The Interaction of Business and the Public thorugh Social Media

Introduction

Anyone who is in doubt about the relevancy of social media needs look no further than the so-called Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia on December 17, 2010, before spreading across much of North Africa and the Middle East (Howard et al, 2011, p.2). A 2011 paper focusing on the revolutions that occurred in Tunisia and Egypt, noted that: “Twitter emerged as a key source for real-time logistical coordination, information and discussion among people, both within the MENA (the Middle East and North Africa) region and across the globe.” (Lotan et al, 2011, p.78)

The events in the MENA region show that people are engaging with social media, and statistics corroborate the story: In April 2016, Facebook – the world’s most popular social media platform – had in excess of 1.5 billion users. The next most popular, WhatsApp, an instant messaging service for mobile phones, had 1 billion. In fact, there are at least 20 social media platforms across the world, which had at least 100 million users in April 2016 (Statista, 2016a), putting the total number of social media users at over 2 billion people. To give further context to this statistic: only about 3 billion people were using the internet in 2014 (World Bank, 2014).

Businesses are alert to the potential of the medium. A 2015 article estimated that the total advertising spend that year on social media would be $20 billion (Economist, 2015). In the second quarter of 2016, Facebook reported advertising revenue growth of 63% (Reuters, 2016) before following up the news a few weeks later by announcing that it was paving the way for businesses to enter its WhatsApp messaging platform, which had hitherto been free of advertising (Kuchler, 2016).

By any standards, therefore, social media is relevant to both society and business. This paper is written against this backdrop. It aims to show how modern businesses interact with society through social media, whilst acknowledging that the relationship is constantly evolving. Two case studies will provide some real-life context to the discussion and conclusions will be drawn from the research, with some suggestions about future avenues for research.

An Overview of Social Media

A list of the world’s most popular social media platforms provides some insight into how the world is currently interacting online (see chart 1 below). The scope of social media platforms ranges from content-sharing platforms such as Facebook, to instant messaging and calling services such as WhatsApp and Viber, through to image-sharing platforms like Instagram and Tumblr.

Platform	Global users (m)1	Year Founded2	Country of origin3
Facebook	1,590	2004	United States
WhatsApp	1,000	2009	United States
Facebook messenger	900	2015	United States
QQ	853	2002	China
WeChat	697	2011	China
QZone	640	2005	China
Tumblr	555	2007	United States
Instagram	400	2010	United States
Twitter	320	2006	United States
Baidu Tieba	300	2000	China
Skype	300	2003	Sweden/Estonia
Viber	249	2010	Israel
Sina Weibo	222	2009	China
LINE	215	2011	South Korea
Snapchat	200	2013	United States
YY	122	2005	China
VKontakte	100	2006	Russia
Pinterest	100	2010	United States
BBM	100	2005	Canada
LinkedIn	100	2002	United states
Telegram	100	2013	Russia

Source: ¹Statista (2016a), ^2,3Company websites

The social networking constituent of social media (comprising Facebook, VKontake and others) is expected to have 2.95 billion users by 2020 – about a third of the entire global population. Approximately 650 million of these will come from China alone, with a similar amount from India. Currently, the United States has the highest penetration rate of social networks, where in 2016, 78% of the population has a social networking profile. (Statista, 2016b).

Further context can be given to the amount of users that each social branch of social media has by showing the number of minutes the average user spends on each of the platforms (see below). On this measure, Facebook is significantly more popular than any of its peers. However, having being founded in 2004, it is also one of the oldest members of the social media community. It says much about the phenomenon of social media that a company founded in 2004 is one of the oldest surviving.

Source: ComScore

Reflecting these statistics, in 2016, only 9 companies from the Fortune 500 – an annually compiled list by Fortune magazine of the 500 largest public companies in the United States – use no social media platforms at all (Barnes, Lecault and Holmes, 2016). Nonethelss, only 10% of CEOs of those same companies tweet and not one of them is active on Facebook (Montgomery, 2016). Four reasons are put for forward for this by the same author; namely: i) chief executives feeling unprepared to have a conversation with their clients, ii) chief executives may lack the time required for the fast-response nature of social media, iii) they may lack the required know-how as to where to make a comment and when, and iv) social media simply “isn’t in the DNA of CEOs yet.”

Alternatively, these statistics may reflect what Weinberg et al (2013) referred to when they acknowledged that although social media is undoubtedly on the rise, companies have yet to find a willingness to “cede some control, be more open, allow employees to devote more time for engaging with consumers, other employees and value-chain partners, and to invite consumers to more closely participate in, and perhaps drive, some critical value-creation processes, such as product development and customer service.” (Weinberg, 2013, p.307).

