Social media plan

Case: Company X
Rouhgandom, Sofia

2019 Laurea
Laurea University of Applied Sciences

Social media plan

Case: Company XCase: Company X

Sofia RouhgandomSofia
Rouhgandom
Degree Programme in Business
Management
Bachelor’s Thesis
January,2019 2019
Laurea University of Applied Sciences Abstract
Degree Programme in Business Management
Degree Programme in Business Management

Sofia Rouhgandom

Case: Company X

Year 2019 2019 Pages 52

The subject of this bachelor’s thesis is social media plan for case company X (an
existing company). This study will focus on how to create interesting organic post that
engages the current target group and to reach more potential followers. Furthermore,
a case study was conducted of the case company X. The objective was to implement a
deeper understanding of the company’s Instagram and Facebook marketing. As well as
conduct a case study that the case company can use in the future.

The theoretical part of the research consists relevant knowledge about social media
marketing in Instagram and Facebook and content marketing for businesses. Followed
by guidance on how to create successfully marketing in Instagram and Facebook. The
theoretical part applies theoretical and knowledge background about social media. The
figures in the thesis were used to present and clarify the findings of the study .

The empirical part analyses and reviews the current situation of the case company’s
Instagram and Facebook profiles. The part outlines new ideas of how the company can
develop their social media marketing and create more engaging content for its target
audience. The thesis concludes to conclusion on the main findings of the case study.
The thesis will provide development ideas for the case company. The idea and the
need for this thesis came in co-operation with the case company. While the author was
working in the company as an intern, the author got good background knowledge for
this thesis.

Nevertheless, the case company has already good content on their social media
channels, there is also room for improvement. The effort to be more visible on social
media channels is quite low. This is due to lack of a strong and structured social media
marketing strategy.

According to the analysis, the company could improve its social media channels by
being more active in social media channels. Meaning they could follow similar kind of
accounts especially in Instagram, comment and like another user’s content. By doing so
they would gain a bigger audience in their own channels and they would have more
viewers also on their Instagram stories. The case company should improve its content
posting by investing more time on focusing in the content and posting consistently in
both of their channels. The use of a brand related hashtags would be more effective
and creating a specific hashtag which allows users and customers to share their
experiences and to be seen. When the company decides to use hashtags, it would
create more awareness and raise its brand awareness of their company.

Keywords: Social media marketing, social media metrics, planning and strategy,
qualitative, data, customer engagement
Table of Contents

1 Introduction ........................................................................................... 6
1.1 Case company X .............................................................................. 6
1.2 The purpose of the thesis................................................................... 7
1.3 Research question ........................................................................... 7
1.4 The structure of the thesis ................................................................. 7
1.5 Key definitions ............................................................................... 8
1.6 Theoretical background & knowledge base .............................................. 9
2 Social media marketing .............................................................................. 9
2.1 Benefits of social media marketing ..................................................... 11
2.2 Challenges facing marketing leaders (in social media marketing) .................. 12
2.3 Social media trends in 2018 .............................................................. 14
2.4 Engagement ................................................................................ 15
2.5 Platforms ................................................................................... 16
3 Content marketing .................................................................................. 18
3.1 Strategy and planning ..................................................................... 20
3.2 Situational analysis ........................................................................ 22
3.3 Objectives and goals ...................................................................... 22
3.4 Control and actions ........................................................................ 24
3.5 Social media metrics ...................................................................... 24
3.5.1 KPIs .................................................................................. 25
3.5.2 Tools ................................................................................. 26
4 Instagram and Facebook marketing .............................................................. 29
4.1 Anatomy of successful post ............................................................... 30
4.2 How to increase customer loyalty ....................................................... 33
4.3 How to use hashtags ....................................................................... 33
4.4 Paid, organic and earned media ......................................................... 34
5 Methodology ......................................................................................... 36
5.1 Methods ..................................................................................... 36
5.2 Reliability and Validity .................................................................... 37
6 Empirical part ....................................................................................... 37
6.1 Target reach of the test period .......................................................... 38
6.2 Results of the test period................................................................. 39
6.3 Suggestions for a social media plan for the case company ........................... 39
7 Conclusion ........................................................................................... 43
7.1 Main findings ............................................................................... 43
7.2 Suggestion for further research .......................................................... 45
Figures ..................................................................................................... 50
1 Introduction

Social media channels are becoming a bigger part of consumers’ daily lives. People are
looking for more information about companies online and making their purchasing decision
based on the information found on their websites. This is why it has become even more
important for companies to be visible and active on their social media channels. In marketing
terms this means that companies have the possibility to engage and communicate with their
customers in with greater reach and efficacy.

Various channels offer company accounts the option of organic posts and boosted posts. And
organic posts are something the company has not paid for specifically and the users come
across the content naturally. Boosted posts refer to content that businesses’ have paid for to
reach a much larger audience than organic posts would. Furthermore, boosted posts are
shown as sponsored in the users’ feeds. (Outbound Engine, 2018).

Channels like Facebook and Instagram have changed their algorithms to adjust businesses’
posts from inundating people’s feeds, making organic reach limited. Most likely just a small
part of the company’s followers will actually see the post. Companies use the boosted posts
to reach all of their followers and make it more specific for example; age, gender and
location can be targeted for a much larger audience than organic posts otherwise would.

Companies have the power to create any type of content they want, but along with that they
should consider what their audience is interested in seeing in order to get them fully
engaged. Additionally, nowadays users are more open about expressing their experiences on
social media platforms. This gives free and great unbiased feedback to the companies to use
when wanting to improve their strategy or services. This forces companies to actively interact
with its customers. (Trong, 2015).

1.1 Case company X

Case company X is a small to medium-size Finnish travel group company from Finland. The
company offers premium outbound services mostly to Southern Europe, with unique options
for both family holidays and business trips. Instead of traditional travel packages and hotel
travelling.

The company uses digital marketing in their strategy. Outbound service in company x refers
to them sending newsletters every once in a while, via email to their contacts. Additionally,
them being available to the customer throughout the whole process from the first contact
point when a customer sends an inquiry of a certain villa, through the booking process, and
all the way to the stay at the villa. Throughout the entire process, the guest can rest assured
that they can contact the company at any point.

The busiest time for the company is always beginning of the year in January when people
start to think and plan their next trip up until end of September. This is the time when
consumers think or plan their next upcoming summer or winter holiday, because normally the
holidays are booked 4-8 weeks before. The busiest travel time for the customer takes place
from April until October.
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Case company’s typical customer is a consumer passenger that is travelling with their family
or a group of friends. The marketing strategy has been focused only on digital marketing and
visual marketing on their own social media channels Facebook and Instagram.

1.2 The purpose of the thesis

The purpose of the thesis is to provide the case company insight into, how they should create
interesting that engages the current target group the best and reach more customers.

The aim is to build a social media plan, which would focus on how to find means for engaging
current target group the best way and reach more customers. The main idea is to get a
deeper understanding of the Instagram and Facebook marketing through organic or also
known as natural posts, and its effects on the company’s visibility.

The goal of the new social media plan is to provide the case company with useful suggestions
on how they can improve their Instagram and Facebook profile. The new social media plan
will help with content marketing and customer engagement. Additionally, help the case
company to recognise the strengths and areas for improvement in their current social media
plan in order to get more followers and engagement organically. The idea and the need for
this thesis came in co-operation with the case company. While the author was working in the
company as an intern, the author got good background knowledge for this thesis.

As a result of this thesis, the case company will gain a new social media plan with deeper
understanding of new marketing trends and engagement methods on Instagram and Facebook.

1.3 Research question

The objective of the thesis is to study and research social media planning, how to create a
strong social media strategy as well as organic post indicators. In addition, carrying out a two-
week test period to test different posts. The theoretical framework and the results of the
two-week test period are used to provide Case company X with better understanding and
recommendations.

Which will help with deeper understanding of what style of content engages and attracts their
followers on their social media channels Facebook and Instagram. This will help the case
company to change and improve their way of posting.

• How do active organic posts in social media channels affect a company’s

visibility?

1.4 The structure of the thesis

The thesis consists of six main chapters. Under each main chapter there are subchapters that
explore the topic in more detail. The main chapters are introduction, social media marketing,
content marketing, Instagram and Facebook marketing, methodology and conclusion. The
introduction consists of a general overview of the thesis topic and the case company.

The Social media marketing covers theoretical background and knowledge base which is
related to the thesis. This chapter provides the literature review on topics that are relevant
in the thesis. The second part explains the basics of social media marketing, benefits and
 8

challenges of marketing as well as the concept of engagement and platforms. The third part
includes theory about content marketing and planning & strategy. Furthermore, the third part
explains basic concept of social media metrics and different measurement methods.

The Instagram and Facebook marketing chapter discusses about the basic concepts of
marketing in those channels. The anatomy of posts will be explained next along with relevant
subchapters about how to increase customer loyalty and how to use hashtags along with three
different media types.

The empirical part chapter covers the research and developing methods used in the
conduction of the thesis. The target reach chapter introduces the target reach of the market
and its purpose. Next along is explained the methodology and research process of the case
study. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and provides development suggestions for
the case company.

1.5 Key definitions

Boosted posts in social media refer to posts that are paid and are shown as adds, this way it
can be distributed to a certain target group. (Facebook Business, 2019)

Social media “is the umbrella term for web-based software and services that allow users to
come together online and exchange, discuss, communicate and participate in any form of
social interaction. That interaction can encompass text, audio, images, video and other
media, individually or in any combination” (Ryan & Jones 2012, 152-153).

Social media marketing “also called SMM is the use of social media websites and social
networks to market a company`s products and services. Social media marketing provides
companies with a way to reach new customers, engage with existing customers and promote
its desired culture, mission or tone” (Investopedia, 2018).

Content marketing “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating

and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly
defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action” (Content Marketing
Institute, 2018).

