MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF INFORMATICS

Social Media and Content Marketing as a part of an effective Online Marketing strategy

Diploma thesis

Michal AUGUSTINI

Brno, 2014

Declaration

I hereby declare that this thesis is my original copyrighted work which I developed alone. All resources, sources, and literature, which I used are quoted in the thesis properly, stating the full reference to the source.

Resume

The thesis is focused on creation social media and content marketing strategies. Also provides analysis of techniques, activities and software tools used in these marketing fields. Theoretical knowledge is explained in several case studies.

Keywords

Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing, Strategy, Online Marketing, eWoM, COBRAs, Social Business, SEO

Thesis Supervisor: RNDr. JUDr. Vladimír Šmíd, CSc.

Acknowledgement

Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor Vladimír Šmíd, for his guidance and valuable comments.

My sincere thanks also goes my family and especially to my brother, Martin Augustini, for his valuable feedback and proofreading.

I thank my friends for their support and positive energy.

And also my thanks go to those who will read this thesis until the very end.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction ...... 6

2 Marketing Definitions ...... 8

3 Online Marketing Basics ...... 12

4 Social Media Strategies ...... 34

5 Content Marketing Strategy ...... 44

6 Black Hat & White Hat in Social Media Marketing ...... 55

7 Software Tools ...... 63

8 Case study VideoFlot ...... 67

9 Conclusion...... 76

Appendices ...... 87

1 Introduction

Looking for the Holy Grail. This is how today’s marketing times may be called. One might argue that in the past it wasn’t much different - true. Nevertheless, today with the technology, social media, big data, analytics, marketers got new powers, a new way that has shifted marketing to another level and may be closer to the Holy Grail. Other fact is that these technologies enabled people to easily spread their ideas and opened up possibilities to transform these ideas into a business. Some say that traditional forms of marketing are obsolete and becoming successful online is easier and cheaper, but often the opposite is true.

1.1 Motivation

In late 2012, I started to work as a Social Media Specialist for Axiory, a forex broker, and I gathered a lot of valuable experience. As this was my first job in marketing, it was the time when my knowledge that I gained from books and blogs, was tested and compared to the reality. There are many articles, many books and people giving presentations about online marketing, social media and other new areas of marketing, but the enormous number of these materials creates a huge clutter. I chose to write a thesis where I will use my working experience combine it with the theoretical knowledge and create a set of best practices how to approach social media and content marketing. I found it really difficult for some startup projects to understand the use of social media for the right and profitable purpose not just because everyone is doing it.

My vision of this thesis is to help companies and individual entrepreneurs to understand the potential of social media and content marketing and help to find the way how to use them in an effective way. To accomplish this goal analysis of various tactics, techniques and tools is needed supported by customer activities theory.

Online marketing is a synergy of the world of information technologies and the world of marketing. Successful businesses are excellent in both of these areas and as a student of SSME at the Faculty of Informatics I find it very appropriate and actual to write about this topic for non-technological marketers as well as for IT professionals without many experiences in marketing.

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1.2 Outline

The thesis starts with basic marketing definitions because I found a lot of confusion when studying the online marketing topic. This confusion many times caused serious problems and misunderstandings.

In order to focus on social media or content marketing it is needed to understand the basic principles how online marketing works (Chapter 3.1 ACT Methodology) and where is the core of its success (Chapter 3.2 Zero Moment of Truth). Another confusion emerges in terms social media and content marketing, because for many these are just two term naming the same thing. This is explained in chapters 3.3 to 3.5. Online marketing brings companies and customers closer together and for understanding this relationship and customers’ behaviours there are chapters about COBRAs and eWoM. For a better overview, I’ve created an infographics that connects described theories with marketing and customer activities together.

A lot of literature about social media strategies is only dedicated to the platform usage but forgets about the whole goal and principle of social business.

Social media platforms update very quickly, thus I focused on how to grasp social media as whole (Chapter 4 Social Media Strategies), not just to describe few of the platforms. I’ve put emphasis on social business concept (Chapter 4.2) because I find it very interesting according to my experience when I’ve met with concept where social media were used just as a marketing tool alone.

More specific solutions are outlined in content marketing strategies (Chapter 5) where I focus on quality of the content, its creation, distribution and evaluation.

Next there is a chapter about black hat and white hat marketing with emphasis on black hat techniques examples and its effects that are demonstrated in a case study.

I also provided a brief overview of software tools (Chapter 7) that are used in online marketing today.

Finally I conclude the thesis with a case study (Chapter 8) based on my work experience in an IT startup company VideoFlot where I analyze their social media and content marketing activities.

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2 Marketing Definitions

The way people communicate was always a fundamental driver for our evolution. Technological advancement in last years is changing how we get, evaluate and use information. For marketers, this doesn’t bring only new possibilities, but also new challenges how to use and control these technologies. There are more than 2 billion people using the internet and it caused that marketing is online and new forms of it are being created faster than ever. For many people, even professionals, it is nearly impossible to keep track of all these new online marketing terms.

Before diving into the waters of online marketing let’s first look at the marketing itself.

2.1 Marketing

In 2010 Scott Brinker, marketing technologist and CTO of ion interactive, wrote down a list of 131 kinds of marketing [1]. And the number still raises. Not only because of new technologies and dynamically evolving marketplace, but also marketers are creating new types of marketing to promote themselves. Inbound Marketing for example is a term created by HubSpot company in 2006 *2+ and it’s practically synonymous to Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing from 1999.[3][4]

Therefore, there is a large number of different definitions of marketing. According to the American Marketing Association (AMA) Board of Directors: ‚Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.‛ [5] Seth Godin defines marketing as ‚the art of telling a story that resonates with your audience and then spreads.‛ [6] And a very popular definition of marketing is: ‚Marketing is everything you do‛ [7]

2.2 Digital vs. Online vs. Internet Marketing

There is a lot of confusion in the terminology when it comes to digital, online, and internet marketing.

Digital marketing is ‚a broad term that describes a set of marketing processes that utilize all available digital channels to promote a product or service or build a digital brand.‛ [8]

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As the main digital channels we consider the Internet, TV, radio, mobile. This sets Internet marketing a subset of Digital marketing.

Difference between Internet and Online marketing is just in the name itself. It’s all about the trend which word works better with search engines. In the US, ‚Internet Marketing‛ holds a 2-1 ratio to ‚Online Marketing‛ in monthly search queries according to Google Adwords Keyword Generator from April 2013. But globally ‚Online Marketing‛ appears in searches 9 times more than ‚Internet Marketing‛.

