Role of Brand Community in Social Media
THIS IS A SHORT INSITE OF MY VIEWS OVER “ROLE OF BRAND COMMUNITY IN SOCIAL MEDIA” BY MOHAMMAD REZA HABIBI, MICHEL LAROCHE, MARIE-ODILE RICHARD, AVAILABLE ONLINE SINCE May 21st 2014.
To gain more number of consumer shares, a particular brand company need to be actively present on Social media as the way social media has grown in past few years the best way for any brand to build the brand trust. The era of technology has changed the way of almost each and everything and so has affected the branding and community engagement. Marketers in the current scenario find it difficult building one on one relationship with the customers as it takes a lot of time and cost although being beneficial, due to
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Shared rituals and traditions help in continuing and communicating the symbolic meanings and cultures of a brand community thus making them comfortable and make the bond within the members of the community even stronger. Obligations to the society creates a sense of commitment towards the welfare of the community in a sense of providing feedbacks and the best possible use of a particular product to help the optimized use of their product.
Apart from these three indicators the building blocks for a brand community include customers in each and every block which are customer to customer, customer to product, customer to company and customer to brand. Having all these things but why would someone join a brand community? This question comes to each everyone’s mind. The answer to this question is really simple and straightforward brand community provides you trust. A community consists of people who have a similar thought process as you, same values and same passion help in selecting a product. Once the product is selected by a customer on the basis of brand community by reading their reviews over it and works out to be well fit for the customer, this encourages the customer to stay associated with the brand community for future information and also provide their inputs that can be beneficial for others. This not only helps the customers but
One of the key roles of social media from a marketing perspective is the development of a client based platform. It is becoming an increasingly important part of any business’s marketing. Businesses can utilize existing online platforms to build networks of current and potential clients. By being active online allows businesses to connect with their customers in innovative ways to become a trusted source of information and convey the passion they have for their industry.
Social media has become an influential ground for consumers to share their opinions about a company’s brand and products. In addition, it helps in having a strong brand that produces positive relations and distinguish the brand from competitors, is a critical component for effective marketing. According to Dahlén and Lange (2009) “the quality of the product is not the evident factor when it comes to purchasing a product, the deciding factor depends on how the brand is perceived” (Para. 1). This demonstrates the importance of incorporating social media as a tool to promote brands, allow for interactions, and customer satisfaction by engaging with customers more frequently for feedbacks or reviews. Thus create an opportunity for the company to show its devotion to their customers, and initiate good reputation, which can increase sales. In other words, social media has the ability to upsurge the awareness for businesses as well as the brand.
Social media has become an essential channel for corporations to build a two-way relationship with their customers. However, having a social media account cannot solve everything. To make the best use of social media in keeping a positive relationship with their customers, corporations ought to seek and maintain influence among their followers in social media, and participate in communications with them.
Using the multitude of resources the authors draw from, they study the results of a survey of several hundred companies using online marketing in order to determine the best practices for those advertising strategies. The authors ascertain that social media marketing is only as effective as the prevailing psychological factors in which social media works. These factors are inherent in human communication, not only on the internet, but in the real world as well. The authors state that there are communities of people using social media and that “these communities often thrive because the members primarily are drawn to one another. The importance of person-to-person affinity – and the ability to interact with these other humans – typically trumped the role of the sponsor’s goods or services or the presence of other features in the online communities.” (Moran 232) What the authors are saying is that social media is a new tool in order to bring similar consumers together and that if a company wants to be successful in social media marketing, they must concentrate on the human connection rather than their product or services.
Social media is an effective media of communication between the consumers and companies. The companies are using social media for improving consumer engagement and brand lift. This essay gives a brief overview of social media platforms and how effective they have been. It shows that the whole marketing concept has undergone radical transformation due to the social media interaction. The essay ends in conclusion depicting what marketers need to take care in order to have successful social media campaign.
