The Role of Social Media in Marketing

Maersk line is one of the few businesses to business companies which has managed to ensure that it has a large social media presence. The organization has successfully managed to integrate social media into its marketing mix which has enabled it to have a large number of followers on social media and to be the top in the shipping industry.

Following its success, there are elements which Maersk line used in its social media campaign that applies to other areas within Maersk or to other organizations in the same or different industry. The first task that needs to be carried out is coming up with a plan; this is what Maersk did. They came up with a plan focusing on customer service, communications, usage and sales. The main goal should be to get closer to the customer while at the same time focusing on other areas of the business.

Research is the other practice that needs to be carried out. The company needs to research the organization's customers and which social media platform they need to venture out first. The research should also be focused on the competition. What Wichmann for Maersk line is that he conducted research which enabled him to come up with a formula the 1500% ROI which determined Facebooks engagement in comparison to its competitors (Katona, 2014).

The corporation should also not follow the conventional ways in which business carry out their social media campaigns. After carrying out the research, they should be able to determine which social media site works best to their advantage. For instance what Maersk line did was to begin first with Facebook as opposed to other businesses which are focus more on google+, blogs or linked in (Katona, 2014).

The organization needs to determine the type of message that they will be posting on their social media accounts. They need to study the characteristics of the users of the different sites to guide them on what they will post. For instance, Instagram should be for posting pictures. A similar tactic was carried out for Maersk whereby they posted different information on the different social media platforms based on the characteristics of the users. They also need to come up with a team which handles the social media accounts. The team ought to be familiar with the different social media websites. They need to focus more on engaging their customers.

The campaign elements and the landscape overview

The campaign elements will assist an organization in determining the type of information that should be posted on the different social media sites. The research conducted enables the organization to determine which social media platforms are currently the most popular in the digital world. After determining the most popular social media websites, they will determine what type of information that they need to post on the different social media accounts to engage with their customers. Since different platforms tend to have different users.

              Not following the conventional ways in which marketing is carried out is linked to the social media landscape, this is because social media is continuall (Katona, 2014)y changing and following the traditional forms of marketing will not yield the same results on social media. The team of experts employed is efficient in determining what is trending and how they can tailor information to engage with their customers more.

References

Katona, Zsolt, and Miklos Sarvary (2014). Maersk Line: B2B Social Media—“It's Communication, Not Marketing. California management review 56, no. 3, 142-156.