Social Media Marketing Strategy

Marketing in the Age of Digital Media: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Social Media as a Marketing Tool
Introduction
Digital media has revolutionized the way in which marketing is conducted. New media has transformed the landscape of advertising and displaced old media as the means of reaching an increasingly fragmented culture (Webster & Ksiazek, 2012) and targeting specific audiences and individuals. One aspect of digital media that has come under increasing focus in this new age of media is social media. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat have allowed individuals and companies to brand themselves in new and unique ways, reach out to consumers with the click of a button, and spread messages further and faster than ever before (Kwok & Yu, 2013). Celebrities, hospitality companies, beverage businesses, and auto manufacturers have all turned to social media to enhance their image, build their brand, develop relationships with consumers, and grow their followers. Companies like GoPro have used YouTube to host user-generated content and draw attention to the types of videos that people are capturing with their state-of-the-art camcording technology (Leonhardt, 2015). This paper will examine the ways in which social media can be used to help advance the objectives of marketing, while acknowledging at the same time the inherent risks involved in social media usage. The paper will conclude with recommendations for mitigating those risks.
The Advantages of Social Media in Marketing
In the digital age, the main method of marketing is related to the collection of Big Data, which facilitates targeted marketing or direct marketing to consumers on the Internet. Browsing history is analyzed along with age, gender, interests and so on to enable marketers to deliver ads to consumers online that appeal to some specific interest that the consumer is likely to have. This method of marketing is specific and calculated. It is the opposite in a sense to the manner in which social media is used by marketers in the digital age. Google, for example, uses Mesa, an online data warehouse that the firm uses for its advertising objectives (Gupta et al., 2016). Mesa works by digesting data that is obtained from upstream services, and it then “aggregates and persists the data internally, and serves the data via user queries” (Gupta et al., 2016, p. 117). So much digital calculation and statistical analysis goes into marketing tactics based on big data analytics, that by comparison social media based marketing often appears like the Wild West of marketing.
To be fair, social media based marketing can also employ the use of big data analytics. For instance, companies can look at statistics related to how often users or consumers visit platforms like Twitter or Facebook, YouTube or Pinterest. They can then develop campaigns that invite users to upload content to their favorite social media platforms, share stories, offer tips to other consumers and in general generate content for the firm that the firm in turn uses to promote its brand or products. The firm does not simply willy-nilly embark on a campaign of this nature; rather it bases the project on the application of big data analytics (Tsou, 2015).
Social media can put a company in the spotlight like no other digital media can do. Social media allows a company to engage directly with consumers, the public, put out messages, promote new products or ideas, grow a group of followers, and develop a brand image. Tesla is one of the greatest examples of a company that has used social media to market itself to a target audience interested in the same goals of sustainability as presented in the company’s mission statement. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has used Twitter and other social media platforms to make his public company popular among investors and consumers by posting videos, personal messages, pictures and links to articles (Orozco, 2016). His company has grown in value substantially over the past decade as a result. Using social media to market oneself or one’s company certainly has its appeal, as it allows one to reach a mass audience instantly and to craft an image, create a message, and create relationships with followers who will support the vision, ideas, and concepts of the company and thereby increase its visibility and market presence. Four Seasons, Red Bull, GoPro and Tesla are just a handful of companies that have used social media campaigns to market their products and services.
Social media is also helpful in terms of connecting companies with the next generation of consumers. Generation Y has essentially come of age in the digital age: they do not know life before computers or the Internet. They are more likely to get their news and information about what to consume from social media than they are from traditional media formats, such as television or print media (Bolton et al., 2013). By using the type of platforms that these consumers favor most, companies can achieve more success in their marketing campaigns than if they simply ignored them.
While social media based marketing certainly offers its advantages over traditional forms of marketing in the digital age, the strategy is not without its risks. These risks should be considered and approached cautiously because companies and individuals who build their brand image up over many years can see it all swept away in an instant through a single slip-up via social media. The power of social media based marketing is such that it can both make and break an individual or a company—and that is why it is both impressive and frightening as a marketing strategy.