Looking at two firms in more detail, therefore, and how they interact with society through social media can inform the debate. In the following two case studies, the social media behaviour of two companies – JetBlue and Starbucks – is analysed, in particular, to see how these companies interact with society through this relatively new medium.

JetBlue Case Study: Customer Service through Social Media

One of the primary ways in which modern companies interact with society through social media is with customer service. According to a 2013 study by marketing firm J.D. Power (Tew and Troy, 2013), 67% of consumers have used a company’s social media channels for customer service. There is an inherent urgency in customer service on social media channels given how others can often see the dialogue between the business and the customer airing their complaint.

The U.S. airline JetBlue offers a good example of how companies can use customer service as a means of interacting with customers, rather than reacting to them. The company has over 2.4 million followers on Twitter, 1.1 million ‘likes’ on Facebook and 182,000 followers on Instagram. A cursory glance over comments on its Facebook and Twitter accounts shows that it promptly responds to customers’ queries and complaints (usually within two hours). Its Instagram account leads with: “Customer concerns? Visit bit.ly/JBspeakup,” in effect, actively encouraging its users to use its social media channels for customer service.

The company’s social media team search out people on social media platforms who mention their brand, by using relevant hashtags: a more active form of customer service than the traditional call centre format, where firms are reacting to the calls of aggrieved customers. They average about 10 minutes’ response time to each mention of their brand name on social channels. In addition, the social media team works around the clock: twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week – ensuring that the fast response time can be maintained (Keath, 2014).

The customer service culture on JetBlue’s social media channels does not adhere to the strict script-based format that many might associate with more traditional customer service channels. Instead, its social media customer service team is encouraged to adopt a friendly and sometimes creative or humorous tone. This creates the added benefit of both creating a story online (which users are more inclined to share) as well as diffusing a situation by “speaking the language of the customer.” (Keath, 2014).

Starbucks Case Study: Social media as a promotional tool

In May 2012, General Motors announced it was no longer going to advertise its products on Facebook, on the basis that it “wasn’t getting any discernible benefit from the spending” which amounted to $10 million annually. The move generated much public comment, with one media analyst reporting: “Facebook’s business model is weak because it does not create sufficient value for different groups of customers.” (Cohan, 2012).

A little under one year later, in April 2013, General Motors had begun advertising on Facebook again with its Chevrolet marque. The US Vice President of Marketing at Chevrolet explained the move thus: “Chevrolet is testing a number of mobile-advertising solutions, including Facebook, as part of its 'Find New Roads' campaign. Today, Chevrolet is launching an industry-first, ‘mobile-only’ pilot campaign for the Chevrolet Sonic that utilizes newly available targeting and measurement capabilities on Facebook.” (Delo and McCarthy, 2013).

The case of GM indicates that even in cases where companies might prefer to avoid marketing through social media, the ubiquity of Facebook and Twitter in contemporary society means that it’s difficult for companies to avoid social media altogether. On this basis, it’s becomes a logical next step to actively participate in social media marketing, rather than simply have a presence. The marketing campaigns of US coffee house chain Starbucks offer some insight into how companies engage with society through social media.

Starbucks’ Facebook page has 36 million likes, its Instagram account has 11 million followers and its Twitter account has almost 12 million followers. Elsewhere, it also maintains accounts on Pinterest, WeChat and Vkontakte. The scale of its audience gives it serious leverage in marketing campaigns on social media, which it has embraced with some vigour: For example, its Twitter account notes that it started in November 2006 and that since then, it has tweeted 75,000 times. Scanning through its tweets shows that many are advertising promotions, products or newly opened stores.

Its marketing campaigns on social media over the past few years have included a “behind the scenes” look at Starbucks, showing images from various stages of its value chain, to a so-called #TreatReceipt promotion which offered a discount on drinks to customers who came back to a store the same day with a receipt and introducing a competition for its social media followers to have a roast introduced in their city a month before it was launched nationwide (Moth, 2014).

Starbucks’ campaigns show that social media is being used as an interactive promotional tool. The company can gain real-time feedback through the number of ‘likes’ or comments. The number of followers it has also given its campaigns tremendous scalability, allowing it to reach tens of millions of customers with each campaign.

Conclusions

The sheer numbers of people in society that now engage in some form of social media have made a social media presence unavoidable for many companies. Companies have to follow societal trends to stay relevant and it is increasingly the case that society is on social media. Learning how to interact with their customers through various channels, therefore, is imperative.