Visual marketing “is about connecting marketing messages to images, whether they are
photos, graphics, infographics, videos, logos, signs, and more. Visual marketing is about
making an object, rather than exclusively text, the center of your message” (Study.com,
2018).

SOSTAC is a planning model, originally developed in the 1990s to help with marketing
planning by Paul Smith. SOSTAC stands for situation, objectives, strategy, tactics, action and
control. (Chaffey, 2016).

Engagement marketing “is a marketing strategy that invites and encourages consumers to
participate in the evolution of a brand. Ultimately, engagement marketing attempts to
connect consumers more strongly with brands by “engaging” them in a dialogue and a two-
way, cooperative interaction.

Follower refers to someone who subscribes to receive your updates on social media sites.
(Beal, 2018).
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Organic reach in social media refers to the number of people who have seen your posts
through unpaid distribution naturally. (Burke, 2018).

Organic post are any posts that are on social media without paid promotion. Meaning when
people who happened to be on social media when a business posted about something and saw
it organically. (Teller, 2019).

Paid posts Any post in your news feed that has the “Sponsored” tag is paid social media.
If you then “like” that post, that is considered a paid reaction. Paid social media can be
targeted by a variety of demographic and behavioural factors. (Advanced Ohio, 2018).

Business strategy refers to a goal which is set out to accomplish the objectives and
additionally it is long-term business plan that will cover for about 3-5 years. (Business case
studies, 2017).

Strategy means a long-term plan which is set out to accomplish the goals and aims. (Business
case studies, 2017).

Hashtag represented by the “#”, followed by a word or several words all written without any
space in between. Hashtags are most commonly used in social media channels which helps
others find content with interest in the same topic. (Small business trends, 2018).

Instagram Insights helps the business users to learn more about their followers and the
people interacting with their business on Instagram. The users will find insights such as
gender, age range, location and how well their posts are doing. Insights and metrics include
paid activity as well. (HelpInstagram.com, 2019).

Facebook Insights Overview provides a synopsis of the overall performance of a Facebook

Page. Social marketing metrics such as People Engaged, Page Fans, Page Impressions, Total
Reach, Page Stories, Post Clicks and Likes in a variety trend graphs and numeric elements.
(Rankranger.com, 2019).

1.6 Theoretical background & knowledge base

This chapter presents the core concepts and theories that are included in the thesis process.
First concepts of social media marketing, benefits & challenges of marketing and trends. In
addition, as well as engagement and platforms will be presented. The concept of content
marketing will be presented next. Different stages of planning and strategy will be described
next after which the different social media metrics will be presented.

2 Social media marketing

This part will explore social media in more details. The author will find information from
academic literature and internet sources. The author will also discuss about different types of
models and theories which will be analysed and applied in the case study. This will help to
give the author the knowledge she needs to understand.

In the theoretical part the author discusses what social media is and the importance of
content marketing. Along with a short introduction of each platform that the case company X
is using. Other key concepts that are discussed in the theoretical part are Instagram and
Facebook marketing, how to increase followers and current and upcoming trends.
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Social media marketing (SMM) “is the business function that identifies unfulfilled needs and
wants, defines and measures their magnitude and potential profitability, determines which
target markets the organization can best serve, decides on appropriate products, services,
and programs to serve these chosen markets, and calls upon everyone in the organization to
think and serve the customer.” (Kotler 2003, Introduction).

Marketing is something that every company has to do in order to sell their products and the
answer to how to compete on bases other than price. Because of overcapacity, marketing has
become more important than ever. Marketing is the company’s customer manufacturing
department. (Kotler 2003, Introduction).

In 2008 several different names were used for the new development phase, such as Next Net,
Live Web, social internet, community Internet and the most known one was Web 2.0, which
Tim O`Reilly started using in 2004. (Salmenkivi & Nyman 2008, 36-37). In order for a website
to be a social media channel or a forum online three aspects are required; connection
(telecommunication/channel), content and social interaction. (Dann & Dann 2011, 345).

“Marketing is a large process of systematically figuring out what to make, how to bring it to
the customer’s attention and easy access, and how to keep the customer wanting to buy more
from you.” (Kotler, 2003).

Most companies use social media as a part of their marketing method which is very beneficial
for the company because they hear their consumers’ needs and wants. And of course,
companies use it also to for example getting more publicity, engage with their followers and
create customers loyalty. (Lovett, 2017).

In the past years of social media’s existence, social media marketing has grown rapidly
compared to its low-cost and high-potential of gains. For example, managing customers
relationships, promoting brands products, developing engagement and gaining customer
attention.

“It is important to remember that social media are not a substitute for traditional marketing
communications, but they are also more than a complement to traditional methods. As shown
below (figure 1: The evolution of marketing communications), the shift from traditional to
“tradigital” to social media is illustrated. (Tuten & Solomon, 2015).
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Figure 1: The Evolution of Marketing Communications (Tuten & Solomon, 2015)

2.1 Benefits of social media marketing

Social media is where people have natural, genuine conversations between other people
about something of mutual interest, a conversation built on thoughts and experiences of the
participants. It’s about sharing and influencing other people by using social media to reach
millions of users. (Evans 2008, 31).

The most commonly used social media most used services are community services. Which are
for example. Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat,
YouTube and other blog channels like WordPress. The popularity of social media channels is
constantly changing. Every year there are new trends and new platforms being created to
replace the platforms that cannot keep up with the change or the ones dying. Of the world’s
population (7.5 billion) half (50%) use the network and almost half of them (46%) use the
Internet on mobile devices. (The Statistics Portal, 2017).

According to Kusinitz (2017), the statistics illustrate, that 92% of marketers in 2014 declared
that marketing through social media channels had an important effect to their business. 80%
of which illustrates that their efforts increased the traffic numbers to their website.

Additionally, according to Social Media Examiner shows that substantial number of marketers
are currently active in social media but aren’t sure which tools to choose. This means that
the company does not have a strong marketing strategy. These statistics demonstrate that
marketers need more guidance on how and which tools to use to become successful and have
strong marketing skills that is needed.
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As shown below (Figure 2), the first benefit when a company decides to market through social
media is, that they reduce substantially on their marketing expenses (50%). Other benefits
are improved sales, establishing thought leadership and grown business partnerships, along
with others.

Figure 2: Benefits of social media marketing (Google-search, 2016)

There are many benefiting aspects when marketing online as mentioned before. According to
DeMers (2014), the three most beneficial aspects that a company can gain are: getting
increased brand recognition. This means that the more visible your brand is online and active
the bigger the chances are for a new customer to find you, visit your account and maybe even
the company’s website.

The second most beneficial gain is improved brand loyalty. This is an important part of social
media marketing plan. The more brands engage and are active for example by posting
through their channels the more they are able to get higher loyalty from their customer. The
third gain is more opportunities to convert.

Meaning every time brands post an image or video on their channels gives their followers the
opportunity to react by commenting or liking the content. That reacting could possibly lead
to a conversation with the follower or a website visit which will eventually increase the
engagement on the channels. When using the right tools and right channels social media
marketing can lead to increasing the company’s image, new customers and more traffic on
the website along the way.

2.2 Challenges facing marketing leaders (in social media marketing)

Every company faces different challenges with marketing on social media. While some
companies are looking for a good social media marketer others on the other hand are looking
for the right tools for their need. (Kolowich, 2018). Additionally, marketers have to think how
 13

to create content that attracts and keeps the customers engaged with also of course bringing
revenue for the company. In the end, every company has typically the same goal to reach in
marketing. (Davis, 2018).

In a recent survey Rayden (2018) studied, to find out and understand the bigger challenges
that the marketing leader are facing in their marketing strategies. The group had surveyed
315 senior marketers for this study, each with 8 or more years of working experience in their
own field. The reason for this was, because they wanted to collect information from the
people in the business who are actively involved in their companies existing marketing
strategy today.

“The study revealed a number of very interesting findings.” (Rayden 2018). The key findings
from this study where based on issues that have been around for years now, which are;
integration, alignment, innovation, modern marketing strategies and client satisfaction. For
example, the survey shows that 49% of the marketers expressed that they are not content
with how the information is connected to the marketing decisions and that they could use it
more effectively. Additionally, the survey reveals that “41% of marketers are only more or
less satisfied with their agency experience and 36% aren’t at all satisfied.” (Rayden, 2018).

Figure 3: What are your company’s top marketing challenges? (The State of Inbound Report,
2017)

The figure 3 above demonstrates data about the most common challenging problems that
companies faced during 2017. (State of Inbound report, 2018). The author will explain about
the problems in more detail below.
 14

The biggest and most common problem with 63% of companies is generating traffic and leads.
As competition gets harder each year for businesses with different platforms to choose from
where to publish content in as well as new ways to promote.

Companies should create high-quality content and the type of content that interest their
customers because consumers are being overwhelmed with information every day in their
social media news feeds or by email.

The second problem which 40 % of companies had was the problem of providing the ROI
(return on investment) of marketing activities. This has been a challenge now for years and it
will keep being a problem but also it helps marketers to understand which campaigns work
and which do not and which type of content attracts most of their customers. The third
problem was 30% of company’s marketers face a problem with securing enough budget for
marketing, which can be even bigger problem for smaller companies that have a limited
amount of money in the beginning. (Kolowich, 2018).

Other common problems are finding the right tools to use in the marketing strategy and
managing website which 26% of companies face. Then 21% face the problem of targeting
content for an international audience, this is depending on whether your target customer
group is national or global. And some smaller problems where training a team (19%), hiring
top talent (16%) and finding an executive sponsor (7%). (Kolowich, 2018).

2.3 Social media trends in 2018

The world of social media is effective and in constant change every year with new trends.
Which means that it can be difficult to keep up with. Social media has become an important
factor to every company’s marketing mix. The evolution of SEO brings new challenges for
other companies. As Google, Facebook and Amazon are creating more updates and AI-driven
technology. Other smaller companies have more pressure to be more creative in their field.
(Marinucci, 2018).

