Case Studies on Social Media and Marketing: HP Sweden AB

Description
Social media refers to the means of interactions among people in which they create, share, and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

Social Media and Marketing

Based on a case study for HP Sweden AB

JARRAR JAFFREY

KTH Information and Communication Technology

Degree project in Communication Systems First level, 15.0 HEC Stockholm, Sweden

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING
Based on a case study for HP Sweden AB
Jarrar Jaffrey
<jarrar(at)kth.se>

Bachelor thesis

14 June 2011

Examiner: Professor Gerald Q. Maguire Jr. Industrial Supervisor: Johnny Kroneld, Marketing Manager at Hewlett Packard Sweden

School of Information and Communication Technology KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract
During different time era’s different methods of communications has developed and changed the everyday life. Social media has become the way of communication in the 21st-century, enabling us to express our thoughts, ideas and feelings in a complete new way. This way of communication have also had a huge impact on corporations, where they have realized that without a proper plan and social media strategy they have no chance to stand out in the rapidly changing digital space. To ensure a successful presence on social media the companies need to take different marketing theories into consideration so that they can boost their brand in diverse aspects. If this can be combined with innovative ways of consumerinteraction the companies have a good chance to take the lead in social media marketing. To solve the problem with measuring the return on investment, companies such as HP Sweden, can implement tools like social media monitoring. With these tools they will be able to analyze and measure their brand or products on the social space enabling them to optimize their way of marketing. The criteria for a company to pick the right measuring-tool are based on different parameters. Where for a company like HP Sweden, that is relatively new to the social space, it is better to take small and wise steps to first learn and then invest in a praiseworthy tool that is able to cover their needs.

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Sammanfattning
Under olika tidsskeden har olika metoder för kommunikation utvecklats med kraftig påverkan på vår vardag. Sociala medier har blivit detta sekels sätt att kommunicera på, vilket har möjliggjort att vi har kunnat uttrycka våra tankar, idéer och känslor på ett helt nytt sätt. Detta sätt att kommunicera har också haft en enorm inverkan på företag, där de har insett att utan en ordentlig sociala media strategi har de ingen chans att sticka ut i den snabbt föränderliga digitala sfären. För att säkerställa en framgångsrik närvaro på sociala medier måste företagen ta olika marknadsföring teorier i beaktande. Detta så att de kan förstärka sitt varumärke i olika aspekter. Om företagen lyckas kombinera detta med innovativa sätt att interagera med konsumenter har de en god chans att ta ledningen i sociala medier. För att lösa problemet med att mäta avkastningen på investeringar, kan företag som HP Sverige, implementera olika mätningsverktyg. Med dessa verktyg kan de analysera och mäta sitt varumärke eller produkter så att de kan optimera sin marknadsföring utefter detta. Måttstocken för att välja rätt verktyg är baserat på olika parametrar. För ett företag som HP Sverige, som är relativt nya inom sociala medier, kan det vara lämpligt att ta små men visa steg där de först kan lära sig använda dessa verktyg för att sedan investera i ett mer avancerat verktyg som både täcker deras behov samt är ekonomiskt fördelaktigt.

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Acknowledgements
I would start with thanking and praising the Lord of the heavens and the earth. Thereafter I would like thank my examiner Professor Gerald Q. Maguire. Jr, as well as Johnny Kroneld from HP Sweden for making this report possible.

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Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................... i Sammanfattning ..................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... iii Table of Figures .................................................................................................................. vi Table of Tables ................................................................................................................. vii Acronyms and Abbreviations ..................................................................................... viii 1 Introduction................................................................................................................... 1 2 Method ............................................................................................................................. 2 3 Background .................................................................................................................... 3
3.1 Related work ....................................................................................................................... 3 3.2 Top Five Social Media....................................................................................................... 3 3.2.1 Facebook ...................................................................................................................................... 3 3.2.2 Twitter........................................................................................................................................... 3 3.2.3 WordPress ................................................................................................................................... 4 3.2.4 YouTube........................................................................................................................................ 4 3.2.5 LinkedIn........................................................................................................................................ 4 3.3 RSS........................................................................................................................................... 4

4 Social Media in Practice ............................................................................................. 5 5 Developing a Social Media Strategy....................................................................... 7
5.1 Brand equity ..................................................................................................................... 7 5.2 Brand Identity..................................................................................................................... 8 5.3 Brand positioning .............................................................................................................. 9 5.4 Seven Steps to Strategy ................................................................................................ 9 5.5 Social Media & Innovation .......................................................................................10 5.5.1 Suggestion Box .........................................................................................................................10 5.5.2 Widget .........................................................................................................................................11 5.5.3 Deal-of-the-day ........................................................................................................................11

6 Case study: HP Sweden ........................................................................................... 12
6.1 Current position in the social web ............................................................................12 6.2 General Problem of Measuring ROI ..........................................................................13 6.2.1 What to measure ...................................................................................................................14 6.3 Monitoring tools ..............................................................................................................14 6.3.1 First tool – Alterian SM2 Freemium................................................................................15 6.3.2 Second Tool – UberVU ..........................................................................................................16 6.3.3 Third tool – Radian6 ..............................................................................................................17 6.4 Comparison chart ............................................................................................................19

7 Discussion and Conclusions .................................................................................. 20 8 Future Work ............................................................................................................... 22

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9 References ................................................................................................................... 23
Books and Reports .....................................................................................................................23 Articles ...........................................................................................................................................23 Internet ..........................................................................................................................................23

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Appendix: Case Description................................................................................ 27

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Table of Figures
Figure 1: RSS Feed................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Figure 2: Innocent drinks' widget ............................................................................................................................... 11 Figure 3: HP Store Sverige on Facebook .................................................................................................................. 12 Figure 4: HP Inferno Webradio .................................................................................................................................... 12 Figure 5: Designutmaningen ......................................................................................................................................... 13 Figure 6: HP Store Sverige on Twitter....................................................................................................................... 13 Figure 7: View of the Alterian SM2 Freemium Dashboard .............................................................................. 15 Figure 8: View of the UberVU Dashboard ................................................................................................................ 16 Figure 9: View of the Radian6 Dashboard ............................................................................................................... 18

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Table of Tables
Table 1: Social Media Forms (Mayfield, 2008) ......................................................................................................... 1 Table 2: Comparison between three SMM tools ................................................................................................... 19

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Acronyms and Abbreviations
Blog Blog is a word that was created from two words: “web log”. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. In marketing context, the value that the brand builds up In a marketing context, the associations that are made with the brand In a marketing context, the image that the brand sends out to the customer In a marketing context, where the brand wants to be positioned In marketing context it is the interaction between company and consumer An economical term, meaning Business to Business Chat can refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, but traditionally refers to one-to-one communication through a text-based chat application commonly referred to as instant messaging applications. A comment is a response that is often provided as an answer of reaction to a blog post or message on a social network. Comments are a primary form of two-way communication on the social web. Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Flickr is a social network based around online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets and other methods. Also known as a message board, a forum is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board. Social media marketing term, meaning influential social media users A “Like” is an action that can be made by a Facebook user. Instead of writing a comment for a message or a status update, a Facebook user can click the "Like" button as a quick way to show approval and share the message. LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Return on investments Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.

