Научная статья на тему 'Social media is important key in market economy'

Social media is important key in market economy Текст научной статьи по специальности «СМИ (медиа) и массовые коммуникации»

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SOCIAL MARKETING / POLITICAL MARKETING / BUSINESS TO BUSINESS OR INDUSTRIAL MARKETING ETC

Аннотация научной статьи по СМИ (медиа) и массовым коммуникациям, автор научной работы — Metin Barxhaj

Many social media outlets have procedures by which entities or individuals can report trademark or copyright abuse to the outlet, which may then take appropriate actions, including suspending the responsible user’s account and removing infringing content. In fact, many social media companies, including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. In addition, companies should have terms and conditions for their own social media outlets, with provisions specifying how to properly use the company’s and/or third parties’ intellectual property. Marketers conducting certain types of social media marketing campaigns, particularly promotions and user-generated content campaigns, should have rules in place that include specific prohibitions regarding trademark and copyright infringement and impersonation.

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Текст научной работы на тему «Social media is important key in market economy»

Section 4. Marketing

Metin Barxhaj, Ph D Candidate High Inspectorate of Declaration and Audit of Assets and Conflict of Interests E-mail: barxha@yahoo.it

Social media is important key in market economy

Abstrac: Many social media outlets have procedures by which entities or individuals can report trademark or copyright abuse to the outlet, which may then take appropriate actions, including suspending the responsible user's account and removing infringing content. In fact, many social media companies, including Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

In addition, companies should have terms and conditions for their own social media outlets, with provisions specifying how to properly use the company's and/or third parties' intellectual property. Marketers conducting certain types of social media marketing campaigns, particularly promotions and user-generated content campaigns, should have rules in place that include specific prohibitions regarding trademark and copyright infringement and impersonation.

Keywords: Social marketing, political marketing, business to business or industrial marketing etc.

1. Introduction use, and maintenance Social marketing is a powerful tool

Today social marketing is at the top of list of mar- that can improve an individual's, a group's, or a society's

keting. Social marketing is concerned with helping to welfare. Often, the goal of Extension programming is to achieve and maintain desirable social change. Sometimes social change occurs unplanned, and with generally benign or even positive effects, such as in the introduction of the printing press, the telephone, or the worldwide web. In other cases, change can be violent as in the French and Russian revolutions of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, or have devastating health effects as in the industrial revolution's underground mining and unsafe factories. More recently, social and economic changes in countries previously constituting the Soviet Union have led to a marked increase in heart disease in these countries, especially among the unemployed and underemployed, with alcohol abuse being the major proximal contributor to deaths [1]. Hence, social marketers and other social change practitioners are called on to use their skills not only to achieve socially desirable change, but also to counter undesirable social change.

2. Marketing and business

Using social media to promote one's brand, products,

or services can also implicate privacy and data security issues. It is important for companies to be aware of these issues and take appropriate measures to minimize their exposure to liability related to personal data collection,

change behavior or to have new ideas adopted and used by the target audience.While no business relies solely on marketing (i. e., finance, production, transport and warehousing, etc., are essential), without marketing of some sort the company could not survive. No matter how good a product is, if consumers are not made aware of how it could meet their needs, and if it is not readily available and affordable, the company will fail. In short, marketing is a necessary, but not sufficient, factor for success.

All other things being equal (e. g., costs of production and distribution, etc.), the most successful businesses are those with the best marketing. By 'best marketing', we don't just mean the best ads or high incentive promotions, but the best use of techniques to: identify consumer needs; develop products and services tailored to deliver benefits that satisfy the needs of different market segments; reach and attract the attention of the target audience and make access to the products and services easy, at prices that customers consider equitable.

Like any other business, the business of social change relies on the use of marketing tools to achieve its goals of attracting and satisfying its target groups. No matter how intrinsically good is our product, say energy conser-

Social media is important key in market economy

vation, we still need to do the following effectively to get people to 'buy' and act on our message:

• inform people as to why energy conservation is necessary;

• show them how they can buy products or adopt behaviours that conserve energy without undue cost or effort;

Similarly, we need to do the same for legislators and corporations ifwe want to achieve regulatory, policy and product changes that provide support for individual behavior change.

3. Social marketing and social change tools

The social marketing listserv has a burst of activity every so often with respect to 'defining social marketing'. Much of this is semantic, with various contributors taking perhaps perverse intellectual delight in trying to think of exceptions to whatever definition is proposed by someone else. We think that the vast majority of social marketing practitioners have been doing quite well without a precise defi nition of each and every word, and pedantic posturing serves little useful purpose.

Social marketing as proposed by many social marketers (mainly by academics, less so by practitioners), has been restricted to the classical marketing techniques and originally excluded areas such as lobbying, legislative and policy action and structural change. However, marketers use a number of tools to achieve sales and profit goals. Business lobbies government for policies and legislation that facilitate business operations, such as restricting competition — especially from imports, tax breaks for research and development of new products, plant and retail location incentives, fuel subsidies and so on, all of which have a bearing on the company's marketing efforts. For example, Australian margarine manufacturers lobbied long and hard for legislation to allow margarine to be coloured like butter to increase its acceptance by consumers — a move vigorously opposed by the dairy industry. Similarly, anti-tobacco campaigners have lobbied government to ban tobacco advertising, to increase tax on tobacco and to restrict smoking in public places. Is lobbying for the social good 'social marketing'? From our point of view, if the lobbyist considers the interaction an exchange and is concerned with the needs of the lobbied (i. e., the politician or legislator), then it is social marketing. Hopefully Andreasen's (2006) [2] book on influencing policymakers and legislators will increase the acceptance ofthese areas as within a marketing approach.Such lobbying is, of course, consistent with commercial marketing anyway — as noted above — since actions like lobbying are included in the promotion 'P' of the marketing mix in terms of influencing

the environment in which exchanges take place (Kotler et al. 1998) [3]. Furthermore, if the key core concept of marketing is the exchange process, whereby one party exchanges something ofvalue with another party to the perceived benefit ofeach, then much ofhuman activity — not just that of commercial organisations — could be termed 'marketing' [4].

