Rowman and Littlefield. - Social media: how to engage, share, and connect

Social Media

Social Media

How to Engage, Share, and Connect

Regina Luttrell

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

16 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BT, United Kingdom

Copyright 2015 by Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Luttrell, Regina, 1975

Social media : how to engage, share, and connect / Regina Luttrell.

pages cm

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4422-2611-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-2612-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-2613-5 (electronic) 1. Online social networks. 2. Social media. 3. Public relations. I. Title.

HM742.L874 2015

302.23'1dc23 2014013880

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Foreword

Ryan Schram

Social marketing.

It is a vehicle that has profoundly changed the way consumers engage with brands and with one anotherthe effects of which the marketing world has only begun to distinguish and understand in the past several years.

These amazing platforms are a springboard for the worlds creators, with billions of pieces of new content posted and exchanged every single day.

However, there are far more profound, societal trends as well:

• One-third of women aged eighteen to thirty-four say they check Facebook when they first wake up in the morningeven before going to the bathroom!
• One in six marriages globally now happen because of people who met through online social networks.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populated in the world based on the size of its user base.
• Adults who use Twitter on an active basis rank it as the most timely source for news events, largely surpassing traditional outlets like cable news channels.

All of these indelible impacts, and social is merely a teenager in terms of how long it has been around as a concept, let alone actively in the lives of the people who participate in it.

As a result, now more than ever, chief marketing officers, public relations directors, social media strategists, and professionals throughout our profession recognize that they must have their brands in the middle of this ongoing conversation across social channels. Yet their team members are vastly unprepared to engage.

Why? Because, more than any other medium in the history of marketing and advertising, social methods have transcended the traditional thinking that previously ruled the educational landscape. The siloed, often myopic, approaches of yesteryear simply do not apply in an ecosystem that moves so quickly and intimately involves so many across a brand organization.

Modern-day social marketing is a true juxtaposition unlike anything else. Digitally enabled and mobility-native, it is a real-time, evergreen vehicle that consumers themselves not only willingly participate in but also constantly update and improve over time. Through the eye of the marketer and practitioners alike, these dynamics provide multidimensional opportunities:

A platform for brand building and storytelling through content marketing.

A terminus to interact with current and prospective customers through the channels of their choice.

An opportunity to provide world-class service experiences (and, hopefully, solve some world-class problems a customer might run into).

The possibilities are limitless. But so are the potential pitfalls for the brands that miss the proverbial boat on where the best opportunities are to maximize their involvement or, worse yet, do not even know where to begin with their strategy.

Unlike a thirty-second spot thats produced in private and then broadcast to viewers unidirectionally, social is a nonstop bilateral collaboration between consumer and marketer.

And it has changed the world forever.

In Social Media: How to Engage, Share, and Connect , my friend, Dr. Gina Luttrell, approaches prospective social practitioners in a straightforward and common sense way: by allowing the content to be consumed as a stand-alone topic or as a series of topics that can immediately be put to usein your planning, in a conversation, or in the boardroom.

She is uniquely qualified as one of the rare educators who has solely focused her research on the growth of social marketing, but who has also spent time in the real world as a marketer and public relations practitioner. All too frequently, the people writing books like this are individuals who have never actually had to roll up their sleeves, do the work for a brand, and receive the practical knowledge that comes along with that.

Dr. Luttrell is the antithesis of this image. She has leapt headfirst into the subject matter, enabling her to create this body of work in a way that is meaningful for its readerswhether they are an everyday practitioner or an aspiring one.

This book is a useful, daily resource that will find its way not only in the classroom but also on the bookshelves and desks of public relations and social marketing leaders as a go-to guide that can be read in its entirety or by topic.

What I found to be particularly relevant was Dr. Luttrells holistic organization of the Circular Model of SoMe and how it challenges the industry to create a new way of looking at tried and true marketing and public relations principles.

While sharing, optimizing, managing, and engaging are ways the industry has been doing offline for many decades, doing so in conjunction with a real-time, fluid medium such as social media is something that is often overlooked and, unfortunately, underplanned.

As chief operating officer at IZEA, a pioneer in sponsored social marketing technology, I am awed by these profound changes in the overarching marketing ecosystem and, correspondingly, the way humanity is helping shape it.

Think about it: More than half of the human race on Earth is under the age of thirty. Theyve never known life without the Internet existing. Being on Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter isnt just something fun for those individuals to do. Its something they have been programmed to do for as long as they can remember.

As brands covet to build relationships and engage in dialog with these important young adults, the investment toward doing so continues to increase. eMarketer estimates advertisers will invest $38.82 on social networking advertising per social network users in North America alone in 2014up from $26 only a year before. That figure only includes paid advertising that appears on social channels, not to mention nonadvertising investments such as creation of content, management of brand pages, or social customer service.

In other words, the interest surrounding the social marketing spaceand the investment made within ithas only just begun.

Enjoy Social Media: How to Engage, Share, and Connect and utilize it in your daily efforts to shape the next generation of marketing innovation.

Onward!

Notes

1. Ben Parr, The First Thing Young Women Do in the Morning: Check Facebook [STUDY], Mashable (blog), July 6, 2010, http://mashable.com/2010/07/06/oxygen-facebook-study/.