Customizing social media marketing to different social media platforms
Jonna Karhu
Bachelor’s thesis November 2021 School of Business
Degree Programme in International Business
Karhu, Jonna
Sosiaalisen median markkinoinnin kustomointi eri sosiaalisen median alustojen mukaisesti Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulu. Marraskuu 2021, 40 sivua.
Liiketalouden ala. Kansainvälisen liiketalouden koulutusohjelma, Tradenomi AMK, Opinnäytetyö.
Julkaisun kieli: Englanti
Verkkojulkaisulupa myönnetty: kyllä Tiivistelmä
Sosiaalisen median ja sen avulla markkinoinnin jatkuvasta kehityksestä huolimatta, isolla osalla erityisesti suomalaisia yrityksiä sosiaalisen median käyttö vaikuttaisi edelleen olevan puutteellista. Tämä herätti kysy- myksiä eikö sosiaalista mediaa ja eri alustojen uniikkeja ominaisuuksia tai niiden omankaltaisia demografi- oitaan voisi käyttää tehokkaammin hyödyksi, loisiko yrityksen paikalliselle liikkeelle luotu tili kiinnostusta tai mahdollistaa kiinnostusta seurata tilejä eri alustoilla. Näistä kokemuksista ja ajatuksista muodostui hypo- teeseja, jotka testattiin aineistonkeruulla ja kvantitatiivisella tutkimuksella, joka suoritettiin internet kyselyn muodossa.
Aineistonkeruu keskittyy sosiaalisen median alustojen monimuotoisuuteen ja uniikkiuteen, kuinka kulutta- jat käyttäytyvät moninaisuutta ja sosiaalista mediaa kohtaan ja mitä muita käyttöjä sosiaalisella medialla voisi olla, kuin vain markkinointi ja brändäys.
Internet kysely sai 51 vastausta ja kysymykset vahvasti keskittyivät hypoteesin luomiin kysymyksiin, olisiko ihmiset todennäköisempiä seuraamaan useampia tilejä, jos sisältö niiden välillä vaihtelisi, luoko paikallisen liikkeen tili mielenkiintoa, tai sitten ”off-topic” tili? Lisäksi voiko sosiaalisella medialla parantaa yrityksen läpinäkyvyyttä ja imagoa.
Tulokset vahvistivat hypoteesit todeksi, tukien voimakkaasti sisällön ja tilien monimuotoisuutta ja vaihtelua sisällössä, sekä mahdollisuudet sosiaalisen median käytön muuhun kuin marketointiin. Tulokset antoivat myös tarpeeksi dataa lähemmän tutkimuksen tukemiseksi, mutta myös osoittivat muutosten teon mahdol- liseksi vaihtoehdoksi jo tässä vaiheessa, suositus olisi hyödyntämään alustoja tehokkaammin.
Avainsanat (asiasanat)
sosiaalinen media, markkinointi, alustat, kustomointi, valinnanvara, moninaisuus, vaihtelu, sisältö Muut tiedot (salassa pidettävät liitteet)
-
Karhu, Jonna
Customizing social media marketing to different social media platforms Jyväskylä: JAMK University of Applied Sciences, November 2021, 40 pages.
School of Business, Degree Programme in International Business, Bachelor’s Thesis
Permission for web publication: Yes Language of publication: English Abstract
In the ever-changing world of social media and social media marketing, the practices of it appear to be still lacking, especially on part of Finnish brands. This resulted in hypotheses being formed, aren’t there more efficient ways to use social media and especially different social media platforms and their unique features and differing demography, would consumers be more likely to follow i.e., brand’s local store’s social media account, or more likely to follow brand on multiple accounts if the content differed per platform. These hy- potheses were first examined with the help of secondary data, and then tested with primary data, collected as quantitative research in the form of online questionnaire.
The secondary data examines the variety and uniqueness of platforms and the differences between them, how consumers behave towards variety and social media and what other uses social media could have, than just marketing and branding.
The online questionnaire received total of 51 responses, and the questions focused strongly on the same line as research questions, if people would be more likely to follow accounts on different platforms if the content varied across them, if they’d be interested in account for local stores or “off-topic” account and whether it was possible to use social media to im-prove company’s image and transparency.
The results confirmed the hypotheses to be correct, showing strong interest towards more varied content and variety across platforms while confirming there are other uses for social media than just marketing and branding. The results offer generally sufficient data to support further research in the topic, or even possi- ble action already, recommending using social media accounts more efficiently, especially across different platforms.
Keywords/tags (subjects)
social media, marketing, platforms, customizing, variety, content Miscellaneous (Confidential information)
-
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ... 3
1.1 Background ... 3
1.2 Hypotheses formed ... 4
1.3 Research questions ... 5
1.4 Structure of Thesis ... 5
2 Literature review ... 6
2.1 Social media in business ... 6
2.1.1 Difference between marketing, advertising, PR and branding ... 7
2.1.2 Social media in marketing and advertising ... 10
2.1.3 Social media in PR and branding ... 11
2.1.4 Differce in traditional branding and social media branding ... 11
2.2 The variety of social media platforms and their differences ... 12
2.3 Consumer behavior towards variety and social media ... 16
2.4 Other uses of social media ... 16
2.5 Information retrieval and source materials ... 17
3 Methodology ... 17
3.1 Research philosophy, approach, and strategy ... 17
3.2 Data Collection ... 19
3.3 Data Analysis ... 21
3.4 Validity and reliability of the data ... 22
4 Research results ... 22
4.1 Current situation ... 23
4.2 Questions aimed to answer research questions ... 25
5 Discussion... 27
5.1 Answering the research questions ... 27
5.2 Managerial and practical implications ... 29
5.3 Limitations of research ... 30
5.4 Recommendations for future research ... 30
References ... 32
Appendices ... 36
Appendix 1. Questionare questions and multiple choice options... 36
Figures
Figure 2. 4Ps Marketing mix Art © tarresamuffet (visual.ly) ... 7
Figure 3. Branding Iceberg Source: Liquid Creativity (2020) ... 8
Figure 4. Apple Beats Competitors In Smartphone Brand Loyalty Source: Richter (2014) Statista.com ... 9
Figure 5. Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2021, ranked by number of active users (in millions) Source © Statista 2021 ... 13
Figure 6. Creating a post on Facebook, shows the multiple options of the variety of content available (the symbols next to “Add to Your Post”) Source © Facebook ... 15
Figure 7. Preview of Instagram post ©Caitlin O'Bunny ... 15
Figure 8. The research ‘onion’ model Source: © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009... 18
Figure 9 ... 23
Figure 10 ... 23
Figure 11 ... 24
Figure 12 ... 24
Figure 13 ... 25
Figure 14 ... 26
Figure 15 ... 26
Figure 16 ... 27
Tables Table 1. The Frequency of Social Media and Other Online Media Used by the Tob Global Brands Source: Noor, A. H. S., & Hendricks, J. A. (2011). Social media : Usage and impact. Lexington Books ... 6
Table 2. Facebook vs. Instagram ... 13
1 Introduction
Social media might be the new king on the block when it comes to networking, marketing or many other subjects. It’s new and shiny and offers countless possibilities, which only fraction have been researched and currently used. This thesis aims to point out and proof the worth of one small practice for social media usage for companies and organizations, one simple way to make possibly huge difference in their social media and the engagements they receive. That is customizing their social media to match the used social media platform.