This year the company’s marketers should focus on five main social media trends that have
taken over 2018. These trends are organic reach, live streaming, influencer marketing,
chatbots and ephemeral content. (Kim, 2018). By applying these trends companies will refine
their marketing plan strategy in new way and keep up with the trends that the consumers are
also expecting. The author will explain in more detail shortly about each trend below.

Organic reach is something that many companies are willing to invest their time and focusing
on. Even though Facebook changed its algorithmic this year it should not stop companies from
continuing to post organic content, but on the contrary, they should create more valuable
content and engage more with their followers, that creates a connection between the
company’s goals and at the same time customers’ needs and wants. (Marinucci, 2018).

In 2017 live streaming functionality was added to Instagram and Facebook. This function
allows the users to broadcast themselves live and ending the live stream immediately after
ending the function. Instagram launched this function to compete with Snapchat and it didn’t
take long for it to become successful and gain more active daily users than Snapchat. Live
streaming has of course it’s benefits to businesses. For example, companies can use the
function to live stream their events, live stream the launch of a product or show how
customer can purchase their products. By live streaming companies usually get direct
messages or comment which leads to engagement with customers. (Kim, 2018).
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Influencer marketing has been a trend for a while now. The reasons why it stays in the trends
for 2018 also is because it is the fastest growing marketing channels in different social media
platforms and blogs. It is important when companies choose to use an influencer to choose a
right influencer that corresponds to the image and values of the company. Make sure when
approaching influencers to personalize your message to stand out, because if you are
approaching a famous influencer it is most likely that the person gets at least couple of
brands approaching them with offer per week. (Kim, 2018).

Chatbots are real-time engagement that marketers use to answer customer service questions
fast as possible. Chatbots have been in use also last year but in 2018 it seems to point toward
another period of growth. According to York (2018), on Facebook Messenger, there is 100,000
chatbots currently. The chatbots are gathering information, giving product guidance and
taking orders from customers.

Ephemeral content refers to any content (photos or videos) that are available for other users
to see for a certain amount of time. This style of marketing is becoming more and more
famous especially in Instagram which is by the name Instagram story where companies can
show for example what happens in the office when creating the next product or just wishing
happy holidays to the followers. (Marinucci, 2018).

Instagram stories are a great way to engage with customers, stay authentic, or teach your
followers something new about the company. The number of companies who are
implementing chatbots is increasing and every company is customizing their chatbots to
answer to their questions.

2.4 Engagement

This subchapter will explain what is social media engagement, the different forms it takes
and its importance to social media marketers.

“Social media engagement measures the public shares, likes and comments for an online
business’ social media efforts. Engagement has historically been a common metric for
evaluating social media performance but doesn’t necessarily translate to sales.” (Big
commerce, 2018). This measure covers up the actions and interactions that the users have
with the company’s social media content. The measure shows the company that the user is
interested in the post by actions such as sharing or liking the post. (Morse, 2016).

In Instagram 72% of users’ have reported that, they have made a decision to purchase an item
or a service while browsing the app. This means that companies should take advantage of
engagement in their marketing strategy. Nowadays those companies not using this method are
wasting an opportunity that they could use daily in their marketing. This is why it makes
sense for most brands to do marketing in this platform. (Smith, 2018).

Social media engagement takes many forms. From customers perspective, engagement means
the behavioural display of a brand or a firm. When customers are engaged to a brand or firm,
they might exhibit word-of-mouth behaviour, recommend or write about it in their blog.
Furthermore, they are not only sharing their thoughts to others, they become brand
ambassadors. (Tuten & Solomon, 2015).

From a company perspective, engagement in social media channels means companies can
engage their customers in different ways. For instance, companies can come up with their
own branded hashtag that they would use regularly in their organic posts.
 16

Essentially this would increase the number of followers and the number of customer
experience shares with the hashtag. (Sprout social, 2018). By doing this, brands want at least
friend, follow, or like the brand’s social channel.

According to Harvard business review, R. Wang (2012), without engaging the customers, the
influence of brands will continue to decline. Improved engagement creates business value and
strategic differentiation and technology is enabling a shift from transaction to engagement.

Figure 4: The Engagement Food Chain (Tuten & Solomon, 2015)

Figure 4 above demonstrates the level of engagement from the consumer’s level of interest
with the brand. There are nine (9) levels of engagement, which are illustrated in figure and
the engagement level starts from “Saw” and ends at “Recommendations”.

2.5 Platforms

This subchapter will discuss about channels and then two social media platforms that this
study focuses on.

Channels, also known as platforms are different social media networking apps, such as
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat and many more. People have natural,
genuine conversations between other people about something of mutual interest, a
conversation built on thoughts and experiences of the participants. It’s about sharing and
influencing other people by using social media to reach millions of users. (Evans 2008, 31).

The most commonly used channels are community services. The popularity of social media
channels is in constant change, every year new platforms are being created to replace the
ones that cannot adapt to the new trends. Of the world’s population (7.5 billion) half (50%)
 17

use the network and almost half of them (46%) use the Internet on mobile devices. (The
Statistics Portal, 2017).

Figure 5: Most popular social networks worldwide, ranked by number of active users in
millions (Statista, 2018)

Figure 5 illustrates the most popular social network worldwide ranked by the number of their
active users. In the figure, it is illustrated that the three biggest social media platforms are
Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. When not counting WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and
WeChat due to a different usage purpose.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is a social utility that offers its users interactions for example; real time texting,
inviting to events, content sharing of images. Furthermore, games, music and of course every
day the opportunity to share what you are thinking. In many cases Facebook is considered to
be the most important one of the social media platforms based on global reach and total
active users. One of these reasons for this is that the platform had in the second quarter of
2018, 2.23 billion monthly active users. Active users are those which have logged in to
Facebook during the last 30 days. (Statista, 2018). Facebook gives businesses a channel to
market themselves, connect with people and engage their customers.
 18

INSTAGRAM

Instagram is a free photo and video sharing platform founded in 2010. According to Instagram
(2018), “The app is available on Apple iOS, Android and Windows Phone. People can upload
photos or videos to the service and share them with their followers or with a select group of
friends. They can also view, comment and like posts shared by their friends on Instagram.
Anyone 13 (thirteen) and older can create an account by registering an email address and
selecting a username.”

Instagram’s main purpose is to share and view photos and videos of the people that you are
following with a mobile device. The material that users share can be edited with filters and
stickers that Instagram offers. After that the material will be shared directly with their
friends and followers on the social media network. The platform has many elements of how it
works. Users can interact with each other by liking photos or videos and tag other users in
their posts.

Additionally, users can send each other direct messages (DMs) or tag other users in the
comment section of another user. As well as users can decide whether they want their
profiles to be public or private. Having a public profile means that every who has an
Instagram account can see what you have posted. On the other hand, having a private
account means that anyone that wants to see your what you have posted must send you a
follow request. This gives the users the option of choosing who can follow the user and who
cannot. In June 2018, the app has more than 1 billion monthly active users. In June 2018, the
app has more than 1 billion monthly active users. (Statista, 2018).

3 Content marketing

This subchapter will explain what content marketing is and its role in social media marketing.
Different zones of social media and different formats of content will be discussed as well
briefly because it is relevant when creating content.

Tuten & Solomon (2015), refers content is the unit value in a social community, akin to the
dollar in our economy. It provides a social object for community participation. Its importance
is the reason content marketing has evolved as a core aspect of marketing communications.

In content marketing, there are four zones of social media. Before publishing content,
companies have to decide which zone fits their content the best. These four zones are, social
community, social publishing, social commerce and social entertainment. Each zone has its
one type of channels that allows people and companies to publish specific type of content.
(Tuten & Solomon 2015, 166).

• Social Community: sharing, socializing and conversing. For example, Facebook,

Instagram and WhatsApp.
• Social Publishing: editorial, commercial, user-generated. For example, Twitter,
YouTube and Blogs.
• Social Commerce: CRM/service, retailing, sales and human resources. For example,
shopping relates apps and deal sites.
 19

• Social Entertainment: games, music and art. For example, Facebook games (Candy
crush) and Spotify.

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing

valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly and ultimately, to
drive profitable customer action.” (Content marketing institute 2018.) Furthermore,
delivering information that helps the audience, to understand issues or adds value by
providing useful and relevant information. Essentially, content marketing is a relatively new
construct for an age-old idea: Provide people useful or valuable information, and they will
seek you out. (Gattis 2014, 52).

To make successful content, companies’ must know first who are they targeting and what
they want to achieve with that audience. Having a develop plan makes the content more
effective, it also streamlines execution. In the long term, it helps and makes the ongoing
content marketing process much more manageable. (Gattis 2014, 53).

The success or failure of the company’s online communication depends to a significant extent
on the quality of its content marketing. The digital marketers should analyse their target in
order to adapt their content and to choose the right way of promoting it. (Baltes, 2015).

According to Content Marketing Institute, the importance of content marketing is growing, as

70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago.

Developing and organizing content to post on social media platforms has several guidelines
that companies should consider. For example, the content has to match and follow the
brand’s over all image and strategic objectives that they have set for the company.

According to Tuten & Solomon (2015, 167), content can include different things for example,
opinions, information, fashion photos, advice or art. Social media content can be published
for many reasons and, such as a news story or a broadcast commercial or something that the
company has produced and published entirely originally. Companies can also publish the
content in a various of different formats such as:

• Blog posts and features articles

• Microblog posts
• Press releases
• White papers, case studies, and e-books
• Newsletters
• Videos
• Webinars and presentations
• Podcasts
• Photos

Contents that are published can be any of these formats mentioned above and many more
that are not mentioned on the list.
 20

3.1 Strategy and planning

This subchapter will explain the steps that should be taken into consideration when planning
a social media marketing strategy. Additionally, what needs to be done before implementing
a successful marketing plan.

According to Tuten & Solomon (2015, 44), strategic planning is the process of four steps;
identifying objectives to accomplish, deciding how to accomplish those objectives with
specific strategies and tactics, implementing the actions that make the plan come to life, and
measuring how well the plan met the objectives.

