the impact of social media on a company’s growth

7/26/2019 The impact of social media on a companys growth

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Mmoire de recherche applique

The impact of social media on a companys growth

Worldchefs

Msc Digital Marketing & E-Business

Niculescu Amalia

Septembre 2013


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ONTENTS

Abstract........................................................................................................................................... 3

Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 4

I. From content creation to consumer engagement.......................................................................... 7

I.I. Content manufacturing...................................................................................................... 7

I.II Channel usage................................................................................................................. 13

II. Creating trust............................................................................................................................ 15

III. Effectively measuring social media impact............................................................................. 18

Conclusion..................................................................................................................................... 22

Bibliography.................................................................................................................................. 23


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ABSTRACT

The emergence of businesses on social media has opened a new area of marketing that is just

as multi-faceted as traditional print media. Currently we outline the factors involved in

creating successful content and how different types of social media platforms demand

different methods of creating said content. Secondly we explore the importance of trust in the

success of social media marketing as well as the effect of word of mouth both online and

offline. And finally we discuss the difficulty in measuring return on investment when using

digital marketing and some aspects of the analytics that lead to a more accurate approximation

of value and success.


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INTRODUCTION

Social sharing through networks started playing a role in the lives of people a few decades

ago. At first it was used as a social tool inside a community of peers, for example through the

intranet of a company. Emails would be exchanged in this closed network creating new bonds

between people, and strengthening existing ones.

Today this behaviour has not only evolved, it has transformed the lives of people. The whole

world uses social sharing in its many current forms. This has expanded to the extent that,

today, were as saturated the more we are bombarded with content.

As the concept and usage of online social platform expanded, companies too evolved into

realising that this type of platform is not only for user-to-user interactions, it is another way of

reaching consumers, and have since started to invest in this new marketing tool.

Thus, a new way of digitally interacting and selling to consumers has started to change the

way businesses present themselves and interact with the outside world. But does this new

form of marketing really work? Can companies reach and engage customers on social media

platforms with success? And can this attention to social media inside of a company create

value for it, real financial value?

What is the impact of giving attention to social media marketing on a companys financial

value?

The current paper will be exploring how a minimum budget implementation strategy of social

media tools and channels inside of a growing, small company has changed the way products

are sold and the value of the company itself. The paper will focus on my perspective of the

implementation, changes, challenges, and results obtained utilising this approach to

marketing.


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When my internship started in January 2014 the company I started working for, the World

Association of Chefs Societies (Worldchefs) was an old association with a start-up mind-set. I

did not have someone to teach me the trade, and I was mostly left to my own devices,

learning on the go. Worldchefs had two Facebook groups, four Facebook pages and one

Twitter account. These had been created by the community, instead of by the company itself.

At present, the World Association is composed of more than 100 countries and more than 100

active committees members: Women in Worldchefs, Worldchefs Without Borders, Young

Chefs, and so on. These committees created the Facebook pages and groups, as well as being

solely in charge of creating or publishing interesting content for chefs from all around the

world. With such a heavily user-generated environment my task when starting out seemed

less daunting, but still challenging. Chefs have very little spare time and are not trained in

using social media (some having only basic computer skills). The age group of those posting

on the channels is 40+ and they are generally do not have higher education, so often curating

content, deleting content and keeping Facebook pages from looking like a mess, and deleting

bad pictures became a fixture of my job.

At the time of my arrival, Twitter did not even exist yet for Worldchefs. After implementing

the platform for them, I quickly began tweeting and made the number of followers grow

exponentially. Soon all of the content I was publishing was in line with the image that I had

started creating for the company; all of the pages (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) had an

editorial line or a marketing plan attached to it. The goal was to create a unified theme for the

company that was easily recognisable as the Worldchefs brand. The task took me the better

part of 6 months to put in place.