1.1 Background
The age of internet and digitalization keeps on rolling and growings and with it social media has become something taken for granted. In actually the global average of daily social media usage is 144 minutes as of 2019 (Statista, 2020a). Of course such huge activity is reflected also in the business world, being most evident in social media advertising segment, spending on ads, which according to Statista (2020b) amounted to a mindblowing US$105,863m in 2020. With that kind of capital being used for social media, one would think the ways of marketing and advertising on social media marketing would have been throughly researched and studied and companies would make the most of their social media opportunities. Unfortunately that is not the case, for
suprisingly many companies and organizations. Most do create accounts on social media
platforms, answering the obvious need for some sort of social media presence, but after that, they have no idea how to utilize them properly. Either they barely use them, block other users from posting or commenting, rejecting interaction with other users, or post same content on all platforms as they use as ads on magazines and on television, without considering how social media platforms work and how the nature of different social media platforms and their differing userbases could be utilized to greatly further their agenda and be taken advantage of, not only as marketing tool, but for many other purposes. This seems like such a waste, not taking advantage of social media almost at all, which prompted the thought process for forming the hypotheses behind the research questions.
1.2 Hypotheses formed
The hypotheses, which are the base for this thesis, started slowly forming during countless hours of research for assignments and studies, browsing different social media channels, platforms and accounts.
First observations made were towards Finnish social media marketing and how simple and basic the tactics used by these observed Finnish companies and organizations were. This prompted the act of observing and comparing different social media accounts of companies, organizations, brands and celebrities and it slowly became obvious, that even though many companies had multiple accounts, often the accounts were quite inactive or the content was very basic, simple, same content used as in their more traditional marketing and the same content across every social media platforms the companies used, which raised questions of the efficiency of these practices in the social media marketing. Considering how different social media platforms are from each other, with varying user demographics and differing with type of content usually posted or atleast
intented to be posted for example Instragram only allowing photos or short videos, always requiring visual content, not allowing just a text, unlike Facebook or Twitter which both support both different type of visual and textual content. All this raised a question of what if there was customized content on across the platforms, would it gain more followers and engagement towards the content as well as ideas of possibilities of more varying marketing tactics with these tools, not just using them to “directly market” with more traditional advertising content, but for example with so called “off topic” content.
This observation was followed by other of how it is interesting that Finland’s most popular brand page with the largest audience on Facebook according Socialbakers (2020) is the business profile page of a local store of a bigger company, Jounin Kauppa (K-Ruoka, 2020). So it could be that having an account for a local store of a bigger business might create more interest, if the content was more locally focused and customized to such.
These observations formed into hypotheses such as how varied content could possibly gain more engagement, which would lead to more prospects, or possible customers, wouldn’t that varied content be more effective when matched better with the used platform, like taking advantage of Instagram’s visual content -only policy, and other ideas as such.
1.3 Research questions
All these different observations and questions formed into hypotheses, which were honed into more specific questions and used as the research questions for this thesis:
1. Would people be more likely to follow companies/organizations online on multiple platforms, if the content differed from each other per platform
2. Would there be more interest to follow at least one of companys channels if the content differend, for example, gaining new subscribers due to interest in “off topic” channel, even though no interest in company’s “official” channel
3. Would having own social media accounts for local stores raise interest to follow company’s/organisation’s social media
Also as a sub-question the research aimed to ask about the usage of social media of companies/organizations to support and promote their transparency and providing tool to promote image as a honest business. This sub-question aimed to point out other possible usages for social media, and prove the benefits of future research on the topic, but the focus of the research is on the idea of customizing contet to match social media platforms.
1.4 Structure of Thesis
The thesis is divided into five parts; Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Research Results and Discussion. Introduction opens up the topic of this thesis by explaining the
background, motivation, hypothesises and research questions behind the thesis. Literature Review focuses on showing with the help of secondary data the need and reasons to research the topic and need to ask these research questions, as well as partly answering them, or atleast adressing the hypotheses. Methodology explains how the primary data was collected and analyzed. Results will be purely that, results of the research with analyses, while discussion will focus on
summarising mainpoints of the research, seeing if the research answered the research questions properly, figuring out more practical use to the collected data and how the data could be used in the future.
2 Literature review
2.1 Social media in business
Social media is used widely, even in the business world, from more obvious areas of marketing and advertising, public relations, to even in human resources management, however in this literature review, we’ll focus mainly on the side of marketing, advertising, public relations, and branding.
They each have hugely grown and almost completely changed since the rise of social media.
Table 1. The Frequency of Social Media and Other Online Media Used by the Tob Global Brands Source: Noor, A. H. S., & Hendricks, J. A. (2011). Social media : Usage and impact. Lexington Books
.
