How to increase engagement on social media using the honeycomb model: A case study in a Portuguese HR company.
| Autor | Silva, Susana Costa |
Introduction
Digitalisation has become a part of our daily life. As a result, digitalisation and particularly social media (SM) have been claimed to transform consumer behaviour (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), with important consequences for companies, products and brands (Mutinga, Moorman, & Smit, 2011). Nowadays, consumers spend much of their time on the internet. They are much more proactive in establishing channels with companies. However, companies use these channels more and more to promote their brands and to engage customers, especially by sharing informational brand content with links for information searches (Swani, Milne, Brown, Assaf, & Donthu, 2017). Social networks are used by people of different ages, education levels, genders, social statuses, people who speak different languages and who come from different cultures, all of whom participate and incorporate social networks into their daily lives (Mazman & Usluel, 2010). Previous studies have shown the differences between adolescents and older adults (over 60s) in the use of different SNS features and content (Pfeil, Arjan, & Zaphiris, 2009). Muscanell and Guadagno (2012) found that young SNS users are much more active, have a larger number of Facebook friends, spend more time online and participate in the different activities available on Facebook. However, in comparison, older users prefer to engage in family activities on Facebook (Dhir & Torsheim, 2016). Users can spend their time on Facebook, doing many different activities such as playing video games, joining groups, getting up-to-date information from friends and family or having fun (Sanchez, Cortijo, & Javed, 2014). Previous literature has observed gender differences in SNS use. Gender differences were observed in the use of different SNS features, for example females tend to comment on friends' posts (Yuan, 2011) and they also post more photos and videos (Hargittai, 2007; Madden, Lenhart, & Duggan, 2013; Muscanell & Guadagno, 2012). In comparison, males tend to play games on SNS (Joiner et al., 2012; Muscanell & Guadagno, 2012) and seek entertainment related to social networking activities (Joiner et al., 2012; Weiser, 2000). The profile differences are relevant, and this way it is important to understand well who the company's clients are, in order to better adapt the page contents to their preferences and chances of engagement. Although this is severely eroded (Mangold & Faulds, 2009), marketing managers would still desire to control over the content, timing and frequency of information provided within the page. "In the new communications paradigm, marketing managers should recognize the power and critical nature of the discussions being carried on by consumers using social media" (Mangold & Faulds, 2009, p. 360). Therefore, it is very important for firms to understand how to provide and organise the information they want their customers to consume through the SNS provided.
However, with the evolution of communication, it is gradually becoming more and more difficult to build customer loyalty (Buhalis & Law, 2008), which means that having a marketing strategy for the effective use of SM is crucial for companies to stay competitive and grow (Parsons, 2013). Understanding SM users' habits is therefore crucial for marketers who need to discover how to attract customers and maintain customer relationships through SM platforms (Cheung & Leung, 2016). According to Erragcha and Romdhane (2014), there is no global definition of Digital Social Networks. However, in marketing literature, the most suitable definition is that they are web services that "allow individuals to construct a public or semi-public profile within a system, to maintain a list of users with whom they share a bond, to view and navigate their list of connections and those established by others within the system" (Boyd & Ellison, 2007, p. 2). Social networking sites allow for interaction between consumers and the community and facilitate the "asynchronous, immediate, interactive, low-cost communications" (Miller, Fabian, & Lin, 2009). "Social network sites can be seen as alternative communication tools which support existing relationships and activities in a fun and colourful way that can enrich the users' experiences" (Ofcom, 2008).
This paper aims to investigate the applicability of SNS in a service company. Our goal is to understand how digital marketing strategies can be used in order to improve firm's digital marketing plan. We will focus on Facebook, as it is the largest social networking website in the world and, as a consequence, the most representative.