Brand Equity Brand Identity Brand Image Brand Positioning Buzz B2B Chat

Comment

Facebook Flickr

Forums

Influencers Like

LinkedIn ROI Social Media

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Social Media Monitoring Social media monitoring is a process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occurs in (SMM) social media. Twitter Widget Twitter is a social platform that allows users to share 160character-long messages publicly. A widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or text box. Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. WordPress is a content management system and contains blog publishing tools that allow users to host and publish blogs. YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos.

Wikipedia

WordPress YouTube

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1 Introduction
The meteoric growth of social websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have ushered the world into a new era of social media. The global reach is nothing short of amazing, so much so that if Facebook were a country, it would be third largest (The Economist 2010), next to China and India. Some even say that this is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution, which means that the world has a brand new playing field. At its core, social media is any kind of online media that stimulates participation, openness, conversation, connectedness and sense of community. It takes many forms, as shown in Error! Reference source not found., and is expected to grow with incessant innovation. Its success lies in the basic knowledge that human beings like to think, share ideas, “cooperate and collaborate to create art”, engage in “commerce, debate and discourse, and find people who might be good friends, allies and lovers” (Mayfield 2008).
Table 1: Social Media Forms (Mayfield, 2008)

Social Media

Purpose

Examples

Social Networks Blogs Wikis Podcasts Forums Content Communities Microblogging

Sites where people build personal pages and connect with friends A web log where you can post anything you want A communal database where people can add or edit content Audio or video files that are available by subscription Online discussion around specific topics and interests Organize and share particular kinds of content Combined social networking and bitesized blogging

LinkedIn, Facebook Seaofshoes, Bryanboy Wikipedia Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Next Gadget Flickr, YouTube Twitter

The social media phenomenon has a profound impact. “Communities of interest have gained clout never before considered possible.” Mothers, for instance, have become more active in the Web, seeking advice, connecting with other mothers or running their business. They are “most likely to visit social networking sites and publish or own a blog than most other online users” according to research (Nielsen 2009). Social media has transformed research methods. A Nielsen study proposes a new methodology, which combines both asking (survey) and listening (consumer generated media) to tell a complete and accurate story. Listening to consumers through blogs, boards, and networking sites not only provides “timely, penetrating insights on a wide range of issues”, but it also “captures the energy associated with consumer beliefs” (Nielsen 2009). This allows brands to communicate better with their consumers, and deepen their relationship with them.

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The advertising world has not been spared from social media influence. Companies are now more careful with advertising, especially in anticipating consumer reaction and avoiding unanticipated blunders to prevent a viral consumer backlash in networking sites (Nielsen 2009). As the book goes, “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000,” quickly and with little effort. The deadly combination of Twitter and offended quick-to-blog vocal customers will rock the brand down (Shankman 2008), a scenario that is both difficult to manage and pull through. Social media plays a hybrid role in the promotion mix. It allows companies to talk to their customers and, at the same time, it allows customers to talk to one another. Shaping customers’ discussions to ensure they are aligned to the organization’s goals is the firm’s best interest. Companies have started providing their consumers with networking platforms, and have engaged them through blogs and other social media tools (Mangold and Faulds 2009). Along with this they have learned that there are risks if the communication is not handled properly. Establishing proper social media strategies have therefore been a hot agenda for many companies, resulting in different strategies having been formed and adopted. However, one question still remains: How can the company measure their return on investment (ROI)? Is this couple to the number of “Likes” on Facebook or “Followers” on Twitter? This report examine the subject of social media from a marketing perspective, covering not only the basics of social media and some strategies; but also investigating appropriate ways of measuring ROI, as well as the possibility of benchmarking results.

2 Method
This report intends to initially give the reader a brief overview of the most popular social media. Later the report will examine social media from a marketing perspective. This will be done by first describing social media in practice followed by guidelines for creating a strategy. This will be based on a literature study that was conduced at the start of this project. A case study conducted for HP Sweden will address the main focus of this report, the problem of measuring the ROI, as described in the introduction. The solution suggested by this case study will be presented chapter 6, starting on page 12.

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3 Background
3.1 Related work
Since this way of communication is still very new, there are still lots of areas in this field that have not yet been researched. Existing work focuses either on the social effects due to using social media or different strategies companies can apply to social media. Unfortunately, there is no existing research concerning the different strategies and different types of analyzing tools. This report intends to remedy this gap in research. The lack of knowledge about the role of social media is well captures in the quotation below:
“Social media is like a snowball rolling down the hill. It’s picking up speed. Five years from now, it’s going to be the standard.”

Jeff Antaya, chief marketing officer of Plante Moran

3.2 Top Five Social Media
In this section we will example the top five social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

3.2.1 Facebook
The leading figure in social media today is Facebook. Facebook is a social networking site that allows users to create online profiles and interact with other users. The main reason for the success of Facebook is its ability to address many different aspects of life in a very appealing way - corresponding to the requirements and demands that human beings have on communication. Facebook’s multi-purpose service allows you to use it in a work related context, as a political tool, or just to find people that share your interests. Many companies have understood the potential of Facebook with its 600 million active users, making it an ideal place for marketing.

3.2.2 Twitter
Who would have thought that a short messaging service would become one of the leading ways of online communication? Twitter is a service providing exactly this service, short messaging service just as we are used to – but online rather than through cellphones. Twitter allows its users to send messages, or “Tweets”, that are composed of 160 characters. In addition, Twitter offers the option to “follow” other users. This opens the possibility for cross communication between multiple users allowing them to receive instant information updates where ever they are. With its 200 million (and growing) users tweeting 65 millions tweets a day, Twitter has proven to be a very powerful tool in different fields of life.

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3.2.3 WordP Press
S Setting up a personal webpage h has for a long time been associat ted with pe eople with h knowledg ge of some e programin ng languag ge. It was though t to b be difficult t for ordi inary users to produce a personal site. Howe ever, with se ervices such h as WordP Press and Google’s Blogger B the prerequisit tes have cha anged. With h one of the ese free easy y-touse platforms with w a few clicks c anyo one can crea ate a person nal site. This s simplicity y has paved the way y for people e with non-c commercial l interest to o set up web bsites. This s has lead d to on-line journals as a new trend d – these are popularly known as B Blogs. B Blogs have adopted a certain c norm m (i.e., speci ific characte eristic), such ch as: entries are writ tten with a personal to ouch, entrie es are publ lished with the most r recent first, and ther re is a possibility to co omment on n entries. To oday blogs cover a ran nge of diffe erent type es from pers sonal blogs to business s blogs and even politic cal blogs.

