Unit 301A Social Media

Unit 301 - Principles of Social Media within a Business

Donut Creative Arts Studio

Type– Youth Arts Facility - Not for profit organisation

Vision–  To be the very best extreme sports retailer in the UK and Europe.

Aims and Objectives;

• to help young people develop their skills.

• to support and motivate young people to achieve their potential.

Goals;

• to raise young peoples aspirations in what they enjoy.

• to support young people towards their future goals. 

Donut Creative Arts Studio (DCAS)  is a local authority run by Derbyshire County Council (DDC). DCAS specialises in creative arts such as music, drama, dance and art. They run drop in sessions every evening for young people aged 11 - 19 or up to 25 if the young person has any additional needs. DCAS also has groups of young people throughout the week who are vulnerable, at risk or struggle in a school setting. They come to DCAS for additional help or support. 

Mission Statement

DCAS and DCC Children Services department has a mission statement: ‘to support and inspire children, young people and their families to be the best they can be; safe, healthy, happy, learning and working.’ DCAS’s mission statement is long but explains the business and its visions well.

A mission statement is a summary of the aims and values of a business. This is part of a businesses branding. A mission statement is seen by the customers, competitors, partners. The mission statement should be good and informative. 

A statement of purpose is what influences the business, their professional interests, and a plan for the future. DCAS’s statement of purpose is provided by DCC and is the same as their mission statement.

Branding

Their brand is represented by a bright, bold logo. The logo uses the primary colours so it stands out and is easy to remember.  

A logo should represent and help promote a business as the logo is how a business is seen by other businesses and the public. A businesses logo is seen by everyone including customers, competitors, suppliers and partners. A logo will be how a company sells itself and how people remember it. 

Ethics

DCAS’s has many ethics but their main ethic and vision is help and support any young people under any circumstance. For example, if a young person can’t afford to pay for a session, DCAS won’t just turn them away. Ethics are a businesses morals, why they are doing what they are doing. 

Sustainable business ethics are how a business manage their financial, social and environmental risks, obligations and opportunities. This is important to how the customers and partners see the business as if the company has bad ethics they won’t want to contribute to the business. 

DCAS’s sustainable business ethics are set by Derbyshire County Council. DCC say that they aim to ‘promote a better quality of life for Derbyshire communities, encouraging sustainable economic regeneration and protecting and enhancing the environment are the cornerstones of sustainable development.’ 

Marketing tools

Marketing tools are how a business promotes itself or its products and services. 

The marketing tools of a business consist of a marketing calendar, digital and physical media, telemarketing, face to face and surveys. A marketing calendar shows if the business has any planned marketing events such as an open day or an event such as a show or something relating to the business. A marketing calendar also shows current and planned media campaigns such as social media campaigns or a poster campaign. Digital and physical media is one of the best ways to promote a business and its products or services. Physical media such as posters, leaflets and flyers. Digital media is content that can be send out digitally such as text, audio, video, and graphics. These forms of media are usually sent and used for TV networks, newspapers  and magazines. Telemarketing is when businesses market goods or services to potential customers over the telephone. Face to face marketing is one of the most popular ways to market a product or service because you can personalise a product or service to the customer. Face to face marketing could be talking to customers as they come into a shop.  Surveys are a good way to gather a variety of opinions and views of your product or service.Surveys can help you develop and come up with new products or services that the public would like from your business. 

Social media on the budget of different sizes and types of business.

Different sizes of businesses such as corporate, public and voluntary businesses will all have different aims and different audiences.

Corporate businesses

Large corporate businesses would have more of an opportunity social media more than smaller businesses because they will have a larger audience and may have more staff and a higher budget. A higher budget means they could run campaigns at a larger scale. For example they could create a TV advert whereas smaller businesses may only run a poster campaign. Large businesses would use social media to promote what they do but to a larger audience. They could rely on social media to promote a new product as they would have a big enough following to get the word out whereas smaller businesses would have to get the word out via other marketing platforms. If a large business gets bad press against them this could cause for them to loose followers from their social media sites so, like every business, they have to keep their social media platforms up to date with regular updates to keep people interested. Larger businesses could be on time scales, for example to complete a campaign in time for a release date of a new product. This could cost the business more as they need it to be completed on time and still be to a professional standard.

