Lecture II: Social Media and Influencers

What is Social Media

  • a collection of software based digital technologies, usually presented as apps and websites, that provide users with digital environments in which they can send and receive digital content or information over some type of online social network (Appel et al)

Social Media Landscape

Two key aspects: Platforms and use cases

Dominant business model: Monetixation of users or audience

Social Media and Marketing

  • Digital marketing channel

  • Space where consumers spend significant parts of their lives

  • Invovles a complex set of behaviours, interactions and exchanges

  • Pervasice across geographies and cultures

Social Media: Key Emerging Themes (see reading list)

1) Omni-social presence

  • From designated platforms to embedded social media functionality

  • Broader array of functionalities

  • Intersection with most aspects of consumers’ lives

2) New forms of influencers

  • From traditional celebrities to micro influencers

  • Megaphone effect

  • Livestreaming and virtual influencers

  • Micro-celebrities to social media influencers

3) Privacy concerns

  • Eroding trust in social media platforms

  • Implications of corporations like Facebook and Google having access to personal data

4) Loneliness

  • Facebook’s mission: bring the world closer together connection

  • Loneliness epidemic is on the rise - loss of real friendships, isolation, adverse well-being

5) Integrated Customer Care

  • Companies using social media to address customer needs

  • Possibility or preemptive predictive approaches

  • Chatbots and vitual assisstants

6) Social Media as a Political Tool

  • Engage voteres on social media

  • Ethical issues - creating eho chambers

  • Political homophily - tendency to associate with those who share similar views

7) Increased Sensory Richness

  • AUgmented reality

  • Virtuaal reality

8) Social Online/Offline Integration and Complete Convergence

  • How can marketers integrate online and offline efforts

  • Offline consequences of omnichannel strategies? How do digital selves that differ from offline personas impact customer behaviours

9) Social media use by non-humans

  • Are we interacting with social bots on social media

  • Benign vs disruptive bots

  • Covert bots as a threat to metrics? Users may lose further trust in social media platforms

  • Therapy bots, bots as a consumer coach

SMI

Micro-celebrities: Ordinary individuals who gain popularity online

Social Media Influencers: Micro celebrities become SMIs when their personal brand is expanded across multiple social platforms and traditional media