2.1.1 Difference between marketing, advertising, PR and branding
Pophal (2014) defines marketing as broad organizational function forming around the traditional
“4Ps”. The 4Ps are often referred as the marketing mix and they form from the price, product, place, and promotion. The concept of 4Ps has been around since 1950s and the short meaning of them are: product is simply the product or service provided, price, meaning the price of the goods or service, place refers to the place they want to sell the product and how to deliver it to the mar- ket and the promotion, including for example advertising, public relations, and promotional strate- gies. (Twin & Anderson, 2021) So according to these two sources marketing is concept which in- cludes advertising, PR and branding, but the three are only one fourth of the whole marketing mix and its key concept of the 4Ps.
Figure 1. 4Ps Marketing mix Art © tarresamuffet (visual.ly)
From marketing, advertising, PR and branding, advertising might be the simplest to understand.
The Bean Team (2017) define advertising as the action of producing advertisements for commer- cial products and services, paying to have information sent to the public, trying to convince con- sumers to buy the product or service, hence it’s often referred as “paid media”.
Public Relations in short is the professional maintenance of favorable public image and is often thought of as “earned media” (The Bean Team, 2017). The main point of PR is managing infor- mation about and related to, for example a company, including activities such as press releases, news conferences, interviews, and managing the brand image (Anderson, Hayes & Rathburn, 2021) and this is where it connects with branding, but they’re not the same thing, but branding is partly PR.
Figure 2. Branding Iceberg Source: Liquid Creativity (2020)
Branding is huge beast on its own. Many think branding means just simply logos, fonts and colors, the visual image of a company and that marketing, advertising and promotions are part of brand- ing, but this is wrong. (Patel, 2014) According to McCoy (2015) branding is the process of reducing company’s reputation into a single word, much like Toyota is known for reliability, Volvo for their safety records (McCoy, 2015) or Google for encouraging creativity (Patel, 2014). Branding is the one area that is impacted by almost all areas of marketing, all 4Ps, advertising and PR. (Pophal,
2014) All these elements include presenting a image, values and vision of the company, having a voice, projecting what is important to the company, how it wants to be viewed. Sure, the visual aspects reflect this strongly, but how PR is handled, communications from and about the company show the values, personality, and the voice of the company, for example is it serious and reliable, or young and fun and relaxed, does the company value environment or high-tech and efficiency.
These are just small samples of branding. And what results from the branding is customer loyalty.
Marketing and advertising is short term, promoting the product and reeling the customer in, and branding steps in after that, more long term and not a one-time deal like promotional campaigns, creating loyal customers, which makes closing the next sale easier. (McCoy, 2015)
Figure 3. Apple Beats Competitors In Smartphone Brand Loyalty Source: Richter (2014) Statista.com
When it comes to brand loyalty, Apple is a great example. According to Richter (2014) 90% of iPh- one users stays with Apple when buying a new phone. Big reason for this is Apple’s steady brand as a status symbol, considered cool and must-have, while customers are fully aware they’re paying extra for the brand and its reputation. (McCoy, 2015) For them if it’s Apple, it’s good, no ques- tions.
The biggest difference with branding and other marketing is that no matter how much it’s
planned, managed, and cultivated, in the end the ultimate authority on the company’s brand is the customers and their perception of it. (Patel, 2014)
2.1.2 Social media in marketing and advertising
With social media playing such a huge role in nowadays marketing practices, it’s no wonder it has also started to change the way marketing is done. The challenges are developing social media, adjusting metrics, personalizing content and making engagement, trying to find ways to keep users from using adblocks or paying for no-ads service right away (MediaLink Ltd, 2017). In a world where consumers keep growing more sceptical towards obvious advertising and install adblockers to avoid annoying ads, understanding of relationship of digital engagement experiences and advertising effectiveness is growing to the point of being indispensable (Voorveld, van Noort, Muntinga and Bronner, 2018).
Other huge change that keeps still changing the ways social media is used, is the change from monologue to dialogue with consumers, though in research done by PRovoked (2012), it becomes obvious that still many companies don’t take advantage of this. Even though 48 out of 50
Interbrand’s Top 50 brands had Facebook profile, the usage of that profile varied greatly, 94% of companies lead consumers to one-way communication page and 38 out of 48 companies had restricted their accounts to only allow own posts on their walls. This is no way efficient use of social media channels and the practice for many companies seems still to be to make profiles on popular platforms but the content that is posted, without any specific schedule, is universal, same for every platform. Even without further research, this seems wasteful, since the platforms differ quite alot from others, but also research shows that consumers experience them uniquely
(Voorveld et al. 2018). It’s no longer enough to just create a profile, it’s just a start that needs to be followed with regular posting and other activity. (Warner & LaFontaine, 2014)
Social media is also in a way one focus group for a company, as long as the focus group is nurtured and rewarded with attention at minimum, since people love their opinions to be heard, with two way communication this is possible. (Chambers, Morehead & Sallee, 2020) This focus group can be used to test new products and ideas as well as new advertising campaigns. If the followers like it, it can’t be total failure outside of social media.
Social media makes advertising also cheaper, since the company doesn’t have to pay for posting content, though paid advertising is provided on most platforms aswell, but with just activity on profile works as good advertising and promotes word-of-mouth in the form of sharing and other engaging to the content.
2.1.3 Social media in PR and branding
PR and branding are the areas where social media shines the brightest. This is fully the result of moving from traditional one way communication from company to consumers into two-way communication relation, from company to consumers and from consumers back to company, but this is only if the company takes the time and effort to take full advantage of this function.
According to Hastings & Saperstein (2010) customer dialogue changes the company’s demand creation activites significantly by enlivening, energizing and stimulating the value-creation network while the effect of effiency, speed, accuracy and scale in this dialogue is a huge bonus to the communications budget, but all this requires that management of this dialogue must be a priority.
