Social Media

Using Social Media to Connect with Consumers

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter you should be able to:

LO1

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CONNECTING WITH TODAY’S COLLEGE STUDENTS USING FACEBOOK AND TWITTER

Like Kimmy Summers at the University of North Carolina (wearing cap in photo), thousands of “brand ambassadors” at colleges and universities across the United States face a special challenge right before freshman week.1 Getting Help for Freshman Move-In Day The challenge: How can she recruit student volunteers to help incoming freshmen during campus move-in day? Use the campus newspaper? The answer is a no-brainer for most upperclassmen working as brand ambassadors for firms like American Eagle Outfitters (AE), Target, and Apple: Use Facebook and Twitter! Here’s a somewhat generic marketing plan they use for freshman week, with AE as an example:

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Define social media and describe how they differ from traditional advertising media. Identify the four major social networks and how brand managers integrate them into their organizations’ marketing actions. Describe the differing roles of those receiving messages through traditional media versus social media and the factors brand managers use to select a social network. Explain how social media can produce sales revenues for a brand and compare the performance measures linked to inputs or costs versus outputs or revenues. Describe how the convergence of the real and digital worlds affects the future of social media.

LO2

Use the college Facebook Page and Twitter messages to recruit about 40 volunteers to assist freshmen on move-in day. Tell incoming freshmen about the volunteers on the college Facebook Page with teasers like: “Need help moving in? No worries. AE will be there.” Have these volunteers help freshmen move into their college dorms. Give each freshman who was helped a coupon for a free pair of AE flip-flops.

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LO3

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The volunteers often get a free American Eagle T-shirt (photo). The New Age...