

Tumblr

Tumblr is one of the blogging platforms that also

allows sharing photos, videos, quotes almost

everything. It is more images driven, interest

focused rather than personnel oriented and offers

much choice to the users. Tumbler has 300 mil-

lion registered users and 216.3 million monthly

visitors (SEOPressor, 2012). There are many

options of formatting and layouts etc. that can be

customised and focused as per your customers'

need. The Admin option allows adding users,

opinion leaders, experts and so on that can add

blogs to your pages. Try a variety of photos and

videos with themes, and things like bloomers,

how to, behind scenes etc. try to make it as close

to personal site as possible but make sure that

company's social media strategy should lead to

more contents from others as compared to from

the company. Just like other traditional marketing

platforms, these mediums also require consistent

time and effort. Marketers generally develop their

profile and carry on updating them so that the

fans and connected users are kept well informed.

Development of Tumblr began in 2006 dur-

ing a two-week gap between contracts at David

Karp's software consulting company, Davidville

(housed at Karp's former internship with producer/

incubator Fred Seibert's Frederator Studios which

was located a block from Tumblr's current head-

quarters). Karp had been interested in tumblelogs

(short-form blogs) for some time and was waiting

for one of the established blogging platforms to

introduce their own tumblelogging platform. As

no one had done so after a year of waiting, Karp

and developer Marco Arment began working on

their own tumblelogging platform. Tumblr was

launched in February 2007 and within two weeks,

the service had gained 75,000 users.

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Social Media Marketing

BLOG MANAGEMENT

• Dashboard: The dashboard is the prima-

ry tool for the typical Tumblr user. It is a

live feed of recent posts from blogs that

they follow. Through the dashboard, us-

ers are able to comment, reblog, and like

posts from other blogs that appear on their

dashboard. The dashboard allows the user

to upload text posts, images, video, quotes,

or links to their blog with a click of a but-

ton displayed at the top of the dashboard.

Users are also able to connect their blogs

to their Twitter and Facebook accounts, so

whenever they make a post, it will also be

sent as a tweet and a status update;

• Queue: Users are able to set up a sched-

ule to delay posts that they make. They

can spread their posts over several hours or

even days;

• Tags: For each post a user creates, they are

able to help their audience ﬁnd posts about

certain topics by adding tags. If someone

were to upload a picture to their blog and

wanted their viewers to ﬁnd pictures, they

would add the tag #picture, and their view-

ers could use that word to search up posts

with the tag #picture;

• HTML editing: Tumblr allows users to

edit their blog's theme HTML coding to

control the appearance of their blog. Users

are also able to use a custom domain name

for their blog.

MySpace

MySpace (stylized as MySpace, previously stylized

as MySpace) is a social networking service with a

strong music emphasis owned by Specific Media

LLC and pop music singer and actor Justin Tim-

berlake. Myspace was launched in August 2003

and is headquartered inBeverly Hills, California.

In April 2014, Myspace had 1 million unique

U.S. visitors.

Founded in 2003 by Chris DeWolfe and Tom

Anderson, Myspace was later acquired by News

Corporation in July 2005 for $580 million. From

2005 until early 2008, Myspace was the most

visited social networking site in the world, and

in June 2006 surpassed Google as the most vis-

ited website in the United States. In April 2008,

Myspace was overtaken by Facebook in the number

of unique worldwide visitors, and was surpassed in

the number of unique U.S. visitors in May 2009,

though Myspace generated $800 million in revenue

during the 2008 fiscal year. Since then, the number

of Myspace users has declined steadily in spite

of several redesigns. As of May 2014, Myspace

was ranked 982 by total web traffic, and 392 in

the United States.

Myspace had a significant influence on pop

culture and music and created a gaming platform

that launched the successes of Zynga andRockYou,

among others. The site also started the trend of

creating unique URLs for companies and artists.

MySpace is a wide majority of businesses

market and promote their products and services

on MySpace and target its users. The network also

provides a variety of other options like gaming,

music, videos etc. (Singh et al, 2008).

Social Bookmarking

There are many such platforms of social book-

marking such as Stumble Upon. StumbleUpon

discovery engine has 25 million registered users.

It searches and recommends web pages to its users

and can also be shared by others to 'like it'. This

also recommends users other related sites or sites

that your network has liked or submit industry

related sites and blogs or create a stumble upon

channel (SEOPressor, 2012).

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Social Media Marketing

ADVANTAGES OF SOCIAL

PLATFORM MARKETING

Many organizations including those in tourism

now routinely use publicly available social net-

working and micro blogging sites for innovation,

marketing and after sales service purposes This

is due to the fact that social networking offers

many opportunities to address challenges and

improve affordances to its users. The challenges

of locating opinion leaders or experts, find users

motivations to share knowledge and capitalise

on social network connections and can adresse

with help from transactive memory, public goods,

and social capital theories (Leonardi, 2013). The

social media enables different ways to engage

in the publicly visible knowledge and conversa-

tions through different kinds of affordance. The

affordance offered are; visibility, persistence,

editability, and association, metavoicing, triggered

attending, network-informed associating, and

generative role taking (Leonardi, 2013). However

there are still some challenges; like governance,

abundance of information, interpreting quality,

tensions of accessibility, contextual cues, leaky

pipe, echo chambers, and intrinsic interest inherent

in the information that needed to be addressed.