2.1.4 Differce in traditional branding and social media branding
According to Holt (2016) at the start of social media, companies thought that they could bypass traditional media and connect directly with consumers, in real time and with great stories, creating a community around your brand, but only few have managed to create meaningful interest this way. Holt (2016) reasons the fault lies in how crowds create new cultures digitally, due to social media connecting communities that used to be separated and isolated by for example geography, amplifying subcultures and promoting so-called crowdculture. Most paid-
media content, so-called branded content, is viewed as spam and ignored (Holt, 2016), which is more proof to consider more “real” content, instead of obvious advertisement content.
2.2 The variety of social media platforms and their differences
Voorveld et al. (2018) found in their study that each social media platforms are experienced in an unique way, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are used for social interactions while both Facebook and Instagram are used to fill a moment. All the platforms are uniquely experienced causing the advertising on the platforms to have unique profiles also. Voorveld et al. (2018) also demonstrated that for social media advertising, context is more important than content, which further demonstrates the uniqueness of different platfoms and demonstrates a need to customize content to match these differences. This is further supported by the difference in ages of the users, Instagram and Snapchat are used by 67% and 68% of users aged 18-29 while the age differences are less for Facebook (Perrin & Anderson, 2019). There’s also difference in usage and engagement, like while Facebook has 1.13billion daily users, on the other hand Instagram has better statistics in engagement and content sharing (Agrawal, 2018).
According to Statista (2021) Facebook is the most used social media platform, followed by YouTube, WhatsApp and Instagram. If categorized by content etc, Facebook is “all arounder”
allowing variety of different content like text, images, videos etc., while YouTube is platform for videos and WhatsApp is for socializing and conversation purposes. Then there’s Instagram, mainly focused on images and short videos.
Figure 4. Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2021, ranked by number of active users (in millions) Source © Statista 2021
Even though YouTube and WhatsApp are more popular than Instagram, most articles and blogs recommend Facebook first and Instagram second when researching “best social media for business”. Due do this, Instagram was chosen to be compared side by side with Facebook to demonstrate the differences between these two platforms, and with these differences,
highlighting the uniqueness of both platforms, providing evidence to support the idea of creating customized content per different platforms when branding and using social media for marketing.
Table 2. Facebook vs. Instagram
Facebook Instagram
2.38 billion monthly active users 1 billion monthly active users
General social networking platform Mobile-centric photosharing app
Possible to post almost any type of
content (image, video, text etc.) Allows only images and/or short videos with text captions
Closed-knit community of people
who know each other Building and joining communities that share common interests
74% of marketers say they use Facebook more as part of their
brand’s social strategy
65% of marketers say they use Instagram more as part of their
brand’s social strategy
Makes most of both mobile and web
versions Optimized for mobile use
Brand awareness less effective than
Instagram Better creating brand awarenes
0.09% median engagement rate per
post 1.60% median engagement rate per post
Largely informational About capturing moments
(Jackson, 2019; Khillar,2019 and Walton 2021)
Above some of the key differences between Facebook and Instagram are listed side by side, giving a clearer image of the uniqueness of these platforms and even though Facebook has much more active users, Instagram has its own worth. It’s interesting that in 2012 Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion and in 2018 estimation of Instagram’s worth was $100 billion with revenue surpas- sing $10 billion. Also buying Instagram helped the company to make the transition from web to mobile. (Walton, 2021)
Figure 5. Creating a post on Facebook, shows the multiple options of the variety of content availa- ble (the symbols next to “Add to Your Post”) Source © Facebook
Figure 6. Preview of Instagram post ©Caitlin O'Bunny
2.3 Consumer behavior towards variety and social media
According to Kahn (1998) variety in an assortment has two advantages, having variety offers different choices over time, fulfilling need for change, and for single choice -consumer, having variety offers customized choice to match their desire. Due to this, Kahn (1998) claims that it’s generally the more true variety a marketer can provide, the better. Although, it’s often claimed that too much is too much, but determining where that point of regret is, is difficult. In the case of social media content, the point of regret can be considered quite low, since, according to
Desmeules (2002), the factors causing negative experiences in front of high variety are expectations, risks and involvement. There is minimal risks with social media content for the consumer, only the dangers of false accounts and scams, but these are usual risks involved all online activity, not just social media, so they easily fall under the “norm of online”, not being considered as such a high risk overall. The most meaningful of the factors for social media content marketing are expectations and involvement, but these only matter if social media channels and the content are successful enough to gain user involvement and to raise expectations towards fututre content. Schulze, Schöler & Skiera (2015) recommend considering nature of the platform that’ll be used in in a campaign, due to the unique natures of the platforms. They give of example of Facebook, according to them, consumers see it mostly as for fun and entertainment, and as a result the users’ reactions to recommendations and advertising will differ depending on whether the product’s purpose fits their expectations.
2.4 Other uses of social media
According to Dickey & Lewis (2010), it’s important to understand why consumers are drawn to so- cial media. They reason it’s because of one of the primary benefits of social networking is fulfilling primal need of sense of community (Dickey, Lewis & Siemens 2006). This is why social media pro- files can be used to nurture this sense of community, with engaging the consumers into a two-way communication, and every time consumers invest their time into the communication, the more invested they become towards the brand. This can be taken advantage of, for example, with cre- ating own profiles for company’s local stores. Them being local, already creates sense of owner- ship and community.
Social media can be also used as a tool to support brand’s transparency. Hayes (2018) offers ways to use social media to show transparency, firstly with consistent branding across platforms, and no, this doesn’t mean publishing same content on all of the platforms, but more of the branding being the same, showing same colors, logos, profile pictures, contact info etc. Second is giving glimpses into daily operations, this is one of the hypotheses tested in this thesis, if this works, if consumers feel it is an effective way. In 2016 Label Insight Transparency ROI Study showed that 81% would consider brand’s entire portfolio of products if it offers transparency, 73% will pay more if brand is transparent and 94% are completely loyal to brands that offer complete transpar- ency.