In time I had managed to take full control over the launch, timing, and delivery of not only the

type of campaigns that were implemented but also o the type of content that the focus of the

campaigns would be on. My strategy was generally to make the entire editorial line sound


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young, and fresh, in order to attract a younger audience; one which would be more prone to

using social media, but also to responding to such campaigns.

From the relegated role of posting on the website and social media accounts, managing

mostly a database of old articles about outdated events, Worldchefs grew into having an

entirely new social media and online oriented package to offer advertisers and thus new

contracts were signed. While Worldchefs primarymarketing tool before my arrival was the

triannual magazine and an emailing database without any analytics attached to it, today we

have stretched out resources into Facebook analytics, Twitter reporting tools, using Bitly

links, Mailchimp and focusing on marketing campaigns mostly online, and very little in the

physical magazine. This move from print to digitalfrom traditional marketing to social

media marketingcame into existence because money, even though a small amount, was

invested in this department. Due to these initial successes, and ease of implementation, I now

even have a colleague working with me. It has to be said that these changes are also due to the

organic aspect of the business world, where this type of marketing is slowly becoming the

norm, forcing even small companies to adopt and adapt to this new form of communication.

Traditional sponsors working with Worldchefs from the beginning did not have in their initial

contracts which were signed 2 years ago anything mentioned about social media, but now

they are demanding from us that we share their content or republish their Facebook posts on

our networks. This is an example of how demand for a service can be ignored or hidden, but

is immediately revealed once the correct tools of implementation are made available.

The focus of the following chapters will be to provide an analysis of how this growth in

content subscribers came to be, what type of techniques actually work, and predictions of

what the future holds.


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I.FROM CONTENT CREATION TO CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT

We are constantly bombarded with offers. As long as you have an email address that you have

disclosed while creating a random account on a website you are being sent daily at least ten

emails detailing offers you cannot refuse.

The competition for consumer attention across media outlets is intense,

especially on social media platforms. Consumers, in turn, are overwhelmed by

the proliferation of online content, and it seems clear that marketers will not

succeed without engineering this content for their audience1

As such it is crucial for companies to explore the way they create content and

manufacture text, the content curation of a marketing campaign is of the highest importance;

as is the channel used to express the message.

I . I .CONTENT MANUFACTURING

In the past few months I have been receiving a large amount of emails with emojis,

both in the subject line and in the main text of the email. From Ryanair I have received emails

with the plane emoji, from Asos with the bag emoji. This way of interacting with

customers is quite new and certainly very interesting. First off it is visual, when I open my

emails I have text and texture but have no images, these emojis are the first to pop out.

Usually they are coloured and bright and make me want to click on the email. This may seem

quite surprising at first as it does not seem to be a very professional way of presenting

yourself as a serious company, but the way it is implemented is being viewed very favourably

and seems to be having the desired effect: more attention to the content.

1Lee Dokyun, Kartik Hosanagar, Harikesh S. Nair, The Effects of Social Media Marketing Content onConsumer Engagement: Evidence From Facebook, Working Papers of Stanford Business School, N187, p. 35,

May 2014


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This is proof of the type of reinvention that a marketing manager has to apply to

his/her trade. Working in a constantly fluctuating business means that everything is in

transition and evolution.

In order to illustrate ways of promoting social content online, I have chosen to display

a few genuine Facebook posts from our main companysFacebook page, WorldchefsWorld

Association of Chefs Societies, in order to analyse what practices have the most success (i.e.

receive more views, likes, clicks, and shares)

For the following examples I have taken into account in this description of the variety

of emotional, philanthropic, and informative advertising content attributes2and the way they

affect engagement.

2

Lee Dokyun, Kartik Hosanagar, Harikesh S. Nair, The Effects of Social Media Marketing Content onConsumer Engagement: Evidence From Facebook, Working Papers of Stanford Business School, N187, p. 2,

May 2014


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Figure 1. Example of Facebook post with information on price


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Figure 2. Figure 3


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importance of the type of information that is present in the post will dramatically influence

how it is perceived. The second post being focused on a philantropic cause, depicting strong

images and language produces an entirely different effect than the previous post containing

only neutral information.