Note: there is also a difference between marketing and advertising [10]. One might argue that companies producing viral videos or pay per click ads are not doing marketing rather advertising. But from the ‚online‛ point of view all this Online Advertising tools and techniques are considered to be a synonym to Online Marketing.

Online Marketing is ‚the art and science of leveraging the Internet to get your message across so that you can move people to take action.‛*11] The major channels of Online Marketing are:

 Web site  Search marketing (SEM) - includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search Advertising (PSA)  Social media marketing  Content marketing  Email marketing  Mobile marketing  Display advertising

2.3 Online and Traditional Marketing

Access to a world of infinite information has changed how we communicate, process information, and think.

Traditional marketing ways of reaching people like print, TV, radio are being repressed by the Internet. For a long time they were a guarantee of a marketing success. And there were 3 main reasons for that:

1. Marketing was a one-way communication channel. Customers didn’t have any viable way to communicate back.

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2. Easier targeting. People were more alike. Diversity in activities, habits and goods that people owned was very small. Marketers knew who and where the buyers were. 3. People weren’t fed up and believed advertising. The marketing clutter was significantly smaller.[11]

Traditional marketing has evolved through the Internet into the new era of marketing.

Bob Liodice, CEO of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) said that ‚The amount of change in marketing over the past three to five years probably equals the amount of change over the past 30 years.‛ [12]

The lightning speed evolution of marketing has brought many opportunities but also chaos. Many marketers started immediately applying traditional principles into online marketing and so they produced even bigger clutter then it was in the before-the-internet era. Another problem was, and still is, the investment into the online advertising with very vague estimate of the return of investment (ROI).

In April 2012, Gartner's interviewed 98 marketing executives in companies with revenue greater than $1 billion. The survey showed that 54% of interviewed marketers invest in digital marketing because they believe it's strategic to their competitiveness. But they are not certain of their ROI.[13]

Figure 1 Position on Investment and Impact of Digital Marketing [13]

However, another survey from Gartner, shows that companies spent 10.4% of their annual 2012 revenue on marketing activities that include both traditional and digital marketing. What’s more, 2.5% of revenue is spent on digital marketing and is expected to

10 increase by 9% in 2013. That makes digital marketing the fastest growing area of marketing. [14]

Traditional marketing on the other hand is no longer the top priority for a lot of organizations. 28% of marketers have reduced their budget for traditional marketing to fund more digital marketing.

Interestingly, it is getting harder to differentiate the marketing spendings as digital and traditional marketing techniques are merging. Nowadays over 20% of companies reported that they no longer separate budgets between digital and traditional.

There is no right or wrong answer to the question about investing in traditional or digital marketing. The well-balanced combination is what will bring the success to the companies. The top 3 digital marketing activities that will drive success in the nearest future are corporate websites, social media and online advertising.

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3 Online Marketing Basics

3.1 The ACT Methodology

From the definition above online marketing is about delivering a message via the Internet to real people and make them do something - in most cases it is to make them spend money.

According to Shama Kabani, author of the book ‚The Zen of Social Media Marketing‛ [11], successful online marketing basically works on a simple framework called ACT Methodology that can be broken down into 3 three distinct components:

 A - Attract  C - Convert  T - Transform

Figure 2 ACT Methodology [11]

3.1.1 Attract

To attract means to get attention or stand out. The goal of this phase is to get traffic to the website by standing out from others. This happens mostly by using Social media and Search Engine Marketing. To be visible and remarkable there are 3 essential elements needed:

 Brand: What is your brand? Use one word or phrase.

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 Outcome: What do you do? Sum it up in one line.  Differentiator: How are you different from your competitors? What is that makes you more special than others?

‚If you don’t have the right elements, you can’t stand out from the noise. If you don’t stand out, you can’t attract people to do business.‛ *11+

3.1.2 Convert

Converting strangers into consumers or customers. Primary focusing on attracted users who are ideal fit. These people are more likely to buy your product and spend money. There two types of conversion:

 Stranger to Consumer Consumer is a person who is consuming your information for example from your Blog, Twitter or Facebook. These people don’t spend money yet, but it is more likely that they will. Consumers are somehow binded with the brand and with that they can attract their friends and acquaintances to the brand. Social media are suited to this kind of conversion.  Stranger to Customer Converting people become paying customers. This happens via the company website .

3.1.3 Transform

Transforming company’s successes into attraction tools. It has two key parts:

1. Doing a good job and provide a perfect service and customer support. 2. Spread the word about success with clients. Share their stories of what they achieved through service or product.

Successful transformation tools are for example video interviews with customers, case studies, client’s testimonials.

3.1.4 Case study Chytra Zed

Chytra Zed (Smart wall) is a company providing service that will turn ordinary material i.e. wall, wood to a white board by using special paint. Company launched their Facebook

13 and Twitter in March 2013 and started to post simple pictures with only one sentence and link to the website as shown in the picture below.

Figure 3 Chytra Zed Picture Facebook Post [16]

They immediately started to attract people to their website where the visitors watched the explanation video and provide the brand their email address so that they can get news about the product launch. People not only provided the brand their email but also started to follow their Twitter and like their Facebook page. Strangers were converted to consumers. In fact, the company could not convert them to customers yet, because they launched the service after 7 months as they waited for product supply.

More than half a year the company was focus on attract and convert (to consumer) phases. They gathered more than 1000 likes and 20 followers.

On 20th September Chytra zed started to sell their service. Consumer were converted to customers. After few successful installations of the smart walls they immediately started to publish pictures of places and people using the walls as white boards - transformation phase. As the picture started spreading, more strangers became attracted and the circle continued.

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Figure 4 Chytra Zed Picture Facebook post 2. [16]

3.2 Zero Moment of Truth

In 2011 Google published e-book called Winning the Zero Moment of Truth. It introduced new perspective of online marketing and defined new center of focus. The Internet and IT technologies changed customers and their process of making decisions. There has been a classical mental model in marketing that had three critical moments:

 Stimulus - an instant when consumer sees an advertisement for a product and gets interested in it.  Shelf - The first moment of truth, when consumer visits the store where he sees the real product, gets the necessary information and answers to his questions from employees. Finally he buys the product.  Experience - Consumer uses the product, is satisfied with it and enjoys the value of the product - the second moment of truth.

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Figure 5 Classical mental model [37]

The Internet era brought a significant change to that classical marketing mental model. New critical moment has emerged between the consumers’ first exposure to advertisements and the ultimate purchase decision. The zero moment of truth (ZMOT) as Google calls it, ‚is that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about a product/service (or potential boyfriend) you're thinking about trying or buying.‛ [37]

Google’s research from 2011 showed that average shopper used 10.4 sources of information to make a decision. Further it revealed that 84% of the shoppers said that ZMOT is the critical moment that shapes their decision. [37]

Figure 6 New mental model with the zero moment of truth [37]

The zero moment of truth

 happens online and typically starts with a search on Google, YouTube, Yahoo or any other search engine  happens in real time, at any time of the day through any type of device whether it is mobile, laptop or tablet.