The online social media platforms have become

so powerful and popular that they have proved

to be very excellent for marketing activities too.

Social network marketing can be very advanta-

geous for businesses. As it can help find talent and

customers, build brand awareness and intelligence,

create word of mouth or viral marketing, create

community of customers, and market research

(Bolotaeva, 2011). It also helps customers com-

municate effectively and allow review or see

reviews during decision making process, protect

speaking to outside strategies for information, and

thus decreases cognitive load on the shoppers.

Business can create users relevant contents which

can increase brand visibility. Social strategy can

become core capability if properly managed. It is

trendy much low cost supplement to other contents.

It is multiple to multiple connections that create

opportunities for customers to know, demand,

share, and participate and complaint about expe-

riences of products, services, brands and other

interests. The customers can get better products

and services as they can participate in design,

development and consumptions of products and

services. It provides opportunity of publicity in

contest to paid advertisement.

However there are certain challenges that the

business needs to address it demands commit-

ment of resources, continuous visibility, difficult

to measure ROI and if it goes out of control than

can cause huge damage in the least time. It can

make use of faster diffusion of innovation by us-

ing the pressure of opinion leaders, early adopters

and social pressures. The company in a tourism

sector can use say 'Trip Advisor'. The company

can understand target consumers' behaviour and

profile, interact with potential, current or exiting

customers, identify brand advocates and WOM

leaders, improve customer experiences through

all phases of consumer decisions making process,

participate in trade competition, and scan moves

of the competition (Bolotaeva, 2011).

Social network platforms works in various

different ways such as:

• Innovation: Social media provides in-

sight into customer experiences and ideas,

which helps businesses to generate ideas

for further development and innovation.

The use of social media is also becoming

very popular, especially in the context of

marketing that it provides the opportuni-

ty to fetch some excellent ideas from the

market without paying even a single penny

(Zarrella, 2009);

• Purchasing Decisions: The consumer de-

cision-making models guides that, buying

behaviour results from consumer involve-

ment and engagement in multistage prob-

lem solving tasks. The stages are: need

recognition, information search, evalua-

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Social Media Marketing

tion of alternatives (evoked set), evaluation

result, and when buying, post-purchase

evaluation (Schiﬀman & Kanuk, 2009).

Marketing communication using social

platforms provides consumers informa-

tion, so they become able to support the

learning process by which they acquire

the purchase and consumption knowl-

edge. Consumers' learning, attitude and

motivation can change due to any newly

acquired knowledge gained from reading,

observation, discussions and virtual or

actual experience. Social platform can ef-

fect consumer perception about evaluating

the desired and actual state, and can drive

active or latent 'problem recognition' and

also oﬀer solution to the problem. During

second stage of 'the information search',

social platform can aid in learning process

by helping to search either internal or ex-

ternal memory sources. The evaluation of

alternative stage is conditioned by the type

of consumer's choice and discussion on so-

cial platform which can aid by inﬂuencing

consumers' learning, motivation and atti-

tudes with help of augmented reality expe-

riences. In last stage of consumer decision-

making process-post-purchase evaluation,

the consumer compares the product real

performance with his/her expectations,

and right discussions and word of mouth

on platforms is useful in setting right lev-

els expectations at well above consumers'

minimum noticeable threshold levels and

by reducing any uncertainty in oﬀerings

or services. Right evaluation not only sets

evokes set and helps in making choice of

brand oﬀerings or destination but also, can

create positive word of mouth, customer

loyalty, feedback and cross product buying.

The social platforms can provide conditions for

high level of customer involvement and engage-

ments with the product or the services. Level of

customer involvement in buying process means

amount of psychophysical energy spent by con-

sumer in the buying process. Higher levels of

involvements are associated with greater use of

affective and cognitive decision making strategies

across different cultures (Edgett & Cullen, 1993).

During buying or consuming highly involved in-

dividuals compared to lower involved individuals

will use more criteria search for more information,

accept fewer alternative, process relevant informa-

tion in detail, and will form attitudes that are more

resistant to change. Involvement levels, therefore,

can have an impact on the information processing

decision-making and responses to advertising.

Lack of proper management of touch points /

customer encounters can cause a churn among

the firm's existing customers. Social platform

not only increases customer relations but also

enhances loyalty, satisfactions through customer's

involvement and encounter management, socially,

emotionally, visually, auditory and kinaestheti-

cally. The social media marketing platforms are

useful for businesses to spread a positive word of

mouth through which they could influence them

and exchange information. These platforms also

provide an opportunity to clear any misunder-

standing that could have become the hindrance

in the purchasing decisions of customers. Singh

et al (2008) states that because of the sharing of

instant information the developed societies have

got in the habit of creating awareness, sharing it on

the Internet on social platforms and then making

purchasing decisions:

• Monitoring: The social media also helps

marketers to monitor what is going on

about them amongst the people. It also

gives them the chance of developing the

strong basis for the business through which

they could inspire individuals. The social

platforms also help in interacting in real

time. A business could clearly watch out of

any incorrect information and take appro-

priate actions accordingly (Khare, 2012);

374

Social Media Marketing

• New Customers: Social media marketing

provides you the opportunity to reach new

customers eﬃciently. Through social me-

dia you can also study and research people

who could be your potential customers in

the future. This also helps businesses to de-

vise strategies that could target people in a

more eﬀective manner (Safko, 2010);

• Referral: The social media also helps

businesses to promote themselves through

clearly targeting people who prefer to be

with your company and like your oﬀerings.

