Create, maintain and reap the rewards of a social media strategy.

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IN

DEGREE PROJECT MEDIA TECHNOLOGY, SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS

STOCKHOLM SWEDEN 2017,

Create, maintain and reap the

rewards of a social media strategy.

Skapa, underhåll och skörda belöningarna av en social mediestrategi.

NIKLAS GUSTAVSSON

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND COMMUNICATION

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Create, maintain and reap the rewards of a social media

strategy.

Skapa, underhåll och skörda

belöningarna av en social mediestrategi.

Student: Niklas Gustavsson, ngustavs@kth.se

Submitted for the completion of the KTH programme; Civil engineer in Media Technology, Master of Science in Media Technology.

Supervisor: Christopher Rosenqvist, Stockholm School of Economics, Department of Marketing and Strategy.

Examiner: Haibo Li, Royal Institute of Technology, CSC School of Computer Science and Communication, Department of Media Technology and Interaction Design.

Work commissioned by: Marvelous Sweden Date of submission: 2017-06-14

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Abstract

This report analyzes the effects that social media marketing has on companies who choose to invest in a social media strategy. Previous research has looked at separate parts of a social media strategy, but no holistic view of the entire life cycle of a social media strategy has been created. Further, this report looks at what companies who choose to invest in a strategy gain from it in terms of different sources of business value.

Advertising over digital media has increasingly taken market shares from more traditional advertising such as print, radio and TV. A large portion of this digital advertising is done through social media in the form of directing content at a specific target audience using the various social media platforms marketing algorithms. This increase in digital advertising is coupled by more companies choosing to create a social media presence. However, often have these social media presences failed to net any results due to a lack of understanding of the social media environment and how the consumers use the platforms.

A case study was conducted on Marvelous, a Nordic digital agency specializing in social media. The case study also analyzed one of Marvelous’ clients who has invested in a social media strategy through them. The reason for this case study was to see how social media marketing is done in practice by a leading company within the industry. To complement the case study and get a less nuanced view of the development of a strategy and the results of it, qualitative interviews were held with other industry professionals who have worked with social media for several years.

The results show that the life cycle of a social media strategy is made up of six stages: the pre- assessment stage, the strategy creation stage, the basics & hypotheses stage, the maturation &

capitalization stage, the short-term evaluation stage and lastly the long-term evaluation stage.

These different stages help companies in creating a strategy to guide social media efforts sustainably over a long period, leading to economical sustainability of the companies through granting advantages such as increased brand strength, increased sales and reaching a new consumer basis amongst other advantages. These advantages are gained while simultaneously strengthening the bond between consumer and company through the two-way communication that social media has enabled.

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Sammanfattning

Denna rapport analyserar effekten som marknadsföring via sociala medier har på företag som bestämt sig för att investera i en social mediestrategi. Tidigare forskning har utforskat olika delar i en social mediestrategi, men ingen holistisk vy av hela livscykeln har skapats. Vidare så tittar denna rapport på vad företag som har investerat i en strategi får ut av det i form av olika källor av affärsvärde.

Marknadsföring över digitala medier har ökat och fortsatt tagit marknadsandelar från mer traditionella källor såsom print, radio och TV. En stor del av denna digitala marknadsföring görs via sociala medier genom att rikta ett budskap mot en specifik målgrupp med hjälp av de olika sociala plattformarnas marknadsföringsalgoritmer. Denna ökning av reklam via digitala medier syns även i form av att fler företag väljer att skapa en närvaro på sociala medier.

Däremot så misslyckas ofta denna sociala närvaro att gynna företag på grund utav en brist på kunskap om det sociala medielandskapet och hur kunder använder dessa plattformar.

En fallstudie gjordes på Marvelous, en nordisk digitalbyrå som specialiserar sig inom sociala medier. I denna fallstudie undersöktes även en av Marvelous kunder som har investerat i en social mediestrategi via dem. Anledningen till denna fallstudie var att se hur denna

marknadsföring görs i praktiken av ett ledande företag inom industrin. För att komplettera fallstudien och få en mindre nyanserad bild av utveckling av en strategi och dess resultat så utfördes även intervjuer med andra experter inom industrin som har arbetat med sociala medier i ett flertal år.

Resultaten visar att en livscykel för en social mediestrategi är uppgjord av sex skeden:

förhandsbedömning, strategiskapande, etablering och hypotesprovning, mognads- och

kapitalisering, kortsiktiga utvärderingar och slutligen långsiktiga utvärderingar. Dessa skeden hjälper företag att skapa en strategi för att vägvisa deras insatser på sociala medier hållbart över en lång period vilket kan leda till ekonomisk hållbarhet för företagen. Detta genom fördelar såsom ökad varumärkesstyrka, högre försäljningsgrad, att nå ut till en ny kundbas och andra fördelar därtill. Dessa fördelar fås medan företagen samtidigt stärker bandet mellan kund och företag genom den tvåvägskommunikation som sociala medier har möjliggjort.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Christopher Rosenqvist at Stockholm School of Economics, SSE, for helping me with this thesis as my supervisor. Christopher’s help and expertise on the subject has been crucial for this thesis. This paper would not be what it is today without him.

Second, I would like to devote a special thank you to Lisa Rytter who has been my supervisor at Marvelous and has helped me tremendously. I would also like to thank the Stockholm and Copenhagen offices of Marvelous for the help and guidance which they have provided me during these weeks.

Another thank you goes out to the six interviewees who helped me by sharing their expertise on the subject and expecting nothing in return. The shear amount of knowledge that the six of you possess is beyond fascinating.

Lastly, I would like to thank my friends and family for supporting me during these weeks.

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1 Introduction

This section introduces the research area covered by the thesis. The section includes the background, research questions, purpose and objective, delimitations and concludes with a report disposition.

