SEO

Social Media Marketing Discussion

Social Media Marketing Discussion

Social Media Marketing Content & Audience

While there is a great deal of thought concerning the best practices for Marketing using Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, these practices can really be broken down into two areas. The two areas of practice include content and audience (Lee, 2013). The internet and social media are already geared for marketers in this way by leading consumers to products and services view content.

Content

There can be no argument that content is perhaps the most important driver in social media marketing. Valuable content spreads like wildfire across the social media world while useless content seems to die in cyberspace. The more valuable the content, the bigger the fire! The issue for marketing experts is how to increase the value of their content or to reflect the value of the content. It is possible to have a valuable piece of content or subject but fail to impact the audience. In 2012, Newsweek Magazine printed a controversial cover picture that spawned a great deal public attention. In an effort to generate discussion and surrounding the issue they created the hashtag #MuslimRage (Doctor, 2013). The problem is that the tag name was not well thought out and rather than generating critical discussion, the tag was misused and became a posting board for user to post satirical and sometimes offensive statements concerning Muslim culture. The tag was eventually removed being a complete failure to generate critical discussion concerning their photo. The hashtag had the reverse impact of spurring critical evaluation of media sources such as Newsweek and other media outlets (Mirkinson, 2012). In the same respect, if content is presented properly and it can be a huge success.

Disney has successfully used Instagram to convey its messages by using its wealth of image content. Disney has rich visual content which can convey meaning to the audience about its products. Pictures from movies, theme parks, and its history provide a tremendous volume of hashtags that are relevant and unique. An example of this can be seen in the promotion of Disney documentary series “Blank: A Vinylmation Love Story” (Disney, 2013). Disney promotes its film using the the hashtag #BlankAndBow which links with twitter and Instagram to generate tremendous following and discussion (Disney, 2013).

Audience

Audience is an important aspect of social media marketing because it directs the meaning of the message. Using media such as Instagram and Twitter is really the act of sharing information. Sharing information with different groups of people is determined by the audience and by the content being delivered. For example, delivering a tweet to students on a college website would require a different approach then delivering a message to students on a high school website. The means to create the most impactful posts one must understand the audience and what appeals to them and their expectations. For example, Starbucks understand that its audience is interested in and excited about new brands of coffee. The company appeals to coffee aficionados and as a result of knowing this audience they will post tweets and pictures with this audience in mind. Whenever a rare or new blend of coffee is released the product is announced using tweets and Instagrams to make the announcement (Starbucks, 2013). Hashtag #coffeepassion is a perfect example of an impactful hashtag that attracts the audience both due to content and audience understanding. #coffeefpassion is a relevant tag that is enhanced by its Instagram message showing a new rare coffee been being prepared (Starbucks, 2013). This is a very focused tag meant for the coffee aficionados.

The social media that will be most important to marketers will be those platforms that link with a variety of social media and are capable of being used on all different types of devices. This makes social media such as twitter and Instagram very successful and will most likely continue to grow in popularity. In contrast, Facebook is not expected to do well with these sites because users of Facebook do not seem to use hashtags. The company introduced hashtags as another means of promoting content but Facebook failed to realize its own audience and users. Facebook users do not use Facebook in the same manner that Twitter is used (Knibbs, 2013). The hashtag approach has been a large failure so far with Facebook mainly because Facebook users already have a form of hashtag which is the News Feed. The hashtag was thus irrelevant to the Facebook user (Knibbs, 2013).

References

Doctor, V. (2013, March 8). Fail: Hashtag campaigns that went bust. Retrieved from http://www.hashtags.org/how-to/marketing-how-to/fail-hashtag-campaigns-that-went- bust/

Disney. (2013). disney. Retrieved from http://instagram.com/disney

Knibbs, K. (2013, September 4). Are facebook hashtags a big fat failure?. Retrieved from http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-hashtags-big-fat-failure/

Lee, J. (2013, September 2). How 123 fortune 500s use instagram marketing & 3 tips for success. Retrieved from http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2297158/How-123- Fortune-500s-Use-Instagram-Marketing-3-Tips-for-Success

Mirkinson, J. (2012, September 17). Newsweek’s ‘muslim rage’ cover draws angry protest (photo). Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/17/newsweek-muslim- rage-cover_n_1890124.html

Starbucks. (2013). Starbucks. Retrieved from http://instagram.com/p/X7oqpXxcw1/

Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

~Citation~

Triola Vincent. Sun, Jan 10, 2021. Social Media Marketing Discussion Retrieved from https://vincenttriola.com/blogs/ten-years-of-academic-writing/social-media-marketing-discussion

Need similar articles?

SEO
Back to: Ten Years of Academic Writing