This easily helps in increasing the referral

for the business (Sterne, 2010);

• Fan Clubs: The rise of social media has

actually helped businesses to create fan

clubs for their businesses. People who are

crazy for your businesses can easily get

closer to the company. The fan clubs work

tremendously for the creation and spread

of positive word of mouth (Kimbarovsky,

2009);

• Feedback: Marketing through social me-

dia actually helps businesses to get in one

to one contact with the target audience and

let them share their experiences with you

so that you could work on them to improve

your oﬀerings. Companies by getting in-

volved in such platforms can actually gain

information about their products and ser-

vices and take corrective measures in or-

der to address the issues (Turner and Shah,

2011).

When people use a product, they then share

their experiences of the internet with others on the

conversation on social media platforms and this

makes others to revise their purchasing decisions.

A business can effectively take the advantage of

such a platform and interact with its customers

in order to help them satisfy their needs through

addressing their issues promptly (Turner & Shah,

2011):

• Connections and Access: For marketers,

social media provides an excellent oppor-

tunity to gain access to individuals in an in-

formal manner without even making them

feel diﬀerent. Databases of customers from

platforms give businesses opportunities

to mine social network information and

contacts. Furthermore, social platforms

help in ﬁnding suppliers or employees too

(Bolotaeva, 2011). It has been observed

that social people are more comfortable

and open in sharing information and ex-

periences on social platforms and over the

Internet than in face to face;

• Brand Awareness and Image: Business

have been actively involved in sharing

information for the enhancement of their

brand name and to improve the overall po-

sition of their brand in the market (Taylor

& Riklan, 2009). Marketing on social me-

dia has also revised the concept of brand. A

company can carry out brand Intelligence,

thus collect consumer feedback, establish a

brand presence, get insights about the way

its brands are perceived and discussed.

Through continuous interaction with cus-

tomers business can address their needs

and thus build long-term brand relation-

ships (Bolotaeva, 2011);

• Product Launching: It has also been no-

ticed that social media also plays a pivotal

role in the launching of the product. A

wealth of word of mouth information re-

garding the brands and products, on social

platforms leads to its use as a new channel

that has features of search engines, review

sites, and price comparison. It directly acts

at least two marketing mix elements place

and promotion which aids in other 2 Ps

Price and product strategies (Bolotaeva,

2011);

• Sites: Online social media platform give

the opportunity to market products and ser-

375

Social Media Marketing

vice and make people aware of the upcom-

ing products and services. Social media is

a great way of giving details about your

company, its oﬀerings and operations. It

also helps businesses to create hype in the

market for their products (Zimmerman and

Sahlin, 2010);

• Coverage: The social media platform pro-

vides an excellent platform to cover a wide

range of individuals from various seg-

ments of the society. As described earlier

that these platforms are open for all and

does not restrict any one from anywhere.

This makes it convenient for companies to

target wider global market;

• Cost: Marketing through social media is

very cost eﬀective as compared to tradi-

tional oﬄine marketing media. This is in-

expensive way to promote a business more

eﬃciently. Previously Costs on MySpace

($25in 2009), Facebook ($5 daily + $0.01

in 2009) and LinkedIn (a $25/1000 clicks

in 2009) was very competitive and enticing

in the US. In 2013 in UK costs per click on

facebook (£0.25-0.57), Google Ad (£1.50),

Linkedin ((£1.50), Twitter (£0.75) was still

attractive and lower than traditional media

channels (Bryan, 2013).

WORKING WITH SOCIAL MEDIA

Companies initially identify their goals and plans

for the future, especially in relation to marketing

and promotion and then develop pages or make

accounts on the social media platforms like Face-

book, Twitter etc. they keep on updating them

with the latest information, pictures, company

news, latest developments, product and service

information, achievements, profits, operations and

so on. The profile is tagged along with the search

engines such as Yahoo, Google, Bing and so on

so that when people are looking for company the

link and profile should come up at the top. The

company also advertises on the general areas of the

social media from where people come also come

to know about the happenings of the business.

Companies further create fun ideas, advertise-

ments, contests, promotions and a variety of other

events through which they get people involved with

them. These activities also inspire more people to

join the company and get linked with the business.

Businesses further monitor and evaluate the

suggestions, comments and user happenings.

Through social media companies also create dif-

ferent blog in discussion forums, where people

share their ideas and this makes the businesses to

gain healthy ideas and creative recommendations

which mainly turn out to be very beneficial for

them (Hajir, 2012).

Businesses also link these social pages and plat-

form with their key websites and portals through

which they also get people in to the habit of visit-

ing their websites and gaining information about

the various products, features and happenings.

Zarrella (2009) suggests that online commu-

nities have become so powerful that they could

make or break a business, individual or society. As

established earlier, social media marketing is all

about making relationships and these relationships

can be taken in favour, or potential competitors

can also develop their own network in order to

break specific business (Tuten, 2008).

