Content Marketing

1. Different types of content and content creation.
2. How can your marketing content stand out from the rest?
• Products and brand content
3. How to involve the consumer in the content creating process?
• How to engage consumers to create content for you?
-----------------------------

1. Different types of content and content creation.

#1: Infographics: An infographic is the presentation of information or data in a visual way.
Its name sums it up — info + graphic.

Infographics are liked 4x more than presentations, and 23x more than documents on SlideShare

Infographics are shared 2x more than presentations, and 3x more than documents on other social networks, such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

e.g.

Source: http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/09/11/infographics-are-more-viral/

#2: Meme

They’re easy to make. They’re viral. They’re hilarious.

Source: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/14/how-these-15-types-of-content-will-drive-you-more-traffic/

#3: Videos

There’s a world of variety within videos. Put the video on YouTube and Vimeo. Both of these video sharing sites are great ways to garner social signals for SEO and improved results for video search itself.

#4: Guides

A guide is a detailed and fairly long piece of content. Think of it as an epic blog post. It goes beyond the length, style, and approach of an ordinary blog post.

#5: Book reviews

Recommend good books, critique not-so-good ones, and share the value that glean from them. Book reviews are great because they help to position you as a thought leader

#6: Opinion post 

This style of post is substantially different from your typical blog post, mostly due to its tone. The rant or opinion, by contrast, may be stronger and more expressive. The more vociferous the position, the more it’s going to get read and shared.

#7: Product reviews

Like the book review, a product review can help establish authority and leadership in a specific industry. Every industry has its unique array of products, software, and services. When engage key developers, manufacturers, or service providers, you gain recognition and respect. All to do is share experience with the product and provide recommendation.

#8: How-to

The how-to is one of the most popular types of content. How-to articles have awesome long tail search potential due to these popular long tail query introductions: “How to…” and “How do I…?”

#9: Lists

Lists have endless appeal. We’re wired to love them. Chance are we’re going to see or read an article today that involves some sort of a list — “5 Security Breaches You Need to Know about,” “17 Ways to Rank Higher in Google in One Month.” 

#10: Link pages

A link page is simply a post that provides links to great resources around the web. The great thing about link posts is that they spread link love to other sites, provide your own site with authoritative SEO signals, and assert your thought leadership within your field.

#11: Ebook

An ebook is long content packaged in a different format, usually as a PDF. Ebooks are often a downloadable product, available for free in exchange for joining a mailing list. Producing an ebook helps to strengthen your authority within a field, and it makes for a powerful method of sharing your knowledge with others.

#12: Case Study

A case study explains what your product or service is and how it helped a client. The case study basically says, “here’s what we do, how we do it, and the results we get.”

#13: Podcast

Podcasts had their phase of popularity, and they’re still a great form of content. Plus, they’re not hard to create. Many people listen to podcasts during their commute or exercise. You have a chance to spread your message farther and better using this format than a lot of other formats.

#14: Interview

When you’re able to interview a leader, you can garner a lot of respect from others in the field, not to mention huge amounts of traffic. Interviews are unique. No one else has this information — only you.

#15: Research and original data

Most of us work in data-intensive fields, where numbers and metrics hold a lot of value. Sharing your findings with others is a powerful way to drive traffic, build trust, and establish your authority. When you do the research, which is hard work, people respect that. What’s more, people share it.

Source: http://www.newsvend.com/blog/7/how-to-build-a-killer-content-marketing-strategy

2. How can your marketing content stand out from the rest?

#1: Focus on consistency, great topics, and growing audience
#2: Publish more quality content than anyone else in your niche
#3: Try under-used content format
#4: Focus time on fewer content format
#5: Plan your blog to save than when you actually write your posts

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/03/16/content-marketing-challenges

Mailchimp stated why newsletters and emails might end up in the spam folder as follows:

• Using phrases like “Click here!” or “Once in a lifetime opportunity!”
• Excessive use of exclamation points!!!!!!!!!
• USING ALL CAPS, WHICH IS LIKE SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS VIA EMAIL (especially in the subject line).
• Using bright red or green colored fonts.
• Using bad content. This one’s broad, but important. Email delivery expert Laura Atkins details content-based filtering in this article.
• Coding sloppy HTML, usually from converting a Microsoft Word file to HTML.
• Creating an HTML email that’s nothing but one big image, with little or no text. Spam filters can’t read images, so they assume you’re a spammer trying to trick them.
• Using the word “test” in the subject line. Agencies can run into this issue when sending drafts to clients for approval.
• Sending a test to multiple recipients within the same company. That company’s email firewall often assumes it’s a spam attack.
• Sending to inactive lists. These are lists which have not engaged in the campaigns through opens and clicks. Because subscriber engagement is a huge part of getting emails into the inbox, when an ISP sees low engagement rates they will often begin to bulk the campaigns to the spam folder. Then they will block the domain and IP addresses used to deliver the campaigns.
• Sending to stale lists. Permission generally goes stale within about 6 months, so if your subscribers haven’t heard from you within that timeframe, you’ll need to reconfirm your list.

3. How to involve the consumer in the content creating process?

Source: http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/113811-7-Ways-to-Get-People-to-Share-Your-Content/

Coca-Cola innovated the music scene and launched a “passion-targeting approach” to generate its brand presence. Since then, it has evolved its strategy to build on consumers’ passion points.
More recently, it partnered with Maroon 5 to stream the band recording their music live in the studio. Fans were encouraged to follow their live feed on-the-go and simultaneously give the musicians live feedback.

By doing so, the brand was able to encourage its consumers to be part of the content creation process.

How to get people to share your content?

#1: Make it easy for people to share your content: no more than 2 to 3 clicks of a button. One simple example of making content easy to share is “tweetables”

#2: Ask them to share it: remind them with a call to action. Pinterest pins with a call to action get 80 percent more shares.

#3: Use images

#4:  Create “round-ups” as blog posts or other content: round-ups are a content format. You ask a bunch of experts one question, then round up all their answers in a blog post. Round-ups can also be SlideShares or audio recordings, but most of the time they’re blog posts.

#5: Write listicles

#6: Write strong headlines: headline largely determines whether or not your article gets shared. 80 percent of people will never read beyond your headline.

#7: Write long-form content

Source: http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/113811-7-Ways-to-Get-People-to-Share-Your-Content/

Source:

Patel, N., 2014. Article15 Types of Content That Will Drive You More Traffic. http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/14/how-these-15-types-of-content-will-drive-you-more-traffic/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Dhariwal, A., 2013. SlidesShare Infographics Are More Viral. http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/09/11/infographics-are-more-viral/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Walgrove, A., 2015. Article How to Make Your Content Stand Out. https://contently.com/strategist/2015/10/19/infographic-how-to-make-your-content-stand-out/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Mailchimp. How to Avoid Spam Filters. http://mailchimp.com/resources/guides/how-to-avoid-spam-filters/html/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Ismail, N., 2015. 4 Tips for Effective Content Marketing. http://www.marketing-interactive.com/4-ways-content-creation-success/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Neeli, P., 2014. Article 7 Ways to Get People to Share Your Content. http://webmarketingtoday.com/articles/113811-7-Ways-to-Get-People-to-Share-Your-Content/. accessed: 23.11.2015

Sensory Marketing

1 How do people use their 5 senses in order to receive advertising messages?

Sensory marketing and branding are the fields where the story of experience starts. Our five senses (Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell and Taste) help to build emotion and recognition.

And it’s crucially important to use them all to build brand. A multi-sensory brand experience generates certain beliefs, feelings, thoughts and opinions to create a brand image in the consumer's mind. It’s the easiest way to touch a soul of a customer (The DreamSpeaker)

Sight: Visual clutter makes it hard to attract consumers by sight alone.
e.g. Coke has a distinctive bottle and there’s always red and white. Before the 1950s, Santa Claus wore green. Coca-Cola changed that by having Santa wear red and white in its ads. In every shopping mall in the country today, Santa now sports the Coke colors at Christmas time, sending a subtle signal to millions.
As Coke demonstrates, shape and color can build brand identity. Others who have done it well include Hershey’s kisses; McDonald’s Golden Arches and just try to ignore the impact of the Hummer on car design.

