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is all about democracy, community, collaboration, authenticity and transparency (Barefoot and
Szabo 2010). Social media contents contribute to informed consumption choices by aggregating
and making available the collective experience and resultant conversations of consumers (Evans
2008). Social media of the pre-marketing days were platforms where consumers turned to each
other for unbiased information, avoiding ads and sales pitches. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) stress
the importance of acknowledging that social media marketing is fundamentally about
participation, sharing and collaboration rather than straightforward advertising and selling. This
puts marketers into an unfamiliar and somewhat awkward situation and has prompted some
to pose as consumers in a desperate attempt to fi t in with the rest of the social media users and
their conversations. Many of these efforts backfi red as they violate the transparency principle.
Marketers need to be genuine partners in the social media conversations in order to be respected
and listened to.
Trust is essential to any form of conversation on the Social Web (Evans 2008), and such trust
needs to be earned. While consumer-based word-of-mouth is typically seen as trustworthy,
marketers have to work hard in order to establish credibility in the social media space. This can
only be done through open and authentic communication that aims at generating genuine
connections. Meerman Scott (2007) summarizes the social media marketing paradigm as follows:
authenticity instead of spin;
participation instead of propaganda; and
close the sale, continue the conversation.
Thus, it becomes clear that social media marketing is still very much based on basic marketing
principles aiming at profi t maximization, but that the focus and the tools are fundamentally
different.
Social media marketing strategies
The paradigm shift in underlying assumptions implies a need for innovative strategies to achieve
marketing success in the new conversation space. Strategic marketing questions to be asked are
how social media can be used to create additional business value and how they can help in the
realms of customer acquisition and retention (Constantinides and Fountain 2008). Unfortunately,
there is not much academic literature available that has specifi cally looked at marketing strategy
in the context of social media. This section of the chapter therefore summarizes strategy insights
mostly derived from social media marketing practice.
One fundamental strategic decision to make relates to channel presence. Hamill, Stevenson
and Attard (2012) distinguish between 'high' (present in two-thirds or more of the available
channels), 'medium' (present in half to two-thirds) and 'low' (presence in less than half). Many
of the channels can now be linked (e.g. Twitter updates and Pinterest posts appear on Facebook,
and videos posted on YouTube can be inserted into other social media postings), allowing
for important synergies. The channel presence strategy decision is a function of the target
markets and their specifi c preferences for certain social media. It is important to stress that
the social media landscape is dynamic and that the channel presence needs to be continuously
adjusted.
The other element is the engagement profi le. It describes the depth and level of engage-
ment within a specifi c social medium (Hamill
et al
. 2012). Indeed, Hamill
et al
. (2012)
convincingly argue that mere presence is not enough for achieving social media success.
Rather it requires interesting conversations to be held with the right audience. Taken together,