1.1 Background

With the digital transformation that has undergone in the last few decades, almost all

industries have had to rethink their way of doing business in one way or another. Companies who have not accepted the shift have suffered from consequences, and the ones who were quick to revamp their business gained an advantage through being the first mover. One industry that has changed immensely is the media industry with, for example, the emergence and rapid growth of social media.

Social media – an ecosystem open to everyone, which mixes personal and professional information, leaves a natural opening for businesses to gain a new channel of communication with its customers. Through this, social media has become an integral part of many

businesses, and more companies are adopting it in their overall business strategy. As a two- sided network, hosting both consumers and businesses, a plethora of opportunities have emerged. Companies have a much easier time finding consumers who share interests, creating direct value for both parties, and through this can use the medium for marketing and other aspects (Shoor, 2016).

With this digital transformation, the advertising landscape has seen a rapid growth of digital advertising in comparison to traditional advertising. In 2016, 45.1% of all Swedish advertising budgets was used on digital channels, with the largest growth being search engine advertising, social media and web-based TV (Thor, 2017). One of the biggest actors in this landscape is Facebook, which hosts the possibility for both organic and paid marketing.

However, many companies are rushing into the social media landscape without putting much thought into why they are doing it, or what they aim to get out of it. Companies see their competitors successfully execute a social media strategy, and try to replicate it – often facing difficulties figuring out what the goals of their social media presence should be, and how to achieve the goals they have with their efforts (Eurostat, 2016; Davidson, 2014).

Another issue that companies are facing regarding investing in a social media strategy is figuring out which advantages are gained through it in comparison to more traditional media.

With limited information about the customer experience and a difficulty in evaluating social media efforts, it is increasingly difficult for companies to balance their marketing budget between the available alternatives.

This master’s thesis in collaboration with Marvelous, a digital advertising agency with expertise on social media, will investigate the different phases of developing a social media strategy and maintaining it. While doing so, it will analyze which benefits are gained by incorporating social media into an overall marketing strategy. Through this, Marvelous will also have a better case to present to businesses on why they should invest in social media, and how they should go about doing so.

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1.1.1 About Marvelous

This master’s thesis has been carried out at the Nordic digital advertising agency Marvelous, which has offices in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Founded back in 2011, the company has evolved to serve businesses in a multitude of ways, primarily focusing on branding and marketing. Marvelous primarily helps businesses with digital solutions, specializing in developing strategies for improving their digital presence. In the Stockholm office, where this thesis was conducted, Marvelous consists of approximately 10 employees.

1.2 Research questions

Marketing strategies have existed for a long time – but companies are having a challenging time understanding how to incorporate social media into their overall strategy and create social media strategies. Not understanding the landscape and rushing into it leads to questions regarding what the advantages are, and how these social media strategies should be thought out and developed.

Main research question

 Which aspects need to be considered when developing and maintaining a social media strategy for marketing purposes?

Additional research questions

 Which advantages are gained by B2C companies investing in a social media strategy for marketing purposes?

 Which advantages are native to social media marketing which do not exist in more traditional marketing?

1.3 Purpose and objectives

The primary goal of this research is investigating how social media strategies are developed and then maintained through time and therein also analyze the benefits achieved in doing so.

As mentioned, the research will supply Marvelous with a greater case to present to their clients as to why they should invest in social media. The purpose is also to increase the understanding of how social media marketing strategies are created, help companies achieve their overall business goals, and what the impacts are for the companies who have invested in a social media strategy. This thesis aims to clarify in which way efforts put into a company’s social media strategy provides advantages which might not directly be financial, but also add other sources of business value.

1.4 Delimitations

This master’s thesis will focus on the social media landscape which is used for marketing purposes, with a primary focus on Facebook as the channel. The execution of the research will be done on the Swedish market using a Swedish client for the study (which, however, is partly operated from the Danish Marvelous office), as well as interviewing Swedish professionals.

The social media platform investigated in the research will be Facebook, as it is the primarily used platform for marketing purposes on the Swedish market. The research will however highlight the strategy creation aspect for social media as a whole, and not just strategies

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involving Facebook. Apart from the above, the thesis will be limited to B2C companies, and will exclude B2B companies.

1.5 Report disposition

This report starts off by presenting a theoretical foundation based on an extensive literature review, which acts to provide an overarching introduction to the area. The theoretical section begins by introducing and defining social media, followed by presenting the usage of it in Sweden both for the public and for businesses. The section continues to present social media strategies and necessary considerations when creating a strategy. Lastly, the theory section describes social media marketing and aspects which it encompasses, such as branding, user- generated content, word-of-mouth and wraps up with an explanation of social media

marketing evaluation.

Following the theory section, the methodology used for the research will be presented in detail. This section describes the three methodologies used, namely a literature study, a case study and qualitative interviews with industry professionals.

The report then continues with the results of the thesis, first introducing the results from the case study in the form of interviews and data extracted from the Facebook account of a Marvelous client who has invested in a social media strategy through them. Following the case study, the results from six interviews are also presented.

Finally, the report wraps up with a discussion, analysis and conclusion. In the discussion and analysis, a six-step social media strategy life cycle is presented which combines previous research with the results of this thesis. The discussion also presents some methodology criticism as to what could have been done differently. The conclusion provides answers to the research questions this thesis is based around and provides recommendations to what areas should be researched further.

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2 Theory

This section will begin by presenting an excerpt of the academia covering the broad definition of social media and the usage of social media for the public as well as for enterprises. It will then continue by discussing the concepts of social media strategies and social media

marketing within relevant areas.

2.1 Social Media

Social media, rooted in the distribution of Internet technologies, has in the last decade attracted an immense amount of attention due to its emergence and growth. It is widely accepted that the very first social media platform, SixDegrees.com launched in 1997, allowed users to create profiles, list friends and later on to browse friend lists (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).

This functionality existed beforehand, but was not incorporated into one single site before then. As Internet technologies evolved, and the growth of the Internet continued, social media continued catching traction in the early 00’s with a large amount of social medias, such as MySpace, LinkedIn and Last.FM, releasing in 2003 (Boyd & Ellison, 2007).