3.2.4 YouTu ube
Y YouTube has h helped people p to re ealize the sa aying: “a pi ictures is wo worth a thousand wor rds” by pro oviding a platform wh here users can c easily upload u their r own pers sonal vide eos. Howev ver, it does not end w with this, bu ut rather the e platform allows user rs to com mment on an nd recomm mend video clips to oth her. In addi ition, there is an advan nced sear rch engine that t enables users to “c connect the dots”. T This service e has gained a lot of p popularity making m it th he foremost st video-upl loadserv vice provide er on the Int ternet.

3.2.5 Linked dIn
S Some peopl le see socia al media as an unreliab ble service which they y associate with afte er work activ vities, maki ing it less ap ppropriate in i business related cont ever, texts. Howe ther re have been n social net tworks that have target t business users u as a g group. The most m wid dely known such services is Linked dIn. L LinkedIn offers o a soci ial network k for busine ess users - packed p in a serious lay yout. Use ers have th he ability to connect with people that they have had d any form m of rela ationship with w before e, categoriz zing these e relationsh hips into a business s or educational co ontext. Link kedIn has also opene ed a new means m for job recruiting, owing users to put thei ir curriculm m vitae in their t profile e. Search en ngines can now allo mat tch compani ies with pot tential empl loyees and vise v versa.

3.3 3 RSS
S Since social l media hav ve started to play a bigg ger role both h for indivi iduals and corporation ns there has s been a gro owing need for integrating the diffe ferenti soci ial media with w each ot ther. Many companies see it vital to have the eir com mpany’s web bpage assoc ciated with t nce in social media. Al lso their presen for those indiv viduals activ ve in differ rent social media and who wish to follo there has been a need to collect a ow the post tings of the eir friends, t all
Figu ure 1: RSS S feed logoi

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htt tp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped dia/commons/4/43/Fe eed-icon.svg g
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the latest updates on one page. The solution to this problem is, Really Simple Syndication (RSS). In short RSS is a syndication method used for extracting data from a webpage and propagating it to other services. The data is structured with tags corresponding to each type and then saved as a document, known as RSS-feeds or web feeds. These feeds can then later be read by any RSS-reader even on another page. In social media context this means that for example: blog entries or tweets can be read on any other page making it possible for multiple instance of integration of content. The RSS logo shown in Figure 1, is used to indicate pages, which offer an RSS field. Clicking on this log enables the user to add this page’s RSS field to the set of RSS fields to which they subscribe.

4 Social Media in Practice
A number of cases are useful as examples of how to apply social media to small, medium, and even large companies. Application of social media come in many forms, and can fit many functions. One such function is to reach out and communicate with your customers, and blogging is one such tool for doing so. Blogging has become increasingly important for companies to participate in, and as Dell blogger and corporate communicator Richard Binhammer explained, “these conversations are going to happen with or without you. At Dell, we have decided that if someone is going to be talking about us, that is a conversation we want to have a say in” (Farrelly 2009). The first case is about a company called; Triumvirate Environmental Company, which provides solutions to deal with hazardous waste and other environmental issues. They discovered social media marketing after an unsuccessful experience with Google AdWords and pay-per-click advertising. Now they have applied a variety of social media marketing tools, including blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. The main cornerstone has been blogging, which was applied with a creative approach: a network of several blogs was created in order to match their diverse service offerings instead of a traditional corporate blog. These blogs vary from niche topics to broader ones in order to generate more search traffic by attracting many different dedicated audience groups. Other tools as Twitter and Facebook are used as platforms to share news, drive blog and webpage traffic, and improve relatiotns with customers. By dedicating time and effort to social media marketing, Triumvirate succeeded in generating $1.2 million in revenues (Bodnar 2010). Echo Partners is a business to business (B2B) financial company, which provides community banks with many sophisticated tools and resources for their own businesses. The company employed online marketing from the beginning, but the focus was outbound using a static webpage and online ads, neither of which significantly paid off. After analyzing social media as an inbound marketing tool and deciding upon how to use it for business growth, the owner started targeted blogging to increase search engine traffic and to drive eventual B2B lead generation. This new marketing strategy paid off in only a few months and the company generated new customer contacts and revenues by exploiting blog posts, which increased attention to and traffic to the corporate webpage. The company also used the observations gathered from social media for developing business strategies for further growth (Bodnar 2010).

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Similar to Echo Partners, River Pools and Spas’ initial online marketing was a static webpage and Google ads until 2008. Afterwards, the company discovered that this marketing was costly in comparison to the leads that were generated, thus they searched for ways for organic search marketing, including corporate blogs as well as social platforms. A few months after starting their social media marketing efforts, the company could drive search traffic both with high quality and high volume. Moreover, the company utilized business blogging to answer common questions and address doubts of customers about swimming pools and other topics. Unlike previous small business cases, River Pools and Spas created a YouTube account in order to publish videos that would visualize their business and put information about the company in the heads of its (potential) customers. As a result, the return from shifting from traditional outbound marketing to social media-based inbound marketing was not only a reduction of cost, but also the huge increase in new sales (Bodnar 2010).

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5 Developing a Social Media Strategy
Marketing strategy is defined as “a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage” (BusinessLink). Social media is seen by marketers today as a great opportunity to boost market share figures. In a recent survey, 91 % of marketers indicated that they were using social media for marketing purposes, and small businesses are the most likely to employ it (Stelzner 2009). Are businesses successfully aligning social media with their marketing strategy? Marketers are only too happy to view the social web as a new set of channels through which to market their goods or services. Thus promotion might be expanding, but it is not yet clear if companies are rethinking the rest of their marketing mix or their strategy in response to probably the most disruptive resource since the introduction of the Internet – social media. The current state of social media within many businesses is described in one of the blogs of Harvard Business Review as “duct tape and bubble gum hold together fragile tactics such as Twitter accounts run by the summer college intern or agency-generated Facebook fan pages that have few actual fans” (Armano 2009). This is not the correct path to a high ROI. Strategic thinking is the only way to achieve the sustainability required to build a real competitive advantage. A social media strategy, for public relations or marketing, should be an essential part of the business’ communications strategy and explicitly addressing the social media strategy should help to keep this strategy in line with the business strategy. Social technologies could help strengthen business strategy by building collaborative and open relationships across all the company’s stakeholders, hence generating increased trust among them. “This increased trust will result in greater knowledge creation, which the same social technologies have the ability to capture, organize and distribute at a yet to be seen level of efficiency. By building collaborative relationships with all company stakeholders using social technologies, businesses will be able to quickly create and capitalize more innovation” (Anderson 2010). Unfortunately, building a social media strategy is not an easy task. However, there are many available resources on the web for today’s marketers, such as recipes and tips, to ease their jobs in this new world of social media.