Marketers must learn to see how the business works from the customers side and their needs
when it comes to creating content. In traditional marketing (Outbound: TV, printed content,
radio) the communication is on-way due to its nature. On the other hand, online the
communication is two sided (Inbound) which means the consumers can give easily feedback
about the content and about the company. (Kananen 2018, 72).

Marketing planning refers to a plan that is written down and formalized. A marketing plan
includes the details of the strategy for product, pricing, distribution and promotional stages
that will help implementing the questions to achieve specific marketing objectives. (Tuten &
Solomon 2015, 44).

Before starting to develop a marketing plan, a company should think about five stages, that
will form the foundation of the marketing strategy which are the following. Knowing your
business, is your products or services suitable for online marketing. Knowing the competition,
who are your competitor in the digital marketplace.

The third is knowing your customers, the customers you’re targeting how do they use social
media channels and what do they want from you. Lastly, knowing what you want to achieve
and how you’re doing, because in digital marketing the results are easier to measure. (Ryan &
Jones, 2012).

To stand out from the competitor’s companies need a strong plan. The key point of building a
strong and sustainable strategy is to create, deliver a unique and original value to your target
customers, a plan that is hard for your competitors to copy from you. According to a
marketing model by Nirmalya Kumars the 3Vs: value target, value proposition, and value
network. Creates a marketing model for companies that is unique fit of their business process
and activities that will make it hard for others to copy their strategy. (Kotler 2003, 172).
 21

Figure 6: SOSTAC planning system (Smith, 2018)

There are many different models to choose when planning you’re marketing strategy. One of
these alternatives is widely used model for marketing and business planning called the
SOSTAC marketing model. The abbreviation SOSTAC means situational analysis, objectives,
strategy, tactics, actions and control. The SOSTAC model is created by PR Smith and the
model can be used either for creating an overall marketing or digital marketing strategy. As
shown in the cycle in Figure 6, SOSTAC model is a continuous cycle that is a bit different with
the one discussed by Nirmalaya Kumar, because it only has only three stages. SOSTAC has
double the more stages.

According to Tuten & Solomon (2015, 46-52), Strategic planning to create a social media
marketing plan has a structural approach that organizations can use when preparing to
implement their plans. The “adoption cycle” has three phases which are “Trial Phase”,
“Transition Phase” and the last phase is “Strategic Phase”. The author will explain these
three phases in more detail below in separately.

The first phase of the “adoption cycle” is the “Trial Phase”. In this phase companies
experiment different social media platforms but do not actually comprehend how they will fit
in the platform in their marketing plan. Companies need time especially in the beginning to
experiment “the waters of social media” and brainstorm ideas. After that they can figure out
the plan how to create something that will succeed in nowadays markets. Furthermore,
companies should really treat this phase as experimenting and not jump straight into focusing
what is new and cool way to communicate.

The second phase “Transition Phase”. In this phase, the company has evolved in their use of
social media marketing which means they enter a transition phase. During this time, the
company makes some random social media activities but mostly they have figured out a
systematic way of working and they start developing.

When entering the last phase of the adoption cycle strategic phase. In this phase, the
company applies a formal process plan which will help to identify clear objectives and
 22

metrics for the social media marketing activities. Social media is now one of the key
components of the company’s overall marketing plan.

3.2 Situational analysis

When starting to create a social media marketing plan from the beginning it is important to
research what is the company’s current situation and then asses the environment. Take into
account the current trends and analyse the situation from the beginning. Research the
industries competitors, product category and most important consumer market.

The second step is to see what the company wants to achieve and what type of content they
want to publish. For example, what is the companies’ social media accounts style going to be.
After that the company has to create a plan how they are going to achieve their goal. The last
part is to try to understand the findings of all the research that was done as they are used as
the data in a situational analysis.

The situational analysis shows specifically the current problem or opportunity that a company
faces and wants to fix or take advantage which typically includes a social media audit. Social
media audit will help and ensures marketing team to understand the brand’s experience in
social media.

In addition, a SWOT analysis is very important to create again because it will highlight the
important aspects of the firm’s internal and external factors that could affect the company.
The SWOT-analysis refers to strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that a company
should recognize when thinking about the strategy. (Tuten & Solomon 2015, 51).

The internal environment refers in the SWOT-analysis to the strengths and weaknesses of the
company which can be controlled by the management to a large degree and the aspects
inside a company that affect how well the company operates. The external environment in
the SWOT-analysis refers to opportunities and threats that maybe affect the company from
the outside factors that the management of the company may not be able to control, which
means it needs to counter them through its planning process beforehand. (Tuten & Solomon
2015, 52).

To have a competitive social media analysis the company should answer the following
questions:

• In which social media channels and specific vehicles are competitor’s active?

• How do they present themselves in those channels and vehicles? Include an

analysis of profiles, company information provided, tone and activity.

• Who are their followers and fans? How do followers and fans respond to the
brand’s social activity?

3.3 Objectives and goals

The goal of most businesses is to make more than the cost of capital. “The goal is to make
today’s investment worth more tomorrow. If this happens the company has achieved
economic value added (EVA).” (Kotler 2003, 68).
 23

Objectives identify specific actions that direct the marketing. Each objective provides a
method so that the company achieves its goals. When creating objectives companies use the
SMART method, this method was invented in 1981 by George T. Doran. This method is used as
a help tool for improving success criteria’s and accomplishing a goal. The S.M.A.R.T method
stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. (Esposito, 2016).

Figure 7: S.M.A.R.T. goals (Esposito, 2016)

• Specific means that goal is clear for everyone for example to reach 10k
followers by end of the year.

• Measurable goal can be measured in numbers

• Achievable means that the goal has to realistic enough to reach

• Relevant refers to a goal that is needed and makes sense with the business
objectives. For example, launching a new product.

• Time-Bound goals has a specific time limit that the goal is meant to be
achieved by then. Without time-bounding, the goals become ineffective.

The goal of most businesses is to make more than the cost of capital. “The goal is to make
today’s investment worth more tomorrow. If this happens the company has achieved
economic value added (EVA).” (Kotler, 2003, 68).

Alternative goals mentioned by Kotler (2003) are; Corporate growth, Market share, Return on
sales, Earnings per share growth and reputation. After setting and clarifying the goals, it
needs to develop clear objectives for the corporate level, to the business divisions, and the
various departments.
 24

3.4 Control and actions

The final phase in a social media marketing plan cycle is the control part, or measurement
and control. In this phase, the performance and progress toward reaching the marketing
objectives is measured and controlled through the social media metrics that are chosen to
reach the objectives that are set. The social media metrics and key performance metrics will
be discussed in the next upcoming chapters. (Tuten & Solomon 2015, 44-45).

The control phase is as important as the other stages because in the control phase the
company gets to compare the results to the originally planned performance. This will help
them in the process and they will be able to make some changes if it’s necessary. Social
media can change fast, which is why it is important to control and measure in a certain time
period during the process. (Tuten & Solomon, 2015).

Now even small businesses can measure and control their ROI (return on investment) and with
some confidence their online marketing investment by using the free tools available that the
web-based analytics offer for businesses. With the help of different tools businesses can
control everything from impressions, clicks to interactions. Businesses are able to even
analyse exactly where the process is going the wrong direction and take steps to try and fix
the problem. All these small changes and controlling their social media channels makes
marketers accountable for their investments that they make. (Ryan & Jones 2005, 254).

According to Ryan & Jones (2005), the model that develops, measuring and controlling
performance online including mobile analytics are going to important to success and will
implicate tracking new metrics.

Actions or implementation is the final stage of strategy and planning where all the things
planned are put into use. But in this stage the company has to answer that how does the
planning and execution will get done.

3.5 Social media metrics

This subchapter will explain what is social media metrics and what are they used for. Along
with an example of key performance indicators (KPIs) in general.

Social media metrics refer to data numbers that is collect from the impact of social media
activity of a company’s revenue. These metrics shows and gathers information about the
company and how is their brand or product performing and how people are receiving it.

There are two ways of social media measurement, qualitative and quantitative measurement.
Quantitative metrics easily measured numbers. For example, surveys, likes, follows,
comments or anything that is structured and statistical data and can be measured. The
quantitative metric gives the opportunity for a company to define opinions, attitudes,
measure trends or compare two things.

Qualitative metrics is less structured and are used to gain and asses information about
people’s motivations, thinking and attitudes. The goal is to gain a deeper understanding on a
specific topic, issue or a problem. (SurveyMonkey, 2018).

Social media can give companies a lot of advantages such as engage consumers, enhance their
reputation and image. But to be able to measure data companies need to identify the right
measure that they are going to use. (Tuten & Solomon 2015, 292).
 25

Engagement is part of social media metrics and because it is a complicated phenomenon it is

important to be precise what measures should be collected and which ones are important.
Measuring social media metrics can be difficult to measure, because the person not only has
to understand the mechanic of digital properties. To be able to understand data and the
outcomes. (Lovett 2011, 6).

According to Tuten and Solomon (2015) Nearly 90% of the marketers’ report wishing they had
better financial measures for assessing the effectiveness of social media expenditures and
strategies.

Additionally, in a recent survey Tuten & Solomon (2015), the CMO Survey found out that the
most often used metrics for social media included hits/views (41%), followers on social media
accounts (31%), replies to social activity (21%) and the organic buzz (word-of-mouth mentions
of the brand in social channels (16%).

3.5.1 KPIs

According to Tuten & Solomon (2015), key performance indicators (KPIs) are those metrics
that are tied to organizational objectives. KIPs are important indicators that demonstrates
the results of a progress. Additionally, the KIP helps with strategic and operational
development as well as creates analytical basis to help making decisions and focus on the
objectives set.

When it comes to social media measurement every companies focus should be on clear and
actually measurable metrics. By doing so, the company can actually understand which
approaches work for them the best. (Hoffman & Fodor 2010, 52).