The emergence and rapid growth of social media has enabled a platform for consumers to communicate with each other as well as directly with companies. This shift gives consumers an opportunity to express themselves and hence have more control (Mangold & Faulds, 2009). The platform enables consumers through giving them an opportunity to communicate with thousands of other consumers in similar situations. The result is a shift for companies as they are no longer the sole facilitator of brand communication (Bruhn et al., 2012). According to Kietzmann et al. (2011), everything indicates that we are in the midst of an entirely new communication landscape. In this communication landscape, social media is increasingly replacing traditional media (Bruhn et al., 2012).

2.1.1 Social media definition

Social media encompasses many different platforms, with new platforms appearing frequently. These platforms primarily come in the form of web-based platforms or mobile applications. To gain a deeper understanding of what the social media spectrum includes it is vital to try to define the concept. Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) have a well-renowned definition of social media often used in academic purposes, which reads:

“Social Media is a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content.”

This definition encompasses a broad range of platforms which encourages users to

communicate, create content, share content and therein create an open landscape driven by the users (Kietzmann et al., 2011). Another definition, as defined by Boyd & Ellison (2008) also highlights that social networks requires users to be able to:

1) Construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system.

2) Articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection

3) View and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system.

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The above definitions show that social media is a broad and complex system, which exists in many different forms. To illustrate the complex ecosystem of social networks, Brian Solis developed the Conversation Prism in 2008, which has later been expanded over the years. The Conversation Prism, shown in Figure 1, is an illustration of the social media landscape,

categorizing different sites depending on their nature. (Solis & JESS3, 2017)

Figure 1: The Conversation prism developed by Brian Solis & JESS3 (2017)

As can be derived from the conversation prism, the spectrum of different social media

platforms is large and complex. This thesis will primarily focus on Facebook, found at the top of the prism under “Social Networks”, as it is the most common social media platform in Sweden, both in terms of usability for companies, but also in terms of user basis.

2.2 Social media usage

To gain an insight in the sheer volume of active social media users, this section will cover the number of social media users in Sweden both for individuals as well as for enterprises. Note that the figures presented regarding social media users in Sweden refer to a wide range of different social media sites, and is not limited to Facebook.

2.2.1 The general public’s social media usage

According to Statista’s Market Analysis of Sweden’s social media penetration forecast between 2014 and 2021, the percentage of Swedish residents who used at least one social media site monthly in 2014 was 56.7%, which is expected to increase to 59.28% in 2021

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(Statista, 2016). In 2017, the penetration is at 58.14% – which translates to roughly 6 million active social media users in Sweden. Figure 2 shows Statista’s expected forecast of social network user penetration up until 2021.

Figure 2: Forecast of social networks user penetration in Sweden. Source: (Statista, 2016)

Another analysis of the social media landscape in Sweden conducted by IIS (Internetstiftelsen i Sverige) during the end of 2016 shows the following usage distribution of all Swedish Internet users between the 5 largest social media sites, presented in Table 1.

Social media site: Percentage of Internet users who use the site:

Facebook 71%

Instagram 44%

LinkedIn 26%

Snapchat 25%

Twitter 18%

Table 1: User distribution between social media sites. Source: (Davidsson et al., 2016)

One factor behind the growth of social media can be contributed to their nature of user- generated media with information initiated, circulated and used by consumers. The nature of the creation of the content is with intent of spreading information regarding subjects such as brands, services and products – which is vital information in a consumerism focused society (Tang et al., 2012).

2.2.2 Social media usage for businesses

A similar increase of use of social media that is seen for individuals can also be seen for enterprises. Eurostat, associated with the European Union, extracted data during the beginning of 2016 on how enterprises are adapting different social media sites into their business

strategy. The published report shows that in Sweden, at least 51% of enterprises used a

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minimum of one social media site during 2015. This is a substantial increase since 2013, where only 42% of Swedish enterprises had adopted the strategy (Eurostat, 2016).

The article reads:

“They have integrated social media into the way they run their business, organised forms of internal communication apart from the management chain and, most importantly,

communicated and interacted with customers using the new applications. From that point of view it has been possible for customers to influence business decisions and assist companies in designing and marketing their products.”

Eurostat continue this reasoning and highlight that 79% of these enterprises use social media for image building and marketing, 52% report using social media as a new way to obtain customer opinions and reviews. This line of reasoning is often agreed upon, Dimitriadis &

Tsimonis (2014) mean that companies are adopting social media for marketing and branding purposes due to the fact that it nets an opportunity to monitor, listen and interact with

consumers. They also state that the adoption of social media is self-fulfilling in that many businesses start their social media efforts in response to their competitor’s efforts to do so.

However, it would seem that many businesses rush into social media without a tangible plan, and without really knowing how to benefit the most from the different platforms (Davidson, 2014). Davidson (2014) states that many companies treat the social platforms as a

broadcasting studio rather than a dialogue and interaction, which the customers do not appreciate. This further highlights that it is essential for businesses to have a social media strategy before entering the arena.

2.3 Social media strategy

A social media strategy is a way to strategically set up goals for how companies efforts on social media platforms connect with the overall business plans and goals. A social media strategy almost exclusively involves using social media as a platform for marketing, but can also involve aspects such as customer service and other communicational aspects. One definition as proposed by Keegan & Rowley (2017) of what a social media strategy is supposed to accomplish reads:

“The strategy would link the business objectives through their communication and marketing objectives, to create social [media marketing] objectives.”

With the evolvement of social media, and how it touches nearly every aspect of our personal and business lives, it is imperative for businesses to add social media into their overall

business strategy and linking it to the business objectives (Hanna et al., 2011). The result of a well-executed social media strategy allows companies with a way to connect and engage directly with consumers in an entirely new fashion (Keegan & Rowley, 2017). A well- executed strategy should engage their audience and focus on building interactions with the consumers (Davidson, 2014), and use the engagement to make the company a “friend” in a social context and through this build trust, commitment and loyalty (Kilgour et al., 2015).