5.1 Brand equity
The common mistake many companies end up doing is that to only focus on marketing that is associated with direct sales. Therefor social media, which is often related to customer support, service, and relations, tends to get low priority. This is based on ignorance of the importance of Brand Equity. Brand Equity is the value of the brand, where high Brand Equity means high brand awareness and a high brand image (Keller 2003). What this actually means is that if your brand has high Brand Equity, then customers associate their needs to your product. While discussing Brand equity Faircloth et al. present two types of strategies that can be taken into consideration to develop and boost Brand Equity (Faircloth et al. 2001): Financial and Customer based.
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The first type of strategy is related to the actual value of the brand and how to measure it. The second type of strategy describes what relationship customers have with the brand with regard to loyalty, willingness to buy, and the belief that the brand gives greater satisfaction (Kapferer 2004). If social media is used correctly it can be an effective tool for increasing Brand Equity. This can be exemplified with Dell’s participation in social media in 2006. Dell realized that participating in such media was important, and this realization paid off shortly after its implementation of “Direct2Dell”, their official corporate blog. The entire computer industry, but initially Dell, was hit with the “big battery recall.” Dell was able to avoid a major public relations issue and huge corporate crisis by effectively communicating with their customer in a very open and transparent fashion through their blog. In fact, Dell was recognized by the Consumer Product Safety Commission for its efforts as a best practice for how to manage a product recall. (Dell 2006) The road to Dell’s realization was, however, very rocky; evidence of this is in the so called ‘Dell Hell’ incident, an incident where a dissatisfied Dell customer and popular blogger wrote about his not poor customer service experience. This incident was widely publicized and even made it into the mainstream media. Dell learnt a valuable lesson from this incident, and the major effects the blogging community can have on a company, even on a company as large as Dell. In fact, Dell implemented a few of the suggestions mentioned by the blogger, as he suggested in one of his blog entries.
“You know what: If Dell were really smart, they'd hire me (yes, me) to come to them and teach them about blogs, about how their customers now have a voice; about how their customers are a community -- a community often in revolt; about how they could find out what their customers really think; about how they could fix their customers' problems before they become revolts; about how they could become a better company with the help of their customers. If they'd only listen.” (Farrelly 2009)

The Dell case is an excellent example of the role and impact social media has on the company’s Brand Equity. Today companies can no longer ignore this media, hence they should learn effective ways of adopting and adapting to the changing social media environment and how to use it to their advantage.

5.2 Brand Identity
All companies struggles to make their product special in some way so that they can attract the customers. This can be done either by actually making the product physically different or by just presenting it in a different and more attractive way. Therefore, it is vital to make sure that your brand is associated not only with a positive image, but also with unique associations so that customers develop a special feeling about your brand. This is where Brand Identity comes in to the picture. Brand Identity can be seen from three different perspectives: (Aaker & Joachimsthaler 2002): core identity, extended identity, and brand essence. In the core identity you should be able to find the company’s values and strategies. There should be at least one association in the core that is unique for the brand and which makes it stand out. The extended identity is a complement to the core identity which covers areas that are not covered by the core identity, but which gives the brand

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a more holistic image. The extended identity is also flexible for changes in trend and market. The last aspect, which is the brand essence, should be seen as the soul of the brand, which is defined as that which is most important for the brand and where the focus should be. The essence does not necessarily have to be communicated outwards, although it can be used as an internal guideline. AJ Bombers, a small burger restaurant in Milwaukee, is another good example for how Brand Identity can be boosted. The owner, Joe Sorge, got the idea to combine social media with his restaurant business. He first started with a Twitter account to engage with his customers and to respond to their comments. Combined with his creativity in organizing different events related with social media, he succeeded to make record sales not only during the event days, but also days after the event. The use of social media to organize and promote these events created a word-of-mouth effect, which increased the sales in the longer term, as opposed to traditional single day marketing events. The overall return of investing a lot of time in social media marketing was 60-80% revenue growth, compared to the period before meeting his online community (Bodnar 2010). This clearly shows how social media can be used as an effective tool to form an identity with the right type of associations for your brand, enabling even a small burger restaurant to be successful in standing out and competing against its biggest competitors (e.g., Burger King and McDonalds).

5.3 Brand positioning
To strengthen its Brand Identity a company has to choose where they want to position their brand in order to get the best result. Ideally companies are in search for an unrealized customer segment and market segment, but this can be difficult to find in practice. Brand Positioning can be divided into two central parts (Keller et al. 2002):
• • Establishing a frame of reference Establishing differentiating and identifying characteristics

The first part is supposed to set out guidelines for identifying the main target group, the potential rivals, and how similar the brand’s characteristics are to the competitors. The second part is interconnected with Brand Identity, that is to say that how can the brand stand out amongst it competitors so that it will be an attractive choice for the customer. With these two parts mapped and established the company can define a position for their brand.

5.4 Seven Steps to Strategy
Social media networks are tools and since tools change constantly, a plan is needed to guide the way. It is a common mistake to “fall in love” with specific tools leading to continuously changing direction. That is why marketers should not focus on the tools themselves, but on how to use these tools to develop a successful social media strategy. According to Jay Baer (Baer 2009) seven steps must be followed to develop a social media strategy:

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Be clear on what the company does. This should be explained in less than 120 words. Clarify what type of program the company is aiming at: awareness, sales, or loyalty. It can be only one of them at any point in time in order to deliver a clear message to the customer Assess what the audience knows about the company or brand today and choose at most two segments among the audience: those who know nothing, aware but never acted, acted once, enthusiasts, or advocates. Choose similar audiences rather than extremes to assure more efficient results. Assess the use that the audience makes of social media. Using the Forrester Social Technographics Ladder might be of great help in this step. “If the audience skews older, the company may not want to engage in a lot of “make a video” contests, since that segment indexes low on the “Creator” scale” (Baer 2009). Indentify the soul of the brand. Your brand equals what? Some examples would be: Volvo=safety, Disney=Magic, and Apple=Innovation. If necessary, engage in some brand anthropology. How will you be human? “Social media is about people, not logos. How will you let down your guard”? (Baer 2009) In the case of big companies, they must learn how to act small. Measure the success. “If they read it and like it, do they click through to your web site, or engage with your organization in new and different ways? Action occus when people are drawn into a profitable and sustainable relationship with your company. That is where the money is” (Zwilling 2010).

Martin Zwilling adds some steps to Baer’s framework in the development of a social media strategy: (1) “Measure respect and find influencers”, reaching people who are key influencers and understanding their impact to gain resonance with the target audience; (2) “Get buy-ins from colleagues” because some executives are slow to understand communication methods and results must be used to convince them about the importance of social media as part of the marketing mix; and (3) “Project the future”, forecast the future of social media rather than allowing changes to get the company by surprise.