CHALLENGES FOR

ORGANISATIONS IN USING

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Like any other media, social platform also offers

challenges to the business. Challenges such as inva-

sion of user privacy, aggressive advertising, lack

of e-commerce abilities, lack of brand controls,

and certain legal pitfalls can be major disruptions

to social platforms. The consumers do not like

intrusive advertisements and communications and

they are not ready to share their privacy that can

be pervaded in an online platform. Aggressive

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Social Media Marketing

advertisements are definitely no-no in an online

platform. The consumers are there on the platforms

to talk to their friends and do not like strangers

being intrusive, aggressive communications and

overselling.

The businesses needs to be careful against

legal frameworks related to data mining, research

and selling online. As social platforms are user

created contents and users are free to take actions

and comments so with a single mistake from

business may lead to brand campaign going out

of control. The biggest challenges are treating the

social network as a broadcasting media instead

of a social platform for communities of practice

(Bolotaeva, 2011).

Halligan and Shah (2010) identified that there

are a variety of things that businesses believe to be

unimportant because of which they fail to take the

benefit form social media marketing effectively:

• Not Developing a Marketing Strategy:

Some businesses do not take social media

seriously and believe that just creating a

page would be enough. Just like other me-

diums, social media platforms also require

a workable marketing strategy;

• Gathering Followers not Networks:

some companies are only busy in generat-

ing users and people who could join their

company page. They fail to focus on devel-

oping networks of people who could bene-

ﬁt them; customers who could strategically

beneﬁt them etc.;

• Focus Only on Social Media: Social me-

dia can be of great help and support if it is

aligned with other oﬄine marketing tools.

Some companies only focus on social me-

dia for marketing and do not invest at all in

other marketing mediums (Evans, 2012);

• Abusing: Some social media blogs do not

give proper attention to their blogs due to

which sometimes people even start using

negative or abusive language for one an-

other. This does not only distracts people

from coming to your blog but will also cre-

ate a negative impression about your busi-

ness (Evans, 2012).

CONCLUSION

These are some of the notable mistakes done

by companies due to which they lose out on the

benefits of social media, especially in the context

of marketing. The researcher personally believes

that in order to take the maximum benefit out

from social media for marketing and promotion,

it is necessary for businesses to first develop an

effective marketing strategy. That strategy should

be in alignment with the organisational goals and

objectives. The researcher further analyses that

it is also important that the business should be

actively handling and managing all of its social

media profiles, blogs and accounts and promptly

respond to peoples` queries and comments.

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Advantages of Social Platform Marketing:

Share knowledge and capitalise on social network

connections; Enables different ways to engage in

the publicly visible knowledge and conversations

through different kinds of affordance; Visibility,

persistence, editability, and association, meta-

voicing, triggered attending, network-informed

associating and generative role taking.

Challenges for Organisations in Using Social

Media Marketing: Invasion of user privacy, ag-

gressive advertising, lack of e-commerce abilities,

lack of brand controls, and certain legal pitfalls

can be major disruptions to social platforms. Gov-

ernance, abundance of information, interpreting

quality, tensions of accessibility, contextual cues,

leaky pipe, echo chambers and intrinsic interest.

Components of Social media: Three main

components: Publishing Technology for everyone,

Information Diffusion, and Relationship Building.

Five Emerging Paradigms Governing Mar-

keting Using Digital Intercativity: Thought trac-

ing, Ubiquitous connectivity, Property exchanges,

Social exchanges and Cultural exchanges.

379

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing: It is an approach of

marketing which enables businesses to take the

feedback, comments, and suggestions from their

customers through blogs, pictures and ratings

and improve their products and services so that

customer's needs could be addressed in a more

proactive manner.

Social Media: Social media is a sort of syn-

thesis of sociology and technology and creating

an environment or platform on the internet where

people share experiences with each other and de-

velop networks for a variety of different official

and unofficial reasons.

Social Network Platforms Works in Various

Different Ways: Such as Innovation, Purchasing

decisions, Monitoring, New Customers, Referral,

Fan Clubs, Feedback, Connections and Access,

Brand awareness and Image, Product Launching

Sites, Coverage Cost etc.

Social Platforms: These are second genera-

tion (Web 2) websites/ platforms which provide

users the ability and tools to create and publish

their own mini web sites or web pages using the

"bottom up approach" — using a many-to-many

model along with features such as; user created

contents, high degree of user participation in

communities of practice and ability to integrate

with multiple sites or networks.

Variety of Social Media Platforms: So-

cial networking sites- Facebook, Google Plus,

CafeMom, Gather, Fitsugar, Micro-blogging

sites- Twitter, Tumblr, Posterous, Publishing tools-

WordPress, Blogger, Squarespace, Collaboration

tools- Wikipedia, WikiTravel, WikiBooks, Rating/

Review sites- Amazon ratings, Angie's List Photo

sharing sites- Flickr, Instagram, Pinterest, Video

sharing sites- YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, Personal

broadcasting tools- Blog Talk radio, Ustream,

Livestream, tumbler, Virtual worlds- Second Life,

World of Warcraft, Farmville, Location based

services- Check-ins, Facebook Places, Foursquare,

Yelp, Widgets- Profile badges, Like buttons, Social

bookmarking and news aggregation- Digg, Deli-

cious, StumbleUpon, Group buying- Groupon,

Living Social, Crowdsavings.