Another aspect businesses need to consider when developing their social media strategy is that the brand must have its fundamentals in order, and that it can deliver upon all brand promises. This is due to consumers being likely to share brand-related posts on social media if

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they are very positive, or if they have negative connotations with the brand – which might prove be detrimental (Barwise & Meehan, 2010).

It is also vital to note that social media strategies cannot be deployed only once, but need constant iteration depending on how the consumers react to them (Alves et al., 2016).

2.3.1 Considerations necessary when creating a social media strategy

2.3.1.1 Understanding the social media ecosystem to create a strategy

Due to the complexity of the social media ecosystem, as seen in chapter 2.1.1, it is crucial for businesses to understand which different social medias are out there and how the users perceive and use them. In light of this, Kietzmann et al. (2011) pointed out that firms must develop clear strategies which correlate with the functionalities of different social media sites, and align them with the goals of the businesses. To address the differences in the ecosystem, Kietzmann et al. (2011) developed a model consisting of seven building blocks, which they refer to as the honeycomb of social media. The seven blocks are necessary to understand to scan the social media environment and build the social media strategy in accordance to it. The honeycomb can be seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3: The honeycomb of social media. Source: (Kietzmann et al., 2011)

Kietzmann et al. (2011) further build onto the model by presenting a guideline for developing strategies regarding social media activities. This guideline is referred to as the four C’s, which are:

 Cognize – Start by recognizing the current social media landscape to understand functionality and engagement implications. During this phase, a company should also

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look at their competitors to get a deeper understanding of how to stand out and make an impact on the consumers.

 Congruity – Continue by developing strategies in accordance to the landscape

previously cognized. Depending on what the business strives for, the strategy needs to be planned accordingly.

 Curate – The business must itself act as a curator of social media interactions and content. To do this, analyzing how and when to interact over social media is vital. This needs to be done in unison throughout the company, which might require policies for the employees responsible for the social media.

 Chase – Finally, businesses need to constantly chase information about social media.

This includes analyzing their own social media activities, but also the changing social media environment.

2.3.1.2 A framework for developing a social media strategy

Felix et al. (2017) present a framework for developing social media marketing (SMM) strategies in which they define different spectrums that companies have to establish positions upon. First, the social media marketing scope defines if the business uses social media defensively, meaning that the usage is primarily for pushing information to consumers in the form of a one-way communication channel, or if the business uses SMM exploratively, entailing primarily relationship building and collaboration in the form of, for example,

communities. The second spectrum is called social media marketing culture, where one end is called conservatism (encapsulated, traditional, mass-advertising approach to SMM) and the other is called modernism (permeable, open and flexible SMM). The third spectrum, social media marketing structure, relates to how organizations handle SMM internally – either through a hierarchical approach where a few select people handle all SMM, or through networks where many, if not all, employees handle the SMM for the firm. Finally, the fourth spectrum is called social media marketing governance and is in regard to how companies establishes policies which regulates what employees are allowed to say on social media platforms. On one end of this spectrum is anarchy, where there are no internal policies regarding SMM for employees, and on the other end is autocracy which has precise regulations and policies of who may interact on social media platforms in the face of the company. Naturally companies end up somewhere in the middle of the above-mentioned spectrums.

2.4 Social media marketing

With the immense rise of social media, there is a clear shift in how marketers use the medium in comparison the more traditional media. SMM is a natural reaction to how social media is replacing traditional media (Bruhn et al., 2012), which is defined as a process empowering individuals to promote their websites, products or services through online social channels and by doing so tapping into and communicating with a much larger community than traditional advertising channels could (Weinberg, 2009). Before businesses begin their SMM the need to develop a strategy, as described in chapter 2.3, is essential.

The primary objective of SMM includes stimulating sales, raising brand awareness,

improving brand image, generating traffic to other sources such as primary website, reduce marketing cost and creating user interactions by stimulating users to engage with the content.

(Felix et al., 2017)

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One aspect that is unique and native to SMM in comparison to traditional marketing is that it most often centers around a two-way conversation and exchange, rather than a strict business to consumer focus (Bacile et al., 2014). Social media has enabled users to become active creators of the content and acts as a platform where the users communicate with each other and in so exchange information. But not only has SMM made it possible for consumers to influence brands and be co-creators of content – it has created a willingness amongst consumers to actively be a part of product development and feedback (Parise & Guinan, 2008). With this, the role of marketing on social media platforms is not strictly to drive sales, but can also be adopted to continually work on the value proposition and product offering a company has.

Previous research has highlighted how various aspects of SMM are essential to understand to create a fully functional and strategic approach. Consumer-brand relations (Bruhn et al., 2012;

Ahmad et al., 2016; Dimitriadis & Tsimonis, 2014), content marketing (Ahmad et al., 2016), word of mouth marketing (Chang et al., 2015) and user-generated content (Barger et al., 2016) need to be examined before businesses start engaging with SMM. Further on, the efforts put into SMM need to be evaluated in order to analyze how to continually optimize these efforts and learn from previous ones (Keegan & Rowley, 2017).

2.4.1 Consumer-brand relations

Conventionally, the view of how brands are created and preserved has been that they are firm- owned under control of the company brand managers (Keller, 1993), created by, for example, marketing efforts focusing on brand stories. These marketing efforts were created to be interpreted the same by all consumers, conveying a narrative with an aim to establishing and strengthening relations with consumers. If some consumers did not agree with these efforts, their voices were weak and could quite easily be ignored by these brand managers. However, with the rise of social media enabled by the Internet, brand managers have lost the control they previously had, and the consumer voices disagreeing with the brand narrative now have a forum in which they can be heard (Kuksov et al., 2013).

Through social media, consumer-brand relations are now a two-way exchange. Holt (2016) states that the biggest change of branding brought by social media is the rise of a crowd culture. Fournier & Avery (2011) go as far as saying that social media has turned branding into open-sourced, defined as.