5.5 Social Media & Innovation
Besides this structured methodology for creating a wise Social Media Strategy, new and more informal ways of using Social Media are emerging for companies with limited budget. The following subsection give some creative examples.

5.5.1 Suggestion Box
The suggestion box is a simple tool that uses the social media’s state of mind by interacting and sharing ideas with customers. It consists of inviting the company’s customers or supporters, to make suggestions in order to improve the company’s products, services, or image. The community members are encouraged to vote for the best ideas, which are then implemented by the company. The key success factor behind the success of the suggestion box is the ability of the company to quickly implement some of the best submitted ideas. “Once people know their ideas will turn into action, it will be easy to motivate participation” (Samuel 2009). If people feel they are listened to by the company, they will become increasingly involved in the company’s success. One key point is to initially reach out

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to p potential ear rly adopters s and then to o make sure e that the or rganisation is responsiv ve to thei ir suggestion ns. S Several com mpanies hav ve already successfully y implemen nted a sugg gestion box. On Star rbucks’ web bsite for ins stance, peop ple are invited to click k on a link k to “share their idea as on My St tarbucks Ide ea” (Starbuc cks 2008). C Clicking on n the logo ta akes the use er to a page e that prese ents all the ideas relate ed to Star rbucks, wh hich have been b submi itted until now, class sifying them m into var rious cate egories such h as: produc ct ideas, ex xperience id deas, or involvement id deas. This page p emp phasizes th he ideas, which w have been alrea ady implem mented and d gives a short s desc cription of two t Starbuc cks Idea Par rtners who are a available to interact t with users s.

5.5.2 Widge et
A widget is s an interac ctive badge e, which displays the company’s latest new ws or deal ls that peop ple can plac ce on their own blogs s, web site, or Faceboo ok profile. This tool l is appropr riate for “popular bran nds with yo oung, web-s savvy custo omers” (Sam muel 200 09). T The two key k success s factors a are first to o design an n original widget, which w diff ferentiates itself i from the other s, and then to find appropriate e incentive es to enco ourage peop ple to endor rse (i.e. utili ize) the wid dget. W Widgets can n be used to o solicit don nations. For r example, Innocent I dr rinks sugges st its supp porters buy y a virtual badge b that “ “automatica ally updates s to show h how many trees t you u have perso onally donat ted” (Innoce entdrinks 20 011). This widget w is sh hown in 2.

Figure 2: Innocent drink ks’ widget†

5.5.3 Deal-o of-the-day y
F For compan nies with ne ew products s that they want w to pro omote or tho ose with ex xcess stoc ck, the deal-of-the-day y provides a good wa ay to attrac ct customer rs’ attention. It consists in usin ng a specific c area of we eb space to make “spec cial and tim me-limited offers” (Sam r interesting muel 2009). It is essen ntial to offer g deals, but t in limited number, an nd to upd date them re egularly in order o to enc courage peo ople to frequ uently check k the page. One exam mple is Uni ited Airlines, which off ffers special l fares to Tw witter users.. (Ostrow 2009).

†

htt tp://grow.in nnocentdrin nks.co.uk/im mg/virtualba adge/img_fa acebook_bad dge.gif
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6 Case st tudy: HP P Swede en
S Social media is in the scope s of inte erest for ma any compan nies; this app plies also to o HP Swe eden. Since e mid-2009 HP Sweden n has been present on n different s social platfo orms such h as Facebo ook and Tw witter. Since e then they have receiv ved very po ositive feedb back and are workin ng continuo ously to im mprove their r position. Due D to thei ir relative short s pres sence in soc cial space, they t had no ot yet imple emented a method m for m measuring their ROI I. T This case st tudy analyz zes the pote ential of imp plementing a monitorin ing platform m for HP Sweden, as s well as inv vestigating the risks, costs, c and benefits that t come with h this imp plementation n.

6.1 1 Curren nt positio on in the social web w
H HP Sweden’s most acti ive social m media chann nel is their main m Facebo ook page ca alled HP Store Sveri ige (see Figu ure ). It is m mainly used d to promote new produ ucts and spe ecial deal ls, but also o events and a compet titions. The ey have ha ad an activ ve presence e on Facebook since August 2010 2 and ha ave approx ximately 1,1 100 likes si ince then. Seen S from m a technica al aspect th hey have em mbedded two different application ns on their page: p one is for prom moting their r products a and the othe er one allow ws users to create a di igital co ball with h their frien nds’ pictures s. The pho otos uploade ed on their Facebook page p disc are related to their t new products p an nd events th hat they hav ve had. (HP P Store Sve erige 2011)

Figure 3: HP P Store Sverige on o Facebook‡

S Since June 2010, 2 HP Sw weden in a joint coope eration with Inferno On nline, one of the wor rld’s largest t gaming ce enters, relea ased a web radio. The e web radio o mainly tar rgets one of HP imp portant custo omer group s: gamers. To T promote e their web radio they have h ablished a dedicated d Fa acebook fan n page (see Figure F ), an nd has more e than 429 likes. esta This s web radi io offers ap part from m music, interviews with h gaming c celebrities, and com mpetitions organized o by b HP. On ne unique feature is that they a allow the radio r liste eners to bec come radio o anchors fo or the chan nnel creating a word-o of-mouth ef ffect, whi ich has been n very succe essful. (HP Inferno We ebradio 2011)

§ Figure 4 4: HP Inferno Webradio W

T To gain more m femal le custome ers, HP Sw weden has focused to change the asso ociations wi ith their notebook seri ies of comp puters. The goal has be een to make e the
‡http p://profile.a ak.fbcdn.net t/hprofile-ak ak§

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com mputer seen to be more e of an acce essory, rath her than a tr raditional la aptop. To fu ulfill this goal they have h not on nly redesign ned their not tebook, but t also launch hed a camp paign called the Desi ign Challen nge (in Swe edish “Desig gnutmaning gen” – see F Figure ), where w four r young des signers were e given the task to desi ign the ultim mate laptop bag. The profit p mad de from this s campaign was donate ed to a char rity organiz zation in Ind dia which helps h wom men to establish their r own busi iness. To promote p th his campaig gned they have h esta ablished a webpage w as well w as Face ebook, You uTube, and Flickr F pages s. Since its start in M March 2010 0 their Faceb book page r reached app proximate 500 5 likes an nd 1400 cha annel view ws on YouT Tube. (Desig gnutmaning gen 2011)

Figure 5 5: “Designutman ningen”**

H HP Sweden n’s first pres sence on the e social web b was on Tw witter (see Figure ). It was esta ablished in June J 2009 a has multip ple purposes s, including g: promoting g new produ ucts, offe ering rebate es, coverin ng events, etc. Today y they hav ve four dif fferent per rsons man naging their r Twitter account a cov vering diffe erent HP re elated topic cs. With 600+ 6 tweets they hav ve managed d to reach a almost 400 followers. (HP Store S Sverige Tw witter 2011)