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/nadezhdabevz/5senses-sensory-marketing

Smell: Although the sense of smell is one of the most powerful and the only one we can’t turn off…fewer than 3 percent of companies have established a unique aroma. There are about 1,000 primary odors, each with the potential to influence mood and behavior. Scent is capable of evoking images, sensations, memories, and associations.

e.g. Singapore Airlines specially designed aroma is included in the flight attendants’ perfume, on the hot towels offered before takeoff, and is sprayed through the cabin before passengers enter.

e.g. lemon dish-washing detergent, which has been using for decades. The lemon scent makes people feel the detergent works better, even though there often is no real or minimal lemon in the product. Somebody came up with using lemon scent for dish-washing detergent, then the entrepreneur exploited the connection between lemon scent and cleanliness. The earlier connection may have been established based on lemon's acidity and used to cut grease and polish silver and to make things cleaner. When people started associating the lemon scent with a feeling of cleanliness (Krishna, 2010)

What influences the scents?
Individual differences variables such as impulsivity and age have also been found to have moderating affects
e.g. the ability of ambient scent to enhance consumer expenditures in a shopping mall was found to significantly diminish among older shoppers reflecting the fact that the acuity of our sense of smell begins to deteriorate as early as out 20s (Krishna, 2010)

Culture influences individuals in many ways, shaping thoughts, values and behaviours, often without conscious realisation. Culture also influences perceptions of scents. Researchers have found that babies learn about smells early but are indifferent to scents until they are about 8 years old (Krishna, 2010)
e.g. the Dassantch of Ethiopia find the odor of cattle (which connotes fertility and social status) attractive and hence wash their hands with cow urine and smear their bodies with manure (Classen, Howes, & Synnott, 1997)

Taste: Such we find normally find "tasty" may have little to do with the "taste" sense. Taste is all five senses: taste of food includes smell (how food smells), touch (temperature, fattiness, texture of food), vision (how the food looks, aesthetic appeal including color), and also audition (e.g. the sound of the potato chip racking when you bite it).

e.g. Colgate stands out in the realm of taste and the flavor of its toothpaste is patented. Yet even Colgate could improve by extending its branded taste to toothbrushes, dental floss and related dental hygiene products.

e.g. Singapore Airlines’ unique World Gourmet Cuisine brings custom-created menus from around the world. To create a unique “taste” experience, they have carefully selected an international panel of chefs to create sumptuous, elegant, and seasonal menus.

Sound: Findings published in the Journal of Consumer Research showed the slower the music, the more people shop and when slow music is played in a restaurant, the bill is 29 percent higher. CNN and Intel have consistently leveraged sound in their marketing and penetrated consumers’ minds. The “Intel Inside” jingle has made the invisible visible. Research shows that more consumers remember the Intel tune than the company’s logo.

e.g. Kellogg’s hired a music lab to create a unique “crunch” for its cornflakes and Daimler Chrysler established an entire new department devoted solely to developing the sound of its car doors.

Touch: Although 35 percent of consumers say the feel of a cell phone is more important than its look, the sense of touch is widely ignored by marketers.

e.g. Texas Instruments developed an exclusive touch for its calculator keys and Bang & Olufsen, with its heavy, solid feel has put as much detail into its design, from telephones to speakers as it has into the quality of its sound (Bevz, 2014)

2 How senses are applied in different channels?

The two senses constantly stimulated by marketing are obviously sight and hearing. Posters, TV commercials, buses ads, radio, pamphlets,... our eyes and ears and constantly stimulated by advertising (Rio, 2012)

Source: http://www.simonharrop.com/blog/

When looking at what drives emotional response to a brand, the senses were equally important to consumers in the relationship to brands (blue) but that marketing budgets were overspent on visual communications alone (green).