“Open source branding implicates participatory, collaborative, and socially-linked behaviors whereby consumers serve as creators and disseminators of branded content. Social media technologies such as blogging, video sharing, social bookmarking, social networking, and community platforms enable open source branding by empowering consumers to create their own personalized experiences and by providing venues via which they can easily share content with like-minded friends.” (Fournier & Avery, 2011)

As such, companies need to adopt their branding strategies in relation to the open-source, crowd culture which is prominent today. Brand management has transformed into using firm- controlled branding and adapting it to the consumer-controlled branding which social media enables. Hence, there is a need for companies to immerse themselves in a mix of company- based branding and user-generated branding, defined as “…the strategic and operative

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management of brand related user generated content (UGC) to achieve brand goals”

(Burmann & Arnhold, 2009).

This includes responding to negative consumer-controlled branding by monitoring social media space and quickly responding to any damaging content (Gensler et al., 2013). More importantly, companies should stimulate and promote the positive consumer-generated branding through user-generated content, see chapter 2.4.2. Previous research indicates that SMM brand activities are vital elements to build positive brand attitudes (Yazdanparast et al., 2016).

Moreover, since consumers are gaining an increasing role in brand perception they also interpret information from companies and consumers differently. Due to this change in how consumers interpret information depending on the source, a single customer is worth far more than what the customer originally spends if he or she passes positive information about the brand through social media (Bruhn et al., 2012). As can be gathered from the Figure 4 below, social media has changed the way consumers interact with brand.

Figure 4: What’s Next In Media: Space defined by Media Owner. Source: (Perkin, 2008)

2.4.2 User-generated content

Social media, which in accordance to the definition proposed by Kaplan & Haenlein (2010) is a primary system for user-generated content. User-generated content is sources of online information which is created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers with an intent on educating or informing others about, for example, products, brands or services (Tang et al., 2012). As such, it is important for companies to develop their SMM efforts with knowledge that consumers might reciprocate content – which may either detrimentally hurt the brand or assist in strengthening it. Previous research shows that the relative aspect of user-generated content has a greater impact on firms profits rather than firm-generated content, and that ideal social media strategies have to account for user-generated content (Goh et al., 2013).

Facebook in particular offers opportunities for marketers to collaborate with consumers and thus create positive sentiment and heightened visibility of the brand (Smith et al., 2012).

Muntinga et al. (2011) propose a behavior construct called COBRA, short for Consumer Online Brand-Related Activity, which distinguishes 3 levels of consumer engagement,

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namely consuming, contributing and creating. Consuming is, for example, viewing videos, reading posts or reading product reviews. Contributing refers to engaging with brands through rating products, joining conversations or commenting on brand-related posts. Creating is the step where the consumer actively uploads brand-related content, such as videos or images.

Creating also refers to when consumers themselves start writing product reviews or other brand-related content.

Muntinga et al. (2011) conclude that the main motives for engaging in these three different levels of engagement differs:

 Consuming – Motivated by a need for information, entertainment and remuneration.

 Contributing – Motivated by personal identity, integration, social interaction and entertainment.

 Creating – This level of engagement is driven by the same four factors as contributing, meaning personal identity, integration, social interaction and entertainment.

With the above in mind, brand managers have an opportunity to create their strategies while anticipating and stimulating consumers to actively be part of a co-creation process. An example could be that the marketers create campaigns which enable the consumers to create brand stories showing of their personal identity while also enjoying themselves (Muntinga et al., 2011).

Barger et al. (2016) continue upon this line of thought by proposing five antecedents to consumer engagement, which are: brand factors product factors, consumer factors, content factors and social media factors. By knowing these five factors and analyzing how to position the content and product in line with the brand, the consumers and the social media landscape grants businesses an opportunity to have a positive engagement with the content. The

engagement with the content, in turn, grants five different consequences: brand effects, product effects, consumer effects, content effects and market effects. The content can either strengthen or weaken the brand, grant positive or negative feedback on the product, persuade consumers to become advocates for the content and in doing so granting a further positive effect on the marketing efforts, help spread the content further through consumers re-sharing or creating similar content as well as significantly influence the market. (Barger et al., 2016) They continue this line of reasoning by presenting a model for the process and correlation between consumer engagement and firm engagement on social media. As described in chapter 2.4.1, the relation between consumer and firm requires that the brand listens to, responds to and adapts to how consumers generate content regarding a brand, and use this content

themselves in order to strengthen the brand image and generate more opportunities (Barger et al., 2016). Singh and Sonnenburg (2012) advocates that it is vital for firms to actively be part of all stages in a communication process from delivery, to listening for a response, to using that response. As such, marketers need to change their mindset to that branding needs to involve the audience in a co-creational process. Figure 5 on the next page describes the process from when the brand posts content to the iterative process of consumer engagement and firm responding.

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Figure 5: Consumer and firm engagement on social media. Source: (Barger et al., 2016)

2.4.3 Word of mouth marketing enabled by social media

Another part of marketing which is enhanced my SMM is that of word-of-mouth (WOM), especially electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) – defined as “any positive or negative

statement made by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004).

All the way back in 1957, marketers came to the realization that WOM was crucial due to how recipients of marketing campaigns also consult others before finalizing purchases (Brooks Jr., 1957). Back then, reviewers were important, but people valued the opinions of their nearby social circle even more. However, with the rise of the Internet and digital marketing, individuals have begun exploring the advice of others outside their immediate social circle (De Bruyn & Lilien, 2008), which has become substantially easier through social media. The primary reason for why consumers choose to seek advice of people rather than advertising or editorial recommendations is due to an increase of credibility (Godes &

Mayzlin, 2004).

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SMM enables companies to launch massive campaigns which end up in an otherwise personal feed on social media platforms. Previous research has established different variables which are evaluated by consumers before engaging in eWOM over social media sites:

 Tie strength – The closer the relationship between the actors in a WOM-situation are, the likelier the recommendation will be engaged with.