Literature review
Digital marketing, social media and customer engagement
Digital marketing can be seen as a tool to promote the company more efficiently, and it should be understood effectively by companies so that they are better able to select efficient marketing tactics and strategies (Taiminen & Karjaluoto, 2015). Within digital marketing, we can isolate SM as "a group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of user generated content" (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). Social networking tools (e.g. Twitter and Facebook), professional networking sites (e.g. LinkedIn), media sharing sites (e.g. Instagram and YouTube), commerce communities (e.g. Amazon and eBay), blogs (e.g. Blogger and Bloglines) and discussion forums are examples of SM platforms. SM has changed the way companies have done business over the years (Ramsaran-Fowdar & Fowdar, 2013), and as a result, in recent years, SM sites have become essential for users and companies (Maecker, Barrot, & Becker, 2016). Although the internet has created huge new opportunities for companies over the years, it has also generated new challenges (Strand, 2011). However, there is a lack of understanding of how and why organisations are actually using these platforms (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014).
SM is a way to generate companies and brands engagement in several actors and stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers and employees (Hollebeek et al., 2018).Customer engagement is a concept in evolution (Hollebeek, 2011) about how an actor can be profoundly interested and bounded in a company, in terms of trust, loyalty, commitment and confidence (Moriuchi, 2019), which include the B2B (Silva, Bradley, & Sousa, 2012; Diba, Vella, & Abratt, 2019) and the B2C contexts (Kesgin & Murthy, 2019). Online engagement can include how someone sees, follows and resends content on SM for his/her audience, helping a company to earn media, instead of buying it. Based on how trustable someone is (Oeldorf-Hirsch & DeVoss, 2019) and the content, for instance, positive or negative (Spottswood & Wohn, 2019) and based on technology issues (Zhu, 2019), it can be moderated.
Facebook as a digital marketing tool
Social networking sites allow for interaction between consumers and the community and facilitate the "asynchronous, immediate, interactive, low-cost communications" (Miller et al., 2009). According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), SM, Facebook in particular, represent a vast area of opportunities for firms. Facebook has many types of pages and other ways that allow people to connect, but there are, according to Strand (2011), four main types of Facebook pages: personal pages, fan pages, official pages and community pages.
Facebook has become a significant tool in engaging with consumers and creating brand awareness (Malhotra, Kubowicz Malhotra, & See, 2013). Approximately 2.2bn people currently have a Facebook profile according to data from 2017. According to a study conducted by Nielsen in 2012, around 53 per cent of Facebook members follow brands at least once per month, learn more about brands (65 per cent) or hear of others' experiences with brands (70 per cent) (The Nielsen Company, 2012).
Facebook (2019), with more than 2.2bn users, is the largest form of SM worldwide. It generated more than $55bn of revenue in 2018, it is the sixth company in the world in market value, with $22bn net income, it is a huge company and an important media to worldwide advertisement, and around 50 per cent of its revenue comes outside USA. Companies need to have a Facebook fan page, which must be well configured and customised (Valos, Habibi, Casidy, Driesener, & Maplestone, 2006; Mangold & Faulds, 2009). In 2019, in Portugal, Facebook's relevance has been seen to be high: about 6.5m of people are its users (65 per cent of the total population) and 90 per cent of all internet users are on Facebook, the first website in the country. Portuguese people, in an international ranking, have taken the first place in looking for information online and 15 per cent have the habit of checking Facebook as long as they are awake (Hootsuite, 2019).
Consequently, companies invest a lot in SM platforms by creating brand fan pages on which companies publish brand posts that users can like, comment on or share, and where the company can reply to comments (De Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012; Labrecque, 2004).
Through Facebook, companies can connect with many more people, more than through phone calls, e-mails or meetings (Luke, 2009). Moreover, costs of communication have fallen drastically with this SM, generating opportunities for companies to communicate quickly, directly and consistently with millions of customers (Mize, 2009; Palmer & Koenig-Lewis, 2009).
For several applications, Facebook has contributed to generate more sales and opportunities, for instance on destination tourism marketing (Villamediana, Kuster, & Vila, 2019), B2B context (Zhang & Li, 2019) and cultural experiences (Vredeveld & Coulter, 2019).
However, researchers have highlighted risks of overuse of SM, including anxiety and FOMO (Larkin & Fink, 2016), and even risk of socialisation and formation of social bubbles (Cardenal, Aguilar-Paredes, Galais, & Perez-Montoro, 2019). People are...
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