Attractive to a number of followers is the posts on Billy Gallaghers book. Billy Gallagher is

a very known chef in the industry and a mentor for young chefs. All posts pertaining to him

have attracted a large following. As seen in Figure 2, the post has 933 views. This illustrates

that consumers are active as posters or contributors or passive as lurkers or consumers of

content4and only a minority of web users are active contributors5. This has not lowered

the number of clicks and although from the outside the interaction seems low this is not the

case.

Figure 3 is a post about a Worldchefs organised international competition. This event always

attracting a large number of likes and views, it is followed worldwide and organised in a

similar fashion to the Bocuse dOr. Thepost itself is not selling anything, it is purely offering

information, but nonetheless has 1870 views and 16 likes. Finally, Figure 5 is a post that is

sponsored (i.e. we hired in order to display the information on our network). One of our

advertisers, Elle&Vire has given us material for posting. The content attached to it is an

instructional video. No prices are presented or discussed, nor is the websites where the

product in the video is sold. The reaction to this particular post is quite good, having received

943 views and 10 likes.

One of the details I have noticed through the various campaigns is that the image or video

attached to content can make it or break it. For example, I can post the same post as in Figure

4

Heinon Kristina, Consumer activity in social media : Managerial approaches to consumers social mediabehaviour,Journal of Consumer Behaviour, N 10, p. 3565Ibid., p. 363


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3 and get a tenth of the reaction because I have not attached a picture to it. Video content is

also highly appreciated; although, while posting on Youtube is a great idea, it is best to load

the video on Facebook when posting on the channel because it receives a lot more shares (this

is due to Facebook promoting natively posted video content that receives shares more than it

does for links that are posted in the same manner but hosted separately).

Such aspects of social media are much unknown to the average social media user, as they

occur in the background, but they are nonetheless present components of the user experience,

one which needs to be accounted for by a media manager in order to achieve the desired

results, and for a campaign to be successful.

I . I ICHANNEL USAGE

Thus far I have provided a brief explanation of Facebook usage and the general

practices used to create successful content for posts, illustrating how a few simple factors can

have significant effects of the outcome of a campaign. Now the focus of attention will be

shifted to Twitter and Instagram, two other channels used quite often in tandem with

Facebook, each aimed at slightly different audiences and with different effects.

If on Facebook the use of hashtags is not very developed, although available and

recommended, on Twitter and Instagram the situation is quite different.

Figure 6 Follower growth over a year and a half since my arrival in the company

Here above in Figure 6 is the detailed account of the growth of Worldchefs accounts on

Twitter and Instagram over the span of one year. They depict a general trend for an increase

in followers over time, on both platforms.

Mar-14 Apr-14 May-14 Jun-14 Jul-14 Aug-14 Sep-14 Oct-14 Nov-14 Dec-14 Jan-15 Feb-15

Twitter followers 824 850 875 908 959 1001 1015 1053 1084 1156 1199 1204Instagram followers 258 289 312 354 387 401 418 530

Mar-15 Apr-15 May-15 Jun-15 Jul-15 Aug-15

Twitter followers 1221 1240 1271 1317 1337 1378

Instagram followers 545 582 619 665 684 714


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On Facebook the general practice is to post a maximum one or two posts per day. In

general this is duplicated by the number of pages, as we have six, so Facebook posts can take

a few hours to put in motion and verify. On Twitter and Instagram the situation is quite

different. Ive started creating posts on Twitter (before my arrival at Worldchefs all posts

were Facebook integrations on Twitter) and have realised quite quickly that hashtagging

events is crucial to the success of a tweet, but also that you can tweet up to twenty times per

day without issues. This implies that, unlike Facebook, Twitter can be used as a service to

update and notify followers of new events and information as it is coming in.