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 is consumer driven. She decides what kind of information she will consume rather than have it pushed on her by others.  is emotional. The consumer makes emotional investments to find the best solution to satisfy her needs.  is multi-way conversation. Brands, friends, strangers, websites, all compete for consumers attention.

Consumers have many more choices that they’ve ever had before and they use them to look for information about companies, their products or services. They use trusted third party sources to check the consistency and credibility of company’s messages.

‚We now have to engage people in a way that’s useful or helpful to their lives. The consumer is looking to satisfy their needs, and we have to be there to help them with that. To put it another way: How can we exchange value instead of just sending a message?‛ Kim Kadlec, worldwide vice president, Global Marketing Group, Johnson & Johnson [37]

The new way of thinking about traditional marketing mental model gives a strong emphasis on brand related content produced by company as well as consumers. This also made the trend shift from basic social media marketing to content marketing.

3.3 Social Media Marketing

In its simplest form social media marketing is the marketing process of gaining attention or website traffic through social media websites. It is used for promoting products or services in different social networks in form of advertisements or in form of content. The basic most general goal is to increase sales of a product / service or to build brand awareness. [7] [15] [39]

‚Social media isn’t just a new marketing platform or channel. If we look at it this way we unnecessarily limit the scope of the opportunities just to one segment. Primary social media entails a change in ways of communication. It is (mostly) not a conversation but a real many-to-many communication‛ Adam Zbiejczuk [40]

For companies to be a recognizable part of the social media communication is much harder that it might seem at first. Neither it is cheap. In 2013 Facebook is dominant social network with 1.200 million users and the number is still increasing. [41] Companies try to engage with as many users as possible by spreading their content and extending their

17 social media presence to other platforms. This produces a larger and larger clutter where marketing messages are getting lost. Facebook nowadays offers a solution with their paid advertisements and post promotion, but many companies doesn’t often have a budget to pay for such services.

Another way is to focus on organic non-paid reach, that is connected to the type of content and brand’s social media communication approach. This of course differs depending on the social media platform and company’s character, but generally there 4 ingredients that are nowadays the basis for social media success [40]:

1. Cool factor, humor 2. Usefulness and advantages 3. Immediacy and novelty 4. Personal approach

The biggest enemy factor is boredom. Official impersonal PR messages and marketing statements are not type of content for social media.

3.3.1 Social Media Platforms

The evolution of social media is really fast and so are the updates of social platforms. The number of these platform is still rising and the popularity of each platform depends on mainly on the country or rather geographical location.

3.3.1.1 Facebook

Largest social media platform with more than 1.2 billion registered users [41]. Solution for businesses:

 Facebook page - possibility to share content in form of links, photos, videos and polls.  Paid promotion of the content  Paid Facebook ads  Event creation  Geo Location  Directly engage with consumers

Key metrics: Likes, Posts, Shares, Engagement, Reach [77]

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3.3.1.2 LinkedIn

The world's largest professional network with 250 million members. Businesses have their own pages and individuals can be identified as their employees or just follow the updates of the company. It is used for business promotion from a professional site and hiring. [78]

Key metrics: Followers, Group members, Discussions, Recommendations (for individuals), Skill Endorsements (for individuals)

3.3.1.3 Google+

2nd largest social media platform and identity service [80], owned by Google. Used nowadays for:

 Search engine optimization  Sharing content  Hangouts - video conference chat often used for webinars  Event promotion

Key metrics: Circle members/followers, mentions, +1 [80]

3.3.1.4 Twitter

Microblogging social media platform, globally 3rd in percentage of internets users. [81] It is used by companies to:

 share information about the services  gather real-time market intelligence  build relationships with customer partners and influencers

Key metrics: Followers, mentions, retweets, reach, number of lists, posts [82]

3.3.1.5 Other

On Wikipedia there is a list of more than 200 social networking websites. Here are other recently popular:

 Pinterest - Online pinboard for organizing and sharing pictures  Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon - Bookmarking and Tagging

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 YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion - Online video sharing  Instagram, Vine - photo and short video sharing  Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo - microblogging - Chinese  Foursquare - geolocation  SoundCloud - music sharing

3.4 Content Marketing

‚Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content Marketing is showing the world that you are one.‛ [42]

‚Content marketing is the process of developing and sharing relevant, valuable and engaging content to a target audience with the goal of acquiring new customers or increasing business from existing customers.‛ [42]

It has become the latest trend in the PR & marketing industry. ‚Content marketing is to 2013 what social media marketing was to 2007.‛ [43] Social media presence is today just not enough. Consumers decision making process has changed and new critical moment - the Zero Moment of Truth - has emerged. One of the core elements to win the ZMOT is content. Successful content marketing establishes company as an expert in a specific field, and that sets the groundwork for a long-term business relationship.

Therefore a radical shift is occurring in marketing budgets as companies shift spend from focus on advertising to investments in content. The trend is toward producing a quality content for consumers rather than only pushing marketing messages. [46]

This content is then published on owned media channels - both ‚fully owned‛ (e.g. websites, blogs) and social media channels which companies control.

Types of content that are usually part of content strategies are: Blog post, Podcast, Video, Micro-video (e.g. Vine, Instagram), Images, Infographics, Case Studies, Ebooks, Presentation slides, Webinars, White papers

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3.5 Difference between Social Media Marketing and Content Marketing

Many people tend to confuse social media marketing with content marketing as social media are heavily involved in content marketing and content is being published by social media marketers. Both terms are very close and there is plenty of overlap between them, but they are actually two distinct entities. For effective online marketing it is essential to have clear in mind the difference and following elements may help to understand it.

3.5.1 Centre of Gravity

In social media marketing the focus of the marketing activity is stationed in the social networks themselves. Produced content is placed inside of Facebook, inside of Twitter and inside of other social networks.

For content marketing it is a brand website or microsite for brand’s specific product. Social sites are distributors of links leading back to the website content. They are not containers of the content itself. [15]

3.5.2 Type of Content

Type of content in social media marketing depends on the context, restrictions and limitations of the specific social platform. As example Twitter allows to post messages that are 140 characters long. Instagram for instance is for posting only squared format photos and videos lasting maximum 15 seconds.

