Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
channel presence and engagement profi le lead to four generic types of social media strategy
(Elowitz and Li 2009):
1 Mavens (high level of engagement across a range of social media);
2 Butterfl ies (use of a large number of social media but only low to medium engagement);
3 Selectives (high engagement in a small number of media); and
4 Wallfl owers (small number of channels and only low to medium engagement).
Overall, social media marketing strategy has to tackle two big issues:
1
which social media among the plethora of available types to select; and
2
how to communicate within a specifi c medium.
The diversity of social media makes it impossible to be present in all and requires selection based
on relevance for specifi c marketing goals (Gunelius 2011). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) also stress
the importance of choosing social media outlets carefully and taking advantage of already existing
applications instead of re-inventing the wheel. They also strongly argue for ensuring activity
alignment across social media, as well as making certain that employees stand fully behind the
company's social media engagement. This suggests that internal marketing takes on a signifi cant
role in the context of social media marketing.
It is important to note that social media marketing and search engine marketing are closely
intertwined strategies. Social media provide increased online visibility (Barefoot and Szabo
2010). The structure of social media makes them attractive for search engine spiders, increasing
the likelihood of social media to be frequently indexed and to appear on top of search listings
(Xiang and Gretzel 2010). Providing interesting contents on a website or blog encourages users
to link to the content through their social media platforms, which increases the incoming links
for the page on which the content resides. On the other hand, marketers have to assure that their
social media content can be found. For messages to effectively diffuse a social network, they have
to reach central (infl uential) nodes (Pan and Crotts 2012). This, in turn, requires an understanding
of who the infl uencers are in a social network and how they can be best reached using social
media channels.
Social media marketing strategies need to be culturally sensitive. First, the availability,
penetration and popularity of certain social media types differ signifi cantly across countries
(Gretzel, Kang and Lee 2008). Second, the very same social media are used differently by different
cultures. For instance, Lee, Yoo and Gretzel (2009) found signifi cant differences in the way US
and Korean travellers use blogs to communicate their tourism experiences, with US blogs being
more focused on recording and sharing one's personal experience while Korean bloggers focus
on giving recommendations to infl uence the experiences of others. Third, specifi c social media
platforms emphasize specifi c modes of communication, including recreational, informational,
transformational and relational modes (Kozinets 1999). This leads to the creation of social media
type-specifi c interaction cultures. Gunelius (2011) points out that social media marketing
requires learning how consumers engage in a specifi c social media type and what value they
want to derive from their engagement.
Whatever the specifi c strategy is, its execution needs to refl ect what the company stands for.
Given the value placed on trust and authenticity by most social media users, approaches have to
be genuine and backed by the necessary resources. Hiring a PR fi rm or advertising agency
to implement the overall strategy appears to be inherently counter-productive. However, certain
aspects of social media marketing might have to be outsourced given the resource constraints of
