SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING IMPLEMENTATION IN THE ESTONIAN COMPANIES
Marko Saue (2010)
The thesis is in Estonian. Everyone interested in reading the whole paper should contact the author Marko Saue markosaue@gmail.com
Marko Saue's Master thesis concentrates on giving advice to the companies who are using social media for marketing and also for those companies who are planning to do that. He studied the current situation of social media implementation in Estonian companies. In addition he interviewed the local internet marketing experts and learned about their opinion about the current situation of social media usage among Estonian companies. Altogether his research involved 82 companies and 11 experts. All the surveys were carried through online.
His main hypotheses were:
Hypothesis H1 – Estonian companies have just started to use SMM, mainly experimenting in that field and doesn’t include or hire internet marketing specialists to help them.
Hypothesis H2 – Estonian companies are investing time and money to SMM, but they are not measuring results.
Hypothesis H3 – In Estonia, Facebook has a biggest potential as a SMM channel.
All of his hypotheses were confirmed. Most of the companies who took part of the research had been using social media for marketing for only a few months. They had not used the help of experts, because either they were just looking into the field and thought that they will firstly find out the benefits of using social media, or they thought they had the competency to do it themselves. The main so called misdoing for the companies was the lack of measuring results. Everyone was using social media, doing campaigns and getting new fans and potential customers, but they did not have the knowledge to measure the exact profit. As it could be seen from both the companies survey and expert interviews, the social media marketing channel with the most potential in Estonia is Facebook. Facebook's possibilities and applications for marketing have the best potential to reach the wanted audience.
According to Saue, the following guidelines could be given to the companies regarding the implementation of social media marketing (SMM):
- SMM is appropriate for all companies and it is the time to start
- It is recommended to include experts right from the start
- Companies should establish specific goals for SMM
- SMM strategy should be long-term
- It is essential to measure the results and act on the go
- It is important to foremost create value for the fans and followers
- While communicating in social media, one has to be honest, direct and patient
Saue suggests to repeat the same kind of research after 6 months or a year, as he believes that a few months in social media can make a remarkable difference in companies marketing results. The new results would show, whether the situation has changed and whether the assumptions have become reality. He also suggests to do a qualitative research about how marketing theories and strategies are used in social media or study specific success stories of SMM.
My remarks:
The research is an interesting material to read for every company and marketing agency in Estonia. But apart from that it is really a useful tool for a company who is just starting using SMM. The conclusions made from the research could be taken as a tool for going further with the implementation of social media. Although the thesis gives a great overview of the situation today, the situation changes rapidly and soon new studies are needed to keep up with the development of new SMM channels and companies' creativity in using them.
Note to self: The author claims that SMM channels like Twitter and Youtube are loosing their audience to Facebook, because the same possibilities of short messaging and video uploading exist there as well and the information could be more easily integrated. Therefore should keep an eye on the changes in that field.
Social media and estonian companies 2010
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