... Social media invites the general thought and believes of the users and generally hosts the genuine conversations of the participants. The uniqueness of this platform is to help participants to come to a collective point sometimes helping them making a fruitful conclusion out of the viewpoints (Evans, 2008). The ever growing popularity of social media communication encourages the development of such social media network that holds the key frameworks featuring among the socially enabled websites (Alan E Mislove, 2007). ...

... Overall, the contribution of this research is theoretical and empirical support for the idea that social network sites operate in a fundamentally different way than traditional e-recruiting sources (Peters, 2014). 8 ...

Social media is an enriching platform for sharing individual stories that can actually be helpful in evaluating human performances. Over the years the platform evolves into an innovative way of understanding the social presence of millions of people across the globe. Many employers actually run an intricate scan of social media activities of prospective employees before hiring them to understand their social presence and based on their activities, try to analyze the mindset of the suitable candidates. The reason lies with the organization's online presence which directly or indirectly linked with the employee's activities that might contradict the organization's policy. As social media gives easier access to anyone and everyone to share their thoughts and propaganda without a strain presence of an attentive gatekeeper, the shared contains may unknowingly hinder the reputation of the organization. The best way to avoid such circumstances is to keep a constant watch on the employee's social activities as well as a detailed screening through the past actives of the promising employees even before hiring them. The viewpoint of the research paper is based on literature reviews to find out the benefits of social media recruitment and identify the opportunities of creating brand ambassador in the form of employees to share their stories and experience over the social media platforms with an intention of strengthening and securing the brand image in the market. The research considers selective benefits of social media among many to come to a conclusion in favor of considering social media as one of the preliminary gateways to select a socially favorable workforce for the organization to enhance the brand reputation and turn passive job seekers into an active one.

... Marketers should work hard so that they can establish credibility in social media space as trust is essential to any form of conversation on social web and such trust needs to be earned. This can be done by open and authentic communication (Evans, 2008). New strategies have to be implied in order to create additional business value and how they can help in the realms of customer acquisition and retention (Constantinides & Fountain, 2008).According to Barefoot and Szabo (2010) it is essential to understand the culture and on which social mediabased interactions are formed to design and implement SMM campaigns because social media is democratic, authentic and collaborative. ...

Gaddam Dheeraj Reddy
Harinadh Karimikonda

Social media is the "BOOM" of 21 st century. It is not only used for chatting (or) communication purposes between two individuals but can also be used as an excellent marketing tool. Since, there are greater than three (3) billion people who are using social media applications across the globe and the number is increasing by approximately 9% every year. So, this is considered as new age marketing style and is capable of replacing the traditional marketing. The key motive of this review paper is to present a complete assessment on the elements of SMM. This Review paper discusses about how social networking applications could be the prominent marketing tools and emphasizes about the importance, strategies, benefits, uses and advantages of SMM.87 papers are reviewed and presented accordingly in this paper.

Araştırma, müşteri tatmini ve bağlılığının online ağızdan ağıza iletişime (yoğunluk ve değer) olan etkisinin değerlendirilmesi amacıyla gerçekleştirilmiştir. Araştırmanın evrenini online alışveriş yapan tüketiciler oluşturmaktadır. Araştırma kapsamında tesadüfi olmayan örneklemelerden "kolayda örneklem" yöntemi uygulanmıştır. Örneklem sayısı ise 427 anket formunda yer alan verilerden yola çıkarak değerlendirilmiştir. Araştırmada hipotezlerin test edilmesi için SPSS ve AMOS istatistik programları kullanılmıştır. Analiz sonuçlarına göre müşteri tatmininin online ağızdan ağıza iletişimin yoğunluk ve değer boyutlarını pozitif yönde etkilediği tespit edilmiştir. Benzer şekilde duygusal bağlılığın online ağızdan ağıza iletişimin yoğunluk ve değer boyutlarını pozitif yönde etkilediği belirlenmiştir. Son olarak yüksek fedakârlık bağlılığının online ağızdan ağıza iletişimin yoğunluk ve değer boyutları üzerinde etkisinin olup olmadığı yapılan yol analizi ile test edilmiştir. Değişkenler arasındaki ilişki istatistiksel olarak anlamlı bulunmuştur ve yüksek fedakârlık bağlılığı ile yoğunluk-değer arasında pozitif bir ilişki tespit edilmiştir. Fakat hipotezler yüksek fedakârlık bağlılığının yoğunluk ve değer boyutları üzerinde etkisinin olmadığı yönünde belirlenmesi nedeniyle araştırma kapsamında oluşturulmuş hipotezler kabul edilmemiştir. Anahtar Kelimeler: Müşteri tatmini, Duygusal bağlılık, Yüksek fedakârlık bağlılığı, Online ağızdan ağıza iletişim Abstract The research was conducted to evaluate the effect of customer satisfaction and commitment on electronic word-of-mouth (volume and valence). The universe of the research is the consumers who shop online. Within the scope of the research, "convenience sampling" method was applied among non-random samples. The number of samples was evaluated on the basis of the data in the 427 questionnaire forms. SPSS and AMOS statistical programs were used to test the hypotheses in the study. According to the analysis results, it was determined that customer satisfaction positively affects the volume and valence dimensions of electronic word-of-mouth. Similarly, it was determined that affective commitment positively affects the volume and valence dimensions of electronic word-of-mouth. Finally, whether high sacrifice commitment has an effect on the volume and valence dimensions of electronic word-of-mouth communication was tested by path analysis. The relationship between the variables was found to be statistically significant and a positive relationship was found between high sacrifice commitment and volume-valence. However, the hypotheses created within the scope of the study were not accepted because the hypotheses were determined that high sacrifice commitment had no effect on the volume and valence dimensions.