Public businesses

Public businesses would use social media to promote their company, products and services but won’t have the audience than a corporate business might have. For example public companies might not have the budget to film adverts or hire professional photographers for their marketing material. They often find themselves doing the work themselves, for example taking pictures of their products and making their own ways to sell their product or service to the public. Smaller companies could use other ways to market themselves by using direct marketing such as email marketing or telemarketing. Every company wants their business to seem professional so by keeping their social media and marketing campaigns professional this could help them gain followers and likes on their business profiles to gain more attention to their business and their products or services.

Voluntary businesses

Voluntary business won’t have much, if any, of a budget to use on marketing. Social media is a suitable marketing platform for them as they don’t need to pay to use sites such as Facebook and Twitter but can still market their products and services. Voluntary businesses don’t exist to make money so their goals from using social media would be very different to a corporate business who's main goal is to sell their products and services. This is the same as not for profit organisations.

A sole trader would use social media the same as any other business would, to try and market their products and services, but might not have much of a budget to design posters or a professional logo or website. A sole trader would use social media to get the word out about the business to a smaller area than a large corporate business would.

Factors

Their are different factors that could affect how different businesses use social media such as their audience, business type, business brand, resources, content, cost, time and market conditions. For example a large corporate business would have a large budget but could be on a time scale whereas a small public business might have a small budget but won’t be on a time scale so will have more time to experiment with ideas and have more time to gather resources and design their own campaign. Another factor is market conditions. If there are other companies offering the same product or service that your business is offering, you will have to make sure you are making yours sound like its the best product that customers can buy. 

The benefits and consequences of encouraging amplification

Amplification is when a company focuses all their marketing on a specific product or service. 

The benefits of amplification could be; firstly the more something is amplified and promoted, the more it is noticed. Then it will begin to grow in likes, shares and follows. Secondly, more people will start to talk about it to friends and family, then it might increase sales.

The consequences of encouraging amplification could be that if you only promote one product or service via social media people could get annoyed by the posts and unlike the page or stop following that company which then will be doing the opposite to what the actual aim was. 

The benefits and consequences of encouraging engagement

Engagement is how much activity their is on a post, for example likes, comments or shares. The benefits of encouraging engagement is that the more people engage with the companies social media platform, the more likes, shares and comments the business will get. When someone likes, comments or shares a post their friends or people who follow them will see the post therefore giving that page more attention. Also the higher the engagement, the higher the potential for increase in website visits and sales of the product or service. 

The consequences are that people could post negative reviews of the product or service on a post, which then other people could see and that could make people change their mind on buying that product or service. Also if a post gets a lot activity, such as likes, comments and shares, people could hide the post from their timeline or unlike the page to stop the notifications. 

Factors to consider when identifying a Social Media plan for a business

When identifying a social media plan for a business there are many factors to consider. These factors are audience, business type, business brand, resources, content, cost, time and market conditions. 

You want your social media campaign to appeal to the right audience. For example if your target market was children, you wouldn't put a TV advert on BBC1 you would want your advert to be played on kids channels such as CBBC. If you appeal your campaign to the right audience the more attention you are most likely to get. 

Another factor is your business type. If your business if a large, corporate business you would have a very different plan than a small, voluntary business. Depending on your business type you will have a different audience, offer different products or services and have different aims than other organisations.

Another factor is cost. Cost is a big factor because if you can’t afford to pay for something then its not going to happen. This could be staff costs, costs for online promotions, costs for other factors such as getting another company to design posters etc. 

Explain how Social  Media could fit into the marketing plan of a business

Social media can be used in a marketing plan to identify where your audience is by using the page insights to see how many likes come from what countries. You can also see what posts are more successful that others. This is good for businesses to make sure they are reaching the audience that they want to market their products or services to. 

Social media can also be used to promote products and services that aren’t as popular or well known as other products. They could focus social media posts on their products or services to try and get more attention or more sales. This is good for businesses to launch new products and services and focus on products and services that businesses want to amplify. 

Businesses can use social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to do campaigns such as giveaways to increase engagement on their posts and amplification of a product or service. This is good to promote a product or service as well as getting more engagement on the social media platforms. Businesses usually tell people to like or share the page, and the post of the giveaway to have a chance of winning the giveaway. This is a good way to gain more likes on social media platforms such as Facebook.