In content marketing context of website provides more options of content type. Brands can publish longer forms of content with emphasis on quality, especially blog posts, videos, infographics, case studies, ebooks. [15]

3.5.3 Objectives

There are two main objectives that SMM tends to focus on:

 Brand awareness - creating activity around the brand.  Customer retention/satisfaction - companies are using social media for a direct dialog with customers to provide them support.

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On the other hand content marketing is more focused on demand generation. Quality content on websites can build a relationship with potential clients and nurture them towards a lead conversion or purchase. [15]

3.5.4 SMM and CM in ACT process

Social media is an attracting tool. It works best in getting attention in the first phase - Attract and also in spreading success stories in the last - Transform phase. It doesn’t often turn stranger straight into customer rather the focus of SMM is aimed on converting people to consumers.

Content Marketing work great through the whole ACT process. Its strength is, compared to Social Media Marketing, that it more successfully converts strangers directly to customers. [11]

3.5.5 Conclusion

In brief, social media marketing is about promotion and content marketing is about creation. The two work together in harmony and can generate fantastic results.

Content marketing should be the starting point of all online marketing campaigns and the next step is social media marketing that is the number one way to promote a website or brand online.

3.6 COBRAs

Web 2.0 and subsequently social media websites have changed users and their online behaviour. Opportunities to interact, express, share and create content about anything gave them significant powers which have important consequences on companies, products, and brands. Their interactions are strongly influencing brands and their consumers’ behaviour, even more than traditional forms of marketing and advertising. [17]

Watching brand-related videos on YouTube, posting photos of products on Facebook or commenting on brand’s statuses are examples of consumers’ online brand-related activities (COBRAs). COBRA concept is a ‚behavioural construct that provides a unifying framework to think about consumer activity pertaining to brand-related content on social media

22 platforms‛.[18] It is essential to understand people’s motivations to engage in such activities to effectively anticipate and direct the consequences.

3.6.1 COBRA Typology

Based on usage typologies of social media and on one’s level of involvement with brand- related content, COBRAs were categorised into 3 dimensions:

 Consuming Type with the lowest level of online brand-related activeness. People are participating without actively contributing or creating content. They watch brand- related videos, read product reviews or comments on brand profiles and forums. These consumers also play branded online video games and download content from brand’s websites such as ebooks.  Contributing Contributing is the mid level of online brand-related activeness. User-to-content and user-to-user interactions fall into this category. Here are a few examples of these activities: o Rating products or brands o Engaging in branded conversations o Joining a brand profile on social network site o Commenting on blogs, pictures, videos and any other brand-related content that others have created  Creating The highest level of brand-related activeness is creating content. People are actively producing and publishing the brand-related content that others then consume and contribute to. They write product reviews and blogs, produce and upload branded videos, music and pictures.

[18]

3.6.2 COBRA Motivations

There are several reasons why and how much are people being involved in a specific COBRA category.

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Firstly, let’s look at the general social media use motivations, why people consume social media and what satisfactions they eventually receive thereof. According to Muntiga et al. [18] study there are six categories of motivations for social media use, plus second-order motivations - called sub-motivations:

 Entertainment - considered as overall motivation. It covers gratifications that have a connection with escaping or being diverted from problems or routine, emotional release or relief, cultural enjoyment, passing time and relaxation.  Integration and social interaction - This motivation covers media gratifications that are related to other people. Connecting with friends, looking for (emotional) support, affiliation with like-minded others are examples of sub-motivations.  Personal identity - covers media gratifications that are related to the self, like reinforcing personal values, self-fulfillment or gaining recognition from peers.  Information - Most common sub-motivations are opinion and advice seeking, information exchange, voyeurism, surveillance.  Remuneration - involves people using social media because they expect to gain some kind of future reward like money, prize or personal wants such as specific software.  Empowerment - is a motivation that refers to people using social media to exert their influence or power on other people or firms.

These motivations also drive customers’ online brand-related activities but each category is driven by a different (sub-)motivation mix.

3.6.2.1 Motivations for Consuming Brand-Related Content

 Information  Entertainment  Remuneration

‘Information’ is an important motivation when it comes to consuming brand-related content. It is the driver of reading product reviews or threads on brand communities in order to make good buying decisions. It also gets people inspired, for instance when they look at the new fashion collection pictures.

Entertainment is present in all COBRA types. Sub-motivations like enjoyment, relaxation and pastime are specific for consuming brand-related content. It is consumed also by

24 people who expect remuneration, for instance, playing social media-based video game to win a valuable prize.

3.6.2.2 Motivations for Contributing to Brand-Related Content

 Personal identity  Integration and Social interaction  Entertainment

The personal identity motivation is a driver of both contributing and creating. Specifically for contributing to brand-related content there are sub-motivations: self-expression, self- presentation and self-assurance. For example people tend to like brand’s Facebook page in order to show others that ‘The brand’ is their favourite.

Integration and social interaction also drive both the creating and the contributing COBRA types. Regarding contributing to brand-related content it covers three sub- motivations: Social interaction, social identity and helping. People contribute to brand’s social media sites in order to meet and interact with others with the same interests. They also try to help and get help from each other.

3.6.2.3 Motivations for Creating Brand-Related Content

 Personal identity  Integration and social interaction  Entertainment  Empowerment

Creating and contributing is driven by the same motivations except of empowerment that is specifically related to the creating COBRA type. One’s blog can change other people’s perceptions, get them to buy a product or get a company to change course.

When creating marketing strategy it is essential to anticipate and stimulate consumers’ online brand-related activities. Knowing which motivations drive particular COBRAs could be very effectively used when setting up campaigns.

This was used by Nokia in January 2012, when they were introducing new smartphone (Lumia 800) to the Czech market. Few weeks before the introduction, Nokia identified top Czech opinion makers and exclusively gave them the new phones. Practically, few

25 minutes later, these people started posting first-hand reactions and writing brand-related blog posts. This caused, that others started to ask questions about the new Nokia phone and contributed to the brand-related content created by the opinion makers.[19]

3.7 Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM)

Traditional Word of Mouth (WoM) was defined by Johan Arndt in 1967 as ‚oral, person to person communication between a receiver and a communicator whom the receiver perceives as non-commercial, concerning a brand, a product or a service‛. *20+ There are three important parts in that definition:

1. WoM is interpersonal communication apart from mass communication such as advertising. 2. Content of the communication is commercial, focused on brands, products and services - or even on their advertising. 3. Communicators are not commercially motivated - or at least they are perceived not to be.

