social media | Custom PHD Thesis

social media

Order Description

Task 1: Listen to the MP3 recording

You need to listen to the recording and then answer the review questions below. I will upload the audio

Review Questions:

1. Why is using social media such a hit and miss event for almost every business?

2. Can you apply elements of relationship intelligence to using social media effectively?

3. Can the use of social media build positive or negative social capital, and why?

Task 2: Review your answers to Task 1 and the article by Kietzmann et al which will be attached. and then answer the three questions below:

This will build on your understanding of social media and how it can be used to develop networks.

Task 2: Review questions

1. How critical do you think it is for small businesses to utilise social media?

2. Are there any types of businesses that could survive and grow without using social media? Explain your answer

3. Do you think social media can build the same quality of social capital as face to face social interaction? Explain your answer.

Social media? Get serious! Understanding the

functional building blocks of social media

Jan H. Kietzmann

, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian P. McCarthy,

Bruno S. Silvestre

Segal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser University, 500 Granville Street, Vancouver, BC V6C 1W6,

Canada

1. Welcome to the jungle: The social

media ecology

Social media employ mobile and web-based tech-

nologies to create highly interactive platforms

via which individuals and communities share, co-

create, discuss, and modify user-generated con-

tent. Given the tremendous exposure of social me-

dia in the popular press today, it would seem that we

are in the midst of an altogether new communica-

tion landscape.

The New York Times

recently hired a

social media editor (

Nolan, 2009

); the

Catholic Press

Association (2010)

offers a webinar on how the

church can use social media; and the Governor of

California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is on Twitter

with 1.8 million followers. Even Northwest Organic

Valley brand milk cartons now display ‘find, friend,

and follow us’ slogans. But unknown to many, this

Business Horizons (2011)

, 241—251

www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor

KEYWORDS

Social media;

Social networks;

Web 2.0;

User-generated

content;

Facebook;

Twitter;

LinkedIn;

YouTube

Abstract

Traditionally, consumers used the Internet to simply expend content: they

read it, they watched it, and they used it to buy products and services. Increasingly,

however, consumers are utilizing platforms–—such as content sharing sites, blogs,

social networking, and wikis–—to create, modify, share, and discuss Internet content.

This represents the social media phenomenon, which can now significantly impact a

firm’s reputation, sales, and even survival. Yet, many executives eschew or ignore this

form of media because they don’t understand what it is, the various forms it can take,

and how to engage with it and learn. In response, we present a framework that defines

social media by using seven functional building blocks: identity, conversations,

sharing, presence, relationships, reputation, and groups. As different social media

activities are defined by the extent to which they focus on some or all of these blocks,

we explain the implications that each block can have for how firms should engage with

social media. To conclude, we present a number of recommendations regarding how

firms should develop strategies for monitoring, understanding, and responding to

different social media activities.

* Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses:

jan_kietzmann@sfu.ca

(J.H. Kietzmann),

khh5@sfu.ca

(K. Hermkens),

ian_mccarthy@sfu.ca

(I.P. McCarthy),

bruno_silvest@sfu.ca

(B.S. Silvestre).

0007-6813/$ — see front matter

doi:

10.1016/j.bushor.2011.01.005

landscape of social media sites and services started

forming more than a dozen years ago. For instance,

in 1997, the social network site Sixdegrees allowed

users to create profiles, list their friends, and add

friends-of-friends to their own lists (

Boyd & Ellison,

2008

). Sound familiar?

There currently exists a rich and diverse ecology

of social media sites, which vary in terms of their

scope and functionality. Some sites are for the

general masses, like Friendster, Hi5, and–—of

course–—Facebook, which opened only 4 years

after Sixdegrees closed its doors. Other sites, like

LinkedIn, are more focused professional networks;

in fact, Facebook started out as a niche private

network for Harvard University students. Media

sharing sites, such as MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr,

concentrate on shared videos and photos. And after

a slow start in the late 1990s, weblogs (blogs) have

become very popular, because they are easy to

create and to maintain. Their authors range from

everyday people to professional writers and celeb-

rities. Today, the resulting ‘blogosphere’ of more

than 100 million blogs and their interconnections

has become an important source of public opinion.