 Homophily – refers to the degree to which the interacting individuals share attributes such as age, gender or beliefs. Interestingly, both sides of the spectrum of positive and negative homophily evoke engagement between the parties.

 Trust – Defined as “[…] a willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence” (Moorman et al., 1993). Trust relates to how the partners believe to have the best intention at heart.

 Interpersonal influence – a social factor which regards to personality traits. This is split into normative and informational influences. Normative influences refer to the tendency of conforming to other expectations whereas informational influences refer to the tendency to accept information from various sources.

(Chu & Kim, 2011; Kucukemiroglu & Kara, 2015; De Bruyn & Lilien, 2008)

If companies manage to produce a social media strategy that promotes the consumers, through building up a relationship with them, to actively share and engage by discussing the product and become advocates for it – the benefits are colossal.

Dave Evans (2010) talks about how social media has enhanced the social feedback cycle, seen in Figure 6, as social media has enabled a global audience to react to marketer- generated content. The model presented is key, as it forms the basis of social businesses – it represents how social technologies has enabled users to communicate on a global scale, including business to consumer, consumer to business but also consumer to consumer.

The result is that information which might previously have been contained within a small portion of people is now broadly exposed – this information can either have negative consequences or be beneficial for the companies (Evans, 2010).

Figure 6: Social feedback cycle. Source: (Evans, 2010)

2.4.4 Social media marketing evaluation

Another aspect which often gets overlooked when businesses start their social media efforts is how to actively evaluate the efforts and how to optimize the return on investment (ROI).

Businesses need to be able to get a better general understanding of how the efforts contribute

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to the overall marketing objectives and business goals (McCann & Barlow, 2015; Kumar &

Mirchandani, 2012). It is important to understand when trying to measure ROI that the financial returns should not be the entire focus. Social media offers benefits associated with intangible metrics, such as conversation and participation, granting long-term relations and brand engagement.

Keegan & Rowley (2017) propose a six-step iterative process for how to go about setting up evaluation goals for marketing efforts. These steps are:

 The process starts by setting up evaluation objectives, linking the SMM with other marketing goals and business objectives. Examples of objectives to accomplish through SMM could be:

o Increase sales.

o Improve brand awareness.

o Increase traffic to website.

o Relationship building.

 After the general evaluation objectives are set, it is crucial to identify which key performance indicators (KPIs) that can be used.

 Continue by identifying which metrics that can be gathered to support the evaluation.

These metrics might either be native to the social media platforms or need to be combined with metrics from other sources.

 Once the above has been decided, the SMM efforts can be started. The data collection and analysis should be done throughout the lifetime of a SMM effort, as well as afterwards.

 Compile the data into a report, easily presentable in an accessible and understandable format.

 Finally, present the reports to marketing management in order to fully evaluate the effort, and how to proceed going forward as well as gain business insights into how future iterations need to be tweaked.

(Keegan & Rowley, 2017; McCann & Barlow, 2015)

One of the keys to this process is that it must be iterative. Especially since SMM still has difficulties in how to properly evaluate the efforts, companies constantly need to strive to learn how to better optimize the evaluation process and how to go about their SMM to create a more sustainable presence on social media which may lead to economical sustainability for the companies.

The above line of reasoning is often agreed upon by other researchers. For example, in an article focusing on small and medium sized enterprises – McCann & Barlow (2015) propose a similar approach to how to evaluate SMM efforts. The authors create a three-step iterative process with the planning stage, implementation stage and evaluation stage. Like Keegan &

Rowley’s (2017) line of reasoning, the planning stage is made up from formulating goals, objectives and metrics. The implementation stage is made up from implementing the

appropriate SMM tools as well as constantly analyzing and measuring the effort. Finally, the evaluation stage should evaluate both long- and short-term benefits as well as the ROI.

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3 Methodology

This section will cover the methodology used for the thesis, as well as an explanation why this methodology was chosen to answer the research questions at hand.

3.1 Literature study

The topics of social media, marketing and strategies were initially researched as a foundation for the rest of the methodology and execution of the research. This study also presents key concepts addressed throughout the thesis.

3.1.1 Purpose of method

The literature study focused on finding relevant research conducted on the subject with the purpose of gaining a general understanding of the area, an overview of the existing research as well as provide a solid foundation to form the remaining methodology upon. The primary keywords used for the literature search can be found in Table 2.

 Branding  Consumer relations

 Marketing trends

 Social media strategy

 Business-to- consumer marketing

 Marketing  Social media  Strategy application

 B2C  Marketing

framework

 Social media advantage

 User generated content

 Competitive advantage

 Marketing strategy

 Strategy creation

 Word of mouth

Table 2: Search terms used in literature study

The literature study initially used a general search approach, primarily using the keywords social media marketing and social media strategy, and was continually narrowed down further as credible and relevant research papers were identified. The literature search used an iterative process combining the above-mentioned keywords using “and”/”or”.

The searches were made primarily using four databases, Google Scholar, Emerald Insight, KTHB Primo and the ordinary Google engine. Using the relevant articles found from these sources, the references used in those were also examined to gain insight into the most prevalent articles in the area.

3.2 Case study of Marvelous

To gain an insight into how industry professionals approach the topic, and to obtain a practical understanding of the area, a case study of the digital agency Marvelous was conducted.

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3.2.1 Interview with Marvelous’ head of social in Denmark

First, an unstructured interview was held with David Ledstrup, head of social for Marvelous in Denmark, based on a recommendation from the Swedish office. An unstructured interview was chosen to get information on how he viewed social media strategies and their

development without imposing any direct questions to guide his answers along the line of the thesis.

The interview had the starting point of discussing social media strategies and his approach to the subject at hand. During this interview, David sent a PowerPoint-presentation with his own illustrations of strategies – which are presented in chapter 4.1.1 and is referred to as “David’s PowerPoint”. The interview was a best-in-class interview of a renowned social media expert to gain a deeper understanding of his views on the overarching questions at hand which was then used as a point to continue the research from. After finishing the interview, it was transcribed for easier analysis.

