Turundus sotsiaalmeedias: Eesti ettevõtete kogemus - põhjused, info ja tulemused
Date
2010
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Social media topic has become very popular lately among users and businesses.
According to Metrix.Station there are over 600 companies in Estonia using Facebook
and 147 companies using Twitter as their marketing channel.
Therefore I have chosen to do a research on companies who are using social media for
marketing purposes. In my study there were three main research areas: the reasons
behind using social media, the message and the results. My main research questions
were as follows – What do the Estonian companies do in social media (how do they
market)? What kind of information is channelled? and What are the results?
For my research I held semi-structured interviews with eight corporate
representatives, who all are related with social media marketing. The selection was
deliberately varied, by including companies from different business sectors, who were
all using social media for marketing. The companies whose representatives I
interviewed are as follows – Estonian Air AS; Hansaplant Hulgi OÜ; EMT AS;
Turismiweb; KSA Silmakeskus; AS Baltika (brand Ivo Nikkolo); Piletilevi AS;
Veinisõber OÜ.
The companies mentioned have only for the last year started using the social media
for their marketing, however there were two companies who have been involved with
it since 2008 – Turismiweb and Estonian Air. When discussing why the companies
started using the social media for their marketing tool they all concluded that – The
Social Media is a new direct marketing channel to the consumer/ customer, it provides
two-sided communication channel between the company and their target group and
the use of the service is cost free, the only outgoings for the companies when using
the social media is the time costs of someone monitoring the process. Estonian
companies have mainly used Facebook and Twitter as their social media channels,
however the following channels are being used as well – blogs, forums, Orkut,
YouTube and Vimeo. The channel selection process is mainly related to what is
currently popular in Estonia and what are their target groups using. The information
provided on the tools are mainly related to the company’s area of business and any
relevant information to help entice their audience – this helps with the initial contact
and then progresses to in- direct relationships with their target groups. It helps to
update them on what is happening in the organisation, to introduce them to new
products or services, providing useful tips or sharing interesting facts about the area of
business. The companies are very keen on the feedback they get from their followers
– responses to their messages, also constructive criticism, comments etc. The
companies are trying to start interactions on different subjects with their followers.
The results are being measured by the number of fans they have got, also on the
feedback and the intensity of the feedbacks. Some companies have been able to
measure the financial gain. In my research there was one company Veinisõber, who
had measured growth in sales. All the results so far have been positive, the targets
have been met and the companies are trying to market in social media more and more
effectively by studying the feedback they get and by learning from their mistakes.
Marketing with the social media is a relatively new area of study; we have found that
not many people have ventured in this area. Myself and two other university
colleagues – Jaanika Aasrand and Kair Käsper – have however opted to write our
thesis on this area and the benefits of social media marketing. We are all searching the
same subject from different angles, my research was based around the companies as
the message creators and their motivations behind this; Jaanika is focusing on the
messages that are being channeled and Kair is looking at the users motivations. I have
come across information that other universities students have taken up in similar
studies this year. Based around the same subject I feel that it would be good to study
the user’s activities on social media in order to find out when and how often it would
be optimal for the companies to post their messages. This interesting research angel
was a discussion point during my interview with Ivo Nikkolo.
Keywords
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