Online Reputation

A new concept, emerging with the phenomenon of social media, is ‘online reputation’, the reputation of a company established in the Internet. According to some authors online reputation is primarily build by search engines like Google, which enable people to find content online. This is in line with the social media marketing consultancy O2Nxt, which remarks that “increasing, a product’s quality and what a brand stands for is determined by Google”.

The major importance about online reputation is that the behavior a company has online and the way it is perceived by its audience has a severe influence on its image. This means that a positive online reputation can potentially strengthen the corporate image and enhance the competitive advantage of a firm. But, vice versa, a negative online reputation can potentially harm a company as well. Therefore, companies need to rethink their approach to corporate communications in order to build and protect their online reputation.

Social Media Demographics

Source: Flowtown

Although we can distinguish between different social media types and services, this determination still does not give any information with regard to user demographics. However, with regard to its utilization in the corporate context, companies could generate valuable clues from this information as to where specific target groups are active. In the beginning of this year, Flowtown published a survey using Google Ad Planner to determine the social media demographics of the 8 most successful social media networks (Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace, and Ning). Although this survey might not be scientifically affirmed, it gives some evidence as to who uses those networks. For instance, it outlines that

• (1) Income: LinkedIn, Reddit and Twitter have the largest proportion of high-incomers, earning more than USD150.000 annually.
• (2) Age: MySpace has a large proportion of young users with 30% below the age of 18, whereas Facebook attracts more and more members of the age of 50.
• (3) Gender: MySpace also has the largest amount of female users, while Reddit has the lowest.
• (4) Education: Many social network users studied at least in college, while LinkedIn contains the largest proportion of highly educated users.

With studies like this, companies can easily determine social network sites to be active in to find potential customers, suitable employees, or to simply provide company information to create brand awareness and corporate reputation.

Social Media Landscape

Source: Robert Scoble

The large number of social media types makes their understanding rather challenging. The attempts to structure and categorize social media for a better understanding did not exist until recently. In 2007, the former Microsoft employee and celebrity blogger Rober Scoble was among the first to illustrate and categorize the social media landscape, which he named the Social Media Starfish.

• Blog – short for weblog - is a sequential online diary others can comment on and post images or links to other web sites.
• Collaborative Tools – include for instance open-source software products such as Linux or Firefox. The code of the software is provided on an online platform and contributors can collaboratively build, test, and improve such software products.
• Events – mean event service provider, such as ‘Eventful’. Members can upload their music list from popular listening services, such as iTunes, and the event service provider will send a notification to the user, when his or her favourite artist plays a concert close-by.
• Microblogs – are a form of blogging in short sentences, phrases or thoughts, often limited to 140 characters (e.g. Twitter).
• Personal Social Networks – are applications allowing users to build personal websites and meet like-minded people to express opinions and share information (e.g. Facebook).
• Photo and Video Sharing – are websites that organize and share content in form of photos (e.g. Flickr) and videos (e.g. YouTube).
• Podcast – are audio and video files, which are distributed via an RSS feed to subscribers of the service. The audio and video files can then be played on computers or portable digital audio players.
• White label social networks – can be described as an organization’s or brand’s own social community, including, for instance, support forums. The purposes of such private networks include enhanced customer support, product development, and customer engagement.
• Wiki – is a site multiple contributors develop a collective consensus about a phenomenon or event, often in form of texts and pictures (e.g. Wikipedia).

This division helps to classify social media according to activities, and thus provides a base for marketers to segment potential marketing a communication platforms.

The evolution of Social Media

Social media are a rather current phenomenon, just emerging a few years ago. In 2005 the consumption of the Internet has proliferated, leading to different ranges of software such as Facebook or Microsoft Messenger (MSN) that foster the formation of online communities and the interaction among people.

The development of such software was only possible through what we call today Web 2.0.. In 2005, Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty coined the term Web 2.0, describing the web as a ‘platform’ where users create content and new sites, thereby, encouraging others to participate, collaborate and exchange content. Due to this participation and collaboration empowerment, Web 2.0 is often referred to as the Social Web, signifying the way people communicate, make decisions, socialize, learn, entertain themselves, and interact with each other in the Internet. Since then, Web 2.0 turned into a common buzzword, encompassing social media services such as eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, BitTorrent and Napster, to name but a few.