Engaging customers’ senses is not a new concept to customer experience. As human beings our senses are constantly on, and businesses (particularly retailers) attempt to stimulate them in ways that are pleasurable in order to create positive emotions and affect their customers’ behaviour. But rarely are more than 2 senses stimulated deliberately. In fact, according to some sources 83% of all commercial communication appeals only to one sense – the eyes. In contrast, 75% of our day-to-day emotions are influenced by what we smell and in 65% of cases, positive sound changes our mood (source: ACP Connections)

Case study:  Event Edible Cinema in Notting Hill

Cinemas have been on the mission to provide customers with an experience that can compete with the low cost, low effort and high comfort online streaming experience the internet has offered. Customer loyalty is gradually more difficult to maintain.

A most notable attempt to enhance viewers’ experience was the introduction of the 3D technology and since that wave didn’t last long, the 4D quickly emerged. The latter does not only engage viewers’ sight and eyes, but skin as well. Those that have been to Madamme Tussaud’s in London in 2012, will know of the 4D experience that is essentially a short 3D screening escorted with tactile effects such as: warm air blown while fire is displayed or water being sprinkled on you while you are looking at a fountain in the screen etc. The idea is to engage as many senses as possible such that the viewer is absorbed by the experience.

One such example is the Edible Cinema event which interestingly, attempts to deliberately and in a specific way combine the visual and audio (the movie) with the taste and smell (food).

The Edible cinema picks out a movie and then designs a menu of nibbles and drinks (stored in pots and bags next to each seat) that are to be consumed in a particular order that corresponds to the scenes being played out on the screen. For example, when one of the characters consumes a sleeping draught, a herbs cocktail is served to resemble medicine. Here is a description from a customer:

“There was a helpful menu on our seats which explained each of the offerings in more detail, and we were informed that a lovely lady would pop up to one side of the screen throughout the film to let us know when it was time to open each of the numbered bags/pots and imbibe/eat its contents:

Source:

Bevz, N., 2014. Sensory Marketing - 5 senses. http://www.slideshare.net/nadezhdabevz/5senses-sensory-marketing. accessed: 16.11.2015

Krishna, A., 2010. Sensory Marketing, pp 3-4, pp 82-112

The DreamSpeaker, Successful Marketing Demands use of all five senses, http://www.thedreamspeaker.com/successful-marketing-demands-use-of-all-five-senses/. accessed: 16.11.2015

Rio, Z., 2012. Marketing for 5 senses. http://www.julienrio.com/marketing/english/marketing-5-senses. accessed: 17.11.2015

Shaw, C., 2012. Case study: The Edible Cinema. http://beyondphilosophy.com/edible-cinema-role-senses-customer-experience/. accessed: 17.11.2015

Media Mix and Agencies

Learning Objective 1:  Discuss different channels that can be used for your media plan

Learning Objective 2: How should you conduct your research? (IE what to research)
• Media habits in your country
• POE

Learning Objective3: Roles of different agencies

-------------------------------------

1. Different channels for media plan

According to Marketing Performance group, different channels for media plan include traditional media and interactive media

Traditional Media

• National Cable Television
• National Broadcast Television
• Local Broadcast TV
• Local Cable TV
• Network Radio
• Local Radio
• Print — Newspaper
• Print — Magazines
• Out of Home

Interactive Media

• Paid Search (pay-per-click)
• Banner advertising
• Facebook campaigns
• Mobile advertising

There is another deeper analyses by Brassington and Pettitt (2013) in Essentials of Marketing book where all media channels are reflected thoroughly as follows:

Television: its impact can be high. It is a combination of sound, colour, motion and entertainment that has a strong chance of grabbing attention and getting a message across. It enables a seller to communicate to a broader range of potentially large audiences but to undifferentiated audiences. This leads to the risk of high wastage. The relevance and quality of those contacts must be questioned. Moreover, this is like one-way communication where advertisers can't check the receiver's level of attention. No guarantee the receiver is following the message.

Radio: provides an important means of broadcast communication for smaller companies operating within a restricted geographic area. Despite being restricted to sound only, radio still offers wide creative and imaginative frequency. Comparing to TV, radio is low cost per time slot but lower involvement and being used as background rather than for detailed listening.