Ahmadh Rifai Kariapper

Twitter is a potentially powerful marketing tool. The study is aimed to examine the influence of Twitter in marketing communication rather than mass media. Furthermore, identify the people's perception of Twitter in marketing communication purpose. Quantitative and qualitative data is collected through open-ended questions, fivepoint Likert scale and decided to undertake a study with samples of 198 peoples who are above eighteen years old to examine the influence of Twitter in marketing communication rather than mass media. We applied the structural equation model and was tested with survey data collected from 100 peoples to identify the factors that may motivate these peoples to adopt and use Twitter in marketing communication. Most of the people (64.28%) suggest that Twitter has many features than mass media. Furthermore, the finding highlights the potentialities for the influence of Twitter in marketing communication activities rather than mass media. Indeed, this study highlights the potentialities for the perceived format with perceived ease of use factor (correlation coefficient = 0.62) has a strong positive linear relationship in predicting the adoption of Twitter and the resource and material sharing with perceived communications factor (correlation coefficient = 0.59) also has the strong positive linear relationships in marketing communicational usage of Twitter. Available research papers are investigated the twitter's specific features. However, this study is identified the useful features of Twitter from compared with mass media. Twitter always best to acknowledge tweets that contain sensitive information on direct messages on Twitter. This helps to build better connections with customers and users. The study has improved the efficiency of people who are willing to use Twitter for marketing communication. Potential conclusions have been made from the analysis and suggestions.

Revolutionary development in field of communication and information technology have globally opened new avenue of marketing tourism and hospitality products. Major shift in web usage happened when Napster in 1999 released peer-to-peer share media and then with pioneer social networking websites named 'Six Degrees'. This kind of interactive social web was named as 'Web 2.0'. It would create openness, community and interaction. Web2. is also known as Social media base. Social media is incudes "all the different kinds of content that form social networks: posts on blogs or forums, photos, audio, videos, links, profiles on social networking web sites, status updates and more". It allows people to create; upload post and share content easily and share globally. Social media allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content and experiences online. Thus, social media is any kind of information we share with our social network, using social networking web sites and services.

Madhavi Sripathi
Gudlavalleru Engineering

False advertising is the use of false, misleading, or unproven information to advertise products to consumers. The advertising frequently does not disclose its source. One form of false advertising is to claim that a product has a health benefit or contains vitamins or minerals that it in fact does not. Many governments use regulations to control false advertising. It might be tempting to deceive in advertisements not only that could attract new customers but also that they might buy products and subscribe to your services. However, usually, this strategy is bad for the future of company, and it might possibly hinder business' success. Companies whose only goal is to rack up as many profits as possible, tend to use advertisements that may conceal some costs, omit important facts, or use misleading images, in a bid to get customers to buy a service or product. This kind of marketing isn't helpful, and it will deprive consumers of the accurate information they need to make good, well-informed decisions. The regulations on advertisement and marketing illegalises use of false or misleading representation or symbol for quality, quantity, data of manufacture, methods of use, content, price, place of origin, the manufacture, processor or place for a product either in advertisement or another platform. In this study, it has been found that while misleading advertisements tend to provide overtly more positive information than is necessary, such positivity tend to result in negative experience for customers. This study has explored the importance of enhancing marketing activities through truthful facts, to ensure that the functions of the organisation (especially outward facing activities like marketing) are believable and thus helpful to customers to make the right decisions.

