Defining Social Media
Since its proliferation into the current world, social media has earned several definitions. In an ideal world nevertheless, social media refers to common online communication channels, which are dedicated to input from specific communities notably for collaboration, interaction and content sharing. In many situations, social media platforms customarily comprise websites, forums, applications as well as social networking sites. Similarly, social media encompasses social curation; wikis and microblogging. Some prominent examples of social media include Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit and Pinterest. Other noticeable social media platforms include Google Corporation’s Google+ and Wikipedia, which usually serves as a reference site (Bond, Merolli, & Ahmed, 2016).
Social media is no doubt becoming an integral part of human lives. They have been celebrated for the fact that they enhance communication between individuals, hence making interaction much more comfortable. The role of social media in marketing has also been applauded as stakeholders have argued that it is the next big thing in marketing. Social media platforms increase both brand recognition and loyalty while at the same time reducing the cost of marketing. Experts have also attested to the fact that it improves customer experience (Elstad, 2016). The research focusses on the various uses of digital and social media analytics such as in marketing, ethical issues that arise due to the use of digital and social media analytics and how best.
Wertime & Fenwick (2011) defined digital marketing as future evolution in the field of marketing when companies will execute most of their marketing activities through digital channels and online mediums. Digital marketing activities are being incorporated through digital channels that are interactive in nature and provide opportunity to companies to execute personalized dialogue with customers. As like neural network, personalized dialogue creates multiple data points and behavioural information of customers. In such context, digital markets can use data points and behavioural information of customers to continuously improvise and optimize interaction with customers (Wertime & Fenwick, 2011). They pointed out that digital marketing are being executed through variety of channels like social media pages of Facebook, Hi5, Twitter, LinkedIn or through web blogging or interactive games in web browsers like Google, Firefox etc. or through YouTube videos. Montgomery & Chester (2011) stated that target customers for digital marketers mainly lie in the age group of 12 years to 32 years. In other words, it can be said that digital marketers target mainly children, teenagers, adolescent, and students, young working professionals who spend significant amount of time in web browsing or social networking. Montgomery & Chester (2011) found that digital marketers have significant amount of scope to use online gaming or augmented reality console in virtual environment as digital marketing platform to promote the brand to thousands of online gamers. On the other hand, they stated that mobile marketing or developing promotional application in Smartphone can be termed as augmented online marketing strategy.
The Uses of Social Media in Marketing
Digital and social media analytics can be referred to as online listening or even social media listening. This is because it allows marketers to have the capability of identifying the trends, and needs of customers, for purposes of developing products that would satisfy and meet these needs. There are significant evidence and examples whereby companies have used the tool of digital and social media analytics to market their products, and engage with their customers (Gonçalves, 2017a). Companies such as Royal Bank of Canada, Jet Blue, Whirlpool and Barclays Bank are known to be using the tools of the digital and social media analytics for purposes of marketing, and promoting their brand image (Kelsey, 2017).
These companies have managed to improve their services, because of the feedback that they usually receive from their customers, through social media. This is because social media is an interactive tool of communication. Furthermore, scholars and academicians have tried to analyze and explain the seasonal emotional pattern that is always characterized by the use of social media (Minazzi, 2014a). This is important because this type of research has enabled companies to know the reason why people use the social media and the best marketing tools to use, for purposes of convincing them to use the products of the company. Through these studies, researchers have managed to come up with social media tools that can enable them to study the emotions of customers, regarding a particular product or substance (Heinonen, 2011). For example, the University of Bristol was able to develop a digital and social media analytics tool referred to as the Mood of the Nation
This tool had the capability of extracting emotions such as fear, anger, sadness, joy, hate from the twitter accounts, of users who are located in the United Kingdom. Such kind of information is essential to a company, and this is mainly because a company would know how its marketing campaigns are received by the target audience(Gonçalves, 2017b). A marketing advertisement or campaign that manages to elicit a lot of negative emotion in the social media would mean that it has failed, and the company under consideration would be forced to change strategies, and initiate a new marketing campaign. On the other hand, a marketing campaign that achieves a lot of positive emotions would mean that it is successful, and hence it should continue with the advertisement or the marketing campaign. These types of technologies and social media tools have the capability of affecting the privacy of individuals (Minazzi, 2014a).
Digital and Social Media Analytics
The measurement of social media has been stated to relate to the actuality of trailing the diverse and assorted content associated with the various types of social media on the whole. This particular process is observed to be carried out for ascertaining the specific quantity and attitude and reaction about a specific brand regarding the social media by the concerned marketers (Deshpande, 2018). Social media is being increasingly considered to be a popular form of a marketing platform for marketers owing to which the facet of measurement is supposed to be quite a decisive constituent to attain success (Minazzi, 2014b). This particular aspect of measuring or instead gauging the social media has been mentioned to be quite unripe as the concept of Web analytics during the period of the 1990s. Considerable popularity towards the usage of the Internet was recorded during 1990 among individuals. The Internet was started being used as a social medium for various purposes which called for the requirement of web analytics. This particular notion has been stated to be related to measurement, evaluation, compilation and providing details about the internet statistics with the intention to comprehend and to optimize the degree of usage associated with the web (Sheth, 2018).