Cinema: being used to reach selected audiences, especially younger and male. For example, in the UK nearly 80% of cinema goers are in the 15-34 age group. The advertiser has an increased chance of gaining the audience's attention because people waiting for movie with intention of being entertained. Thus, quality and impact of cinema advertising can be much greater than that of television because of the size of screen and quality of sound system.

Magazines: the main advantage of a printed medium is that information can be presented and then examined selectively at the reader's leisure. A copy of a magazine tends to be passed around among a number of people and kept for quite a long time. Magazines can be closely targeted to a defined audience e.g. Playboy for men
Magazines also have a powerful advantage over broadcast media. People keep magazines for reference purposes, thus it might not prompt immediate action but the readers suddenly come back into the market and they know where to look for suppliers.

Newspapers: main role of newspaper for advertisers is to communicate quickly and flexibly to a large audience. Local newspapers are an important advertising medium for small to big chains of businesses. Problems of newspapers advertising: expensive, short lifespan, too broad targets.

Advertising billboards, outdoor media: posters, ambient media (advertising on bus tickets, toilet walls, store floors), transport-oriented advertising media (on buses, taxis, trains, in stations) => cost-effective in reaching a large number of people but such whether advertising is noticed or remembered.

Online advertising: many advantages for reaching target audiences with support of internet but many times the advertisements are ignored by users.

2. How to conduct research?

What to research?

1. Senior managers working with members of corporate comm. to determine objectives for certain stories. e.g. a company wants to move into a new market => create awareness about the move, company's strategy has changed globally.

2. Communications professionals conduct research to find out who covers their industry and the company especially. Identifying print, radio, TV reporters. Each time a journalist covers a firm in the industry, a corporate comms. professionals need to determine what angle the reporter has taken. 

3. Research about competitors and what stories they have been covered by reporter and how to conduct visually an interview (Argenti, 2013)

2.1 Media habits in Vietnam
Creating advertising campaign using television, cinema, advertising billboards, outdoor media, online marketing, especially social media to again attention.
Using cultural aspect to again publicity in Vietnam is an important strategy.

2.2 POE

Source: http://blog.hootsuite.com/converged-media-brito-part-1/

Paid media is often considered to be “traditional advertising” and includes banner ads, paid search marketing, sponsorships and content syndication. Paid media initiatives usually target prospects in an effort to create brand awareness or new customer acquisition.

The great thing about paid media is that scales really fast. If you have a message that you want to be seen by the mass market, paid media is the right channel to do that. While it can certainly be expensive, you have complete control over the creative, content and marketing spend. The disadvantages with using paid media alone are that consumers often ignore pure “brand messages” since they are already inundated daily with advertising messages; and not just from your competitors either. Every other large brand with a marketing message and a significant budget is fighting for their attention.

Owned media is the content that your brand has complete control over such as the corporate website, blogs, communities, email newsletters as well social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Owned media initiatives typically target to your brand’s existing community and/or current customers. Normally owned media is seen as free of charge but it actually needs a lot of time investment on content creation and customer service which costs something.

Earned media is a result of public/media relation’s efforts, ad campaigns, events and the content that you create within your owned media channels.  When someone not associated with your brand mentions you on Twitter, Facebook or any other social media channel, it’s earned media. Other types of earned media include consumers’ social media posts, tweets, product reviews, videos, photos, and open dialogue within online communities (Brito, 2013).

3. Roles of different agencies 

Role of a media agency: 

A media agency (or media planner) is responsible for the strategic recommendation of media activity for your campaign. Working from your brief the planning process involves analysing the audience objectives and balancing the reach, frequency and costs of media options to deliver a detailed media plan that maximises advertising exposure and impact.

Planning should demonstrate a coordinated approach to different media and illustrate the thinking behind the proposed approach. Media planners work closely with advertising agencies to ensure the client's advertising budget is well spent, as well as adhering to the overall campaign strategy (NSW Government)

Roles of different agencies:

Client Service or Account Management: a key role in the development of the advertising campaign, in charge of the relationship with the client. Account handlers are responsible for developing an in-depth understanding of the client's marketplace and their business.