3.2.1 Finding a relevant client

The second aspect of the case study was finding one of Marvelous’ clients suitable for the research. The criteria were that they had to be a client of Marvelous for at least 6 months, gotten their social media strategy developed with help from Marvelous and that a large focus of the strategy was on Facebook.

The decided partner was a large retail company conducting business in several European countries, including Sweden. The company has asked not to be mentioned by name in this thesis – therefore, the company at hand will be referred to as “the client” or “Marvelous’

client” throughout the remainder of this thesis. Furthermore, the data extracted from the client’s Facebook page has been multiplied by a coefficient to avoid the possibility to track it back to their page – the following data has had a coefficient in the range of 1.0-2.0 multiplied to it: page likes, page reach, post reach (total, organic and paid), lifetime engaged consumers, reactions, comments, shares, total money spent and link clicks. Aside from this, the exact contents of the social media strategy as presented in chapter 4.1.2 will not be revealed – instead, the general structure of it and the content will be described to provide valuable insight in how a finished social media strategy looks in practice.

3.2.2 Information retrieval about the client

Once the partner had been decided upon, a semi-structured interview (Fontana & Frey, 1994) was held with the person who at the time was the account manager of the client. The goal of this semi-structured interview was to have a discussion regarding questions about the strategy creation, goals of the strategy as well as Facebook’s position in comparison to other brand communication and evaluation. The questions can be found in Appendix A. This interview was later transcribed for easier analysis.

After the interview, the social media strategy of the client was sent to me by email and an excel file with the money spent on some of the posts. Do note that the excel file contained the spend based on a Danish budget, as the client is partly operated from there – as such, the numbers presented in the results will be using DKK rather than SEK. I was also given access to the client’s Facebook account.

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3.2.3 Data analysis of the client

After gaining insight of how the client is operated, data was extracted from the Facebook page using the Insight-tool. In total, the data was extracted from a 5-month period, namely

November 1^st 2016 to March 31^st 2017. The retail company has individual Facebook pages for each market, and the data analyzed in this thesis was solely from the Swedish Facebook page.

The data which was analyzed for the sake of this thesis was:

On a page level, the data extracted can be found in Table 3.

Metric. Description. Formula.

Page likes. The number of people who have pressed

“Like” on the client’s Facebook page.

-

Weekly page reach. The unique number of people who have seen content relating to the page, for example by visiting the page or seeing a post show up in their newsfeed. The number presented is the sum of people over a seven-day period.

-

Table 3: Page data extracted from the client’s Facebook account

On a post level, the data which was extracted and analyzed can be found in Table 4.

Metric. Description. Formula.

Post reach. The unique number of people who have seen a specific post. Both organic and paid reach was extracted and analyzed.

-

Post engaged users. The unique number of people who have interacted with a specific post.

Interactions include all clicks and stories which have been created (reactions, comments, shares for example).

-

Reactions, comments and shares.

Number of people who have either reacted to, commented on, or shared a specific post.

(Reactions + Comments + Shares)

Total engagement rate.

The percentage of the people who have seen the post that have engaged with it.

(Post engaged users / Post reach)

Engagement rate of reactions, comments and shares.

The percentage of the people who have seen the post that either reacted to, commented on or shared it.

((Reactions + Comments + Shares) / Post reach) Engagement rate of

link clicks.

The percentage of the people who have seen the post that clicked a link in the post. Note that a lot of posts did not have a link attached to them.

((Total link clicks) / Post reach)

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other engagements.

The percentage of the people who engaged with the post in a form other than clicking a link, reacting, commenting or sharing it.

((Total engagement – (Reactions + Comments + Shares) – Link Clicks) / Post reach)

CPM (Cost per one thousand

impressions).

The cost for the client to have their post seen 1000 times (may not be unique people seeing it).

(Money invested in the post / ((Post reach * Frequency)/1000))

Table 4: Post data extracted and analyzed from the client’s Facebook page.

The primary reason for the data section of the thesis is to grant the readers an overview of which numbers can be seen from a company which has invested in a social media strategy – however, an analysis for correlations could not be performed due to lacking the final amount of money spent on some of the posts. Despite this, the data still fulfils a crucial part by displaying the reach which can be achieved with a strategy and provides information on the cost of doing social media marketing. It also proves valuable as it shows how engaged the users are with posts during the period, and how the client balances the reach between paid and organic.

The posts were categorized in one of 4 ways: Interaction, DIY, Feel-good and Product posts, which is an internal categorization for the client, and is presented further in chapter 4.1.2.2.

3.3 Interviews with industry professionals

To get a less nuanced view of the questions at hand, interviews were held alongside the case study. These interviews served to get a wider range of opinions on the subject, and not base the entire thesis on a specific case.

3.3.1 Interview questions

In total, six interviews were held using a semi-structured interview approach (Fontana & Frey, 1994). The reason for choosing a semi-structured interview was to be able to guide the

discussion along the lines of the research questions, while still being able to insert probes during the interviews. Examples of probes was asking the interviewees to clarify, expand their reasoning or provide an example. Through this, a larger understanding of the questions was achievable. The structure of the interviews was mainly based on five areas, which were:

1. Opening questions regarding the person, such as background, current position and past experiences.

2. Reasons for why companies invest in a social media strategy, both in the form of reasons for choosing to do so and the goals that the strategies normally have.

3. Strategy creation process, the steps which are taken when developing a strategy. This area also contained questions regarding common mistakes and what analyses that are conducted in the process.

4. Advantages of social media in comparison to traditional media with questions

regarding the direct advantages and differences between social media marketing and traditional marketing.

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5. Measurement evaluation and strategy adjustments. How to set up measurement frameworks, important KPIs and how the results of these evaluations adapt the strategy.

