teachthe4ps.com - For instructors of marketing.

Social media is getting less confusing.  Best practices are emerging.  Marketing managers are better understanding how which marketing objectives might be best addressed with social media.  This article, “Are You Talking to Me?” (Wall Street Journal, April 25, 2011, non-subscribers click here) suggests five best practices used by companies with some success in social media.  Many of the lessons come from “listening” closely to customers via social media.  The early heavy users of social media are listening, learning, and adapting.  Anyway, the article has some good examples of using Facebook and Twitter that you can bring to a class discussion about Promotion, social media, and market research.  Also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Duh!  Not sure I find this very surprising – “For ‘B-to-B’ Companies, Finding Facebook ‘Friends’ Can Be a Struggle,” (Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2010 – non-subscribers link here and click on article).  While I believe there are some opportunities for B2B communication via Twitter and Facebook — and this article offers a few success stories — I think there are other social media vehicles that work better.  At this point most people use Facebook for personal connections and possibly to keep up on brands they enjoy as consumers — not as business buyers.  That may change.  What do you think?  Where are the opportunities for social media with B2B?  Some discussion of this might fit in when you cover social media in a class on Promotion — when offering for B2B examples.  Note:  also posted at Learn the 4 Ps.

Brandweek‘s (June 2, 2010) article “Why Do Consumers Visit CPG Web Sites?” provides a brief summary of a recent Ipsos survey “Engaging CPG Consumers in the Digital Space.”  Consumer package goods companies have been investing in websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter.  This data will tell them which of these sites customers will visit for various reasons.  I was also surprised to see how many consumers actually figured it was likely they would visit a CPG site.   This ties consumer behavior and promotion objectives with social media.  You might highlight the survey results in class and ask students what type of information they might put on a website, Facebook page, or Twitter for Coca Cola or Tide detergent.  They should see that each will require different information to best meet customer needs.

Thank you Stephen Baker.  Bill and I are working hard on develop new frameworks and conceptual organizers for our books so that we can help students better understand social media.  The current editions of Basic Marketing and Essentials of Marketing do not include references to Twitter (which was not around when we last revised) and only a few referemces to Facebook and other social media.  Our books deal extensively with the Internet and its implications, but social media is the next wave.  While Baker’s article “Beware Social Media Snake Oil” (BusinessWeek, December 3, 2009) doesn’t bring clarity to these issues, it calls attention to the hype.  We are trying to carefully revise our books to reflect an understanding about how social media can be effectively used as part of an organization’s integrated marketing communications plan.

As a quick aside, we will miss Stephen Baker’s insightful articles at BusinessWeek.  When Bloomberg bought BusinessWeek, Stephen Baker was not offered a job.  If you are interested, you can follow his blog at thenumerati.net.

This article and video combination describe how companies can monitor “tweets” on the social media service Twitter to help them forecast sales.  “Follow the Tweets,” Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2009 (subscription required – no subscription click here).   The video below is an interview with one of the authors.

We believe executives can make accurate predictions about sales trends by analyzing tweets that mention their products or services, and we have created a model based on Twitter’s keyword-search function to help them do that.

Best Buy is one of the most innovative retailers around in its use of social media.  They are always experimenting.  In “What Best Buy Learned About Service as Marketing and Empowering Employees“AdAge, November 24, 2009 (subscription may be required), we hear how the company has found a creative way to use Twitter.  I still question the value of Twitter to most marketers — I guess it depends on your target market.  What do you think about Twitter?  Should marketers be using it?

This is the viral army of 2,200 Best Buy employees who answer questions and solve customer problems via the customer-care channel we know as Twitter. Self described as “a collective force of Best Buy tech pros offering tech advice in Tweet form,” the program has nearly 15,000 “followers” and it’s growing. Think Apple Genius Bar but without the physical counter.

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This post on the ReadWriteWeb blog (“40% of People on Facebook ‘Friend’ Brands“) descibes a survey with the above claim — among others.  The sample of “1000 connected consumers” suggests we are dealing with a particularly digital segment of the market.  Still, the results suggest that consumers may be willing to interact with brands on social media.

I know that I am trying to figure it out and get a handle on it. These two presentations have helped me.

I’m not sure if these presentations are better used in the classroom (do our students already know this?) – or our offices (do marketing faculty get it?). I showed the first one in class and my students appreciated it. The “Social Media Revolution” (top one below) has data that really can be a surprise. While I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of the data presented, I did not find people on the web arguing with the numbers. Usually the web will “out” any bad data. The second video is more a tutorial — but still very helpful if you are not up on social media.

Do any of you have other online video slide shows that do a good job with this topic? (click on comments in the gray banner below to share)