Strategic Planning: strategic planners represent the consumer in the agency. They are responsible for developing the key strategic insight which lies behind the advertising idea. They need to get under the skin of the consumer and understand as much as possible about them. 

Media Planning and Buying: media Planners map how to connect the consumer to the creative idea. Planners in a media agency will take a brief from the client which highlights the message that they want to communicate to the consumer, sometimes customers will ask the media agency to give advice on budget setting. The media buyers are responsible for negotiating with the media owners of the relevant channels in order to get the best position, timing and price for their client's media space and therefore realise the maximum value and impact from the budget available.

Creative: the creative department of an agency is where the campaign comes together. It's where that great idea or stunning visual is dreamt up. Creatives are generally hired in pairs — a copywriter and an art director. They take the client brief and work with it to invent ideas to address the brand's business problems. From here, they work with media planners/buyers and the production department in order to turn those ideas into a reality. To get a job as a creative, the most important think is your 'book' — a portfolio of all your ads to showcase your talent.

Creative Services & Production: to ensure that the internal process is smooth and the ads are made to the highest quality, on time, and within budget. The people in this process need a variety of skills and can be split into three main areas — those who control the internal process within an agency, those who source the outside talent for production and those who oversee the production itself, including Creative Services Director, Creative Services Manager, Art Buying, TV Production, StudioProject Management, Traffic Management and Print Production.

User Experience (UX): the UX guys are responsible for research and design activity required to deliver great online experiences. They are the digital equivalent of retail merchandisers who guide you intuitively around a supermakert.

Social Media Strategist: understand how consumers interact with social platforms. It is essential that they understand how new technologies shape the user experience online. They craft ideas which are social by design and engage with the online consumers.

Web Developer: responsible for technically implementing digital ideas by working with creatives and UX. They take ownership of the entire build phase of creating websites (IPA)

-----------------------------------------------

Sources:

Marketing Performance group, article: Pick the right mix of media channels for your advertising campaigns. http://www.marketingperformancegroup.com/media-placement/media-channels. accessed: 9.11.2015

Brassington, F., Pettitt, S., 2013. Essentials of Marketing, 3rd edition, chapter 10, pp 381-390

Argenti, P., A., 2013. Corporate Communication, 6th edition, chapter 6, pp 148-150 

Brito, M., 2013. Your Content Strategy: Defining Paid, Owned and Earned Media. http://blog.hootsuite.com/converged-media-brito-part-1/. accessed: 9.11.2015

NSW Government, Role of advertising and media agencies. http://www.advertising.nsw.gov.au/advertising/planning-campaign/advertising-and-media-agencies. accessed: 10.11.2015

IPA, Who does what? Job roles in a nutshell. http://www.ipa.co.uk/page/Who-does-what-Job-roles-in-a-nutshell#.VkEbg64rL6Y. accessed: 10.11.2015

Social Media

This time's PBL is about social media which is an appeal topic for marketing or in another word business nowadays.

1. Which platforms are suitable for which purposes considering social media?
• Differences between B2C/B2C sectors
• How does the industry influence which platforms are being used?
• Cases

2. Social Media Strategy

• B2C / B2B

• Case studies

3.  Measuring the effectiveness of social media efforts
• Tools
• Key indicators, important metrics
• Is social media worth the effort?
• Cases

-------------------------------------------

1. Platform - Purpose

Social media platforms Concepts and Applications:

Source: https://eileenbrown.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/image_thumb4.png?w=643&h=509

1.1 B2C and B2B

SIMILAR:
Require a sales process: need well defined strategy and tactics in both arenas even B2B lead generation may take longer and involve more nurturing.
Alignment with marketing: online and offline marketing messages need to align well with sales communications
Excellent customer service

DIFFERENCE:
Emotional vs Rational
Retail sales are often emotional, based on a perceived immediate need, while corporate sales are planned, evaluated and longer term. Online shopping has changed this to some extent, allowing customers to research and compare prior to purchase.

