5 Social media in marketing

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Figure 16  The Open University’s social media site

You are likely to have at least some idea of what social media and social networking websites are and what they do.

Social media has been defined as follows:

 ‘Websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.’ (Oxford Dictionary, 2016).

Some examples of social media you may be familiar with are:

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • TripAdvisor
  • YouTube
  • Twitter.

When trying to understand how social media can transform marketing practices, it is useful to start by looking at how consumers use social media. Consumers of different ages, with different social backgrounds and different income levels will use social media in different ways. For a business to be able to target the correct consumers, it will need to understand their behaviour. A small business owner could look for the groups and discussions that are most relevant to the customers most likely to be interested in the product or service (referred to as segmentation in the marketing world) and then focus the effort on these groups (this is commonly referred to as targeting). The idea is to get the most out of the effort used.

You have already learned that marketing can be a two-way process, where consumers play an active part in using products, interpreting and passing on marketing communications, and influencing marketers' actions through their preferences, gathered by marketers through marketing information systems. Digital technology has given consumers an even more active role in certain aspects of marketing.

4.5 E-commerce and m-commerce

5.1 Responding to customer use of social media