The interview questions can be found in Appendix B.

3.4.2 Interviewee selection

In total, 15 potential interviewees were scouted on LinkedIn by searching for people located in Stockholm who had the work title “Social media strategist” or “Social media manager”.

These potential interviewees were either contacted using LinkedIn’s InMail or by email if their work email addresses could easily be found by typing their name and company into a search engine. In total, eight of these 15 replied to the enquiries, from which six accepted meeting for an interview. Table 5 shows the interviewees who were interviewed during this research:

Interviewee number.

Current position. Current company. Years of

experience working with social media.

1 Social media specialist and vicarious head of marketing.

Digital bureau. Studied 1.5 years.

Worked 2 years +.

2 Social media manager. Hotel. 5 Years. Worked

with large B2C brands at digital bureaus previously.

3 Nordic social media strategist.

Global entertainment company.

4-5 years.

4 Social media strategist. Freelancing with small and large clients.

3 years.

5 Digital and social media specialist.

Digital bureau. 5 years.

6 Digital strategist, recently promoted from social media strategist.

Digital bureau. 4 years.

Table 5: Interview participants, with their interviewee number, current position, current company and experience working with social media.

3.4.3 Interview process and analysis

All six of the interviews were conducted in person and recorded to ensure that the full attention of both me and the interviewee was on the subject at hand. One noteworthy point is that due to the semi-structured nature of the interviews, the questions were not always asked in the exact same order depending on what side-steps the interviews took – but all questions had been asked at the end of each interview.

The interviews ranged from 28 minutes to 45-minutes long, and were transcribed directly after they were conducted for an easier analysis. These transcriptions were then analyzed by

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scanning them for keywords and trends. Following the initial analysis, the interviews were methodically analyzed using a sentence concentration method, described by Kvale (Kvale &

Brinkmann, 2014) as extracting the essentials of the material and shortening down the formulations, while also categorizing the material. This method for analyzing the interviews helped by vastly shortening down the responses to the questions while maintaining the quality. The answers may either have been in direct response to the specific questions or be a response in another part of the interview.

3.5 Choice of methodology

The choice of having these three different methodologies was based upon each respective part playing a key role, and the combination of the three would grant the best opportunities to answer the research questions.

The literature section acts to establish a solid foundation by analyzing what others have accomplished in the field and not having to answer questions which already have been answered. The literature section also helps in shaping the rest of the methodologies by examining how others have tackled similar problems.

The case study serves as a tangible real-life scenario of how people working with the subject see the questions based on everyday actions with their respective clients. However, the interviews were added as an extension to this to get a less nuanced answer to the questions at hand. One of the main goals of this research is to have a broad answer to the research

questions, and not just be able to answer how one specific company in the Nordic area would answer them.

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4 Results

This section will cover the results from two of the methodologies used. The section will begin by presenting the results from the case study conducted on Marvelous and continue by presenting the results from the six interviews with social media industry professionals.

4.1 Case study of Marvelous

4.1.1 Introductory interview with David Ledstrup

As described in the methodology section, an interview with David Ledstrup, head of social for Marvelous in Denmark was initially held.

4.1.1.1 What is a social media strategy

David starts off by saying that a social media strategy is an incorporation of social media into a more classic market strategy, and that the two have quite a bit of an overlap. The difference, and separator, is that social media strategies takes upon a more holistic approach to all

different social media channels through analyzing the company’s social media presence and the audience’s social media presence. Moreover, David notes that a strategy should answer why a company wants to be there, and lay out the goals for the company’s presence.

On one of David’s PowerPoint slides which he shows regarding social media strategies – he presents Figure 7 as seen to the left. In this visualization, the strategy is the link which connects four aspects:

namely organization, measurement,

objective & audience and the tactics which are incorporated to carry out the strategy.

Moreover, he uses a sport-analogy where he divides social media strategies into two columns and two rows. The columns are “attack” and “defend”, while the two rows are “home” and

“away”. On the home side, companies proactively decide which channels to be on and what the content should portray on the different channels while also deciding upon how to react to and answer situations which may appear, for example through comments on a Facebook page.

The away field on the other hand, which is both earned and unexplored is trying to proactively create content which makes others want to speak about the company, while also setting up

Figure 7: What is a social media strategy. Source: David Ledstrup, Marvelous

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guidelines on how monitor what is being said about it. This sport-analogy can be found in Figure 8.

All the above is done through the strategy by, for example, setting up internal policies and tactics for the company’s social media presence.

Figure 8: Model of social media strategy aspects. Source: David Ledstrup, Marvelous.

4.1.1.2 Defining the social media landscape

David presents his and Marvelous’ own definition of the current social media landscape, which is based on a total of three axes: interest, social and professional based platforms.

While developing a social media strategy, it is essential to consider how different the channels are – and what the users expect from them. He takes up the example of Twitter and YouTube, which he defines as interest based since the users follow people not necessarily because they share a relation, but rather that they share an interest in the content that is produced. Social on the other hand is mediums where you connect with others due to a relationship between you – David uses the example of Messenger as a social platform, which is almost solely used to talk to your friends. In the case of Facebook, David notes a shift in what the platform is used for by saying: “But I would say that Facebook is not a social network anymore, because if you look at us as users, there is a bigger chance that when you scroll down your feed that it contains just as much posts about interests we have, or brands that we like and so on and so forth.”.

He goes on by saying that you can use these three axes to get information of how the target audience of a company uses the different mediums, and use that information while developing the social media strategy. He says: “Let’s say we look at a specific company, the target

audience might be from 18-35, and you can actually look at this landscape and ask how this specific audience acts within this landscape. How do they use Facebook? This target group probably has Facebook more on the interest side, because they do not use it to post pictures of food and such, they have moved to doing those things on Instagram, which is more on the social side.” Building on this, when analyzing the landscape, as much demography as possible needs to be taken into consideration as there may be significant differences in how social media platforms are used between target audiences – David notes that even small