WoM is considered to be more effective than other marketing tools. [23] One of the reasons is that consumer-created information is more credible than seller-created information. Sellers present their product with strong emphasis on good aspects and try to hide (as much as they can) the bad ones. Consumers, in contrast, provide honest evaluations of the strengths and weaknesses of a product from the user’s viewpoint. Another reason is that this consumer-created information is more consumer oriented than seller created information. It is more understandable, familiar, and focused on the usage situations and product advantages from consumer’s perspective. It can be subjective information, consisting mainly of emotion expressions, or it can be objective information just like seller-created information. [22]

The Internet has upgraded WoM to electronic Word of Mouth (eWoM) by providing more possibilities where the communication can take place. eWom is defined as ‚any statement based on positive, neutral, or negative experiences made by potential, actual, or former consumers about a product, service, brand, or company, which is made available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet (through websites, social networks, instant messages, news feeds. . .).‛ [21] [22]

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The difference between traditional WoM and its new electronic version, is that eWoM is measurable, since comments are written on the websites and also some types of eWoM messages are controllable. For instance, it is decision of marketers whether online consumer reviews are shown on their website or not. Finally, there is credibility difference, while traditional WoM messages are direct messages from familiar people (family members or friends), eWoM content is created by unknown authors. But if an eWoM message, such as online consumer review, is persuasive and logical, consumers are more likely to believe that message. [26]

Nowadays eWoM, also called ‚online referrals‛, highly influences purchase decisions. ‚Customer know-how exchange has an impact on consumer perceptions of product value and likelihood to recommend the product, but is does not influence consumer repurchase intentions‛ *21]

3.7.1 Factors of eWoM

There are number of factors with an impact on eWoM that need to be taken into account when designing online marketing strategy and afterwards managing eWoM, namely:

 Type of eWoM - Matter of disconfirmation  Type of experience  Platforms  Quality vs Quantity

3.7.1.1 Type of eWoM

Basically there are two types of eWoM based on the effect it has on brand: positive and negative. Both are important when it comes to managing eWoM, but it has a larger impact in cases of negative eWoM, which it is greater for established websites than for unestablished ones and more influential for experience goods than for search goods. [21] [24]

3.7.1.2 Matter of Disconfirmation

From aforementioned definition of eWoM, motives to create eWoM content are dependent on ‘positive, neutral, or negative experiences’ related to a ‘product, service, brand or company’. In other words, motives are based on emotional reaction - degree of

27 satisfaction. This could be measured as the difference between a customer’s expected performance and her perception of the actual performance of a product, service, or brand. If consumer’s expectations are exceeded, they lead to a satisfied consumer; unmet expectations lead to a dissatisfied one. [21] Thereof disconfirmation of expectations dramatically affects consumer satisfaction and so the likelihood to create eWoM.

There are three disconfirmation outcomes:

 Positive disconfirmation = Expected performance < Actual performance  Negative disconfirmation = Expected performance > Actual performance  Neutral confirmation = Expected performance = Actual performance

Note: We can consider eWoM as a part of the creating brand-related content COBRA type. Thus, the motivations for creating brand-related content can also drive the creation of eWoM.

3.7.1.3 Type of Experience

Customer experiences could be divided into two main categories:

 Brand Experiences with product itself, visual identity, advertising and innovativeness of product or service compared to previous versions or competition.  Customer interface experiences - dynamic exchange of information and service between the consumer and a company face-to-face, online, via phone, email or any other way.

According to Kietzmann et al. [21] research, consumers tend to create eWoM about all brand experiences more, when they are positively disconfirmed. This suggest, that people like to be positively surprised and share this experience with others. On the other hand the negative disconfirmation must be very strong in order to motivate people to create the negative eWoM about their brand experiences.

When it comes to customer interface experiences the trend is different. In cases of negative disconfirmation, when the interaction with the brand was worse than expected, the likelihood of negative eWoM creation is very high, especially in personal-but-distant communication via email, social media and phone.

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3.7.1.4 Platforms

Another important factor is the place where consumers share eWoM. This is influenced by ‚people’s perceived ease of access to a competent contact person, the firm’s expected ability to handle feedback efficiently, or degree of comfort and experience with a platform.‛ *21+ eWoM is mostly shared on social media platforms. Kietzmann et al., who looked at the two biggest social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter, showed that Facebook is mostly the choice for sharing better-than-expected experiences. Twitter on the other hand, is the place to share eWoM from negatively disconfirmed consumers. One of the reasons might be the nature of the social media platforms. Facebook provides users with control over their postings while Twitter has a strong public nature.

The findings of Kietzmann et al. [21] study are not very much applicable to Czech republic, because of the number of users of mentioned social media platforms. While there were 3.8 million Facebook users in Czech republic in April 2013, only 150 000 people were using Twitter.[25]

Consumers share their experiences not only on traditional platforms like website or Facebook. But constantly increasing number of social media platforms gives consumers opportunities to share eWoM wherever it is comfortable and effective for them. This fact adds tremendous complexity to any marketing strategy. [21]

3.7.1.5 Quantity and Quality

We can assess the quality of eWoM content on the basis of relevance, understandability, sufficiency, and objectivity. Product review, as a form of eWoM that has noteworthy influence on purchase decisions, can be considered as high quality when it is logical, persuasive and gives reasons based on specific facts about the product. In contrast, low quality eWoM contains emotional, subjective, vacuous, no factual information that is simply making a recommendation.

Quantity, when talking about product reviews, represents the product’s popularity because it is related to the sales volume of the product.

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Park’s et al.*26+ study showed that quality of online consumer reviews has a positive effect on consumer purchasing intention, and furthermore, this intention increases along with the number of reviews - quantity.

3.7.2 Managing eWoM

As eWoM plays a major role for customers’ buying decisions, it is necessary to effectively manage it. How firms respond to eWoM has an effect on customers intention to repurchase and to provide positive referrals. It is important to be aware of the variance in eWoM types and pay close attention to eWoM to:

 minimize the risks of harmful comments  maximize the impact of helpful eWoM

For eWoM managers the key to manage eWoM is to prioritize attention: what, where, when to read and respond to eWoM and how much time to devote to any individual post. This could be done by using the knowledge about eWoM factors discussed above.

3.7.2.1 Managing Positive eWoM

Many companies are not paying enough attention to positive eWoM. They appreciate it, but they don’t use it effectively. For eWoM shared on social media, it is essential to create a dialog with the consumers, thank them for their activity and use the eWoM content for further campaigns.

3.7.2.2 Managing Negative eWoM

As negative eWoM has a larger impact on the company it is usually priority number one. To handle negative eWoM it is necessary to understand customer’s problem, try to solve it and so transform the negative eWoM into positive one. To do that it is needed to have:

 Friendly customer service - ‚Do unto your customers as you want to be treated when you are a customer.‛ *28+  Boundaries - it is not possible to accommodate all negative eWoM. It requires rules to set boundaries and agenda, then it is necessary to strictly follow them.