Figure 8: Strategic Options for Social Media Measurement (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010)

The Strategic Option for Social Media Measurement table illustrates in a straightforward way
how to measure, view developing strategy and assess success choices for social media
marketers. Additionally, it shows marketers the possibility of approaching “along a continuum
of fuzzy to quantifiable and may see effectiveness along a continuum of failing to
succeeding”. (Tuten & Solomon 2015, 294).
 26

The figure 8 demonstrate that social media marketers may see the end results in four (4)
different ways. One way of social media as failing dead end, this means that the measures
would be fuzzy and ineffective. The second way would be the need of measurement and
adjustment. The third way is quantified measures and ineffective strategy and the fourth way
would be as an “iterative process” which means effective strategies and quantified
measurements.

As mentioned in the previous chapter engagement is social media metrics and KPIs.
Engagement is important to follow as well as others. With following engagement companies
can track the following:

• Comment volume

• Uploads, contest participation

• Subscriptions (podcasts, video series, document series)

• Registrations

• Time spent with social pages

3.5.2 Tools

In the previous chapter the author introduced the KPIs. This subchapter will discuss about the
tools which can be used to analyse social media results in general. In addition, some specific
platforms KPIs are explained briefly.

When it comes to social media marketing plans it is important to choose the right tools and
channels according to the companies desired audience. By this point the company knows what
its objectives and goals are and now it’s time to choose the best social media mix to achieve
this. The zones of social media channels decide the channels that are available for social
media mix. Social media mix illustrates the combination of the tools that the strategy will
include to attain the company’s objectives. (Tuten & Solomon 2015, 57).

The four zones of the social media mix are: relationship development in social media
communities, social publishing, social entertainment and social commerce. Within each zone
the company can reach certain audience but the company has to choose the zone that meets
the objectives that are set.

Furthermore, there are also other marketing tools. One of the most useful and famous tools is
called the 4P, this framework was invented in 1960 by Jerry McCarthy. “He studied under
Professor Richard Clewett, who used the framework. Jerry changed “distribution” to “place”
and could then talk about the 4Ps.” The 4Ps are: product, price, place and promotion. And it
is used as tactical and by strategic decisions on STP, for segmentation, targeting and
positioning. (Kotler 2005, 61-62).

According to Kotler (2005), the 4Ps is even nowadays a useful framework for marketing
planning which support more the seller’s thinking instead of the buyer’s thinking. However,
the 4Ps can be changed into the 4Cs to change it to the buyer’s thinking as follows:
 27

• Product → Customer value

• Price → Customer costs

• Place → Customer convenience

• Promotion → Customer communication

The 4Cs shows us what the customers want and need, which is value, low cost, high
convenience and communication instead of promotion.

Facebook Insights

The Facebook insights page is an analytic platform meant for Facebook Business users. The
insights page provides valuable metrics and allows companies to run comparisons reporting
that allows the administrators to track trends over a period of time. The Facebook insights
provides its users with numerous of data for example, the number of posts/updates that the
company has had on their page.

The number of interactions per post, how many people have subscribed, the number of
reviews and many more other very useful insights. But Facebook doesn’t only provide their
users with numbers. Insights offer in-depth analysis, which focuses on communications and
demographics to make it possible for the users to measure and compare in any possible way.

Furthermore, several different graphs, grids and other forms are available for companies
which they can use to measure and understand how they are doing. Using Facebook Insights is
the essential tool to actually see what type of content works with your customers and which
ones do not. Not only can companies supervise how well their marketing is working but they
can additionally, use this to make sure they stay consistent with posting content and engaging
their customers.

Instagram Insights

Instagram Insights is not as evolved compared to Facebook’s Insights and offers a limited
amount of data and graphics for its users to measure for now. The Insights presents general
review that includes three main pages: activity, content and audience. Under activity there
are interactions which means the number of actions taken on their account over the past
week.

Additionally, there are profile visits, website clicks, get directions. The last part in activity is
discovery, this means the number of accounts that have reached in a certain amount of time
and also impressions can be seen here. Next is the content section, there can be found all the
content that the company has posted including their Instagram stories, feed and promotions.
And lastly in audience section that they can see the number of followers that the company
has by gender or all together more specifically by; location, age and gender.
 28

Figure 9: Facebook page Insights overview and - organic reach (Facebook Business, 2016)
 29

The figure 9 above illustrates all the tools that Facebook business users can use to measure
and control their page. In the overview section businesses can see their page: action, view
and likes. Additionally, they can follow their organic reach and the success of each post
individually in more detail. In the Post Reach section is a chart that shows separately the
success of paid and organic posts and the chart below shows the reactions, comments and
shares.

4 Instagram and Facebook marketing

In this chapter, the two social media platforms for marketing will be discussed. And then the
benefits for businesses will be explained in more detail.

Instagram as a platform was explained in subchapter 2.4 before briefly. Now the author will
discuss more related to the business use aspects. Instagram as a platform is suitable for
industries where the visual side of photos play in an important role in the business. Only 36%
of business do their marketing in Instagram compared to Facebook where 96% do their
marketing.8 (Kananen 2018, 397).

The business usage side of Instagram is not as evolved compared to Facebook but it is
catching up fast with different social media metrics that business can use to measure their
growth and metrics. But Instagram has also one other reason why it stands out from rest of
social media platforms. And that is because it is designed for mobile use only. The platform is
also accessible for users with a computer but it doesn’t work as well as on a mobile device.

According to McGilver (2017), 5; Pinkham (2015) Instagram has couple of strengths compared
to other social media channels. These strengths are: Easy to use, the fast growth, still little
amount of marketing and strong level of engagement.

The main purpose of Instagram is posting pictures and all of the visual aspects. There are
many different ways of showing products in the platform. One is using short videos to show
consumers for example, how to use the product. This challenges businesses to produce
variable content for the followers. As social media channels evolve and new trends come
along it is not enough anymore for consumer that businesses only post a photo of the product,
they want the companies to show how it works and what results they will get by using the
product. (Kananen 2018, 397).

To make a business’s Instagram account successful, marketers need to publish useful and
informing content in regular basis after all consistency is key in the platform. Furthermore, a
successful companies Instagram accounts content should all match in the aspect of photos
colour, style of their text and overall look. After a while of posting content regularly the
company will build its Instagram image around a story or a theme related to the company’s
image. This will maintain the consistency of the channels and consumers will start recognizing
the style that the company publishes. (Kananen 2018, 398).

Facebook marketing follows the basic marketing rules, because it’s system is built by the
basic teachings. In traditional marketing the campaign is sent for example, to the paper
which is then printed and the results will be analysed after the campaign is done. With
traditional campaign the company may not know where the results caused by the campaign or
something else perhaps.

Instead when starting a marketing campaign in Facebook the style of marketing is very
formal, because every marketer uses the same proses that Facebook gives. After publishing
 30

marketers can start immediately the process of tracking in real-time with different analysis
tools which the platform offers for free of charge.

However, it is important in the planning phase of the campaign already to avoid methods of
marketing, that Facebook does not allow. (Carter & Levyn, 2012).

1. Usage of capital letters, this violates the writing regulations and gets more attention
than other adverts

2. Writing only one word in all capital letter, this reminds of spams which is not allowed

3. Incomplete text (The advert has to have information about the company)

4. Promises must be kept (Companies can’t promise for example, discount to get people
to their website and then the customers actually do not get anything)

5. The photos and the text has to be connected

6. The text has to be written grammatically correct

The marketing content has to full fill these criterias when publishing content on Facebook.
(Kananen 2018, 313).

Furthermore, Facebook has many different social media marketing measurement tools that
business can use. It is important that a company chooses the right tools that work and support
the goals and objectives of the company. For example, Google Analytics can be uploaded in
the company’s website and because Facebook metrics and Google metrics are overlapping but
they still conduct separate results, because of the differences in the calculation bases.

Facebook has two expenses in their marketing called CPM and CPC. CPM or cost per mille is a
marketing term which means advertiser must pay for every 1,0000 (thousand) impressions of
its ad. (Investopedia, 2018). CPC or cost per click means on the other hand that advertiser
pays based on the clicks.

“The metric is calculated as the total amount spend divided by clicks.” The metric counts
multiple types of clicks on your ad, including certain types of interactions with the ad
container, links to other destinations and links to expanded advertising experiences. For
example, link clicks, comments, shares, clicks to expand media (photos) to full screen or
clicks to the business page profile. (Facebook business help, 2018).

4.1 Anatomy of successful post

To create perfect content businesses, need to first have the knowledge about anatomy of
posts. It is an important step in attracting new customers and building brand awareness in
social media channels.

According to Hootsuite, there are 5 essential elements that should be taking into
consideration when wanting a top-performing post in Instagram. The first element is high-
 31

quality visual content. In Instagram, this is everything and highly important to stand out from
the crowd. Choosing to invest in the right colours, quality, relevance and consistency it
should make a great difference. These same elements should be taken into consideration
when posting in Facebook.

Additionally, marketers have to think that what do they want to focus on? The caption or the
image itself? And is there a good balance in the post, meaning that the marketer should pay
attention that they are planning the content accordingly and considering the colour and it
matched also the feed that they have been building aiming for a well-balanced feed overall.

Figure 10: The Instagram Post (In Site Media Marketing, 2017).

As shown above in (Figure 10), the anatomy of posts in Instagram has many elements. The
first part is the “The Eyes: Photo”, this should catch viewers’ attention and stops them from
scrolling for a moment. The second part is the “The Brain: Caption”, where you can provide
context and really engage your followers with captions like, Tag a friend, or comment bellow.

Then comes the “Heart: Comment & Likes”, engaging with your followers, answering their
questions and liking their comments is the key when it comes to creating brand loyalty. “The
Mouth: Hashtag”, will strengthen your reach and viewership. When using industry related
hashtag, it makes it easier to find for anyone who is looking for exactly what you are posting
about.