Sosyal medya her ne kadar erken bir geçmişte yaşamımıza girmiş olsa da etkisi her coğrafyadan insanlara ulaşmıştır. İnsanlar sosyal medya platformlarında dijital bir tarzda kendilerini ifade etme biçimleri keşfetmişlerdir. Günümüz dünyasında üniversiteler bilgi paylaşımını mekân ve zaman sınırlarından kurtaracak yeni bilgi teknolojileri kullanmaya başlamıştır. Dolayısıyla dijital bağlamda üniversitelerin üzerine düşen sorumluluklar da sürekli artmaktadır. Bu bağlamda üniversitelerin temel amaçlarından biri hem akademisyenlere hem de öğrencilere dijital-pedagojik yeterlilikler kazandırabilmektir. Sosyal medya kullanım alanlarının geniş kitlelere yayılmasıyla birlikte "arkadaş edinme", "bilgi paylaşma", "sohbet etme" gibi eylemler daha sanal olmaya başlamıştır. Sosyal medyanın bu düzeyde geliştiği günümüzde, bu platformların öğrenme-öğretme sürecine olan katkısını yok saymak mümkün değildir. Öğrenme-öğretme süreçlerinde kullanılan onlarca teknoloji de eğitime büyük katkı sağlamaktadır. Özellikle üniversitedeki öğrenme-öğretme ortamında sosyal medya platformları eğitim için önemli bir araç haline gelmiştir. Tüm bu durumlar göz önünde bulundurulduğunda çalışmanın önemi ve gerekçesi netleşmektedir. Bu araştırmanın amacı, üniversite öğrencilerinin sosyal medya algıları, kullanım becerileri ve bağımlılık düzeylerinin çeşitli değişkenler açısından incelenmesidir. Çalışma İstanbul'daki bir vakıf üniversitesinin dokuz fakültesi ile birlikte iki yüksekokulunda öğrenim gören toplam 3283 öğrenci ile gerçekleşmiştir. Veriler "Sosyal Medya Kullanım Amaçları Ölçeği", "Sosyal Medya Algı Ölçeği" ve "Sosyal Medya Bağımlık Ölçeği" ile toplanmıştır. Çeşitli değişkenler açısından ölçeklerden elde edilen puanlara ait yüzde ve frekanslar hesaplanmış, varyans analizleri için ise t-testi ve tek-yönlü ANOVA testi gerçekleştirilmiştir. Sonuç olarak öğrencilerin sosyal medyaya yönelik algıları üzerinde, "fakülte türü", "sosyal medyada bir gün içinde geçirilen zaman", "evde internet erişiminin olup olmaması", "aile gelir düzeyi" değişkenlerinin istatistiki olarak anlamlı bir etkisi gözlemlenmiştir. Öğrencilerin sosyal medyayı kullanma becerileri üzerinde yukarıdaki moderatör değişkenlere ek olarak "cinsiyet" ve "akademik başarı" değişkenlerinin de istatistiki olarak anlamlı bir ektisinin olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Bunula birlikte, öğrencilerin sosyal medyaya yönelik bağımlılık derecelerinin "sınıf düzeyi", "fakülte türü", "akademik başarı", "sosyal medyada bir gün içinde geçirilen zaman", "evde internet erişiminin olup olmaması", "aile gelir düzeyi" değişkenlerinden önemli bir düzeyde etkilendiği tespit edilmiştir.

Manasvi Sharma
Rinkle Das
Sonia Saini

The developing functioning of social media in the field of the travel industry has been expanding on rising investigations of different topics lately. This takes a look at reviews and analyzes the study courses specializing in the world of social media in tourism. Through an in-depth literature assessment, this paper identifies with what we realize approximately social media in tourism and recommends a destiny research schedule on this very phenomenon. The paper indicates that the study on social media in tourism continues to be in its very early stages. And therefore, it is vital to inspire comprehensive research into the influence and the effect of social media (as part of tourism management/advertising and marketing approach) on all aspects of the tourism enterprise that consists of neighborhood communities and to illustrate the financial contribution of social media to the tourism industry.

Many studies have proposed the use of the relationship metaphor to enhance the understanding of the relationship between consumers and brands. However, few studies have empirically tested consumer–brand relationship models. In this paper, the authors argue that the success of developing empirical models of consumer–brand relationships depends on the adequacy of the metaphoric transfer. The authors compare two models of consumer–brand relationships—the brand relationship quality (BRQ) model and the relationship investment (RI) model on the basis of empirical fit and model interpretation. They modify both models to better accommodate less involving relationships and test them in two studies. The findings suggest that the modified RI model offers a straightforward interpretation of consumer–brand relationships that vary in intensity. The results from the BRQ model are less clear, though further refinements of the model demonstrates the increased potential of the BRQ model compared with traditional attitude models to explain relationships between consumers and brands.

Alexandra Köhler
Mirko Gründer

Das Internet ist sozial – bei vielen Webangeboten können die Nutzer miteinander kommunizieren. Soziale Netzwerke (Social Networks), Foren und Blogs haben gemeinsam, dass sie die Menschen an den Computerbildschirmen zusammenbringen. Das Internet wird so zum Präsentations- und Kommunikationsraum. Auch für Zahnärzte liegt darin eine Herausforderung, der sie sich in Anbetracht der beeindruckenden Nutzerzahlen und der damit verbundenen Bedeutung dieser modernen Medien stellen müssen. Denn hier entstehen auch neue Marketing- und Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten: Zahnärzte können direkt mit Patienten in Dialog treten – und umgekehrt. Jedoch müssen Zahnärzte bei ihren Aktivitäten auch stets das HWG im Hinterkopf haben, denn Äußerungen Dritter dürfen sie nicht zu Werbezwecken einsetzen. Das betrifft vor allem Dankesschreiben, Anerkennungs- und Empfehlungsschreiben. Auch die Hinweise auf solche sind untersagt. Insofern sind Gästebücher auf Websites und die Pinnwand bei einer eigenen Facebook-Präsenz stetig zu kontrollieren. Im ersten Teil dieses Kapitels lernen Sie die wichtigsten Social Media-Instrumente und Beispiele aus der Praxis kennen. Jedoch bringt diese schnelllebige und vernetzte Welt auch einen Nachteil mit sich: Niemand ist mehr davor gefeit, dass jemand anderes im Netz über ihn spricht. Auch dann nicht, wenn man selbst gar nicht im Netz aktiv ist. Solange es sich um positive Äußerungen handelt, stellt das kein Problem dar. Ärgerlich und eventuell sogar berufsschädigend wird es, sobald Patienten zahnärztliche Leistungen oder den Praxis-Service in Bewertungsportalen oder Foren negativ beurteilen. Mehr dazu lesen Sie im Interview am Ende dieses Kapitels. Leider gibt es in den Sozialen Netzwerken richtige „Hass-Gruppen", in denen Menschen, Unternehmen und Produkte kritisiert und schlechtgemacht werden. Nur wenn Sie davon erfahren, haben Sie eine Chance zu reagieren. Der letzte Teil des Social Media- Marketing-Kapitels zeigt Ihnen, wie Sie Ihren zahnärztlichen Ruf im Auge behalten und wie Sie ein erfolgreiches Reputationsmanagement aufbauen können.

