Leveraging Social Media Practices for Business Growth Assignment Sample

Introduction of Social Media Practices Assignment

SM is the means to interact with people, either known or unknown. It supports the exchange of information and ideas with people throughout the world with the help of virtual networks. It is used for communicating with different people, along with that it is used for marketing and publicity of any company or any products. There are various modes of digital marketing but organizations choose SM for digital marketing which makes publicity of the products worldwide. There are many organisations that use SM as a source of marketing like; Hellofresh. It is helpful to every social group like; common people, students, service persons and business organisations.

Explore the benefits of choosing New Assignment Help's UK-based services for your academic success.

Section 1

Concepts of SM for businesses

The following five core social media ideas are People Display Particular Behavior on Different Social Media Channels, Social Media Channels Are Similar and Different in Some Ways, Marketing and Communication Principles Still valid: social media is primarily a visual medium and should not be used as a conversion channel.

The primary purpose of SM in the field of business management is to connect with customers. SM determines the engagement of the organization with the customers and to know the opinion of the consumers on the company and its product. In other words, SM is a critical tool to attract the customers. The use of SM helps to get customer feedback as well as emphasizes customer loyalty (Ancillai et al. 2019). Market research becomes easier and investment in marketing also reduces. SM has a huge role to contribute in developing the brand image in the market. As it accesses a large number of people, the exchange of ideas improves the process of business management.

There are several flaws in using SM in the business process. They are stated below.

Disadvantages: SM practices demand more resources to handle to manage the online presence of the company. There is a possibility to face unwanted behaviour on social network sites. There are many risks associated with the SM practices for business development. Consumers can provide negative feedback openly and that affected the image of the company in the market. The risk of hacking or the possibility of leaking information also takes place. Most importantly practicing SM in business development may not be effective for every business purpose. A proper strategy is required to maintain SM presence and make this practice effective for the company (Bhimaniet al. 2019). This process demands a regular reviewing process for making this practice fruitful for the company.

Influence of business on improving SM

Nowadays SM practices have a great influence on the business management program for several companies. The report says that moreover 4.5 billion people across the world use the internet (emeritus.org, 2022). Therefore, SM becomes a powerful tool for promotion of the products and services. The major impacts of SM are;

• Increase Brand Loyalty: Brand loyalty consists of the trust of the customers in the products of the company. Brand loyalty occurs when the company maintains a healthy relationship with the customers with honesty (Chatterjee and Kar, 2020). SM is the place where it increased within a very short period of time.
• Easy Communication: Communication with the customers becomes stronger. Hence, this process helps to identify the market demands. As the interaction with the company becomes so frequent it is helpful to increase the company's visibility. The most effective SM platforms are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for promoting the company.
• Power of Customers: Digital marketing increased the power of consumers. The SM practice allows sharing of personal opinions of the customers regardingthe product without any fear. This is helpful in the case of promotion of the services and the products of the company because they become more conscious about the promotion of brands.

Figure 1: Influence of business on improving SM

(Source: Ioanas, 2020)

• Reach out to a bigger audience: Access to the internet allows companies to attract the audience and customers across the world. This is impactful to increase the productivity and efficiency of the companies.
• Creates word of mouth: The current trend is to read online reviews before purchasing. 72% of people read online reviews before making decisions (emeritus.org, 2022). Therefore, organizations are required to increase sales and make a good relationship with consumers.

Social Media Plan

A social media strategy is a written plan stating one's social media objectives, the strategies they would employ to accomplish them, and the metrics they will monitor to gauge their success. A social media marketing strategy should include a list of all current and future social media accounts, as well as goals tailored to each platform where the user is engaged. These objectives must be in line with the organization's overall digital marketing strategy. Finally, a solid social media strategy must specify the team's duties and responsibilities as well as the reporting schedule.

Use of SM in companies & consumers

The use of SM is not only productive for the companies but also effective for the consumers too. They get access to a huge number of products. A lot of choices confused the consumers the company needed to attract such customers with an effective SM strategy (Domenico et al. 2021). The major impacts of SM on several aspects of customers and business processes are;

• Brand Awareness: SM is an effective component for the company to assess the target customers. the companies can keenly analyse the preferences of the customers through several surveys in SM. The current position of one’s own company in the market and the thinking of the customers about the brand can be understood.
• Humanize the Brand: Digital marketing brings the company closer to its customers. This segment is mainly concerned with building trust between customers and companies. This is such a great scope for the embracement of brand values.
• Customer Service: The use of SM enhanced the quality of customer service. If there any inconvenience occurs regarding the product or services, customers can easily launch their complaints via SM and the company can act according to that. Strategic use of hashtag increase brand visibility in the market.
• Recruiting and Hiring: SM plays an important role in the context of hiring new employees. SM offers a number of job seekers, on the other hand, job seekers also get access to a number of different companies (Hansen et al. 2019). The companies usually use the platforms like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and many other sites.