Figure 6: HP P Store Sverige on Twitter††

6.2 2 Genera al Proble em of Me easuring g ROI
M Managing a company’s s presence o on the socia al web with a proper st trategy can be a com mplex task. On one ha and, it is un ndeniable that t there are millions of users using u soci ial media an nd there is a broad agre eement abou ut its potent tial. On the other hand, , it is not easy to assess the rea al effect of f a social presence p on n what man nagers are most m concerned with h: their ROI I. Currently there is no clear agree ement amon ng experts about a the ROI of soc Nor is ther cial media campaigns. c re an agreem ment about the real cost or the real benefi it of using social med dia. Howev ver, it is ex xpected that t “when pe eople spen nd a lot of time t and en nergy on som mething, the ey must be interested in n it and want to get it” (Wang 2010). 2 T The benefits s obtained are difficul lt to estimat te. There ar re some dir rect quantita ative benefits, for ex xample, sal les done th hrough a lin nk on Face ebook. How wever, there e are othe er qualitativ ve benefits that are d difficult to measure m in terms of m money, but t are considered as key k factors for the com mpany, such h as loyalty, , trust, passi ion, interaction, areness (Yo ongfook 20 09). Lookin ng at the benefits b from m this poin nt of and brand awa

**

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view, instead of considering ROI as money accounted for in the ledger, the ROI is the community created around the brand. It is important to highlight that the difficulty measuring ROI is not a problem exclusive to social marketing, but it is present in most kinds of marketing investments. Actually, social marketing provides indicators that can be measured and that are not present in every marketing channel. Measuring how many times a widget was clicked, or how many people “likes” (is subscribed to) the Facebook page could be interpreted as a signal indicating how successful the investment is.

6.2.1 What to measure
According to Yongfook, measuring the number of followers in Twitter or “likes” in Facebook is not enough. It is important to know if the kind of people the company is interacting with belong to the business context of the company. For example, if a fashion clothes store identifies that it has 500 followers on Twitter, who are female and living in Stockholm, it can engage those potential customers by reminding them of promotions and new collections. Therefore, what exactly is necessary to measure will depend on the objectives of the marketing campaign. For example, Starbucks launched a campaign to collect suggestions from its customers through social media. Its goal was to collect a certain number of suggestions per month that could be implemented. The success metrics used were (1) the number of suggestions classified as good and (2) the number of suggestions actually implemented (Yongfook 2009). Is there a solution to this problem? A step in the right direction is to start listening about what is said about your brand. If your brand is talked in a negative context, you can intervene and add positive input, this can help your company increase its brand equity. This can be realized with so called social media monitoring tools. These tools gather information about your brand, present it in a very convenient way with charts & diagrams, and giving the user the possibility to engage in conversation on the different social platforms directly within the program. The potential of these tools is that you can measure how people react to your campaigns, events, support, or even your presence on the social web. This is one way of measuring ROI. The goal is to make sure that your brand is talked in a way that is positive towards the company, and if not to ensure that you can do something about the problem before damage occurs to the company’s brand equity and brand identity.

6.3 Monitoring tools
The drastically increase in usage of social media has lead to a huge demand for social media monitoring (SMM) tools (Aronica 2011). What company does not want to know what is said about their brand? This has resulted in a range of different tools, specializing in different fields of social media - as well as targeting different price levels. For many companies, such as HP Sweden, a tool that can cover as many social platforms as possible is the most interesting. This report will cover three different SMM all-around tools in three different price segments: a SMM tool that is free, less than $500/month, and above $500/month. The most popular SMM tool in each segment will be chosen.

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6.3.1 First to ool – Alterian SM2 Freemium m
A Alterian SM M2 Freemiu um is a bud dget version n of the com mplete Alte erian SM2 tool, whi ich is a res sult of the remake of f Techrigy SM2 that took place e after Alte erian acqu uired Techr rigy Inc. in 2009. 2 (Alte erian 2011) T The freemiu um version n is very si imilar to th he full vers sion of SM M2. Both use u a dash hboard inte erface (see Figure ), which is currently very comm mon for SMM prog grams. The e user has the t possibil lity to enter r one or mo ore search term comb bined with h filters. Th he built-in search engi ine will sea arch throug gh both hist torical and live soci ial informa ation, throug gh various lines of so ocial media a audit trai ils, and a large l num mber of soci ial media an nd data aggr regators. Th he freemium m version li imits the user to 5 or r fewer sear rch terms, re estricting th he usages of f filters and even limitin ng the resul lts to max ximum of 1,000 1 hits. This T can be e compared d with the full f version of SM2 which w offe ers unlimite ed search terms, t unlo ocks the co omplete filt ter function nality, and can prov vide the use er with more e than 10,00 00 hits in se earch results s. (Alterian 2011)

Figure e 7: View of the A Alterian SM2 Freemium Dashboard‡‡

T The search results are sorted by popularity rank, wher re the influe uencers who o are mos st related to your search h terms are categorized d using a scale of 0-10.. The popularity rank k calculator r takes into consideratio c on different t parameters s. Each soci ial media ha as its own n parameter rs, for exam mple: for the e tweets, followers and d followed a are measure ed in Twi itter. One of o Alterian SM2’s uniq que features is that it can segmen nt the data into diff ferent layers s. Therefore e, if you wis sh to find out o what the e “Top Auth hors” are sa aying abou ut your bra and it gives you the inf formation on o which do omain the d discussion takes t plac ces - as well as what th hey are talki ing about. (FreshNetwo ( orks 2010) The results s that are generated can c be save ed and expo orted to Ex xcel for furt ther analysi is. (Webbiq quity 2010)

‡‡

ht ttp://webco ontent.alterian.com/ima ages/screen nshots/ACM M7-SM2-dash hboard-L.gi if
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W With its detailed filterin ng and sear rch results, Alterian A SM M2 Freemiu um gives a good g over rview of wh here the inf fluencers of f your brand d can be fou und, so that t a social media m man nager can en ngage and add a positive e value, if ne eeded. A Although it has limitat tions, Alteri ian SM2 Fr reemium is a good star rt, giving you y a quic ck overview w of who is talking a about your brand and d where thi is discussio on is happ pening. Be ecause this program is s free, it makes m it at an ideal ch hoice for small s com mpanies or companies that are n new to SM MM tools. The freem mium versio on is upg gradable to the t full ver rsion, which h makes it a good “tra ansition-stat te” program m for com mpanies who o are willing g to invest i in this field, , but want to o take a safe fe first step.