M. Saravanakumar
T. SuganthaLakshmi

During different time era's different methods of communications has developed and changed the day by day life. Social media has become the method of statement in the 21't century, enabling us to express our belief, ideas and manner in a absolute new way. This way of message have also have a huge impact on corporation, where they have realize that without a correct plan and social media strategy they have no chance to stand out in the rapidly changing digital freedom. To guarantee a successful attendance on social media the companies need to take different marketing theories into consideration so that they can boost their brand in different aspect. If this can be collective with original ways of consumer interaction the companies have a good chance to take the lead in social media marketing'. The meteoric growth of community websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and Linkedln, have usher the world into a new era of social media. The global reach is nothing short of marvelous, so much so that if Facebook were a country, it would be third largest, next to China and India. Some even say that this is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution, which means that the world has a brand new playing meadow At its center, social media is any kind of online media that stimulates participation, openness' conversation, Connecters and sense of community. The social media phenomenon has a profound impact. Social media has transformed research methods. This allows brands to communicate better with their consumers, and intensify their association with them. The advertising world has not been spared from social media influence. Companies are now more careful with advertising; chiefly in anticipate consumer response and avoiding unanticipated blunders to prevent a viral consumer backlash in networking sites. Social media plays a hybrid role in the promotion mix. It allows companies to talk to their clientele and, at the same time, it allows regulars to talk to one another. Shaping customers' discussions to ensure they are aligned to the organization's goals is the firm's best importance. Companies have started provided that their consumers with networking platforms, and have occupied them during blogs and other social media tools. Social media is seen by Marketers today as a great opportunity to boost market share figures. Marketers are only too happy to view the social web as a new set of channels through which to market their goods or services. Social media marketing is a hot topic for companies. It allows companies to establish a communication channel with its customers, market their products, build brand equity, and boost clientele faithfulness.However, as it is a two-way channel, it requires effort and care to manage this communication. Dissatisfied customers can protest out loud, attainment many other customers easily and damaging the brand's image. In order to avoid the risk of damaging the brand's image rather than improving it, the company should align their social media marketing with the global marketing strategy of the company. In order to do this, the business should choose the profile of people that matches its target segment and communicate with them accordingly.

M.J. Piskorski

Almost no one had heard of social media a decade ago, but today websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have more than 1 billion users and account for almost 25 percent of Internet use. Practically overnight, social media seems indispensable to our lives--from friendship and dating to news and business. What makes social media so different from traditional media? Answering that question is the key to making social media work for any business, argues Mikolaj Piskorski, one of the world's leading experts on the business of social media. In A Social Strategy, he provides the most convincing answer yet, one backed by original research, data, and case studies from companies such as Nike and American Express. Drawing on his analysis of proprietary data from social media sites, Piskorski argues that the secret of successful ones is that they allow people to fulfill social needs that either can't be met offline or can be met only at much greater cost. This insight provides the key to how companies can leverage social platforms to create a sustainable competitive advantage. Companies need to help people interact with each other before they will promote products to their friends or help companies in other ways. Done right, a company's social media should benefit customers and the firm. Piskorski calls this "a social strategy," and he describes how companies such as Yelp and Zynga have done it. Groundbreaking and important, A Social Strategy provides not only a story- and data-driven explanation for the explosion of social media but also an invaluable, concrete road map for any company that wants to tap the marketing potential of this remarkable phenomenon.

Social media are increasingly implemented in work organizations as tools for communication among employees. As these technologies begin to proliferate across the enterprise, it is important that we develop an understanding of how they enable and constrain the communicative activities through which work is accomplished because it is these very dynamics that constitute and perpetuate organizations. We begin by offering a definition of enterprise social media and providing a rough historical account of the various avenues through which these technologies have entered and continue to enter the workplace. We also review areas of research covered by papers in this special issue and papers on enterprise social media published elsewhere to take stock of the current state of out knowledge and to propose directions for future research.

Koen Pauwels

Long-term marketing effectiveness is a high-priority research topic for managers, and emerges from the complex interplay among dynamic reactions of several market players. This paper introduces restricted policy simulations to distinguish four dynamic forces: consumer response, competitor response, company inertia, and company support. A rich marketing dataset allows the analysis of price, display, feature, advertising, and product-line extensions. The first finding is that consumer response differs significantly from the net effectiveness of product-line extensions, price, feature, and advertising. In particular, net sales effects are stronger and longer-lasting than consumer response. Second, this difference is not due to competitor response, but to company action. For tactical actions (price and feature), it takes the form of , as promotions last for several weeks. For strategic actions (advertising and product-line extensions), by other marketing instruments greatly enhances dynamic consumer response. This company action negates the postpromotion dip in consumer response, and enhances the long-term sales benefits of product-line extensions, feature, and advertising. Therefore, managers are urged to evaluate company decision rules for inertia and support when assessing long-term marketing effectiveness.