A2 Business uses of social media
Ask learners: how many types of content can you post on social media? What are the benefits and drawbacks of different media types?
• Posting different content formats, e.g. text, images, video, links, polls, and quizzes.
Using a range of different media within a social media platform is key to a successful brand, this is can be due to the nature of the products being presented/sold or to enable the users to see the item in action or feedback from others on the quality of the product.
IMPORTANT!!! Remember when using any media it allows for critical reviews to be posted up using the different media types.
• Content focus and meaning, e.g. information, promotion, humour, special offers and customer service.
Using your Social Media Pack carry out worksheet 3.22
• Developing an audience and encouraging people to follow or ‘like’ the business through the creation and use of engaging content.
As you can see in the images above the Vanish Facebook followers are above 128 thousand members (correct as of 08/2017) this enables the company to reach out to these individuals and perhaps others through their accounts (privacy settings prevailing). This is fantastic for the company when it may come to the promotion of a new product, or even a potential recall if it is needed.
Making a social media site interesting can also allow users to want to come back, TopCashBack is a site that offers users/members the chance to make money on their purchases by simply going through their site to access the required site, for example, Game, the TopCashBack site adds a little additional element to the web address in the URL area that enables any purchase to have a percentage recovered. This company runs yearly a treasure hunt on their social media that promotes the opportunity win cash sums if you can find the answer to a riddle or image.
The image above presents the giveaway on their site, the image below promotes it on their social media site. This clever marketing enables members to see that the company has offers and links to a number of well-known companies that you can get cash back from. Obviously, the Top Cash Back Company take a small percentage out of any money gathered.
• Keywords and their use in posted content.
Using some level of research and identifying social media keywords, companies gain a much clearer picture of how to construct and communicate their message effectively. Applying this level of keyword insight to all social media optimization efforts (from the optimized video to image tagging, to social bookmarking, to targeted Tweets) it gives the maximum “pull” and value to the site.
Image taken from: http://www.wordstream.com/articles/keyword-research-for-social-media-guide
SEO is one of the largest and key factors to the success of any web related site or social media. The term its self-refers to the optimisation of a site. This optimisation is in an effort to target and improve the content that is used by search engines to index and log the type of site or content linked to it. This is where as an end user we use google to find "Keywords" these could be discount codes for a specific product or reviews to the next upcoming thing.
Companies exist that their specific role is to improve the overall ranking of their clients to boost them up the results pages on the most popular search engines. There are a few known areas that are used to help improve SEO and a few of these are as follows,
Use of keywords in the code. Within the HTML of all pages, meta tag information can be included to identify the purpose of the site i.e Education resources. Within Social Media, this would be in the description of the channel, page, introduction area, about information area and general information sections.
Repetition of certain keywords, some search engines target repeated words or statements or phrases, this indicated a pattern that allows them to generalise the pages intentions and purpose.
Updated content, search engines do not favour sites that have content that remains static for a long period of time, this can have quite a negative impact.
Links to other sites. Links between sites has historically worked in the ranking of sites as people tend to share those that are good, however, this does carry some level of warning, there are companies the will do a link exchange (you add my link and ill add yours to mine) but others can sell links, if added to a site these can be seen by search engines as an attempt to improve page ranks by unfair methods and can result in pages being removed completely from the search engines database.
Using your Social Media Pack carry out worksheet 3.6
Image taken from: https://blog.kissmetrics.com
Further Information can be found using the following link https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht
What do Google use?
What is Keyword research?
What is a longtail keyword?
Give an example of a longtail keyword?
Try and find the least amount of results based on search criteria.
What was the most searched for thing on the internet this year (Please keep it clean)
A useful glossary can be found at
https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/3114286?hl=en
Using your Social Media Pack carry out worksheet 3.12
• Developing contacts by following and linking relevant businesses and individuals, and sharing content posted by others.
Companies that use social media are not limited to just looking at their own presence but to also follow that of their suppliers and their competitors. It is key for all companies to know their own market well, so having a link to people like suppliers can enable them to plan and also weather any potential storms in business, for example a chocolate manufacturer may want to follow the producer of the cocoa bean as they could comment on things like poor weather affecting produce levels of the bean, which in turn could affect the price in which the beans are sold.
This linking between companies can also be classed as a community, where companies can share information by retweeting or liking supporting their industry.
What kind of business would you like to have/own/run? who would your target audience be? What detail would you like to provide them? What information do you think that they would need? Using a social media platform search for groups that are linked to your ideas.
• Direct and indirect advertising.
The following video covers a large amount of this course well, you should look at this in your own time as this is 45 minutes long, however, it is a key video.
Thier are a number of companies that make further use of social media by embedding it into their own websites, this can be a great way to keep your visitors on your site by providing them just the social media element and not navigating them away from your site to the social media's site ( this could allow them to lose focus on what they were doing before they landed on Facebook!).
Company's use special web script's to enable them to have these elements on their sites, these are called API or Application program interface. An API requires most developers to have a key or link to the company's social media pages, these keys or tokens in other social media applications will be embedded within the code to enable the linking.
the code below is an example of such code.
Token = new Token("token_access", "token_secret");
Credential c = new Credential("user_name", "consumer_key", "consumer_secret", token);
UserAccountManager m = UserAccountManager.getInstance(c);
if (m.verifyCredential()) {
GeoLocation loc = new GeoLocation("+37.5", "+26.7");
Tweet t = new Tweet("Cool! Geo-located Tweet via Twitter API ME. o/", loc);
TweetER ter = TweetER.getInstance(m);
t = ter.post(t);
}
As has been mentioned previously companies can and will use social media to promote products and new upcoming releases, this social media presence has the capability of becoming an advert that can be viewed by millions of people regardless of location (cellular network allowing, for mobile users). Facebook has the ability to allow companies to have a "Buy IT" or come to our "Shop" button at the top of the site that then transfers them to the e-commerce area where they can make a purchase.
Company sites that have social media feed on them can allow visitors to gain or gather information that is rapid and current, this can be exemplified by travel companies that wish to inform their passengers of delays, cancellations or engineering works that are scheduled.
This information is valuable to most and can provide a point at which many will return.
Mark Ritson – academic, brand consultant and Marketing Week columnist – recently gave a talk entitled ‘Why Social Media is Mostly a Waste of Time for Marketers’.
Mark discusses the areas including:
Do you agree, or disagree, with Mark.
Links to Learning Outcomes |
Links to Assessment criteria |
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Learning aim A: Explore the impact of social media on the ways in which businesses promote their products and services - A2 Business uses of social media
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A.P1 Explain the different ways in which a business can use social media. A.M1 Assess the different ways in which a business can use social media to attract a target audience. A.D1 Evaluate the business use of social media to interact with customers and promote products or services to a target audience. |
Key Terms:
Brand:- an aspect of a service or a product that sets it out from others in the market. Coverage of brand is not limited to products it can be linked to the presentation of the company in its website design or ethos.
Fractions: Sharing amounts, Calculating fractions, Comparing fractions
Ratios: Calculating ratios, applying ratios, Scales e.g. Maps
Statistic extracting information: Tables, Diagrams, Charts and Graphs
https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/challenge-toolkit-6063318
Anonymous Assessment - Learners assess an anonymous piece of work containing deliberate mistakes against given success criteria.