Social media is learned to change the dynamics of modern consumer behavior completely. It has become amongst the most dynamic tool for consumers to voice their opinion about anything on earth be it a political issue, a film review, recent brand launch, and the latest trends. It has been phenomenal in empowering consumers since they can openly share their respective opinion about various brands and directly become a part of the success or failure of a brand. Contrary to the time when consumers relied on feedback from their close and near ones to get feedback about a brand, social media has helped the consumer get a global perspective about a particular brand (Gonçalves, 2017c).
Consumers express their opinion in the form of retweets and likes. The voice of the consumers has never been given such importance by brands before. The companies regularly keep tracking the blogs, posts, and tweet of consumers so that they can position their brands according to the consumer tastes and thus lead the competition (Yuksel, Milne, & Miller, 2016).
Brands have grown to be increasingly aware of the impact that social media could have on its success or failure and accordingly try to woo the consumers with the best they can offer. For example, the “LG- Find Your Bliss” campaign was successful in creating 80000 fans in the fan page about FaceBook, was published in more than 100 blogs and was tweeted more than 75 times in a time span of merely four weeks (Gonçalves, 2017d).
Measuring Social Media
Social media has aided consumers’ voice to reach to their desired targets. Although consumers had a voice, social media has assisted it to become louder and spread quicker than before. Brands have always had time to react to consumer complaints, but with social media becoming more powerful every day, brands don’t have the time to waste. They have to work on their offering and live up to their promise every moment to delight their target consumers. Before the advent of social media, consumers never had the option of expressing their opinion in public and reach a wide target in a very short span of time. However, nowadays it does not take much of a time for a consumer to express his satisfaction or dissatisfaction to a considerable number of audiences irrespective of whether his peers are known or unknown (Gonçalves, 2017e). Consumers can freely share their opinion even with acquaintances, strangers and a diverse group in a reasonably comfortable manner. The purchasing behavior of consumers depends on tweets, feedbacks, and posts in social media channels rather than promotions done by brands in channels of conventional media.
In today’s world of consumer empowerment marketers are left with little choice other than changing conventional approach to transformational approach. The long-established push system of marketing is a passé. Transformational marketing means using modern tools to comprehend the outlook consumers share about the brands and accordingly design consumer-focused marketing strategies to lead in the competition (Gonçalves, 2017e).
With the growth of digital marketing as an alternative to the traditional marketing approach, a number of channels have been developed that have enhanced the presence of companies online. These include the use of search engine optimization, the pay per click among other channels that have been developed to improve either the presence of an organization’s digital website or the description of its products.
The increased use of digital forums as a way of marketing as compared to the traditional approaches has been associated with the advantages it provides to the users. With digital marketing, the playground is leveled and all businesses, irrespective of their size, market capitalization or government support can perform equally. This provides an opportunity for emerging businesses to increase their presence in the market despite the tough competition. As opposed to traditional advertising approaches where big multinationals control the airtime on national televisions and advertising channels, digital marketing is only influenced by the approach adopted by the marketer (Deshpande, 2018).
Consumer Behavior and Social Media
The overall cost of advertising using this approach is relatively lower as compared to other traditional approaches and this increases its preference among emerging businesses. The cost of digital advertising is only affected by the level of contents that are required and the surcharges by the web developer. Traditional advertising methods can only be measured based on the level of increase in the sales in a given year. This can be falsely pegged on the marketing approaches despite the fact that other factors can also increase the sales apart from the advertising approaches. With digital marketing however, the response and the results of the initiatives can be measured real time based on the online response of the clients and the high number of positive reviews received.
The level of exposure with digital marketing is also high as compared to other approaches that have been traditionally used, as the number of online visitors remains high in the country. Once a key is optimized, any search that has the key will increase the traffic into the website and this increases the likelihood that the product advertised will reach the target market. Digital advertising can also go viral due to the current web 2.0 features which allow online contents to be shared in different social media sites such as Facebook and twitter (Lober & Flowers, 2011).
Traditional and digital marketing approaches differ considerably and this explains the current preference for the later among organizations across the world. While traditional advertising is one way, digital advertising provides a two-way communication medium in which the advertiser can interact with the target market and get the feedback concerning the product. Digital marketing is also a closed system of reaching the market while the traditional is closed and involves the communication from the business only. Traditional advertising is opaque and does not provide room for consumers to improve their knowledge about the product while digital marketing is transparent and more involving. Digital marketing is a one on one marketing approach where one client is approached and attracted at a time. This differs from the traditional approach in which the mass is targeted and communication is generalized to meet the needs of the entire market without consideration for the variation in the tastes and preferences (Lober & Flowers, 2011).