2.5 Information retrieval and source materials
Sources used for this thesis were retrieved from Google Scholar, Ebsco Business Source Elite, ProQuest -database, Statista and Janet Finna – JAMK’s library service and other databases
branching from Janet, as well as some through basic Google -search. All sources were thoroughly checked, the sources of the sources cross-checked and confirmed and made sure the information were legit. In case of some not so obviously legit sources, the information was double-checked against other similar articles etc. to cross check the legimacy, even though the sources of this cross-check isn’t listed as source material, since they were used only as confirmation of information.
3 Methodology
3.1 Research philosophy, approach, and strategy
To decide the approach for this research, the research onion model by Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill (2009) is the best tool to explain the organizing of the research’s methodology.
Figure 7. The research ‘onion’ model Source: © Mark Saunders, Philip Lewis and Adrian Thornhill 2009
The chosen research philosophy is positivism which, according to Saunders et al (2009) means
“working adobting the philosophical stance of natural scientist”, working with observable reality and results can be generalized and the research is completely value-free, meaning it’s not affected by for example by social values of the researcher or any other. In this thesis, the collected data is general, from totally random people, with no specification or requirements to respondents, completely random people, while the questions are straight-forward but carefully constructed to avoid any kind leading of the respondents, while limiting the option of “no opinion” and “don’t know” from the multiple-choices.
Collecting the primary data for this research constructs of quantitative data collection method of surveys, in the form of self-administered online questionnaire following deductive research approach. Deductive approach is when researchers form preliminary hypotheses using secondary
research data and test these hypotheses with collected primary data (Wilson, 2010), which is the very definition of this thesis, aiming to test the priorly formed hypotheses, however the
hypotheses for this thesis were formed even before gaining proper secondary data, and the secondary data were used to refine the hypotheses and forming research questions from the hypotheses. Deductive approach is considered the best option for explaining the relationship between different variables using quantitative data (Saunders et al, 2009) and quantitative data collection method allows testing hypotheses and the collection of suffiently general data, making the results of the research made generalisable (Kuada 2012). Surveys are popular especially in business and management research due to being highly economical and making collecting larger amounts of data from considerably sizeable population possible (Saunders et al, 2009). These were some deciding factors for deciding the style and approach for this thesis. With self- administrated online survey, in the form of multiple-choice questionnaire provides maximum amount of data with minimal resources, which was sufficient and also most appropriate for this thesis.
To “finish the onion”, the research is mono methoded, only using one method, in this case a survey, a quantitative method to collect needed primary data. As for time horizons, the research is cross-sectional, studying something at a particular time, instead of over period of time (Saunders et al, 2009).
3.2 Data Collection
The primary data collection plan was implemented by using Google Forms -tool to create online questionnaire with closed questions in form of multiple choice and yes/no questions. Google Forms -tool was chosen due to it being free to use, requiring no monetary payment, simple in design to use, while having all needed functions for the intented questionnaire and great functions of forming piecharts of the percentiles of the responses to help in analyzing the data, making it the ideal tool for this self-administrated online questionairre.
The questionairre was made to be short, simple and easy to fill out, due to the fact that there was no monetary or material insentive for people to answer the questionairre, so it must be attractive (Kuada, 2012) or atleast not a bother that consumes a lot of time and energy to fill out. The questionairre was then shared on multiple social media platforms such as different Facebook
groups and author’s own personal and artist profiles on different social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and DeviantArt as well as on 3D chat client IMVU, on userprofile and live in real time in public chatrooms as well. There was no preconditions or requirements or any specifics planned for the focusgroup, just aiming for variety and quantity to gain more accurate data. The questionnaire received 51 responds, overall.
The questionairre constructs of eight questions:
• 2 demographic questions
o Gender to see if there’s huge difference in opinions and the need to analyze results closer than just overall percentile, by dividing the data by gender
o Age which isn’t a major factor, but interesting fact, plus a factor to confirm that majority of responses are of ages between 18 and 34 which can be considered the majority target audience when using social media (Big Foot Digital, 2018)
• 2 questions regarding current social media activity
o How many different platforms the respondent uses actively, just one, multiple or none at all, to provide background information for the research, aiming to add to the validity of the gained data, since people who don’t use multiple platforms actively wouldn’t be likely to interact with companies/organizations online on platforms they’re not already part of as well as to gain insight if people overall do use multpitle platforms, supporting the idea of creating content for multiple platforms, instead on just one
o When the respondent follows companies/organizations on social media, do they follow them on only one or on multiple platforms, or they don’t follow
companies/organizations on social media at all, to gauge the current situation of the popularity of multiple platforms
• 4 questions to gain data to answer the research questions
o The most important question for this questionnaire and the whole research, if the content of companies’/organizations’ social media differed, would the respondent be more likely to follow on multiple platforms, aiming to prove the hypothesis straight up, that differing content would create more followers
o If company/organization had own social media accounts for the respondent’s local store, would the respondent be more likely to follow only the local, the main or both social media accounts, aiming to prove the merits of creating own social media accounts localy
o If company/organization used different platforms for “official” content and
“offtopic” content, would the respondent follow only official or off-topic accounts or both, aiming to further prove the interest in more varied content, especially across different platforms
o Would showing company’s/organization’s day-to-day operations on social media create more positive image of the company and it’s transparency, aiming to prove the usefulness of having varied content and the content having further impact than just marketing and visibility etc.
The questions were worderd with terms like “more likely” with intent to avoid answers like maybe or I don’t know, so these options weren’t even provided in the multiple choise -options. Also since the research questions were quite straight forward, the questions in the questionnaire reflect that straight-forwardness, by being on the point and extremly similar to the research questions of the thesis.This was intended to help to gain more accurate data as well as make analyzing the data that much simpler process.
3.3 Data Analysis
Due to the simplicity of the questionnaire and using Google Forms as the tool for collecting the data, no real anaysis was needed by the author, making analyzing simple. Google Forms
automaticly processes the collected data into pie charts showing the results of the questionnaire in percentiles, which is enough anaysing for this research.
To answer the research questions of this thesis, percentiled results of the data is more than enough, so no further data analysis is required. The collected data may be generalized to equally represent females and males, due to the result showing the genders of those who answered the questionnaire, 58,8% were females and 41,2% males. This is close enough to equal representation
of both genders, so no need to analyze data separated by gender at this point. Although age was asked in the questionnaire, it doesn’t play importance in the analysis at this point.