6.3.2 Second d Tool – UberVU U
I In the midra ange price class c we hav ve UberVU, , a small com mpany foun nded in 200 08 by rece ent graduates of the University U of Buchare est. It offer rs everythin ng that the e big com mpanies offe er, such as searching through rea al-time and historical social data and digg ging deep th hrough diffe erent social media netw works. (Fore emski 2010) ) O One of Ube erVU’s char racteristics i is that it no ot only prov vides the use er with rele evant data a, but it is also presen nted in a ve ery appealin ng way through differ rent graphs and char rts. This makes m it mor re user-frien ndly than Alterian A SM M2 Freemiu um (Webbiq quity 2010). The resulting functionality is a clear exa ample on th his. After yo ou have ent tered ng it crawls s through al ll the different social media m and r return two main m the search strin rts (see Fig gure ). The e first one is a timel line showin ng when y your brand was char disc cussed abou ut most. The e second is a pie chart showing th he distributi ion of on which w soci ial media your y brand was discus sed. Below w these char rts a list is given with h the mos st popula ar posts related to your search term. ( (Berry 20 009).

Figure 8: View w of the UberVU U Dashboard§§

§§

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UberVU comes in three different price models, starting from $49.99/month to $400+/month. The most popular plan costs $179.99/month, which allows three different users at a time, with 30 search terms and unlimited mentions/hits results. (UberVU 2011) The results can be saved as raw data files, which can be, exported and analyzed in Excel. Another neat feature of UberVU is that it can generate an analytics report with text and graphical charts. (UberVU 2011) There are lots of different SMM tools in the midrange level, but there are very few of them that have been successful in combining user-friendliness and performance. With an attractive price tag UberVU is one of the hottest competitors in its own segments as well as a clear threat to the more expensive SMM tools. With customers such as Sharp and TeliaSonera, UberVU has proved itself to be suitable even for enterprise sized companies. (UberVU 2011)

6.3.3 Third tool – Radian6
Radian6 has for a long time dominated the market of SMM-tools and is still a clear heavyweight in its class. Following its release in 2006 it has continued to improve and enhance itself, and now offers a solid and reliable monitoring tool with lots of features. Today it has position itself as the best-in-all aspects monitoring tool. However, it comes with high price tag, ranging from $600/month to more than $1,000/month. (Radian6 2011) What makes Radian6 one of the most comprehensive tools is the fact that it covers many aspects of social media monitoring. Radian6 includes many innovative and useful tools that help the user to monitor their brand. Comparing only the Radian6 Dashboard with the other SMM tools, the Radian6 Dashboard has a lot more features, including brand clouds, trend spotting, and influencers’ interactions online. In addition to the Dashboard, they offer a product called Radian6 Insight and the Radian6 Engagement console. (MartinButlerResearch 2011) Radian6 Insight is a built-in utility in the main program to combine the extracted data from the search with information from third party partners providing the user with demographical-, geographical-, influential- and entity extraction information. This combination makes it possible for users to quickly get the correct “insights” from the data that have been extracted. This means is that you can get a very good and precise overview of who the influencers are and who the influenced are, so that you can pin-point your marketing. (Radian6 2011) The Engagement Console provides the user with the option to interact with the influencers in the program. Additionally, it routes the conversation from these influencers to another influencer or to the influenced while mapping the conversations where each conversation is tagged. (MartinButlerResearch 2011) Another outstanding feature is their Benchmarking facility. This offers the user to monitor and analyze their own brand along with a competitor’s brands. With this feature you are able to compare and benchmark your brand with your competitor’s brand in the different social media. This open up the possibility for finding the weak points in your own brand and understanding what the influencers are demanding from your brand. (Radian6 2011)

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Figure 9: View w of the Radian6 Dashboard***

R Radian6 is undoubtedl ly the most t popular SM MM tool, with w large c customers from f diff ferent branc ches, such as a Air Can nada, 3M, DELL, D Mic crosoft, GEI ICO, Amer rican Red d Cross, an nd more. It I is a perf fect tool fo or those co ompanies th hat are alre eady acqu uainted wit th social me edia, and ar re prepared to invest large amoun nts of mone ey to ensu ure their future f prese ence on th he Internet. Paying th his much m means that t the com mpanies hav ve very hig gh expectati ions on wh hat the tool can delive er and there efore Rad dian6 has to o respond to t this dem mand. This is i why they y have to a add the feat tures nece essary to sa atisfy the companies’ re equirements s of a compr rehensive to ool. F From a sma all- or a mid drange com mpany’s poi int of view, all of thes e extra feat tures may y not be nec cessary. Ins stead the co ore function nality that ca an be found d in other SMM tool ls with a mu uch lower price p tag ma ay be more appropriate e, hence Ra adian6 is not the best t solution for f all comp panies. Wer re Radian6 to offer a “budget” v version it could c defi initely be an n attractive choice, esp ecially for small s and medium m size ed companie es.

***

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6.4 Comparison chart
Alterian SM2 Freemium, UberVU $180 model, and Radian6 $600 model are compared in Table 2. As seen in this comparison chart, Alterian SM2 Freemium lacks many of the features that UberVU and Radian6 offer. The greatest limitation would be the limitation to maximum of 1000 mentions/hits. Comparing UberVU versus Radian6, they both offer many standard features, but Radian6 has some extra functionalities. UberVU on the other hand offer better core functionality, such as the number of search term, number of mentions, and numbers of simultaneous users.

Table 2: Comparison between three SMM tools

Alterian SM2 Freem. Search terms Mentions/hits Users Real-time search Historical search Filtering Language translation Graphs and data Benchmarking Insights functionality 360 Social profile Price

UberVU

Radian6

5 1,000 1 Yes Yes No No Moderate No No No Free

30 Unlimited 3 Yes Yes Yes Yes Good No No No $180/month

20 10,000 1 Yes Yes Yes Yes Good Yes Yes Yes $600/month

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7 Discussion and Conclusions
Social media marketing is a hot topic for companies. It allows companies to establish a communication channel with its customers, market their products, build brand equity, and increase customers’ loyalty. However, as it is a two-way channel, it requires effort and care to manage this communication. Dissatisfied customers can complain out loud, reaching many other customers easily and damaging the brand’s image. In order to avoid the risk of damaging the brand’s image rather than improving it, the company should align their social media marketing with the global marketing strategy of the company. In order to do this, the company must select the profile of people that matches its target segment and communicate with them accordingly. The company should also select the best communication tool, such as suggestion boxes, widgets, and deal-of-the-day, according to what the marketing objectives are and to whom they wish to communicate. As presented in the report, if the social media marketing is managed effectively, it can be an efficient marketing tool, allowing the company to better understand its customers and strengthen the positioning of its brand, as well as generating new sales. To have a successful presence on the social web, as well as making sure that the brand identity is positive, one has to closely monitor and analyze this brand. When it comes to marketing on social media, SMM tools are definitely the best way to measure ROI. To give a general answer of which tool is the most appropriate for all corporations is a very difficult task. This is because different companies have different requirements. Some companies may need a specific feature that is only available in specific tools, while other companies need the most functions and are willing to pay the price associated with a tool that meets their requirements. Therefore there is no general answer on which SMM tool to use. However, I would recommend taking the following parameters into consideration when making a decision about which tool to use. These parameters can act as a guideline for acquiring a suitable SMM tool: Parameters: Level Need Functionalities Budget Coverage
How much do you know about social media in general? Is your company new to this space or do you have previous experience? What are the needs of you company? Are you after just a monitoring tool or do you want to be able to analyze the data? How important are extra function, such as demographical information etc., for you? How much are you willing to invest in a SMM tool? What types of social media networks do you want to cover? Are you looking for a tool that only covers a specific social media or you in search of a all-in-one tool? How important is support for you? Are you ready to pay extra for good support? What SMM tool are the competitors using?