In this sense we agree with Piercy (2008) and Baker (1996) that virtually all organisations engage in some form of marketing (i. e., attempting to achieve satisfying exchanges with stakeholders), although many would not label it as such, and some would make more efforts with some stakeholders than others. For example, many government department CEOs expend far more effort in keeping their minister happy than they do in keeping their clients satisfied [5].

4. Social marketing and health promotion

Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter generally have their own privacy policies that govern their use of consumer data and third-party conduct on the social media platform with respect to personal data. Marketers utilizing third-party social media outlets should ensure that their marketing campaigns do not encourage consumers or any other parties to engage practices that would violate the social media company's privacy policy, and marketers should also ensure that they are abiding by the policies as well. Companies that administer their own blogs and/or other social media platforms should also maintain comprehensive policies that disclose the company's data collection, use, and storage practices, and any responsibilities that third parties have as regards privacy and data security [6].

5. Social marketing, the public health approach and social medicine

A common call today by health and social policy professionals is for 'a public health approach' to almost every health and social ill, from the obesity problem, violence, adolescent substance use and increasing physical activity to reducing medical malpractice errors (just Google Scholar 'public health approach' and you will see what we mean) [7]. Much of this has arisen from the success of the public health approach in controlling infectious diseases (and environmental hazards) and applying the same principles and methods to the lifestyle behaviour of tobacco use.

Public health is concerned with preserving, promoting and improving health, with an emphasis on prevention: primary prevention refers to preventing problems occurring in the first place (universal interventions); secondary prevention refers to interventions targeting at-

risk groups before the problem is established (selective interventions); and tertiary prevention refers to interventions that attempt to prevent the problem re-occurring (indicated interventions). Hence, relationship programmes for young males about respecting women are an example of primary prevention; interventions aimed at young males whose father or male carer was abusive represent secondary prevention; behaviour change programmes for men who have physically abused their partner represent tertiary intervention.

6. Social marketing and social mobilisation

Based on social change programmes in developing

countries, some authors defines social mobilisation as 'the process of bringing together all feasible and practical intersectoral socialallies to raise people's awareness of and demand for a particular development programme, to assist in the delivery of resources and services and to strengthen community participation for sustainability and self-reliance'.

He lists legislators, community leaders (religious, social and political), corporations and the target audience themselves (the 'benefi ciaries') as targets via lobbying, mass media, training, participation inplanning, sponsorship, study tours and so on, to bring about the 'mobilisation' ofall these groups to ensure a programme's success [8].

7. Retaining Records Related to Use of Social Media

Companies using social media should retain records related to such use for a reasonable period of time in the

event the records are needed in connection with a regulatory investigation or other legal proceeding. Information and communications conveyed through social media channels may become relevant to a legal or self-regulatory proceeding, and may ultimately be the subject of a subpoena or other compulsory process. Indeed, the legal action may not directly involve a company that has custody of relevant social media exchanges or information, but a regulatory, court, or other authority may nevertheless compel the company to produce the materials. Further, records related to a company's use of social media may also ultimately prove useful in supporting a company's position in a legal proceeding or in connection with a threatened proceeding [9].

Conclusion.

In today's non-profit market, most projects require a scientifically developed needs assessment, a monitoring process throughout the project, and a formal evaluation upon conclusion. All are factors in a successful social marketing effort. Social marketing has a systematic structure that includes pretesting of the strategy. Extension often involves people in educational opportunities as part of a social change campaign. This work can be effectively achieved through social marketing, which allows for improved audience identification, better product development, and targeted marketing for each outreach effort. This framework for changing behavior holds great promise for extending Extension's outreach on old and

new issues.

References

1. Lebherz P. R. Relevant factors for the impact of social media marketing strategies.Empirical study of the internet travel agency sector., 2011.

2. Andersen's 2006, Marketing Concepts and Strategies, Sydney: Australia, NelsonSocial Marketing in the 21st century, Sage publications.

3. Kotler, Philip; Peter Chandler; Rosalie Gibbs and Rodney McGoll (1987), Marketing Strategy.

4. Aaker, J. L. 1997. Dimensions of Brand Personality, Journal of Marketing Research 34 (Aug.): 347 -56.

5. Abroms, L. and Lefebvre, R. 2009. Obama's Wired Campaign: Lessons for Public Health Communication, Journal of Health Communication 14: 415 -23.

6. Ackerman, P. and Duvall, J. 2000. A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Confl ict. New York: St. Martin's Press.

7. Aidis, R. (2003), "Entrepreneurship and Transition Economies", TI 2003-015/2, Tinbergen institute Discussion Paper, 1-31.

8. Fogel, K. (2006), "Institutional Obstacles to Entrepreneurship", Oxford Handbook of Entrepreneurship, Oxford University Pres.

9. Kietzmann J. H., Hermkens K., McCarthy I. P. and Silvestre B. S., Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media, Business horizons, 54 (3), P. 241-251, 2011.

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