It seems that companies are now interacting with society more than ever. In a way, they have to: the internet gives an immediacy that never existed before. This has dangerous consequences when negative commentary is being posted about a company: better to have the lightning rod of a Twitter page, where the complaint can be dealt with quickly, rather than leaving it to fester elsewhere online.

Social media has also given companies’ marketing campaigns a new dimension. The interactive nature of social media means that companies are not only finding out which promotions work on a real-time basis through online feedback but also generating marketing ideas from conversations with customers as they go. An example of this is provided by the MyStarbucksIdea page, where customers are encouraged to generate ideas for Starbucks.

What’s notable, both from the academic literature and looking at contemporary companies is engaging in social media, is that it remains a somewhat experimental field. The case of GM shows that there’s a ‘should we or shouldn’t we?’ question sometimes being asked by companies about social media. However, as case studies of more and more companies which have successfully interacted with massive numbers of customers emerge, the likelihood is that other companies will see that social media is quickly becoming the most effective way to interact with society.

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Making a Fortune the Taylor Swift Way

Why did Taylor Swift pull her music from Spotify on November 3, 2014? Was it really to “protect a superfan” as her bosses claim or even to fight for the rights of unsigned musicians everywhere? The answer is probably a lot more mundane. And more predictable. A quick view of Google Trends shows Taylor Swift’s relative fall in popularity  since late 2012:

But look at all those headlines generated in November 2014. A record amount of publicity generated for the young pop star. Something else happened on November 2014: Swift announced dates for her tour in 2015. All that publicity would come in handy. Presumably, it did no harm in shifting tickets, particularly as Swift was now looking out for the “super fan.”

The music industry has been accused of lacking ideas to generate revenue for over a decade now. Industry executives are told they should be more creative than the artists they're trying to promote. Whoever is responsible for the Swift PR exercise is truly a marketing whizz. Her next business ventures should be watched with interest.

Media Reaction to Another Round of Peace Negotiations in Israel and Palestine

It could be easy to take a generalist approach when looking at the Israeli media. However, we can nonetheless advance some theories about the reaction of the media should Israel and the Palestinians begin another round of negotiations towards signing a peace agreement. Although a peace settlement of one form or another is arguably in everybody’s long term interests, the media is likely to exaggerate the content of peace talks in one form or another.

Context is everything. Media outlets, traditional and otherwise, are wrestling among each other for decreasing revenues. In such a climate, sensationalist pieces make better cover – and generate more revenues (or at least, that’s how much of the prevailing thinking goes). In peace negotiations, the process often moves at a snail’s pace. Another round of negotiations towards peace (“here we go again”) is likely to stimulate some nationalist comment in the newspapers and elsewhere.

The peace negotiations are sure to stir up the “rally around the flag” rhetoric that becomes commonplace in media outlets during wartime. It’s not difficult to envisage a situation whereby Israeli negotiators are seen to give some concessions to the Palestinian side. It’s unlikely the concessions would be too significant in their impact but the Israeli media response is likely to converge around how Israel is, “giving in to terrorists” or “bowing to international pressure.”

In fact, an international element (America, Europe, the G8, etc.) will likely play some role, active or passive, in future peace negotiations. This could create a voice within the Israeli media, which questions the need for any outside participation at all. As much as every country and economic bloc has its own issues to contend with, the media is likely to draw comparisons between the UK and Northern Ireland. So, for example, “Northern Ireland has more so-called peace walls now than it did before the Good Friday Agreement and the UK wants to lecture us on how to achieve peace?”

Narrative-building like this is common in media, not just in Israel. In times when there is less headline-creating news, features – and political features – become more common. Features are open to being driven by narratives rather than what is happening. So, whereas the news would report about representatives from both sides entering a room, a lot of back and forth, and little outcome to report, a feature might present a narrative about these negotiations being part of a bigger Middle Eastern plot to oust the Israeli government.

Furthermore, when conflicts are polarized, as is the case in Israel, there is a tendency for people to view politicians from the other side as not only representatives of the people but almost representations of their people. So, when Israeli media outlets, rightly or wrongly, portray leaders of Hamas as anti-Semitic fundamentalists, there is a natural tendency (not just in Israel) for people to view all supporters of Hamas in the same light. Polarized views become the norm, whereas in reality, populations are like everything else – there is a normal curve representing all views across the political spectrum.

Once peace negotiations have been concluded – with a resolution or without - how the media presents what occurred within the negotiations is likely to impact on future efforts for peace (be they negotiations, efforts on the ground, etc.). Although war makes better print coverage than peace; the examples of Lord Kitchener’s “Britain Needs You” poster from 1914, or its American equivalent featuring Uncle Sam from 1917 or even Russian wartime propaganda posters  («Не болтай!» meaning “Don’t talk!” being the most famous). Somewhat regrettably, it is difficult to recall any peacetime slogans, imagery or print from these countries.