Cheap vs Expensive
Again, not strictly true, but on average B2C sales have a lower price point and are less often paid out over time. There is a crossover where B2B sales involve products such as office supplies. Corporate services are often retainer-based over a long term. Luxury B2C items such as houses and cars are paid over a long term as well.

One-off vs Relationship
Retail point-of-sale purchases are often done without prior contact and with no ongoing relationship between sales person and customer. This is seldom true in the B2B arena, where the entire sales process is often based on relationship building and trust.

Experience
While there are many B2C sales people with years of experience, the learning (and success) curve is certainly shorter than in B2B. B2B sales people must know how to work with senior decision makers in addition to knowing their products cold. That can take years to develop and the right personality to make it work (Dunne)

In the book Essentials of Marketing by Frances Brassington and Stephen Petttit (2013) stating that B2B customers often purchase goods and services that meet specific business needs which emphasis on economic benefits whilst consumer customers purchase goods and services to meet individual needs with psychological benefits.

B2B uses lengthy policies and processes, high quantities and large group decision makers. B2C is minimal simple purchasing process with small quantities suiting family's needs.

B2C is often purchasing from intermediaries so it is easier to switch to another supplier which hardly happens for B2B, however B2B can negotiate better prices while B2C normally accepts the stated prices. 

Social media platforms are being used in B2B and B2C

Source: http://www.statista.com/chart/2289/how-marketers-use-social-media/

Source: Screenshot from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2015.pdf

1.2 How does the industry influence which platforms are being used?

Entertainment: the entertainment industry accounted for a whopping 63.2 percent of all posts across six different industries: retail, auto, telecom, financial services, food, and beverage
Marketing: According to the 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report (in which more than 3,700 marketers were surveyed) social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn were critical components of their overall strategies. Video marketing has quickly become one of the highest returning forms of social media content and 57 percent of marketers are currently using it.

• 96 percent of marketers use social media as a marketing tool.
• 92 percent of marketers believe social media is important to their businesses and/or clients.
• 22 percent of marketers have been using social media for more than five years.
• 84 percent of marketers have integrated their social media and traditional marketing activities.

Real Estate: Agents, brokers, developers, and property managers all use social media to get their properties in front of more people
Retail: get feedback on new products and fix customers' complaints. For daily deal sites like Groupon, the viral nature of posts make for a very cost-effective advertising strategy. Positive word of mouth can go a long way and one user’s endorsement can lead to a number of subsequent sales.
Education: Social networking sites like Facebook allow students, educators, and institutions to connect with one another.
Universities use social networking sites as platforms for advertising on-going events, new curriculum, and more. Social media becomes a tool for alumni fundraising
Restaurant: The major benefit for these restaurant operators is that they can quickly build a positive reputation with a large contingency, something that used to take months or years.
Fashion: Social media is an incredibly valuable asset to the fashion industry because of the lightening-fast speed at which content travels on Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.
the task of creating visually stimulating images that produce an emotional response in the user (Carranza, 2015)

2. Social Media Strategy

CARE model

Source: http://www.smartinsights.com/b2b-digital-marketing/b2b-social-media-marketing/creating-social-media-strategy-b2b-audiences-products-services/

l2.1 B2C 

If there is a model for how B2C marketing can be done right, it’s Dollar Shave Club’s humorous and outlandish strategy. A company that just a few years ago was merely a concept, Dollar Shave Club has taken the marketing world by storm, especially on YouTube.

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this ad (there’s over 19 million views), the one that took them from a “nobody” to a mainstream phenomenon.

Within the first 48 hours of this ad being launched on YouTube, about 12,000 people signed up for the delivered-to-your-door shaving supply service. They now have over 1.5 million loyal customers.

And they’ve capitalized on this simplicity by using it as a platform to show off the company’s relatable, casual, and hysterical personality. In their marketing, they simply tell you that their products can not only save you money on something that everyone needs, but that their products are better quality too.