Risks: The Disadvantages of Social Media Based Marketing
Lack of Filter
Numerous examples abound of celebrities and CEOs getting into trouble via social media for not filtering themselves, their thoughts or their comments until it was too late. In some cases, individuals have lost their jobs simply because they were too engrossed in social media to pay attention to their work. Brian Cullinan of Pricewaterhouse Coopers was blamed for ruining Oscar night at the Academy Awards when he handed the wrong envelope for Best Picture to the presenters: the culprit, it was later learned, was his preoccupation with posting pictures to social media (Chen, 2017). What should have been a great night for promotional activity turned into a disaster for the firm and for Cullinan personally who was barred for taking part in anymore Oscar night activities. Roseanne Barr lost her sitcom after posting derogatory remarks on Twitter (Effron, Kakkar & Knowles, 2018). Tesla CEO Elon Musk is as popular on Twitter as President Trump, but the former’s words have also been the reason the SEC has launched an investigation into the firm: Musk used Twitter to declare that he intended to take the company private—the only problem was that he did not have funding secured (even though he Tweeted that he did). Instead of using social media to positively promote his company, he created a firestorm that is likely to result in billions lost from lawsuits accusing Musk of stock manipulation (Gedye, 2018).
Problems Controlling the Narrative
Once a story about a company hits social media, it is difficult for the firm to control the narrative. Social media has proved to be the bane of public relations and marketing departments for companies in the airlines industry: with every flier having a potential video recorder on his or her smart phone, the occasional affront or unethical dealing with a customer on an overcrowded flight can quickly become a trending item on social media and get noticed by 2 million people over the course of 24 hrs. The fallout can be disastrous for the firm, which in the days of old media would have hard for more time to control the narrative by releasing a statement and developing a marketing tactic to counter any bad press that might arise from an unseemly incident. Today, that control is largely gone thanks to social media (O’Connor, 2018). Unless a company is very adept at using social media to engage positively with the public, it risks being on the receiving end of some very vicious attacks when the public is outraged by perceived slights or injustices by the company. For example, Yelp is a popular social media platform that consumers use to leave reviews of businesses—from mechanic shops to restaurants. Businesses can pay to have five star reviews listed, but if businesses do not keep up with their presence on the platform, negative reviews can proliferate and the company’s reputation online can quickly tank.
Another problem is the proliferation of online social media platforms. A platform like Snapchat may be trending today, but in two years something else is likely to have replaced it. A company that spends time learning one platform only to see it lose traction among consumers may feel that it has wasted its time and money and still fallen behind the curve. Simply trying to stay current with so many different social media outlets can wear on the marketing resources. It is not like with old media where the platforms are minimal and ubiquitous. Digital media platforms are constantly changing and shifting, which means marketing is much more difficult and risky if one is going to use social media as a strategic form of marketing.
Uncertainty of Impact
The uncertainty of the impact of social media based marketing is also a problem for some companies that do not want to devote a great deal of time, money or resources to the cultivation of a social media based marketing campaign. They do not see the return of such a marketing campaign as being that substantial (Kwok & Yu, 2013). Because it is difficult to quantify the impact of social media based marketing on business returns, some business owners reject it as a strategy. They are more willing to embrace traditional forms of marketing as opposed to new media forms because they both do not understand them and find the correlations between money spent on digital media marketing and business returns to be somewhat hard to believe. Allocating funds to social media based marketing campaigns may sound fun, but a company that does not believe in the strategy risks throwing good money down the drain if it develops a social media based campaign that it neither appreciates nor fully supports.
Recommendations
Marketing via social media can help a company to promote itself, but it also invites certain risks if social media usage is not tightly regulated. In the case of Tesla, Musk’s usage of social media has both helped and harmed the company. When Musk first began to show signs of erratic behavior on social media, the Board should have intervened and put his social media accounts under the watch of a third party—i.e., it should have placed a barrier or filter between Musk and the public. Instead, it allowed him to continue to send direct messages to the public via social media. It failed to place all marketing aspects into the hands of marketing directors and allowed Musk to serve as the company’s CEO and head of marketing—and the latter role was one he was not professionally or personally able to manage effectively.
A company looking to market itself via social media must be prepared to treat social media like any other form of marketing. Celebrities have shown that they can use social media both to promote themselves and to implode their own careers by saying something that a professional marketer would have easily advised against. The problem with social media is that it puts too much power into the hands of a single individual. Any slip-up can cause untold harm to a company’s image, brand, reputation and even financial stability. Companies have to be careful about how they use social media as a strategic marketing tool. They also must be willing to commit resources to understanding the parameters of the platforms and following social media trends.
Conclusion
Social media based marketing can be an advantageous form of marketing for businesses that are able to invest time and money into developing campaigns for social media platforms. There are numerous success stories and examples of companies that have used social media based marketing to develop a brand, promote products and services, and reach a global audience. Tesla, GoPro, Red Bull and many others have demonstrated this fact. However, there are also risks that go along with developing a social media based marketing strategy in the digital age. These include the possibility of losing control of a narrative or having a rogue CEO use Twitter as his own personal venting machine and ruining the company’s image. The risks must be weighed against the rewards and caution exercised no matter what.

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