The “Geotag: The foot”, means where have you been. By tagging where have you been or
where the picture was taken people can click the location of the post and see other pictures
that were also taken in the same location. This can additionally, grow the company’s
 32

awareness especially for a travel company it is important to be posting pictures from

different locations to grow the chance of a new audience finding the company by the
location. (Ashley 2017).

When it comes to creating a post, marketers may have to take a minute and first think what
are they trying to tell their audience. To be able to grow brand awareness companies should
use consistent visual storytelling which is an important element and why the best brands are
storytellers. The best way to inspire other people is to tell your story through a creative
visual storytelling. “Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make, but the stories you tell.
- Seth Godin”. (Pearce 2017).

Figure 11: Anatomy of a successful Facebook post

The anatomy of a post in Facebook includes mostly the same elements as in Instagram. Such
as having a clear goal, meaning knowing what you want to achieve with the post and using
hashtags. Although these two platforms have some of the same anatomy elements in
Facebook posts there is one important element called “a clear call to action”. A call to action
refers to when a post caption that asks a question for example, “subscribe now”, or
“comment bellow who would you take with you...”.

Another element is including a high-quality photo or at least a link to your post which will
help for the follower to find more information about the post. The third element is that, it is
 33

good to remember to not post always post only promotional posts, this will turn you Facebook
account to an advertising page. Balancing promotions post with useful tips and information
content will help to build a well-balanced, real and relevant Facebook page.

Learning to balance between promotional and useful information giving posts is extremely
important especially for travel companies when it comes to marketing.

4.2 How to increase customer loyalty

Customer loyalty is one of the most important elements for marketers in social media
channels. It means that a person is being dedicated to a company by being active in their
social media channels and buying their products. In marketing terms this can be also called as
“brand loyalty”. “Brand loyalty is roughly indicated by the company’s customer retention
rate.” (Kotler 2003, 97).

Companies can build customer loyalty in many ways. Customer loyalty requires companies to
be smart and seek out the types of customers that would be benefit from the companies
offers. Once a customer has visited the companies Facebook or Instagram account it is
important to take care of that customer. It is very likely that the people who have visited the
company social media channel that they will start to follow the channel and “like” their
posts. Because they are the ones that would be loyal and bring in long-term cash flows.
(Kotler 2003, 98; Kananen 2018, 308).

Some companies give points or rewards based on how much they have purchased. Loyalty
programs are also another way of gaining loyalty. Many companies have even different levels
of customer loyalty program, which are good way to reward the loyal customers, attract new
customers and increase customer loyalty. Although, this is a good way to keep customers.
Many times, companies offer better deals for new consumers or for example, try to get back
the customers who have ended their membership. (Kotler 2003, 117).

For customer loyalty programs to actually work they need to be simple enough for everyone
to be able to understand and use. The program should not have any hidden disappointments
or agendas and deliver excellent service and goods, otherwise it will not work properly.
(Kotler 2003, 118).

Other ways to increase a business’s customer loyalty are for example, creating ongoing
engagement, build a transparent and authentic relationship with consumer. lastly always
remember to treat your best customer the best by sending them for example, a sneak peak of
a product before it’s released to all other customers. (Forbes communication council, 2017).

4.3 How to use hashtags

In this chapter, the author will explain how to use hashtags in Facebook and Instagram as they
have the same regulations.

According to Cambridge dictionary, hastags (#) are used on social media for describing the
general subject. The symbol can be found on a phone or a computer keyboard. Hashtags must
be written in one single word without any spaces in between with the sign in front of it. For
example, #socialmediamarketing #howtousehastgs.
 34

Social media users can search for a hashtag using the search bar at the top of any page.
Which ables people to search for topics that they are interested in and find other people’s
posts that include that hashtag. (Facebook help, 2018).

To tag a photo or a video with a hashtag the user’s needs to first take a photo or upload an
image or video clip. After taking or uploading a content the user has the option to edit the
content. Along with being able to type # (the number sign) and this is then followed by a
caption text or an emoji. The users’ have also the option to add a hashtag to their post that
they have already posted. This can be done by selecting edit and then modifying the caption
or just by adding the hashtag by commenting on their own photo or video. (Instagram help,
2018).

Users need to be aware that when they choose to add a hashtag to a post it sets the photo or
video as public. Which means it will be visible for anyone who searches with that word on the
hashtag page, unless they have a private profile. The users will be able to tap the hashtag to
see their photos or videos in a page that shows all the photos and videos that people have
uploaded by using the same hashtag. (Instagram help, 2018).

Instagram also mentions “things that users should keep in mind is that when writing a
hashtag, numbers are allowed, but spaces and special characters, for example. The dollar
sign or percentage won’t work. Users can only tag their own posts and they cannot tag other
people’s photos or videos. Furthermore, users can use up to 30 tags on a post if a user
includes more than that the comment won’t post.” (Instagram help, 2018).

In a business posts, it’s better to decide in the beginning the number of hashtags that
marketers will always use consistently when posting. According to Ellering (2017); Hauffman
(2017) eleven (11) hashtags is the best amount for one post, in order for the optimization to
be as broad as possible. Adding three (3) emoji to end of the text adds the visual look or if
the marketer wants they can also just add the emojis without any text. One emoji
communicates one thing, which means phrases can be replaced with emoji’s. (Kananen 2018,
432).

4.4 Paid, organic and earned media

When choosing “to distribute a brand message, marketers have access to three core types of
media: (1) paid, (2) organic and (3) earned media.” (Tuten & Solomon,2015, 25). All three
elements are important part of a digital media strategy and reaching potential customers
online. In this chapter, the author focuses and explains in more detail about owned and paid
media which are relevant to the case companies study. And additionally, about their role in
the media world.

According to Tuten & Solomon (2015), paid media are traditionally the purview of advertising,
which is defined a paid version of an advert in social media channels which are capable of
reaching a bigger audience. For example, any of the posts that a user sees in their news feed
that has the tag sponsored is paid media. Meaning that a business has paid for that particular
post to reach a mass audience. And when a user then likes or comments that post, that is
considered a paid reaction. Paid social media can be targeted by a variety of demographic
and behavioural factors. (Advanced Ohio, 2018.)

Earned media is content created by the other people that is beyond the control of the
company. For example, word-of-mouth online, shares, reposts, reviews or content by 3rd
 35

party sites. Word-of-mouth (WOM) and publicity online is an important form earned media for
a company. To be able to gain word-of-mouth, there is three strategies to be implemented at
first: conversation, real-time marketing and contests and requests for user-generated
content. Furthermore, when a brand has engaged consumers and encouraged them to
comment with the brand and share the interactions with others online that is when a brand
has earned value in social media. (Tuten & Solomon 2015, 152-154).

Owned media also known as organic media “are channels the brand controls”. For example,
corporate websites and e-commerce sites and corporate blogs all represent forms of owned
media. Additionally, the number of people who have seen your posts through unpaid
distribution naturally. (Burke, 2018).

Various channels offer company accounts the option of organic posts and boosted posts.
Organic posts are something the company has not paid for specifically and the users come
across the content naturally. Boosted posts refer to content that businesses have paid for to
reach a much larger audience than organic posts would. Furthermore, boosted posts are
shown as sponsored post in the users’ feeds. (Outbound Engine, 2018).

Channels like Facebook and Instagram have changed their algorithms, making it harder for
businesses to post organically and reach people’s feeds in real-time. It is likely that just a
small number of the company’s followers will actually see the post. Companies use the
boosted posts to reach all of their followers and make it more specific. For example, age,
gender and location can be targeted for a much larger audience than organic posts otherwise
would.

Companies have the power to create any type of content they would want to, but along with
that they should consider what their audience is interested in seeing in order to get them
fully engaged. Furthermore, nowadays users are more open about expressing their
experiences on social media platforms. This gives free and great unbiased feedback to the
companies to use when wanting to improve their strategy or services. Which is why companies
have to actively interact with its customers. (Trong, 2015).

Figure 12: Types of media (Tuten & Solomon, 2015)

 36

When it comes to using media advertising marketers must know about each four media zones
and types. This is important to select the right one for the company’s marketing plan. When
considering there is many factors to take into account. As shown above (Figure 11), there are
four zones which are social communities, social publishing, social entertainment and social
commerce. Then there are three types of media which are paid media, earned media and
owned media. Each media zone and type consist of different areas of marketing.

5 Methodology

This chapter will explain about the used research methods and the validity and reliability of
the research.

5.1 Methods

The theoretical structure along with the information given by the case company X is used as
general base for the suggestions in chapter subchapter (6.3). The purpose of the data
collection, was to get answers for the research objective. The study was a case study and the
author decided to do a two-week test period in the case company’s social media channels as
a data collection method. The method that the author used was the most suitable for the
research objective

Research methodology process includes five steps: design a case study, conduct the literature
review, collecting data, analysis of data and presenting the research results. (Research
methodology, 2018).

According to Research Methodology (2018) case studies are a popular research method in a
business area. Case studies aim to analyse specific issues within the boundaries of a specific
environment, situation or organization. Additionally, it can be divided into three categories:
explanatory, descriptive and exploratory. The author decided to use explanatory case study
where the aims is to answer “why” and “how” questions.

The advantages of choosing a case study method are collecting data and having the possibility
to integrate both qualitative and quantitative data when analysing the information collected.
On the other hand, there are also some disadvantages such as lack of rigor, challenges
associated with data analysis and having very little data of findings and conclusions.

The research method chosen is the quantitative research strategy where co-decided content
with the case company will be posted on the case company’s own Instagram and Facebook
profiles. Quantitative research focuses on statistical data and classifying figures to explain
what is observed and gathers information from existing and potential customers using for
example test period or sampling method or surveys.