They use Instagram, Twitter and they understand the value of video marketing, social media, and traditional mediums like TV and magazines (Speier, 2015)

2.2 B2B

Three strategic uses for social media in B2B:
1. It offers an opportunity to boost customer acquisition by expanding a brand's reach, add scale to campaigns and enhance conversion through recommendations.
2. It can help form deeper relationships and advocacy through improving customer service, brand reputation and even product and service quality.
3. It also provides the opportunity to access a huge market to test, trial and crowd source new ideas about your products and services.

Social media strategy to increase visitors in social pages like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
1. Use Hashtags: to reach the right audiences
2. Monitor Analytics: checking analytics will help find out what works and what doesn’t, with target audience. find out how people are engaging with the posts and what language is more relevant to be used
3. Use Great Images: adding high quality, engaging images to posts will help them rise above the noise on people’s timelines. This is one of the most effective ways of grabbing people’s attention.
4. Post at Peak Times:  use social analytics to find out at what times posts receive higher interaction, and Facebook insights even tells what times most of your followers are usually online. Posting content more than once is also important, as the audience will be online at different times.
5. Use the Article Title: good copywriters know that headlines make users click (Miles, 2015)

3. By which tools are using to measuring effectiveness of Social Media?

1. Sprout Social: Also a means to manage and schedule your social media, Sprout Social provides analytics on the effectiveness of all forms of social media as well as identifying influential social media users that could help spread word of your business.

2. Optify: email marketing, business website, SEO. Optify brings all these marketing tools together and analyzes their effectiveness to tell what’s working and what’s not.

3. Hootsuite: receiving reports on audience demographics and the popularity of links clicked on your social media.

4. Klout: How much influence does your business have amongst your networks? Klout measures all your social media accounts together and gives a score out of 100 for the way people react to content you post, whether that be retweets, likes, shares, etc.

5. SocialBro: Specifically Twitter focused, SocialBro is a paid-plan site that gives businesses a lot of useful data that can help them reach out to their Twitter audience at key times of day, evaluate a competitor’s Twitter feed, and identify most influential audience members in order to target to them.

6. Naymz: Naymz lets users compare the amount of influence their social media profiles have against those of their peers. Naymz focuses on building brands for users that are united across social networks and searchable across the web.

7. Twitter Counter: Twitter Counter allows you to buy Twitter stats for any account as well as pay to become a featured user, a user that is displayed on their homepage in hopes of generating more Twitter followers.

8. TweetLevel: Want to see what Twitter user is the best at sharing a given topic? What words do people use most when talking about your brand? TweetLevel provides answers to these questions and more to help businesses streamline their content down to the exact word that will engage users.

9. BlogLevel: Whether your business blogs or not, BlogLevel is a useful tool because it allows users to find relevant, popular blogs in a given subject area. It also measures the trends following certain topics so bloggers know which subjects are most popular to engage in at a given time.

10. Radian6: What are customers saying about your brand? Is it positive? Negative? Radian6 helps businesses listen to the social media chatter around their brand and join in the conversations (Stringer, 2013)

Source:
Dunne, G., Mansfield sales blog, http://www.mansfieldsp.com/mansfield-sales-blog/bid/50959/B2B-vs-B2C-Sales-Similarities-and-Differences

Brassington, F. & Pettit, S., Essentials of Marketing. 2013, 3rd Edition, p110
Carranza, A., 7 Industries That Benefit Most from Social Media, 2015, http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/anthonycarranza/2015-06-16/7-industries-benefit-most-social-media
Miles, G., 5 B2B Social Media Hacks to Increase Click Through Rates, 2015, http://socialmediab2b.com/
Speier, K., B2B & B2C Marketing: How Do The Strategies Differ?, 2015, http://www.business2community.com/marketing/b2b-b2c-marketing-how-do-the-strategies-differ-01247766#J7zvxhHxJlCF1UD3.97
Stringer, K., 10 Tools to Measure Social Media Effectiveness, 2013, http://cargillcommunications.com/2013/06/10-tools-to-measure-social-media-effectiveness/