Social media is capable of connecting a brand with its consumers and discover how they are being perceived, it also has the power to change perceptions and identify the key people within the business network. The unique feature of social media is that it can provide corporations and businesses solutions developed through operating with consumers and stakeholders. Basically, social media serves as a visible connection to one’s corporation and its stakeholders, consumers, suppliers, etc, who each have a defined role within the system to filter and regulate information. As mentioned earlier, the influence of social media is spreading in a proliferative pace that has resulted to an essential transformation in society, technology and business customs.
In today’s business world, social media is being discussed on a daily basis. This phenomenon has taken over the marketing and advertising industries and has changed the way they handle their efforts to attract customers. There is a big misunderstanding that social media are only popular networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, social media are “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos).” The rise of these online communities has given companies an opportunity to engage in conversations with their customers. This in
This study can be briefly discussed through the lens of literature review, data collection methods and findings. Based on the literature review, social media marketing is a non-traditional method of marketing which requires special attention and strategy building to give firms better communication grounds with the consumers to achieve brand image and loyalty. To be exact, solid media strategies are required for firms to stay competitive. As an approach to understand the effect of social marketing on brand loyalty
The purpose of this report is to show that even though some state that Social Media has fallen short of their expectations, it is actually good for business, given that it enhances the visibility of their brand and helps businesses stay connected to potential customers.
In recent years, social media has become the best available option for brands to communicate with prospective consumers. In other words, social media is an opportunity for brands to transcend the traditional middleman (Neti, 2011). One of the many positives is that companies can build their own brand communities easily on the social media. There are some obvious benefits of brand communities which are facilitating information sharing, spread the history and the culture of brands, providing help to customers, and positively influencing brand loyalty (Laroche, Habibi and Richard, 2013).
The relation brand-consumer changed aspect. The brands have to watch henceforth what people say of them on these social media and to begin the dialogue with their consumers to make sure to keep a good "e-reputation" and to enter a relational optics with their customers. But they can also benefit from these digital social networks to try to create consumers' community on-line "ambassadors" around them, to federate them and to develop loyalty of them thanks to a communication and specific tools.
Brand community is considered to be a community of brand followers and customers, fastened together by similar behavioural attachment towards the brand. As drastic innovation on the leading platforms reduces down, marketers become progressively limited in their influence, brands are requiring to move laterally to lodge their customer-centred needs. Brands are considering onlookers connected by the synchronization of their brand interest, rather than the unity of their social "real world" connections. The communities are trained on social media which bid amusing new opportunities to squeeze brand sensibility. Taking the commitment of the brand to a fully preserved community makes comprehensive sense in a customer-centred strategy. Marketers can build up brand communities by assisting in shared consumer experiences and strengthening the trustworthiness to the brand as an amalgamation towards the brand (McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002). In the emerging consumer culture fuelled by industrial revolution, the sense of community and interpersonal bonds and unimagined fellowship is necessary for the growth of the brand and the manufacturers (McAlexander, Schouten, & Koenig, 2002).
Using social media helps in connecting with and engaging influential individuals and customers to enable a positive brand image. Distributing proactive content and building relationships with customers helps in dispelling negative perceptions and highlighting the positive.
Communication is another important factor that needs to consider for building relationship with customer and make them loyal. Communication needs to be two way between customer and company. Social media platform has enriched communications among people. Therefore, it has open up new opportunity for companies to interact with customer more. Companies can open up their page to increase interaction with the customer on social media platform. On the other, customers also interested to interact with brands page and know brand their opinion, thoughts and views. According to (Nduisi, 2007), state that communication is the important way to build awareness, understanding customer preference and motivate customer to make them loyal to the company. Communication is an interactive dialogue between company and its customer. Some scholars underscored significance of communication of building relationship with customer. However, it has been now turn into an indispensable part of customer loyalty or retention strategies because of technological evolution. Social media platform has open up opportunities both for customers and brand to communicate at any time, at any cause. ‘Customer and brand relationship can be improved by improving relationship quality and also help to build long lasting relationship” (Jaya chandra, 2005). In (2012, Kavah, ), has developed a new model where he uncovered that among trust, commitment, satisfaction, purchase intention, communication has