Facebook is a community oriented network, when groups are involved, a display case

for a company, when it comes to the official page. Twitter is more of a news oriented, short

message, fast paced environment where content is telegrammed towards consumers.

Instagram is the largest growing community online today and the fact that we are a company

dealing with food can make us taste makers for Instagram foodies.

In general it is amazing to post directly at events and be present there, because it

garners a lot of attention from other users. Additionally, following an event we get a huge

influx of new followers, as can be seen by observing the increase in followers in February and

March 2015 following the Bocuse dOr, which took place at the end of January 2015.

On Instagram regular posts with food oriented hashtags get a lot of attention and

creating a brand look is also one of the priorities we have. Instagram posts are also unlimited

per day. As good practice, we try to post five times per week but we post a lot more during

events we participate in. We also make it a habit of using a repost app to post sponsored

images, but have to be very careful to not post too many of them, as they can have a negative

effect on followers (e.g. they are viewed as spam).


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II.CREATING TRUST

Although Worldchefs is not a company like Amazon where products are rated and reviewed,

user generated content is still an important part of the way the association functions.

For us there is the user generated content that gets published, creating a bond between chefs

worldwide sharing experiences, events, competitions and activities (see Figure 7). This comes

in the form of people giving articles to be posted online and spread throughout our social

channels.

Figure 7. An example of an article written by a chef for publication.

We also have a set of services catering to culinary schools and chefs. We offer online

certification for chefs that have the necessary experience but do not want to go back to school.

It serves as the only international certification for chefs that is entirely online. Our certified

chefs communicate their positive attitudes () to new prospective customers both online

and offline6and the number of chefs applying to become certified generally increases after a

big culinary gathering. This is where trust becomes a key factor in our sales. Our campaigns

on this subject are mainly quotes from certified chefs relating their experience with the system

6Hoffman L. Donna, Can you measure the ROI of your Social Media Marketing?, MIT Sloan Management

Review, Fall 2010, p. 46


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and their success in finding the job of their dreams (see Figure 8). This reinforces the reality

that trust, encouraged by social media, significantly affects intention to buy7.

Figure 8. Publicity used online for promoting Worldchefs certification.

Another argument for going forward with the purchase of the certification is the

usefulness, which we do well to highlight on our website:

7Hajli Nick, A study of the impact of social media on consumers,International Journal of Market Research,

Vol. 56, Issue 3, p. 400


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Figure 9. Graphic from the Worldchefs website depicting the attributes of getting certified.

[P]erceived usefulness is the other construct of the research that significantly affects

intention to buy. When participants experience high levels of system quality or information

quality, they are more likely to buy8.

And finally the arguments are obvious when entering the newly build page for the program

[h]ence, improving the quality of websites enhances perceived usefulness in their

consumers.9

8Ibid.9Ibid.


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Figure 10. Theoretical model depicting the relationship between Trust, Social media,

Intention to buy, and Perceived usefulness.

III.EFFECTIVELY MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT

Detailing how social media is useful and engaging does not directly help in

understanding its monetary value for a company. For a traditional marketing campaign you

would buy space in a magazines or even banners on websites and see how much the ad or

editorial would help you sell. But in the case of the channels of marketing described above

success cannot be measures simply in terms of sales.

Forget traditional ROI. Instead of calculating the return on the

companys investment managers should assess consumer motivations to use

social media and measure the social media investments customers as they

engage with the marketers brands10

In Worldchefscase the relationship we have developed with Elle&Vire was sparked

by the companys interest in the Asian market.In the grand scheme of things a tweet posted

by Worldchefs account for Elle&Vire does not mean much but it is steadily establishing a

new public (i.e. potential consumer base) for the company outside our usual Western borders.

As such it is part of a bigger campaign that Elle&Vire has started as retweets from us, which

also cover their presence at big Asian events like Food&Hotel Asia in Singapore.

Often I am asked how much a tweet costs or what is the value of a Facebook post.