Prchal [27] in his presentation suggests 4 steps to transform existing negative eWoM:

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1. step - Find out motives and causes of customer’s problem by sending her a personal message via email or via social media private message. It is good to use the type of sentence: ‚Please tell me something about yourself‛. The message should contain also truthful information about yourself, the company and its situation. 2. step - Communication exhaustion - if the customer will communicate with you directly, he won’t produce any more public negative eWoM that might do harm to your company or brand. 3. step - Cooperate with the customer and provide exclusive benefits and advantages only for her. 4. step - Involve the customer into a project and give her an agenda and responsibilities.

An example to demonstrate the success of these steps is Prchal’s *27+ informational campaign for Prague’s transport enterprises (Dopravni podnik hlavniho mesta Prahy). Fundamental changes in public mass transportation in Prague were made in September 2012 and they needed to be properly communicated to the passengers. A massive campaign called: "Vždyť to jede jinam!" (C’mon it’s going wrong direction) helped people to notice the changes and also made them to post eWoM and questions on the special Facebook page dedicated to the campaign. [29] In the first month of the campaign there were hundreds of questions asked by more than 1500 people. Everything went well, strict boundaries were set and there was a friendly customer support that replied to consumers.

But there was an unexpected problem. One consumer (specifically, his name is Martin Šubrt and he became quite popular during the campaign) started to repeatedly post negative eWoM that was full of professional knowledge about the public mass transportation in Prague and appeared to be unstoppable. After tens of negative posts that were posted on Facebook timeline, one of the team members of the campaign (Marek Prchal) contacted Mr. Subrt directly via email (1. step), thanked him for his professional criticism and asked him to reveal more about himself and his carrier. Mr. Subrt replied and continued in the email communication (2. step). He was then invited to join one of the campaign events in the tram, where he also met the director of ROPID (Regional Organiser of Prague Integrated Transport) (mix of steps 3. and 4.). It all went public and photos of Mr. Subrt in the tram with the director were posted to the Facebook page. This was the moment when all the negative eWoM was transformed and then perceived by others that their opinion and criticism (if it is relevant), really matters to the enterprise.

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Figure 7 Mr. Subrt (Left) with director of ROPID (right) in tram during the campaign [27]

After this sequence of events, Mr. Subrt didn’t stop posting critical eWoM (as mentioned above, you can’t satisfy everyone), but the regularity decreased and content was written in a different, more positive-thinking style. [27] [30]

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3.8 Online marketing infographics

Figure 8 Online Marketing Theories Inforgraphics

To better understand how the basic theories and parts of online marketing come together, I have created an infographic where on the top there is the new mental model with the critical Zero Moment of Truth. Then there are approximate boundaries indicated between the model and the online marketing types and techniques. And on the bottom there are the ACT methodology phases to show how these are connected to the ZMOT model and online marketing techniques.

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4 Social Media Strategies

Despite the fact that many businesses have a social media presence, they still struggle with low effectivity in these field. For many, setting up a social media strategy, may look like an easy task ask at first, but then the results are not very satisfying. According to research conducted by Constant Contact, over 50% of small businesses need help with social media. [32]

4.1 Social Media Strategy Failures

From my point of view, according to the experiences gathered in online marketing business there are certain myths or illusions that are causing issues to the companies:

 Building up a social media strategy is easy, simple and could be done by everyone who has at least one social media profile. It might sound little too extreme, but yes, there are business owners who still think it will this way.  There is no need of technical skills. It’s enough when one has basic internet- browsing skills and can manage his social media account.  Many companies think that they don’t need to change anything just add some social media platforms to their current strategy and let one person to manage it.  Social media marketing is cheap since you don’t need to pay for social media accounts (at least not for the three most popular Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn)  Or the other extreme, the success depends only and only on how much money will company invest to social media advertising (pay-per click ads etc.)

These mind-sets are the first causes of social media strategy failures.

Another problem, that occurs far too often, is that businesses don’t have social media strategy at all, or they just think they have, but the only thing in their strategy is expanding their social media presence without any solid purpose. And this is the most important part, these so-called social strategies are not innately linked to business goals. Or even if the goals do exist, social initiatives face challenges in the form of a lack of defined strategy, governance, and funding. [34]

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Nowadays, social web is transforming how people interact, how relationships are being formed and developed and this is changing the way people socialize, work and engage with companies.

‚The new normal is that customers are leading the conversations that define your brand, competitors are crowd-sourcing ideas to bring new offerings to market and employees are using social media in all facets of their lives.‛ [33] This shift presents an opportunity. Social Business. [36]

4.2 Social Business

Altimeter company defines Social Business as: ‚The deep integration of social media and social methodologies into the organization to drive business impact.‛ [34]

In other words, Social Business takes social concepts like sharing, rating, reviewing, connecting, and collaborating to all parts of the business including customer support, marketing, the executive team and more. These days when a company has a social media strategy its concept usually looks like this:

 Company has a Facebook page, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts that are managed together, meaning they are posting the same posts (sometimes with slight changes because of for example Twitter’s 140 character limitation) on each social media.  They have also a YouTube channel to upload their videos.  They use content calendar to plan what to post a week or maximum a few months ahead.  Finally they measure basic metrics as number of likes, retweets, views and engagement.

This strategy is maybe building some engagement, but definitely it’s more alike to the interruption marketing [3] and goal of these kind of strategies does not correspond with the business goal of the company.

In case of Social Business the business goals are the main focus also with customer and customer relationships that are being the core. Every social media activity helps to meet customer expectations and achieve business goals furthermore. From a higher perspective, it helps to establish a competitive product or service. [36]

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4.2.1 Engagement in Social Business

Customers engagement or consumers’ online brand related activities (COBRAs) are one of the key elements in every social media strategy. Basic strategies are focused only on the first phases of engagement (or COBRAs) that are consumption (e.g. number of views of video) and contribution/curation (e.g. number of likes/retweets). Effective Social Business place emphasis on the creation phase and specifically on the collaboration element between customers and company, and between customers and employees.