There are even search engines, like Technorati, that

are dedicated to searching blogs. Similarly, with the

helpofsocialnewsandbookmarkingsiteslikeReddit,

Digg, and Delicious (formerly known as Del.icio.us),

userscanranksitesbyvotingonthevalueofcontent.

Most recently, the phenomenon of micro-blogging

focuses on offering real-time updates. Twitter has

beendrivingthisdevelopmentsinceitwasfoundedin

2006. Today, more than 145 million users send on

average 90 million ‘tweets’ per day, each consisting

of 140 characters or less (

Madway, 2010

). These are

mostly short status updates of what users are doing,

wheretheyare,howtheyarefeeling,orlinkstoother

sites. In turn, Foursquare ties these real-time up-

dates into location specific information by rewarding

users for ‘checking in’ to real sites at any location

worldwide,andforleavingtheircommentsforothers

to view.

With this rise in social media, it appears that

corporate communication has been democratized.

The power has been taken from those in marketing

and public relations by the individuals and commu-

nities that create, share, and consume blogs,

tweets, Facebook entries, movies, pictures, and

so forth. Communication about brands happens,

with or without permission of the firms in question.

It is now up to firms to decide if they want to get

serious about social media and participate in this

communication, or continue to ignore it. Both have

a tremendous impact.

For instance, when United Airlines broke Dave

Carroll’s guitar in 2008, it likely was not the first

time a musical instrument had been broken during

the course of a flight. It was, however, probably the

first time that the owner of the instrument recorded

a music video about the experience and posted it on

YouTube. The video, portraying United in a very

unfavorable light, went ‘viral’ and has been viewed

almost 9.5 million times (

Carroll, 2009

). Amongst

other highlights, United Breaks Guitars was cited by

Time.com as one of YouTube’s best videos, and even

discussed by Wolf Blitzer on television’s CNN Situa-

tion Room. Such attention led to a brand and public

relations crisis for United, as the story was cheered

on by a global community of passengers who under-

stood all too well the frustrations of dealing with

airline service failures. United did not respond and,

to this day, an Internet search of the term ‘United’

returns Carroll’s damaging YouTube video link at the

top of the results list. This high profile example

illustrates how ill-prepared firms can be in dealing

with social media conversations about them. As BBC

Business Editor Tim

Weber (2010)

explains: ‘‘These

days, one witty tweet, one clever blog post, one

devastating video–—forwarded to hundreds of

friends at the click of a mouse–—can snowball and

kill a product or damage a company’s share price.’’

Although it is clear that–—for better or for worse–—

social media is very powerful, many executives are

reluctant or unable to develop strategies and allo-

cate resources to engage effectively with social

media. Consequently, firms regularly ignore or mis-

manage the opportunities and threats presented by

creative consumers (

Berthon, Pitt, McCarthy, &

Kates, 2007

). One reason behind this ineptitude is

a lack of understanding regarding what social media

are, and the various forms they can take (

Kaplan &

Haenlein, 2010

). To help address this gap in knowl-

edge, we herein present and illustrate a honeycomb

framework of seven social media building blocks.

Utilized individually and together, these blocks can

help mangers make sense of the social media ecolo-

gy, and to understand their audience and their

engagement needs. In true social media fashion,

the origins of this framework can be attributed to

a number of bloggers: principally, Gene

Smith (2007)

of the Atomiq.org, who developed and combined

ideas discussed by Matt

Webb (2004)

of intercon-

nect.org; Stewart

Butterfield (2003)

of sylloge.com;

and

Peter Morville (2004)

of semanticstudios.com.

We have taken their ideas and advanced them in

four ways, each of which forms a part of our article.

In Section

, we explain how executives would

use the framework to understand the functional

traits of different social media activities, and dis-

cuss and illustrate the fundamental implications

that each block presents to firms as they seek to

fathom the engagement needs of their social media

242

J.H. Kietzmann et al.

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