3.4 Validity and reliability of the data
There are four criterions of validity for quantitative research, which are internal and external validity, reliability and objectivity. Internal validity refers to a right causal connection while external validity refers to how well the results can be generalized to match the population, that the respondents match the research target group and hence can represent the target group as proper sample group of that target group. Reliability referst to the consistancy of the research, that the results can be replicated, if not exactly, but closely enough, in example there’s no difference in ways to interpret the questions etc. (Kananen, 2015)
The nature of the research, the research questions and their straight forward relation to the questions in the questionnaire supports internal validity, while external validity is confirmed but also weak, since the research doesn’t have specific research target group, other than people who use social media, which is quite vast research pool. To ensure reliability, the questions in the questionnaire were reviewed multiplte times and the wording simplified and checked carefully.
Objectivity was confirmed by reviewing the questions so they wouldn’t be leading, but as neutral as possible in tone, and the responding to the questionnaire was completely anonymous, only asking for age and gender for details.
4 Research results
The questionnaire received 51 responses, with 58,8% females 41,2% males.These results confirm that the results can be generalized in terms of gender, since the difference isn’t unreasonable, when taking in consideration the quantity of responses received.
The major agegroups are 19-25 (29,4%) and 26-30 (45,1%), confirming majority of respondents belonging to the majority target audience considering social media (Big Foot Digital, 2018), while overall all the ages had some representation in the responds, which allows more generalization to be done, that the data might apply to wider audience than just the major agegroups of the
respondents.
Figure 8
Figure 9
4.1 Current situation
Starting of with mapping the current situation of the respondees. From the 51 responses, 82,4%
uses more than one social media platforms actively, while only 13,7% uses only one and when following companies/organizations on social media, 43,1% follow them only on one platform and
39,2% follow on multiple accounts while 17,6% don’t follow companies/organizations on social media at all.
Figure 10
Figure 11
4.2 Questions aimed to answer research questions
The research questions for this research are quite straight forward and they were asked as point blank questions in the questionnaire, to receive straight forward data, with yes/no answers to the questions. For the first one, if people would be more likely to follow companies/organisations on multiple platforms if the content differed across, from each other and 74,5% answered “Yes.” to this question.
Figure 12
As for the second question, if company had its own social media accounts for local store, would people be more likely to follow only the main account, local account, or both. Over half of the re- spondents chose the option for both, 35,3% chose only local store and 9,8% chose only main ac- count.
Figure 13
The third question required if company had different, “off-topic” -type of content on one of its so- cial media accounts, would people follow only official, only off-topic or both accounts. 52% would follow both while 33,3% only main account and 13,7% would follow only off-topic one.
Figure 14
Last question was about social media and company’s transparency and whether showing day-to- day operations and other “diary-type” content would provide more positive image of a company and its transparency, which received strong “Yes.” from 88,2% of the respondents.
Figure 15
5 Discussion
5.1 Answering the research questions
Viewing things from the perspective of the research questions, would people be more likely to follow multiple platforms? According to the responds, most people do use multiple platforms actively, which helps if wanting people to follow across platforms, since they won’t have to create new accounts to do so, so it lowers the bar with less effort needed to do so. It’s also worth noting that even though majority use multiple platforms, only under 40% follows
companies/organizations on multiple platforms and almost 20% don’t follow them at all. This shows that atleast the current activities could be improved upon, and adding variety to the content can be one variable. Providing variety of different content, would help keeping the brand current, providing change to match the need for change that some experience (Kahn, 1998).
Differing the content across platforms would make it worth following the same company’s account, since following on multiple platforms when the content is exactly the same, seems counterproductive, seeing the same content repeated. By offering variety, targeting content to match the images and demographics of different platforms, could bring more interest to follow atleast one option of the many accounts a company could have in use. Even though the content differs between the accounts, they can be used to post the important and informative content to all accounts, to reach maximum ammount of followers.
The second research question addressed the idea of creating accounts more dedicated to “off- topic” content, for example grocery store providing recipe ideas etc. and whether people would be interested to follow only the official or off-topic account or both. The results indicated strong interest towards following both at over 50%, but following only off-topic account gained only 13,7% from the respondents. This indicates more interest in combination of content, which points more towards switching content between off-topic and official, instead of dedicating an account for just off-topic content, but with interest of 33,3% for only official account, idea of dedicating one of the multiple platforms to stricly official business only, could be worth considering.
As for the third research question, the results strongly support the idea of creating own social me- dia for local stores. Some could argue that it would take away from the main account’s traffic, but the result of over half of the respondents choosing the option for following both, gives more evi- dence towards the likelihood of adding traffic to both accounts, instead of taking away from the main one. And having 35,3% likely to follow only the local store’s account, this gives huge incen- tive to create them, with the combination of following both or just local, the result is over 90% af- ter all.
Social media, different platforms and social media marketing and advertising keep evolving constantly, they’re still considered quite new practices afterall, and the results of 88,2% “Yes.” - answers for whether showing day-to-day operations and other such content would give company and it’s transparency a more positive image, show obviously that transparency can be shown with social media, and in the future possibly for many other things than just marketing and branding, especially of companies start to seriously use the platforms as they’re ment, as social tools instead of just one way communication tools, similar to television or radio. With the interactivity that is
possible with social media tools, only limit in all of it is imagination, the idea of using them to better companys image is just one of the more obvious ideas how to use the tools.
5.2 Managerial and practical implications
The research in it’s straight forwardness brings light to a few practical implications, that can be used for favorable change in current social media marketing, starting with the strongly suggested need for variety in content across platforms. In practical terms, this could be implemented for example allocating different roles for different accounts, such as using Facebook for more official content and Instagram for more “off-topic”, taking advantage of the younger demography and leaning towards pictures. The Instagram accounts of some celebrities are good examples of using more diary-like content, which could be beneficial for companies and organizations as well.