Figure 9 Structured engagement [31]

For instance company can measure the number of submitted ideas from customers that then will help to enhance their product or service. To increase such a metric number it is necessary to know the motives of the customers to create such ideas, support them and make it easy for them to share these with the organization. It all requires collaboration with the company, with the employees throughout the whole company. Engagement in Social Business is about ‚about connecting your customers and stakeholders with the brand, product, or service, and then tapping their collective knowledge and connecting into the organization to drive innovation and beneficial change.‚ *31+

4.2.2 Marketing and Operations

Social media marketing or marketing as a function inside of the company, many times stands alone or is only vaguely connected to the other departments. Generally we can consider marketing as function or discipline within an organization that defines and shapes the customer’s expectations. On the other side, Operations, the functional team that develops or is responsible for the product or service, shapes and delivers the actual customer experience. The difference between what is expected and what is delivered (the matter of disconfirmation) is one of the important factors in customers’ content creation (eWoM creation). Social Business is the connection of marketing, operations and customers. ‚Social media marketing is most effective when the entire business is

36 responsible for the experiences and everyone within the organization is visibly responsible for the overall product or service.‛ *31+ Organization, as a social business, operates as a ‚holistic entity rather than a collection of insulated silos.‛ *31+

Figure 10 The Marketing - Operations connection [31]

4.3 Social Business Strategy

Social Business strategy is defined by Altimeter company as: ‚The set of visions, goals, plans, and resources that align social media initiatives with business objectives.‛ [34]

The strategy to be successful it requires:

1. Alignment with the strategic business goals of an organization 2. Organizational alignment and support that enables execution of that strategy

It’s substantial to realize that a fully formed, coherent and integrated social business strategy needs time to develop. The strategy changes as company goals and vision evolve over time. [34] [35]

4.3.1 Example of Social Business Strategy - Royal Dutch Shell

Shell’s primary channel is Facebook, but they also have LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Their goal is to showcase the personality of Shell in operations, drilling, retail, and careers. As their key metric is reputation that is evaluated by asking a random population on Facebook and other (also traditional) media two questions:

1. (On a scale of 1 to 5) To what extent do you think Shell is actively addressing future energy needs?

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2. To what extent do you think Shell meets its customers’ energy need in socially and environmentally responsible ways?

Shell seldom replies or engages with people on the Facebook page. This may seem wrong, but the Shell’s strategic goal priorities are different than engagement without purpose. They measure Facebook daily to see how their reputations is trending in Facebook versus other channels. Thus they can say what impact Facebook content has on their reputation. This way they can connect a measurable key performance indicator (KPI) to a business goal. [35]

4.4 Factors of Social Business Strategy

Before developing a strategy towards social business, realization about the current position and the future goal is needed. It’s not good to compare the company’s position to others very much, rather focus on the success factors of social business. There are 7 factors, that will make social business strategy successful, proposed by Li et al. [35] based on their study about how businesses were developing social media strategies and whether or not strategists aligned strategies with business goals.

The 7 factors are namely: 1. Define the overall business goals 2. Establish the long-term vision 3. Ensure executive support 4. Define the strategy roadmap 5. Establish governance and guidelines 6. Secure staff, resources, and funding 7. Invest in technology platforms that evolve

Benchmarking against these factors will help organizations invest in the efforts to evolve social media strategies into meaningful social business transformation. [35]

4.4.1 #1 Define the Overall Business Goals

The social business strategy should be based on the specific goals the company business is trying to accomplish, for instance making more revenue or increasing customer satisfaction. A good place to start is to take the company’s vision and mission statement, current strategic plan and long-term goals and think about how social media activities can

38 contribute to reach these goals at a high level. Instead of just measuring likes, share, tweets etc. it is necessary to develop social KPIs and tie them to company’s business KPIs.

Example: Organizational Strategic Goal: Decrease costs Strategic Metric: Reduce customer service costs by 10% Social Business Goal: Respond via social media to deflect from call center Social Business Metric: Decrease number of inquiries addressed via call center by 20 percent

4.4.2 #2 Establish Long Term Vision

It is not enough to have goals in place, a long-term vision is needed. The vision clearly expresses the future customer, employee and stakeholder relationships and experiences that will be the result of the social business strategy. It also ‚helps to reset culture and minimize politics - but it requires careful thought to ensure that the statement builds trust rather than engender fear and skepticism‛. *35+ Properly done, the vision is formulated as a future state that is around 3 years ahead. Such period is long enough to envision a significant change and short enough to create a plan to achieve that reality.

‚Just like a good message, the strategy has to be memorable.‛ [35] So the vision has to be something that employees, shareholders and customer can stand behind, a story that will be inspirational.

4.4.3 #3 Ensure Executive Support

In March 2013 Altimeter study showed that only 52% top executives, of surveyed companies, were informed, engaged, and aligned with their companies social strategy. [34] Many executives don’t understand social media’s potential for business impact, because they simply don’t have experience with social media themselves. It is not necessary for them to understand specifics about social media, rather is important is to show them the types of relationships, experiences and outcomes that they can bring.

Executives are instrumental in granting additional budget and resources to scale strategic social media. Depending on the scale and scope of the strategy, the engagement of executives may be just minimal, but at least at informative level.

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4.4.4 #4 Define the Strategy Roadmap

A work breakdown structure is needed to achieve the long-term vision along with business goals. Developing a roadmap means to list all potential ideas and compare them against company's readiness and ability to execute, then define what and when will be done. What company will do is equally important as what it won’t do. This kind of roadmap will then add clarity and discipline to the social business strategy.

Brainstorming social business initiatives is the first step in building a roadmap.

Example: Initiative name: Proactively address customer support issues Business goal: Reduce customer support costs Description: Look up customer conversations related to product or service issues on non- company sites (forums, blogs) and address with customer support team.

Next step is to categorise these initiatives in order to find possible dependencies and tie them better to business goals. There are 5 categories suggested by Li et al.[35] where most of the social initiatives often fall into:

 Learn - Glean insights from social engagement. Listening to customers, employees and partners, by social technologies, to get know them and their needs. These are actionable insights that can be used to make decisions. Customers increasingly expect organizations to be listening and responding, thus learn-initiatives are a must for most of the companies.  Dialog - Deepen relationships with conversations. Building relationships with customers by listening to the conversations and adding value to it. In larger companies it’s important not to forget about relationship development with employees by using enterprise social networks (ESNs)  Advocate - Enable the fans to speak on behalf of the organization. Turning customers and employees into enthusiastic fans and encourage them to, for example, post reviews to third party web sites, engage actively in social channels or participate in company made advocacy programs.  Support - Assist people and create great experience in the process. Provide customers support through social channels in (near) real-time.  Innovate - Tap the energy and ideas from others.

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Enormous opportunities to use social technologies to gather ideas and innovate and form the product or service.

After assembling all the social business initiatives, it is essential to prioritize them according to:

 capabilities of the company to accomplish them  value that it will bring to the company.