Support Competitors

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Keeping these guidelines in mind will allow you to determine what kind of SMM tool you are looking for. This will give you the power to state your requirements to potential providers, increasing the chance to get what you get what you want at the price you can afford. In the case of HP Sweden there are certain aspects that has to be taken into consideration. The main aspect is that they are relative new to this space, making it possible to adjust some of the fundaments of their way of marketing on social media. The importance of a proper social media strategy has already been emphasized in the beginning of the report, where some analysts predict that social media will become the future means of communications. Therefore it’s essential that they prepare themselves for that. The presented theories, methods and some practical advices given in this report, although it was targeted to a general audience, can be beneficially for HP Sweden as well. Some brief specific advice for HP Sweden is that they need to initially engage themselves more in the different social media. If they want to increase their brand awareness they have to update their social channels daily. Moreover, this will not be sufficient; their presence has to be combined with a clear social media strategy. A good start is to look at what other, similar companies, have done already. However, the intention should not be to simply follow what other have done, but rather that they themselves come up with new innovative ideas to position themselves as a leading company in social media marketing. Coming to the conclusion regarding the case study, HP Sweden need to closely monitor and analyze their own presence in the social space. In this way they can measure their results of online campaigns or to turn disappointed customers into happy customers, dampen the spread of negative buzz, and develop potential marketing advocates who will boost brand equity. In order for this value to be realized as monitory value there is no doubt that a SMM tool is needed. Knowing that HP Sweden will continue to improve its presence in the social space, a SMM tool is undoubtedly a good investment. The question that arises is which tool that is most suitable for HP Sweden? Given the current situation of HP Sweden, such as their current market position, and scale of presence and numbers of followers on the social web, it is wisely to following these two steps: Steps: Learning Actions: In the first stage it is important to get started with SMM. Therefore choosing a free monitoring tool, preferably Alterian SM2 Freemium, would be a good way of achieving this goal. After learning the basics of SMM it is time to start acting and using it as a real tool. The best choice would be a SMM tool that is in the midrange class, preferable a tool like UberVU. The cost of these tools is not that high and they provide an opportunity to develop and enhance the company’s social presence, which would not be possible with the limitations of a free tool.

Acting

If HP Sweden takes this advice and actualize the above two steps they will have a great opportunity to take the lead in social media marketing in Sweden, compared to other companies in the same field.

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8 Future Work
Since this field is relatively new, there are lots of things remaining to be done. One approach that could extend this report would be to gather different social media strategies, implement each one of them separately and then measuring their results and impact with a SMM tool. The results could then be analyzed and compared. This might make it possible to draw some kind of conclusion about which strategy is best. The result of this testing would be very interesting for many companies in search of the most effective strategy. Of course this raises the question of if everyone does the same thing in social space, will it continue to be effective? As we have seen there are lots of different SMM tools at different prices, some specializing in certain social media while others are all-around tools. Another approach to extend this work would be to set up a website to guide a company in choosing the right SMM tool. The company could enter what it requires from a SMM tool, as well as how much they are ready to pay for it. The website should match these requirements with the appropriate SMM tools, and then present the matches in such a way that the user can easily compare them.

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9 References
Books and Reports
Aaker, David A. & Joachimsthaler, Erich (2002). Brand Leadership. London: Simon & Schuster UK Ltd Kapferer, Jean-Noël (2004). The New Strategic Brand Management. London: Kogan Page Keller, Kevin Lane (2003). Strategic Brand Management. New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc. Wang, Lusha (2010). “Design of a Strategy for Using Interactive Social Media in Organizations”. (Master of Science Thesis), Stockholm: KTH, Computer Science and Computation

Articles
Faircloth, J. B., Capella, L. M., & Alford, B. L. (2001). The effect of brand attitude and brand image on brand equity. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice. Vol. 9, Issue 3. Keller, K. L, Sternthal, B. & Tybout, A. (2002). Three Questions You Need to Ask About Your Brand. Harvard Business Review. Vol. 80, Issue 9 Mangold, W. Glynn, and David Faulds.(2009) “Social media: The new hybrid element of the promotion mix.”. Business Horizons. Vol. 52, Issue. 4

Internet
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10 0 Append dix: Cas se Descr ription

Po ossibility y of imp plementing Social Media Monitor M ring Plat tforms for f HP S Sweden
Bac ckground:
Soci ial media is in the scope e for many c companies, this applies even for HP P Sweden. Since S mid d of last year r (2010) HP Sweden has ent on different social pl latforms suc ch as s been prese Face ebook and Twitter. Sin nce then th hey have rec ceived very positive fe eedback and d are wor rking contin nuously to im mprove thei ir position. Due D to their r relative sh hort presenc ce on the s social space e, they have not implem mented any proper p monit toring platfo orm.

Pur rpose:
This s case study y intends to analyze a the possibility to t implemen nt a monitor ring platform m for HP Sweden, as s well as in nvestigating the risks, costs c and be enefits that come with this plementation n. imp

App proach:
? ? Step 1: Necessary information n about soc cial media platforms p w will be gathe ered, ed and com mpared. Im mplementatio on costs will w be app proximated and analyze presente ed. Step 2: HP Sweden n will provid de with partn ner contacts s that are usi ing social media m ring platform ms today, s such as Mic crosoft, Intel l, whom wi ill provide with monitor informa ation that is needed. HP P will also assist and provide p with h necessary data that ma ay be needed d for the stud dy. Step 3: All gathered d informatio on will be ta aken into con nsideration a and the stud dy f wit th a report. T The study will w be a part t of a Bachel lor project. will be finalized

?

Cas se study carr ried out by: Jarr rar Jaffrey, Industriell Ekonomi – K Kungliga Tek kniska Högs skolan Con ntact person n at HP: John nny Kroneld d, Marketing g Manager a at Hewlett Packard P Swe eden AB

Case e Study – Description D KTH H – Bachelo or project

Jarrar Jaffrey 2011-0 04-07

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