Due to this, Web 2.0 is often interchangeably used with ‘social media’, although there is one major distinction between the terms: Web 2.0 predominantly refers to the technical platform on which social media types and services can be used, whereas social media rather describe the social aspects of Web 2.0 applications, including participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness enhanced through blogs, social networks, or discussion forums.

According to Weber, the web will soon head towards the next phase of the web, featuring rich media, such as video, sound and touch transmitted via high-speed broadband connections, allowing the web to be more emotional.

Social Media Marketing

Source: Evans (2008)


Desribing social media marketing is not easy. Although there are a number of books and articles published, I had difficulties summarizing the concept of social media marketing. Personally, I found the book by David Evans (Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day) very useful.

Evans summarizes that social media marketing “involves a natural, genuine conversation between people about something of mutual interest, a conversation built on the thoughts and experiences of the participants. It is about sharing and arriving at a collective point, often for the purpose of making a better or more-informed choice.”

From this description it becomes clear that the main task of social media marketing comprises to encourage conversations by creating ‘talk-worthy’ events that result in word of mouth. The WOMMA defines word of mouth as “the most honest form of marketing, building upon people's natural desire to share their experiences with family, friends, and colleagues”. This sort of conversation can spring naturally through the so-called organic word of mouth, or companies can enhance it through ‘talk-worthy’ campaigns that foster the buzz, which is called amplified word of mouth. In my opinion applified word of mouth is the main objective of social media marketing. Another social media marketing author, Larry Weber, describes two tasks in his book Marketing to the social web: how digital customer communities build your business how amplified word of mouth can be created:

1. by creating customer experiences consumers would want and talk about, and
2. by participating in various social media services to take part in the conversations about a company

Based on the concept of this word of mouth, Evans Social Feedback Cycle (above) illustrates how this could generate in higher sales. Evans used the purchasing funnel model, explaining how consumers purchase products and services steered through marketing activities, and extended the funnel to include post purchase experiences of the overall marketing process. These post purchase experiences are generated by the user of the product, leading him or her to form an opinion and talk about it. Subsequently, this ‘talk’, influences the consideration of purchase of potential other buyers.

A very interesting McKinsey study showed that social media marketing oversimplified said results in 25% increased awareness, 19% higher consideration of purchases, 17% greater conversions from online registrations to actual purchases, and 30% higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

From this point of view, social media marketing looks like a benefical instrument to market a company and ist products, if done rightly ...

Social Media Marketing Books

For my thesis research I found so far a couple of books quite useful, which I don’t want to keep back:

Dave Evans – Social Media Marketing: An hour a day
He manages to explain the social media phenomenon clearly and provides useful steps to examine the different social media platforms. However, what I would have wished were more hands-on guide on how to finally implement the tools and social media strategy.

Charlene Li ad Josh Bernoff – Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies
Both authors provide a very useful overview of various social media strategies and which social media channels can be used for which strategy (e.g. listening to the crowd, responding, energizing etc.)

Larry Weber – Marketing to the social web: How digital customer communities build your business
Although Weber mainly concentrates on online communities, he explains the emergence of the Web 2.0 very clearly.

Other books recommended to me include:

• Paul Gillin - Secrets of social media marketing : how to use online conversations and customer communities to turbo-charge your business
• Paul Gillin - New influencers : a marketer's guide to the new social media
• Tracy Tuten - Advertising 2.0 : social media marketing in a Web 2.0 world
• David M. Scott - New rules of marketing and PR : how to use news releases, blogs, podcasting, viral marketing, & online media to reach buyers directly

Social Media

As can be seen in the video, social media became an increasing trend. I can imagine that many marketers, for instance, recognize the Youtube video posted above. Therefore, the businesses shouldn’t shy away from it. Many companies start using social media activities to listen to customers, engage with customers, and, thus, increase the company’s awareness and customers’ loyalty. To examine this trend, I will use my old blog to post interesting insights of books and academic articles I found during my research for my Master thesis.

I picked this topic, as I think it is not only a fad, but offers new potentials for companies to put themselves in their consumers’ shoes and grow beyond what they have been capable of in the past. Dell, Lego, P&G, Dove or Linux are all good examples for this new potential. Personally, I hope to learn more about social media and the possibilities they offer.