Socialgraphics & Social Feedback Loop Frameworks

For the purpose of this thesis two frameworks about marketing in social media were chosen. These frameworks help to understand how the customers act in social media. The socialgraphics framework gives tools to assess customers and how to best reach them. The social feedback loop then shows how the custom-er´s activities in social media affect the purchase funnel. The brand manage-ment framework gives some idea on how to use brands effectively in social me-dia and otherwise.

Owyang and Li have come up with the socialgraphics framework. This framework says that when marketing in social media, marketers should instead of focusing on their customers demographic, geographic or psychographic pro-files, they should also develop a social strategy which they call socialgraphics.

By this they mean that marketers and managers should ask these questions:

which websites are my customers on? What are my customers‟ social behaviors online? What social information or people do my customers rely on? What is my customers‟ social influence and who trusts them? How do my customers use social technologies in the context of my products? (Owyang & Li, 2010)

By answering these questions the marketer/manager can then separate their customers to different stages of engagement. These stages are: curating, producing, commenting, sharing and watching. After the customers are sepa-rated in these groups by their activity in social media, the marketer can then produce group specific content to facilitate their social interactions. (Owyang &

Li, 2010)

Owyang and Li provided next some guidelines to comprehend with these different groups or layers. They said that it is important to understand the cus-tomers+ social behavior. Watchers tend to only consume content (visit social networking sites, read blogs, watch videos etc.), they do this to get information that could help them in their decision making process. To engage watchers marketer should first understand what they are currently consuming and then provide them with relevant information to help their decision making. Those customers that fall in the sharing category share their information to peers through social media (photos, videos, tweets, articles etc.). To engage the

shar-ing group marketer should simplify sharshar-ing by allowshar-ing Facebook, Twitter etc.

connection features. (Owyang & Li, 2010)

The last three groups are seen by Owyang and Li to be placed at the top of the engagement pyramid. The commenting group wants to respond to the con-tent that other have shared by commenting/rating it. So they actively partici-pate, support and contribute ideas and opinions. To engage commenters, com-pany should develop community policy or make sure that every webpage has commenting features. It is also important to foster an open, friendly environ-ment and to make sure that spammers and trolls are discouraged. The next group is the producing consumers. They create and publish their own content via blogs, websites, podcasts etc. to express their own identity and to be heard and recognized. To engage them company should provide public recognition for the most helpful community members and to create sponsored discussions (like Intel Insiders, Microsoft MVP etc.). (Owyang & Li, 2010)

The last group is the curating consumers. They moderate the communi-ties and are heavily involved in them. They might have invested in the product and want to help its success or just give back to the community and be recog-nized. To engage curators properly company should rely on them and see them as trusted advisors or non-paid partners even. Company could also identify these influencers and recognize them in public, to bolster their own identity and status in the community. (Owyang & Li, 2010)

Owyang and Li provided good information and tools to engage customers in open dialogue about the goods the company is providing. Next will be pre-sented the social feedback framework by Dave Evans (2012), which shows why it is important to get your customers engaged in social conversation about the products/services provided.

Dave Evans introduces the social feedback loop framework in his book

„Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day‟ (2012). He states that one of the most valuable aspects of social media in marketing perspective is to build and man-age a feedback loop. The feedback loop gives important information about where and how one should influence social conversations. So in a nutshell the social feedback loop means that current customers are feeding back their expe-riences after the purchase through social media into the purchase funnel and that information and experiences will then be used by potential customers when making decisions about purchase. Here the purchase funnel is defined to be the process of decision making when purchasing goods. The three stages in the funnel are awareness, consideration and purchase. Evans then points out that the social feedback loop is an open model where the experiences of current customers benefit the next wave of shoppers. So in this light he sees the feed-back loop connecting post-purchase experiences to the beginning of the pur-chase funnel to be a key element in using social media for marketing purposes.

(Evans, 2012, 39–41)

Evans explains that after a purchase the customer uses the product, forms opinions, and talks about it. Some of the experience after purchase will be post-ed online and this will loop back to other customers‟ decision making processes.

This social feedback cycle is driven mostly by word-of-mouth. Evans then re-minds that as social media is nowadays common and widely used by consum-ers, which lead to the fact, that also marketers should be using it to stay on top of the trend. He has made a „new‟ purchase funnel which also covers the post-purchase phase and the feedback loop. Evans reminds that in traditional mar-keting the focus has mostly been on making customers aware of the products and getting them to buy it. But the actual consideration part of the purchase funnel has been somewhat hard to influence. He then points out that the feed-back loop does exactly that (see FIGURE 3). (Evans, 2012, 41–45). Whitler (2014) points out the importance of word-of-mouth by stating that 92% of consumers believe recommendations from their friends, family or other peers over all form of advertising. Also she continues that 64% of marketers see word-of-mouth to be the most effective way of marketing (Whitler, 2014). Whitlers findings clearly support the social feedback loop framework from Evans, which states that cur-rent customers will impact the purchase decisions of future customers.

FIGURE 3 The Social Feedback Loop (Evans, 2012, p. 44)

Summary

These two frameworks provided by Owyang & Li (2010) and Evans (2012) show that marketers should shift their focus from the pre-purchase decision making to post-purchase and word-of-mouth. The marketer should study the different levels of engagement of their customers and by using that information adopt different strategies to serve their needs best and to encourage the social media activity. The direction of these conversations that take place in social media should also be monitored and if needed the company should influence the di-rection of these conversations. However these frameworks only present vague tools to segmenting and engaging these consumer groups and how to influence the conversations to the right direction.

3 SOCIAL MEDIA IN CHINA

This chapter and sub-chapters will focus on the social media that is used in China, as well as the internet censorship that Chinese Government is utilizing.

Main focus in the social media will be in the most popular social media services of China: Sina Weibo and WeChat. Some additional services shall be mentioned briefly.