This could be done by simple denotation of high to low values or by using a five-point scoring system. Those initiatives with high capability and high value will have also the highest priority and should be executed among the first. Low capability but with high value initiatives will be considered as areas of investment. Initiatives with high capability and low value might need a closer examination to possibly increase the value for the company over time. Lastly, those with low capability and low value initiatives are not of immediate concern, but that may be activated later.

Figure 11 Prioritize Social Initiatives by Capability and Value [35]

Discovered by Altimeter, social media campaigns and activities are usually planned for 6- 12 months. For successful social business it is needed to have a strategic roadmap designed for a longer period - around 3 years. This might be good to divide to 6 month parts and fill them with social business initiatives according to the priority.

It is good to create a Gantt chart where in first year there will be initiatives with high value and high capability, but if there are any dependencies it is needed to properly address them.

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Then fill in the next two years of the chart until there are included the low-value, low- capability initiatives. Finally phase is aligning all dependencies and prerequisites. It is also important to move up and label the initiatives that are strategic to the key organizational goals.

4.4.5 #5 Establish Governance and Guidelines

With strategy roadmap in place, a good governance is needed. Otherwise, everyone will want to use social media in their own way and for their own purposes. Without organization and centralization, this will create chaos among employees and particularly among customers.

Social business companies have established a hub called centre of excellence (CoE) that help the rest of the company to understand and scale social activities. The key is to give authority and executive support to someone who will have the responsibility to set processes and policies for social activities throughout the company. Moreover the CoE will provide support training and education to the employees.

For social business strategy governance it is essential to define following guidelines and processes:

 General social media policy/guidelines  Specific playbook for social business practitioners with best practices and a description of your brand personality  Engagement triage process - a system for managing messages from followers  Risk management and social media crisis response plan  Agreement on who has decision making power

4.4.6 #6 Secure Staff, Resources, Funding

Social business strategy needs to include details about resources needed to execute the strategy. One of the crucial question here is how to get right people to the core social media team. In the early stages of social business maturity, one way is to outsource to an external agency that will then help to build develop strategic capabilities in-house.

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The first position to hire for is a social strategist, skilled in both social media and business. Implementing training programs in the organization can make then everyone helpful with social media.

Regarding funding, it is good to test strategies with pilot programs to see the results they bring but it is vital not to get stuck with them and keep moving forward.

4.4.7 #7 Invest in Technology Platforms that Map the Strategy

Everyday technology innovation often makes companies to jump immediately into technology selection and implementation. In other words it makes them to choose tactics before setting up strategy. Then these companies find themselves doing and investing into something that is beyond their interest and goals.

For organizations to make such decisions there are two basic types of tools related to social business that will help them:

 Monitoring Platforms  Social Media Management Systems

Putting the success factors into practice is ‚more a journey than a destination‛.*35+ Important is that social business strategy always stems from company’s business goals and it should be constantly evolving. This doesn’t require a full-on examination of the entire strategy but rather a quick check to make sure that all elements are still in alignment.

Some may argue that these factors and the whole concept of social business is only suitable for large companies, but the other side is true. Startups and small companies often strive with social media and this provides them a good framework for getting the wheels turning. When their business and number employees will grow, properly defined social business strategy will become more coherent and consistent.

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5 Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing is a very essential part of social business and it is necessary to have a solid strategy to understand what content is being produced and how it supports overall vision of the social business. When building such a strategy, it is important to always have in mind all the social business strategy factors. ‚All content has to work together; all the groups need to work together‛ *44+

There are 6 essential components of content marketing strategy [43]:

 Creation  Curation  Optimization  Social Media  Amplification  Analysis

5.1 Creation

Creating engaging content on a consistent basis is probably the hardest part and it cannot be accomplished by accident.

5.1.1 Know your Audience

The number one rule here is to know the audience. *45+ It’s good to start with gathering demographic and behavioral information from Google Analytics, Facebook Insights or other analytical tools. Then analyze COBRAs motivations and try to find what type of content does the audience consume. When distributing content such as ebooks or white papers a great way to get more sophisticated information from the consumers is by getting them to fill out forms or questionnaires in order to get access to the content. Another important way is to communicate with the audience and ask them for their opinions and ideas.

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5.1.2 Deliver Real Value

‚If you deliver to your audience a value they can’t get anywhere else, they will keep coming back.‛ [43] The content must be a lot of things at once:

 Timely and relevant - it has to address an issue, trend or problem that affects the reader  Varied and consistent - the subject has to be fresh, newsworthy, actual, but publishing style and frequency has to be consistent and stable.  Well written and well produced - it has to add value and include a certain expertise that is unique for the organization.  Call to action - it must somehow engage and call the audience to action such as subscribing for further content.

5.1.3 Type of Content

Besides the specific types of content mentioned in previous chapter, there are 2 general types of content depending on time and resources needed for the production:

 Brick content - larger content productions such as research papers, case studies, applications etc. It requires a larger budget, more resources and time. But this kind of content has a large payoff in terms of better SEO rankings, lifespan and metrics.  Feather content - smaller content often in form of simple text or photo content that is posted to blog and social media. It requires less time and resources to produce, but has a shorter lifespan and diminished SEO potential. [43]

5.2 Curation

Content curation is form of content marketing where company editorially collects the best content related to a specific topic, enhances that content by adding personal opinions and expertise. This kind of content then delivers added value to the target audience who consumes it after it is published. Well-executed content curation isn’t just a recyclation of content that was already published but rather a personalized retelling of a story. It is good to start with reading blogs and following experts in the company’s industry on social media and keep up with new articles and trends.

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By promoting these external stories, it allows company to get in front of their audience and be seen as a thought leader and not just someone who always promotes their own brand. [43] [44]

5.3 Optimization

‚Great content can only meet its true potential if it can be easily found and consumed.‛ *43]

Optimization of the content for search engines will help to get the content more in front for audience searching for related topics. Increasing readability and availability of the content will engage people with it and make them share it further.

5.3.1 Search Engine Optimization

‚Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s ‘natural’ or un-paid (‘organic’) search results.‛ [43] SEO helps search engine algorithms and social sites figure out why your content is relevant to your audience.

The importance in getting found in search engines is undeniable. There are people trying to get their websites to the first positions since first search engines emerged. SEO as a topic is huge, changing and innovating every day therefore only some parts and simple basics of SEO will be covered in this thesis.

5.3.1.1 On Page Optimization

One of the most important element in optimization for search engines are keywords. In the process of creating content is it good to use an analytical tool, such as Google Keyword Tool, to identify the most relevant keywords. Once these are found it, there are three important to places in content and in html code where the keywords need to be integrated:  Title tag