The test period is free of charge, as it will happen in the company’s own social media
channels. And the time frame is usually short, where the company marketer will experiment
photos or videos with different themes for example. Sun sent, beach related or countryside
related photos.
 37

Furthermore, each content should have a different caption style for example. The caption of
the photo can be something informative about the destination, just a nice caption that really
suits the content or describing the photo with emoji’s. By using different caption styles and
content the test period will show which ones work the best on the target audience.
Conducting a test period has advantages of having access to statistical techniques to analyse
survey data and to measure the success of the posts in real-time.

5.2 Reliability and Validity

In a research, the quality of a study is measured by the reliability and validity. When
assessing it is important to critique the validity and reliability of a quantitative research.
For example, that the sampling and data analysis are relevant in the methodology.
Additionally, it is important to maintain the quality of the research through measuring
validity and reliability both in data sources and in analysis.

“Reliability refers to the degree that the same answer can be achieved again when using the
same method more than once. For example, if the research is identified as highly reliability,
then other researchers should be able to conduct the same level of results by using the same
research method.” (Research methodology, 2018).

Validity is the primary measure of quality and It is defined “as the extent to which a concept
is accurately measured in a quantitative study” (Heale & Twycross, 2015). For example, a test
period designed to explore about increasing the “impressions” but actually measures how
many people have visited the profile this would not be considered valid.

The ways to measure the ensure validity of a research include the following: estimated time
scale for the study, the most suitable methodology chosen and suitable sample method.
Although there are always threats to research validity, it is important to remember to aim to
minimize that as much as possible. (Research methodology, 2018).

The secondary measure of quality in quantitative study is reliability which is used to measure
the accuracy and consistency. For example, that a research has constantly the same results if
it is used in the same situation constantly.

The case study and tests period are the primary research of this thesis and the theoretical
research is used to support the authors findings. The sources used in the research included
books, company x website, articles and blogs. The information in the theoretical section was
collected thought primary and secondary sources.

6 Empirical part

This chapter will analyze why the research was done and what developing research methods
were used in the conduction of the thesis. The target reach chapter will introduce the target
group, the reach of the market and its purpose.

Next along is explained the methodology and research process of the case study. The last part
is the marketing plan suggestions, which were made on the basis of the analysis done in this
chapter.
 38

6.1 Target reach of the test period

The test periods content had been co-decided with the case company based on the industry
trends, which will be explained later on. The test period was executed by conducting a two-
week test period on the case companies own social media channels Instagram and Facebook.
The results of the test period will be analysed with Instagram and Facebook Insight pages.

This case study was conducted to build the case company a new improved social media plan,
specifically focused on organic posts. The aim of the new social media plan is to gain a
deeper understanding of Instagram and Facebook marketing through organic or natural posts,
and how it effects the company’s visibility.

Before the test period began the author and the case company made a written plan for the
test period. The case company wanted the author to post 14 photos on their Instagram
account and 7 photos on their Facebook account during the two-weeks. Along with deciding
the destination the plan included selecting villas that have attractive photos for showcasing
the location.

The second part was planning the content of the post: What would be in the photo? The photo
would mostly consist of the villas and scenery. The style of the photo? The style of the photo
could be either a sunset, inside of the villa or sea view style. The style of the caption text?
The caption text is an important part of the photo it can be informative knowledge about the
location, travel tips or information about the villa. These are the questions that the case
company was mostly interested in. The case company wanted the author to feel free to be
creative and use all the sources the company had available for posting photos.

The author was also responsible for researching industry trends. After conducting the
research, some trends had appeared to include what type of photos companies posting at the
moment and how different companies captured the audiences. The three companies caught
the authors attention: Airbnb, Luxury world travel on Instagram and Aurinkomatkat on
Facebook. The author found out that they are all posting photos with informative captions or
travel tips on Instagram as well as Facebook which really engage with their audience.

During the test period the author had access to both of the case companies social media
accounts and was the only one posting on them during that time period. The case study was
conducted by posting photos of villas located in Southern Europe depending on the
destination for the day that was planned. The author wanted to choose different sizes and
different interior style of villas from countryside, beachside and town villas to make the
reach process more engaging. Posting photos from various destinations would also make the
test period more appealing for a wider range of audience.

Each day the author would choose a destination form the plan and post a photo of a villa in
that destination for example. If the theme would be “Croatia” the author would choose one
or two photos of a villa in Croatia. Then after choosing a villa, the photo had to be cropped to
be the right image size according to the Instagram application resolution size. At the end, the
author would create a caption that suites the photo or photos the best. The author did this
five days a week for two-weeks on Instagram and seven times on Facebook. The author
posted couple of same photos to Instagram and Facebook to see how the photos would work
on different platforms.

Although the company in the past had tried some of the same styles, the author thought that
by repeating again with little changes, it should bring some new information to test period.
 39

The qualitative marketing research of the thesis is focusing on the level of engagement
through organic posts. Due to the clientele of the case company being from also other
countries than Finland, the research aspects of the Instagram strategy are valid on a
European level.

6.2 Results of the test period

According to the analysis, the company could improve their social media channels by being
even more active in social media. Meaning they could follow similar kind of accounts
especially in Instagram, comment and like another user’s content. By doing so they would
gain a bigger audience in their own channels and they would have more viewers also on their
Instagram stories.

The case company should improve its content posting by investing more time on focusing in
the content and posting consistently in both of their channels. The use of hashtags more
efficiently and creating a specific hashtag which allows users and customers to share their
experiences and to be seen, this would create more awareness of their company.

Although the test period did not show any radical changes in the Instagram Insights it did still
help the author to test different types of content. As well as see how does the Instagram
story and posts work and understand what need to change so that the case company would
get more awareness. The author wanted additionally to know how the organic posting affects
the company’s business. The tests period was conducted in the case company’s slowest month
this could also be another reason why the impressions and activity on their social media
platforms was low compared to their busiest months beginning of the year. In the next
chapter the author will explain more about the results and the suggestions made.

The test results of Instagram and Facebook will be illustrated in sub chapter 6.3 and then
suggestions will be given.

6.3 Suggestions for a social media plan for the case company

The purpose of this thesis was to create a new improved social media plan for further
research for the case company, because the company has not tested before or documented
social media plan for organic posts at the moment. In the theoretical part, various elements
of an organic Instagram strategy were researched. At the end, the goal was to gather
information from a strong and well-structured Instagram and Facebook plan and gather
information about the most important elements for the case company.

In this chapter, the author will explain platform specifically about the suggestions created
based on the test period that was executed and different elements of an Instagram strategy
that where researched in the theoretical part.

Instagram

The figures under show the summary of the test results for Instagram. The author decided to
focus in the activity section of the followers. This covered interaction and discovery
indicators.
 40

Figure 13: Summary of results of Instagram actions (from Case companies own Instagram
insight page)

The figure 13 shows two indicators from the Instagram Insight page the Interactions section
has three different indicators Profile Visits, Website Clicks and Get Directions. Profile visits
reflect the number of times your profile was viewed. Website clicks reflects the number of
times the website on the business profile have been clicked. And Get directions reflects the
number of clicks to get directions to your business.

Discovery section on Instagram Insights page indicates where the post was seen or discovered
the most, including how many accounts weren’t already following the account when they first
saw the post. This section includes data on a post’s reach which reflect the number of unique
accounts that saw the post. As well as metrics on Impressions, which reflect the number of
times your post was discovered from a particular place within Instagram, like the user’s home
feed, a search, your profile, a location tag, or a hashtag.
 41

Figure 14: Wrap-up of Instagram audience (from Case companies own Instagram Insights page,
audience)

The figure 14 shows the current audience of the company in more detail by cities and age
rage. Most of the followers are currently from Helsinki, Stockholm, Turku and Oulu. The age
range of the audience starts from 25 years old and it goes up till 55 years. This means that
the case company has a very views age range of followers in their Instagram account and
mostly living in Finland but also followers from Sweden.

The test period of two weeks in Instagram showed couple of things that the case company
should improve on in the future. One of the most important things is that they should improve
on their usage of hashtags, because at the moment the case company is not using any.

The second improvement point is increasing the engagement when posting content, the
caption and the photo should go together hand in hand and really caption the follower’s
attention. The third is using influencers to grow awareness, this is something that the case
company has been doing but not so often.

The case company is using currently Instagram story and posts more actively then Facebook
and analysing the engagement with Instagram’s own analytical tools. The case company
should improve their usage of hashtags. By creating their own hashtag as well as using
industry-related hashtags in their posts the case company should be able to increase the
possibility for future customers to share their experiences.

It is very important to use industry specific hashtags to draw attention, promote and engage
users. The travel industry is huge on Instagram which makes the possibility to stand out
difficult but by using few hashtags and the right ones the company should get more followers
and awareness. The case company does not use any hashtags at the moment on their
Instagram posts. Before they used only one which was the case company’s name in a hashtag.
This allowed users to share their experience but currently the case company uses only a
caption and the name of the villa.

When choosing not to use hashtags in company posts it enables potential customers from
finding the company organically meaning the natural way which they would want to invest
more on. People often search for industry-related hashtags when planning a trip or when
 42

wanting to find out is there any companies offering the kind of service they want. That is why
it is important that the company remembers to use few hashtags that are related, because
those can lead to a potential customer to find their account, contacting which can end up as
a possible sale.

There is an option to collaborate with Influencer which is another way that can bring more
visibility for the company. This is very important for smaller companies and that it why the
case company has experimented this before and it has worked well for them. The usage of an
influencers in marketing can be quite expensive, which is one of the reasons the case
company does not use them very often.

For example, the famous influencers ask quite a lot of discount from their trips, which ends
up costing the case company a lot of money. In order for the case company to benefit out of
the collaborations they have instead collaborated with not the most famous influencers. And
asked them to post for example, five posts and one blog post about their holiday in villa and
the posts show in the influencers posts as sponsored posts.

Facebook

The test period was also conducted on the case companies Facebook platform.

The test period was done when the platforms activities are the slowest on their page. Despite
of the lesser active during this the month test period, the result still gave some information
to the author and elements that should be changed.