Due to the scrutiny that digital advertising is exposed to the contents are more authentic and actual as the clients can rebuff polished information as presented in the traditional approaches. In digital advertising, the main participants or the channel of passing the information are the users of the sites. However, traditional approaches use celebrities and actors to influence the buying habits of the general population. The communication in digital marketing is also unstructured, which makes it more informal as compared to the structured approach adopted in traditional advertising. Based on this comparison, it is evident that traditional approach is more reliant on the lack of information of the target market. However, digital advertising appreciates the level of enlighten of the target market and thus presents information to attract and not lure the customers.
This research shall review peer-reviewed articles and journals on the effectiveness of digital and social media marketing analytics in streamlining marketing campaigns in Asia. A literature search would first be carried out via an internet search using the following search words and similar combinations of these words: effectiveness of digital and social media marketing analytics, social media marketing analytics, ethical issues in the use of social media analytics. Relevant studies shall be set aside for further analysis. Studies carried out in the last ten years shall be included in this topic, and shall mostly cover social media marketing analytics. Studies which cover other forms of analytics (i.e., big data analytics and data analytics) will not be included in this research. Only peer-reviewed articles carried out by credible authors will be involved in the study.
Privacy is a matter of concern to every people, and this is because it any breaches to it, can compromise the security and well-being of an individual. For example, with the development of Facebook, and the continued increase in the popularity of MySpace, majority of people, all over the world are providing their personal information through the internet (Lober & Flowers, 2011). However, most of these users do not have the knowledge that they can modify the settings of their accounts for purposes of ensuring that the personal information they provide is not given to the public. This, therefore, means that the privacy concerns of people, about digital and social media analytics, is unfounded. This is because users of social media sites have the capability of controlling the kind of information they receive or use, in their social media sites. However, (Karas, 2013) believes that this is not the case.
In the view of (Stewart & Coleman, 2013), administrators of the social media sites have the overall control of the accounts of users. This is because they are in business, and the desire to ensure that large organizations can use their sites for marketing purposes. Furthermore, for purposes of identifying the location of its users, companies such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace have introduced applications aimed at tracking and determining the location of its users. This kind of information is beneficial to companies, and this is because they would know the geographical location of their users, hence develop appropriate marketing techniques or tools, that would have the capability of appealing to people within these geographic locations. Furthermore, it would save the company some money, because it won’t advertise or engage in marketing promotions, in regions where it offices or products are not available (Lober & Flowers, 2011).
However, these applications that identify the locations of social media users is controversial, and it has implications on the role of internet privacy, as overlapping on the need of providing security to the users of these social media sites (Bond, Merolli, & Ahmed, 2016). For examples, some of these social media applications are aimed at cyberstalking. An example is an application known as Creepy. This application has the capability of tracking the location of an individual by using photos that are uploaded to Flickr or Twitter. For example, when an individual uploads photos to their social networking sites, marketers can track their recent locations. Furthermore, some smartphones have the capability of embedding the latitude and longitude coordinate into photos, hence automatically sending this type of information to the Creepy application. Anybody using this type of application can search the specific person, and find out their locations (Sharma, 2016).
This creates a variety of risks to the users of the application, specifically to those sharing their information with a large group of people, or followers. The security of these people is at risk, and this is because of the identity of their locations. However, to marketers, this is beneficial. This is because they would have the capability of identifying the location of their customers, and hence come up with marketing campaigns, that are effective in appealing to the needs of their customers. Furthermore, developing a marketing campaign that does not factor in the location of its target audience would generally lead to the failure of the campaign under consideration. Therefore, such kinds of information are always useful to marketers (Khan, 2017). Furthermore, the use of digital and social media analytics helps an organization to listen and learn from its customers. This information is beneficial to marketers because they would develop a marketing campaign aimed at satisfying the identified needs.
Below is the Gantt chart indicating the main tasks to be carried out, their duration and both start and end dates.
Conclusions
Asia, just like any other region of the world can benefit immensely on the use of digital marketing. (Bond, Merolli, & Ahmed, 2016) Explains that the use of digital and social media analytics in marketing helps in improving innovation. These tools of the social media usually help in providing a deep natural language or semantic analysis of the social media. It is possible to configure these tools to discover the various gaps in the industry as a whole. Innovation would emanate, based on the information provided by users of social media, concerning a particular product. The social media comprises of a lot of information about the portfolio of a company. Effective implementation of the tools of digital and social media analytics helps an organization to mine this information, which would, in turn, help it to improve the existing services and products (Heinonen, 2011).
In conclusion, digital and social media analytics plays a significant role in ensuring that an organization manages to get the necessary information that can be used in advancing its interest and objectives. Social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter have millions of users, and these people regularly comment on the quality of products or services that an organization offers. It is this kind of information that companies can mine, and use them for marketing of their products and services. However, the use of social media analytic tools frequently compromises the security and privacy of an individual. This is risky, because the safety of the person under consideration may be at risk, or vulnerable. However, to business organization, social media analytics is a vital marketing process, that can help them recover information that can be used to promote their business.
References
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