Creating active social media accounts on various different platforms requires more time to manage and ideas for more content, but this can be limited by creating accounts only on relative platforms, instead of having non-active accounts on some platforms, such as having YouTube- account even though no time or budget etc. to create content in the form of videos. In this sense Instagram is also good option for varied social media account, since taking pictures can be low cost, requiring just ideas and a smartphone, which most people already own anyway. In making the Instagram account more diary-like, there could be some idea in asking all employees to take part in creating the content, if they’d take pictures of their day with small caption, to be possibly posted on the account. This can lower some costs of creating more content, while taking
advantage of the results, showing how to create more positive and transparent image of the company. This can be even more effective when implemented by local stores, in case of business with multiple stores. People are interested what happens at “their” store, since just location creates already a sense of community, and this can be built on with the local store’s social media, giving the chance to communicate with others claiming the store as theirs, while also being able to keep up to date on informative content of local store is more simple than when following one social media account, which has information for all the stores, which won’t interest non-locals as much.
However, even though the results show strong interest in “off-topic” content, the idea of “off- topic”-account didn’t seem to gain as much interest. The results do show over 50% would follow both accounts, 33,3% would follow only main account and only 13,7% would follow just the “off-
topic”-one. These results seem to indicate more of interest in off-topic content, but not in actual off-topic only account. Instead could be worth considering having varied content on all accounts, but others more off-topic than others, giving variety not in just content but also with the accounts, to provide options which to choose from, if one wants to get only official information and less other content, or if one wants to follow account which has more quantity and variety in it’s content.
5.3 Limitations of research
This research was conducted with no budget, by single person with limited resources, with no bigger “aim” in the research nor assignor giving it more focus, variety and credibility to the
research. Instead it is quite generalized overall. Having a assignor could possibly have been useful in the data collection as well, proving legitimacy of the research better. This raised to be a bit of an issue, while trying to reach respondents, since many viewed the message and link with suspicion, fearing it to be dangerous in technological sense, strongly suspected of being spam or other, something harmful like virus, scam or such. This resulted in a bit of a limited quantity of respondents to what was originally planned and desired for this research project.
Having no assignor, hence no proper “aim”, more specifically means that while the current
research was done about the overall situation and how people would receive platform specific and off-topic content, with assignor, the research could’ve gone to more specifics with the research questions, the questionnaire and also would’ve had more specific target group to sample.
5.4 Recommendations for future research
This research received a quite limited amount of responses, giving good data, but with this sort of topic, more quantity would be ideal, having more quantitative data to match the vastness of basically not-specified target group. The results work as a great start, but the topic would be worth of more research.
This research works as a great starting place for more specific and customized research for specific company/organization, to test what kind of variety exactly their current followers would be
interested in, how could they gain more from their social media activities and get hints and direction to what could lead to more engagement and followers.
Though the topic is worth more research, the results are also good enough for taking action without further research as well, since they obviously show very strong interest in variety, and the uninterest of seeing same content across platforms.
References
Agrawal, C. (2018). Modern battle : Facebook vs instagram, content analysis. Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://medium.com/new-media-dod/modern-battle-facebook-vs-instagram- content-analysis-2af243d4508e
Anderson, S., Hayes, A. & Rathburn, P. (2021). Public Relations (PR). Investopedia. Retrieved No- vember 10, 2021 from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/public-relations-pr.asp
BigFoot Digital (2018). Social media audience profile: What ages use social media the most? . Re- trieved November 11, 2020 from https://www.bigfootdigital.co.uk/social-media-audience-profile Chambers, L., Morehead, J., & Sallee, H. (2020). Make your business social : engage your custom- ers with social media. Business Expert Press.
Desmeules, R. (2002). The impact of variety on consumer happiness: Marketing and the tyranny of freedom. Academy of Marketing Science Review, 12
Dickey, I. J., Lewis, W. F., & Siemens, J. C. (2008). The evolution of internet weblogs: History, cur- rent trends, and projections of usage in marketing strategy. Journal of Business and Behavioral Sci- ences, 19(1), 91-102.
Dickey, I., & Lewis, W. (2010). The evolution (revolution) of social media and social networking as a necessary topic in the marketing curriculum: A case for integrating social media into marketing classes. Advances in Marketing: Embracing Challenges and Change - A Global Perspec-
tive, 32.(Management and Marketing Faculty Publications), 140-143. Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://ecommons.udayton.edu/mgt_fac_pub/32
Hastings, H., & Saperstein, J. (2010). How social media can be used to dialogue with the customer.
Ivey Business Journal, (January / February 2010) Retrieved November 11, 2021 from https://ivey- businessjournal.com/publication/how-social-media-can-be-used-to-dialogue-with-the-customer/
Hayes, S. (2018, Jun 22,). The importance of brand transparency on social media | SocialMedia.biz.
Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://www.socialmedia.biz/the-importance-of-brand- transparency-on-social-media/
Holt, D. (2016, March,). Branding in the Age of Social Media. Harvard Business Review, , 41-50. Re- trieved November 11, 2021 from https://hbr.org/2016/03/branding-in-the-age-of-social-media Jackson, D. (2019). Instagram vs facebook: Which is best for your brand’s strategy? Retrieved May 03, 2021 from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-vs-facebook/
K-Ruoka (2020) K-Market jounin kauppa - K-ruoka. Retrieved from November 11, 2020 from https://www.k-ruoka.fi/kauppa/k-market-jounin-kauppa
Kahn, B. (1998). Variety: From the consumer’s perspective. In T. Ho, & C. S. Tang (Eds.), Product variety management: Research advances (pp. 19-37). Boston, MA: Springer US. doi:10.1007/978-1- 4615-5579-7_2 Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5579-7_2 Kananen, J. (2015). Opinnäytetyön kirjoittajan opas: Näin kirjoitan opinnäytetyön tai pro gradun alusta loppuun. Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulu.
Karapetian, K. (2016). Transparency leads to increased brand loyalty and perceived brand worth.
Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://blog.labelinsight.com/transparency-leads-to- increased-brand-loyalty-and-perceived-brand-worth
Khillar, S. (2019, April 5,). Difference between facebook and instagram | difference between. Re- trieved May 03, 2021 from http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/internet/difference- between-facebook-and-instagram/
Kuada, J., & Kuada, J. (2012). Research methodology : A project guide for university students. Fred- eriksberg: Samfundslitteratur Press. Retrieved November 11, 2020
from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/jypoly-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3400854 Liquid Creativity (2020, Aug 10,). What is branding and why is it Important to your business? Re- trieved November 11, 2021 from https://liquidcreativity.com.au/what-is-branding-and-why-is-it- important-to-your-business/
Media Link (2017) The importance and variety of digital marketing trends. Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://www.medialink.com.cy/digital-marketing-trends/
McCoy, J. (2015). What's the Real Difference Between Marketing and Branding Content? Social Media Today. Retrieved November 11, 2021 from https://www.socialmediatoday.com/market- ing/2015-04-10/whats-real-difference-between-marketing-and-branding-content
Noor Al-Deen, H. S., & Hendricks, J. A. (2012). Social media usage and impact. Lexington Books.
O'Bunny, C. (2018, Aug 6,). Instagram — Post Preview. Retrieved November 11, 2021 from https://blog.prototypr.io/if-i-worked-at-instagram-41528db98d7b
Patel, N. (2014). Where Marketing Ends, Branding Begins. Neil Patel. Retrieved November 10, 2021 from http://neilpatel.com/blog/where-branding-begins/
Perrin, A., & Anderson, M. (2019, April 10,). Share of U.S. adults using social media, including face- book, is mostly unchanged since 2018. Retrieved November 11, 2020
from https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media- including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/
Pophal, L. (2014). What's the Difference Between Marketing, Branding, Advertising and PR and Does it Matter? LinkedIn. Retrieved November 10, 2021 from
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140525131830-20343956-what-s-the-difference-between- marketing-branding-advertising-and-pr-and-does-it-matter/
Provoke Media (2012) Many companies still use social media for one-way communications. Re- trieved November 11, 2020 from https://www.provokemedia.com/latest/article/many-
companies-still-use-social-media-for-one-way-communications
Richter, F. (2014). Infographic: Apple Beats Competitors In Smartphone Brand Loyalty. Statista In- fographics. Retrieved November 11, 2021 from https://www.statista.com/chart/2460/brand-re- tention-in-the-smartphone-industry/
Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2009). Research methods for business students (5th ed.
ed.) Pearson Prentice Hall. Retrieved April 11, 2020 from http://www.fachportal- paedagogik.de/fis_bildung/suche/fis_set.html?FId=1077211
Schulze, C., Schöler, L., & Skiera, B. (2015). Customizing social media marketing. MIT Sloan Man- agement Review, 56(2), 8-10. Retrieved November 11, 2020
from http://ezproxy.jamk.fi:2048/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.ezproxy.jamk.fi:2443/docview/1650910666?accountid=11773 socialbakers (2020) Facebook stats of popular brands pages in Finland
. Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/face- book/pages/total/finland/brands
Statista (2020a) Global time spent on social media daily 2018. Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://www.statista.com/statistics/433871/daily-social-media-usage-worldwide/
Statista (2020b) Social media advertising - worldwide Retrieved November 11, 2020 from https://www.statista.com/outlook/220/100/social-media-advertising/worldwide Statista (2021) Most used social media 2021. (2021). Retrieved May 03, 2021 from
https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
tarresamuffet.4 P’s of Marketing: Decisions When Launching a New Product | Visual.ly. Retrieved November 11, 2021 from https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/business/4-p%E2%80%99s- marketing-decisions-when-launching-new-product
The Bean Team. (2017, Dec 29,). Marketing vs. Advertising vs. Branding vs. Public Relations. Re- trieved November 11, 2021 from https://www.transformationmarketing.com/marketing-vs-adver- tising-vs-branding-vs-public-relations/
Twin, A., & Anderson, S. (2021). The 4 Ps of Marketing. Investopedia. Retrieved November 10, 2021 from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/four-ps.asp
Voorveld, H., van Noort, G., Muntinga, D. and Bronner, F., 2018. Engagement with Social Media and Social Media Advertising: The Differentiating Role of Platform Type. Journal of Advertising, 47(1), pp.38-54. doi:10.1080/00913367.2017.1405754
Walton, J. (2021). Twitter vs. facebook vs. instagram: What's the difference? Retrieved May 03, 2021 from https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/100215/twitter-vs-facebook-vs-insta- gram-who-target-audience.asp
Warner, J., & LaFontaine, D. (2014). Social media design for dummies. Hoboken: Wiley. Retrieved November 11, 2021 from https://janet.finna.fi/Record/jamk.993634253406251
Wilson, J. (2010). Essentials of business research: A guide to doing your research project. SAGE Publications.
Appendices
Appendix 1. Questionare questions and multiple choice options
Gender
○ Male
○ Female
Age
○ 18 or under
○ 19 - 25
○ 26 - 30
○ 31 - 40
○ 41 - 50
○ 51 - 60
○ 61 +
How many different social media platforms do you actively use ? (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.)
○ Only one
○ More than one
○ None
When you follow companies/organizations on social media, do you follow them..
○ Only on one platform (Example: Only on Facebook)
○ On multiple platforms (Example: On both Facebook and Instagram)
○ I don't follow companies/organizations on social media
Would you be more likely to follow company's/organization's social media on multiple platforms if the content differed from each other?
○ Yes
○ No
If company/organization had their own social media account for your local store, would you be more likely to follow ...
○ Only the company's main account
○ Both main and local store's account
○ Only local store's account
If a company/organization had a social media accounts where content on one platform was official and on the point and on other platform offering off-topic content (Example;
grocery store offering recipes and cooking tips, diary-like conent of day-to-day operations etc.), would you follow..
○ Only official account
○ Both official and off-topic account
○ Only off-topic account
If company/organization posted content showing their day-to-day operations etc. diary- type content, like some celebrities, in your mind would this help create more positive im- age of the company and its transparency?
○ Yes
○ No