This is a hard answer to give. I can quantify it by using a Facebook tool that tells me: if reach

is 40000 than post should cost x euros, but does that include Facebook post creation? I think

not. There are many hidden aspects of generating social media content that makes it hard to

10Hoffman L. Donna, Can you measure the ROI of your Social Media Marketing?,MIT Sloan Management



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quantify not only the gain from such a campaign, but also the costs of constructing and

implementing it. One post of 140 characters on Twitter can take me up to 15 minutes to write,

I have multiple such posts per day. Although in general the consensus would be that work

involved in creating short messages is less laborious than writing long articles it is not the

reality. If I have ten posts to create in one day with images that are attractive and messages

that are appealing it can take me half of the day; not to speak of the analytics involved in any

post or the decision making following analytics in order to create better posts/content/images.

It is my belief, based on what I have learned and experienced during academia and on

the job, that social media is a necessary tool for creating relationships and even if part of the

job is quantifying it, in the end only the number of followers will tell you if the technique you

implemented is working.

While managers certainly need hard numbers to know whether their

investments are paying off, they represent a narrow Show me the return

focus rooted in a traditional mainstream media. First, it is oriented to the

short term (Show me how my companys tweets will improve sales next

quarter). Developing meaningful relationships with customers takes time

because online relationships involve interactive conversations. And some

managers still do not fully appreciate that they are entering a brave new

world of relationships with customers11

This gradual relationship with customers and the attention given to the detailed

interaction can make or break a community. If too many posts sell things on a Facebook page,

if the content is too dark or the images too low resolution, eventually followers will leave.

11Hoffman L. Donna, Can you measure the ROI of your Social Media Marketing?,MIT Sloan Management



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We should also take into consideration that Worldchefs is a busy community with a

goal and a very specific audience. If a cab company like Chauffeur Priv doesnt have more

than 100.000 likes on Facebook its bad because it is a general use company and so the public

is everybody. If Worldchefs has 10.000 it is exactly that number of chefs, a specific type of

public that is only interested in chef things. This is why advertisers and sponsors work with

us, because we offer clear channels to their intended consumers.


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CONCLUSION

In the end measuring this relationship through ROI or likes or shares or views or

hearts or any other way is limited. There is no quantifiable way of stating using Facebook

will increase your business by this much. The only thing that works is putting in motion a

good campaign with clear objectives, following it, changing whatever doesnt work, involving

people (interactive posts where you ask Facebook followers to tell you if they like your

mascot with or without a moustache work like a charm), and following up on the analytics.

Le calcul du ROI des actions sur les rseaux sociaux reste ce jour un

exercice difficile, car il suppose de transformer en donnes quantitatives des

interactions ou des conversations entre les individus. On peut recommander

aux entreprises davoir une dmarche classique, reposant tout dabord sur la

dfinition dobjectifs ralisables et quantifiables, avant de developper une

stratgie sur les rseaux sociaux.12

Eventually your social media channels will grow, and it will still be cheaper

than traditional marketing campaigns where publicity spaces needed to be bought.

12Balagu Christine, David Fayon, Facebook, Twitter et les autres..., Pearson, 2012, France, p. 176


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Balagu Christine, David Fayon, Facebook, Twitter et les autres..., Pearson, 2012, France

Hajli Nick, A study of the impact of social media on consumers, International Journal of

Market Research,Vol. 56, Issue 3

Heinon Kristina, Consumer activity in social media : Managerial approaches to consumers

social media behaviour,Journal of Consumer Behaviour, N 10

Hoffman L. Donna, Can you measure the ROI of your Social Media Marketing?,MIT Sloan

Management Review, Fall 2010

Balagu Christine, David Fayon, Facebook, Twitter et les autres..., Pearson, 2012, France

Lee Dokyun, Kartik Hosanagar, Harikesh S. Nair, The Effects of Social Media Marketing

Content on Consumer Engagement: Evidence From Facebook, Working Papers of Stanford

Business School, N187, May 2014

the impact of social media on a company’s growth

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