Figure 15: Summary of the Facebook results (from the Case companies own Facebook insights
page)
 43

When analysing the results, the test period month October was compared to September the
previous month. The test results were collected from Facebook page Insights. According to
Facebook business, building an online and mobile presence, communication with customers or
encouraging people to take an action – your Page Insights will help the business to understand
who among your audience is most engaged with your Page.

In the analysis, the author focused on three core areas of the Page’s performance indicators
which were taken into observation and measured. These four areas where Actions on page,
page views, post reach and post engagement. These four are very important when a company
wants to see how they have been succeeding in the couple of days or compared with the
previous month.

The test results period impacted the most on page views which means how many times the
profile has been viewed by logged-in and logged-out people. Actions on page went down by
7,1% from the previous month when there were seven views to five views. Post reach did not
increase either, but went down by 8,7% as well as post engagements 30,4%. All other aspects
went down and did not improve expect page views which means the test period was not as
successful as expected.

The test period month was during 1st of October until the 15th of October. That time of the
year is typically a slower month for the case company. During the month, the social media
channels activity gets slower and people are not as active into looking to booking a holiday.
Additionally, the case company does not have as much inquiries from customers compared to
January up till April which are the busiest months.

The author feels that during the beginning of October people have already went on their
holidays or are waiting until December or January to plan their summer holidays which could
have affected the test results. Furthermore, if the test period would have been one month
instead of two-weeks the results would have been different.

7 Conclusion

In the conclusion part, the author will sum up the main findings of the research, give
suggestions about the marketing plan and platform specific suggestions for further research
about the topic. Additionally, the author will explain how did the thesis process went as
planned.

7.1 Main findings

Today marketing is all about strong branding and in Instagram especially using influencers as
brand ambassadors or doing collaborations. This is why it is very important to be visible in
social media channels, to have a strong, unique and interesting marketing strategy for a
company to stand out.

When using Instagram, like any other platform it is important to have a strong, unique and
interesting marketing strategy for a company to stand out. Instagram is a great way for
marketers to show their creative side. For a travel company, to be able to create and post
visually beautiful, engaging and informative content is very important. This is why more and
more companies are starting to use influencers as their brand ambassadors or doing
collaborations with them, because it is a great way to bring their brand visible for larger
audience.
 44

Facebook, is another great platform for companies to use. It is easy to use, create content
and it has a very important feature which is scheduling. It means that the user can schedule
the content to be posted automatically at the time and date chosen. This makes the
marketers job easier and efficient, because the content will be posted continuously after
creating the whole weeks or two-week posts.

When it comes to social media metrics in Instagram and Facebook the most important metric
to measure the success is the level of engagement. Engagement means following, liking and
commenting on other user’s accounts. For the company’s engagement level to rise the
company has to learn and understand how Facebook and Instagram work and what are the
most effective ways of getting followers attention.

According to the findings, the key elements of a successful Instagram and Facebook marketing
are:

• A written and documented separate strategy for Instagram and Facebook, which will
be followed and updated in a certain time-period.

• Posting content that is interesting and unique in both of the channels.

• Using a brand related hashtag in Instagram, which customer can use to share their
experiences

• Posting content continuously by using scheduled timing

• Posting continuously on Instagram story

• Increasing engagement by following and liking other similar accounts

When a company has strong and different a social media marketing strategy adapted as a part
of their social media plan, they will have a bigger chance to become successful and stand out
from the other companies. Having a strong Instagram plan can increase a company’s business
and visibility. This is why it is important for companies to take advantage of marketing on
Instagram.

The thesis process went mostly as planned. The most challenging part was to find recent and
relevant literature about organic posts and also about the topic over all as it does not yet
have a lot of research. When the main articles and printed sources where found, it was easier
to collect information and find similar type of sources. Along searching for new literature,
and reading more, it raised new ideas to the structure of the thesis. Furthermore, the thesis
process raised deeper knowledge about marketing strategy and planning in Facebook and
Instagram.

Conducting the two-week test period was also one of the challenges in the thesis process. To
be able to gather information on how do active organic posts in social media channels affect a
company’s business the author conducted a two-week test period. The author and the case
company designed the base together after which the author had freedom to designed the text
and themes according to the company’s image for each post for a time period of two weeks
for the case company’s social media channels Facebook and Instagram.

Creating new type of content for the case company which is relevant but also new for the
company was quite difficult. This is why the author decided along with the case company to
 45

create and post the same type of content that they have done but make some changes with
the style of the text, colour and couple of new themes that the company has not tried out.
Although the test period was not as successful as the author was expecting the author was
still able to gather information for the case company.

The author was satisfied with the results of the case study, although it did not work as well as
the author was expecting. The author was able to gather literature sources to support the
main findings.

7.2 Suggestion for further research

Organic posts in social media marketing, especially Instagram marketing are still in the early
stages of development and there is still quite little literature about the subject. Although the
case company is putting more focus on posting organically on social media it still needs more
information and improvement to be successful in the future.

For a medium-size company the competition inside Instagram or Facebook is though, and it
needs certain skills and goals to be able to compete and stand out from the bigger companies
who have a bigger audience, more followers or well known. Especially in Instagram marketers
are using their every skill to produce more and more interesting, trendy and engaging content
in very post they make and make it unique. This is harder for smaller companies with smaller
marketing budgets.

In social media platforms, there are many things to take into consideration when posting for
example. Copying other companies style and violations. This is why it is important for a
company to stay unique and have a strong social media marketing plan.
 46

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Helpinstagram.com 2019. View Insights on Instagram. Accessed 15th March 2019.

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Investopedia.com 2018. Social Media Marketing (SMM). Accessed 23rd October 2018.
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Influencermarketinghub.com 2018. 13 Leading influencer marketing platforms and tools for

Instagram in 2018. Accessed 29th October 2018. https://influencermarketinghub.com/13-
leading-influencer-marketing-platforms-and-tools-for-instagram-in-2018/

Instagramhelp.com, 2018. What is Instagram? Accessed 30th November 2018.

https://help.instagram.com/424737657584573

Instagramhelp.com, 2018. How to use hashtags? Accessed 29th November 2018.

https://help.instagram.com/351460621611097

Insitemediamarketing.com, 2017. The Anatomy of an Instagram Post. Accessed 10 th January

2019. http://insitemediamarketing.com/2017/07/06/the-anatomy-of-an-instagram-post/

Marinucci, J. 2018. Five social media trends that will impact digital advertising. Forbes.
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that-will-impact-digital-advertising/
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Marinuck, J. 2017. The role of organic social media in a paid media world. Forbes. Accessed
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Morse, K. 2016. What is social media engagement and what does it mean? Internet marketing.
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Monnes, S. 2019. The Anatomy of a Successful Facebook Post. Hub spot. Accessed 10th January
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Pearce, K. 2017. 15 Brilliant examples of visual storytelling on Instagram. Diygenius. Accessed

10th January 2019. https://www.diygenius.com/brilliant-examples-of-visual-storytelling-on-
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Researchmethodology.net, 2016. Reliability and Validity. Accessed 16 th January 2019.

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Smallbiztrends.com, 2018. What is a hashtag? And what do you do with hashtags? Accessed
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Smith, A., Anderson, M. 2018. Social Media Use in 2018. Pew Research Center. Accessed 30th
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Smith, M. 2018. The eye-opening influence of Instagram on buying. Impact Bound. Accessed
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SurveyMonkey.com, 2018. The difference between quantitative vs. qualitative research.

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Teller, K. 2018. Put your money where your followers are - Organic vs Paid Social media.
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The Statistics Portal 2018. Most popular social media networks worldwide as of October 2018,
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users/

Kusinitz, S. 2017. 16 Stats that prove social media Isn’t just a fad. Blog hub spot. Posted 28
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Kim, L. 2018. 9 Social media trends to pay attention to in 2018. Accessed 22 nd November
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KPI.org, 2018. What is a key performance indicator? Accessed 27 th November 2018.

https://kpi.org/KPI-Basics

Kolowich, L. 2018. 8 of the top marketing challenges marketers will face this year. Accessed
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Kusinitz, S. 2017. 16 Stats that prove social media Isn’t just a fad. Blog Hubspot. Accessed 21 st
November 2018. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-media-roi-stats

Whitler, K. 2018. The biggest challenges facing marketing leaders. Accessed 23 rd November
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Wang, R. 2012. How to engage your customers and employees. Harvard Business Review.
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York, A. 2018. What is social media engagement & why should I care. Posted 1st May 2017.
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York, A. 2018. 6 Social media trends that will take over 2018. Accessed 22nd November 2018.
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Case company x website 2018. Accessed 20th October 2018.

Unpublished sources

Case company X internal sources

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Figures

Figure 1: The Evolution of Marketing Communications (Tuten & Solomon, 2015) ............... 11

Figure 2: Benefits of social media marketing (Google-search, 2016) ............................. 12

Figure 3: What are your company’s top marketin challenges (The State of Inbound Report,
2017) ...................................................................................................... 13

Figure 4: The Engagement Food Chain (Tuten & Solomon, 2015) ................................. 16

Figure 5: Most popular social networks worlwide, ranked by number of active users in millions
(Statista, 2018) .......................................................................................... 17

Figure 6: SOSTAC planning system (Smith, 2018) ................................................... 21

Figure 7: S.M.A.R.T goals (Esposito, 2016) ........................................................... 23

Figure 8: Strategic Options for Social Media Measurement (Hoffman & Fodor, 2010) .......... 25

Figure 9: Facebook page Insights overview and – organic reach (Facebook Business, 2016) .. 28

Figure 10: The Instagram Post (In Site Media Marketing, 2017).................................... 31

Figure 11: Anatomy of a successful Facebook post .................................................. 32

Figure 12: Types of media (Tuten & Solomon, 2015) ................................................ 35

Figure 13: Summary of results of Instagram actions ..................................................40

Figure 14: Wrap-up of Instagram audience ........................................................... 41

Figure 15: Summary of the Facebook results ......................................................... 42

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