However, one piece of research in particular, on the role of media in (relative) peacetime in Israel (Wolfsfeld and Alimi, 2008) makes an outstanding contribution to the existing literature. The authors note that that is an “inherent contradiction between news and peace,” but note that leaders on either side of a conflict have the ability to initiate stories that provide hope to their people. Likewise, some form of peace can create novel news structures about “the other side.” They comment, “even negative stories about diplomatic and economic relations between the countries remind people that something fundamentally has changed and that normalization is possible.”

Bibliography

Wolfsfeld, G.,  Alimi, E.Y., Wasfi, K. (2008). News Media and Peace Building in Asymmetrical Conflicts: The Flow of News between Jordan and Israel. Political Studies: 2008 Vol. 56, pp. 374–398

Four Roles of Media during War

1. Information

The first role of the media in wartime is as a timely source of relevant information. Despite the shifting mediums that the media takes, this remains its primary function during a war. This naturally leaves large room for various interpretations and raises the question, how much information should the media be sharing about the war? At what stage does information become counter-productive in itself? One paper (Kalb and Saivetz, 2007) note that during the war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, “journalists…broadcast their reports from hotel roofs and hilltops, as they covered the movement of troops and the rocketing of villages – often (unintentionally, one assumes) revealing sensitive information to the enemy.” Therefore the informative element of the media can have a strategic as well as a purely information-for-information’s sake element. To date, the information-for-information’s sake seems to be the largest area occupied by social media channels such as Twitter. As a paper by Sarah Joseph (Joseph, 2010) notes: “anyone in the vicinity with audacity and a (still or video) camera… can document brutality and spread it on the net, sometimes instantaneously with those same mobile phones.”  This role of the media, being new, is still being defined and may evolve into something else as once outsider technologies becomes more mainstream.

2. Shaping Public Opinion

One of the historical roles of media is to shape public perception and opinion, and even, to “mobilize” support for the conflict among one side or another. Cetus paribus, domestic news media will generally reflect official views on the war at the initial stages. Thereafter Bennett, Livingston and Laurence refer to “reality management,” and how, during Israel’s conflict with Lebanon, Hezbollah in particular was able to exploit the media for its own purposes. Traditionally, this might have been referred to as propaganda but as media has become democratic and less influenced by government and censorship (at least, that is how it seems), the element of propaganda – if it still exists - is increasingly difficult to separate from the opinion and editorial pieces.

Journalists: selling stuff.

3. Providing Legitimacy/Notoriety to a Cause or Movement

As the paper, Social Movements, Protest and Mainstream Media (McCurdy, 2012) notes, “social movements and mainstream media have a contentious and longstanding history.” It appears that a major difference between a movement which remains on the fringes and one which joins the mainstream, is access to the media. This was particularly evident in the conflict in Northern Ireland, where Sinn Féin, the political arm of the IRA, were not allowed any access to the media in the 1980s. Because of the concerted media campaign against them (or maybe in spite of it), the organization adapts some of its modus operandi and/or central message. It is not always the intention of media to provide legitimacy to a cause or movement. Sometimes, in reporting on the movement, the media provides notoriety, itself a kind of legitimacy. The case of Al Quaeda and Osama Bin Laden are a case in point. Kalb and Savietz (2007) report one Middle Eastern analyst, who provides them with the soundbite, “If bin Laden didn’t have access to global media, satellite communications and the Internet, he’d just be a cranky guy in a cave.” Likewise, movements on Twitter are given some legitimacy by reports in more mainstream media: this in turn provides legitimacy and/or notoriety to the new cause or movement in a war or conflict setting.

4. To sell things

This is perhaps slightly off-topic from the readings and materials, but relevant nonetheless. During peacetime or conflict, we must not forget that one of the primary purposes of the media is to sell products and services. With people paying less for media subscriptions (particularly so in print media) all the time and media outlets themselves increasingly depending on advertising revenues, it follow that one of the primary purposes of the media is to sell us things. In an article entitled Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be tweeted, (Gladwell, October, 2010) the  author discusses how, despite claims to the contrary, Twitter hadn’t changed anything in Iran up until the time the article was written. What is clear, however, when one looks at Twitter’s revenue in the same period (which was growing in double figures) is that one thing did change: Twitter was selling more. Several things stop during wartime; media advertisements do not.

Bibliography

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