SM platforms as source communication objectives

SM is a platform that has various uses. People use it for making conversation, along with that it is used for sharing information and generating various web content. It contains various social sites, like; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many others (Bala and Verma, 2018). This supports people to share photos, make video conferences and help to have conversations with people. This is attractive, hence it attracts the attention of its users.

It is a model that offers to interact with people who are far away. This supports to communicate with others along with that it acts as a source of entertainment. It generates and improves personal and professional relationships. Its influence is seen in developed and underdeveloped areas.

Figure 2: Number of SM users worldwide from 2017 to 2027

(Source: statista.com, 2022)

It is seen that SM acts as a mode of communication which helped the owner of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp to earn $117 billion in revenues in the year 2021. It is seen by the 1st quarter of 2022, it is seen that there was a rise of users of SM by nearly 3 billion people per month (statista.com, 2022). There were 2.73 billion SM users in the year 2017 which kept growing and reached 4.59 billion users worldwide. It is predicted that the number of SM users will be growing and it will reach 5.85 billion by the year 2027 (statista.com, 2022). It is the platform that supports people to communicate, at a low cost, with people who are miles away.

Competitor details and audit

An extensive amount of data is gathered during a social media audit. Understanding how the brand compares to others in the business will be made easier by gathering all pertinent information about the competitors. It is important to keep in mind that a thorough social media audit would include recording a lot of data. This information could fill many pages, depending on how many competitors intend to examine and study it. Understanding the strategy for compiling all the data and metrics you gather is essential. A Google search for competition analysis templates can be useful. They can assist with getting things going and organising all the information in a useful, practical manner.

Impact of SM on brand awareness and consumer engagement

It is used as a marketing tool as the business organisation can make publicity of their products and brands through SM. It will help them to attract customers from different regions of the world (Voorveld, 2019). It provides customers with different brands and helps them get different options while purchasing any product. It affects the consumers’ engagement and provides awareness regarding brands.

• Brand awareness: It helps companies to make publicity of their brands, along with that it helps to generate trust with customers, business partners and employees. The organisation would require to make publicity of its brands (Ebrahim, 2020). This includes the attractive way of campaigning through advertisements and short videos conveying detail of the product. This will attract new customers and let the old buyers stick to the brand.
• Consumer engagement: Customers are the most important part of a market. The use of SM is common to every people. SM puts an impact on consumers’ emotions through their attractive marketing posts (sciencedirect.com, 2022). This leads the customers to provide valuable reviews and feedback of its products, which helps others to get motivated by those reviews and affects customers purchasing strategies.

Improvement in SM

It is the platform that leads the brands to attract the attention of the people to enhance their publicity and increase its sale. Every organisation uses the digital method of marketing and SMis used by every company to campaign for its products (Cui et al. 2018). Customers get information about different brands and it's on them to select a good quality brand. The buyers and the sellers are the SM users, hence it is necessary to bring some sorts of changes and improvements in the SM platform.

This platform requires improvement for the sake of the organisations and the consumers. Every organisation puts attractive and innovative ads for raising publicity for their brands. It is the customers who need to identify the best product and go for that (mediaengagement.org, 2022). It needs to bring some changes, that is:

• Judge the posts to avoid the publicity of fake news.
• Provide opportunities for people to learn new skills.
• Improve the privacy of personal information.

The improvement of these features would help users to learn new things from SM. The posts of fake news are common on all SM platforms, which leads many users to fall into depression, on the other hand, many make a negative moves based on the news. There are many people who use others’ personal information and do negative work. Hence it is necessary to improve these features in all SM platforms.

Impact of SM on business aim

The usual aims and objectives of the business process are earning a profit, increasing the number of customers, innovation, methods of utilizing resources, and most importantly increasing productivity. The introduction of SM put a huge impact on each sector of business aims. Digital marketing enhanced such common objectives and aims of the companies (Bilgin, 2018). Another important impact of SM is that the company can use it as a tool for crisis management too. When the company gets into a deep crisis it is possible to seek help on SM. A loyal customer can be useful in this case.

It has many positive and negative impacts on the development of business organisations. It sometimes supports the organisation to achieve its goal and succeed in the competitive business market. It lets the customers recognise the brand and help to enhance customer engagement (Plantin and Punathambekar, 2019). SM, sometimes put a negative effect on the business as, the number of likes, shares and comments can bring down the performance of the organisation. Hence it has both positive and negative impacts and it is on the customers to make an effective selection of the right brand.

Section 2

HelloFresh is a German-based food subscription company founded in 2011 in Berlin. The service of the company extended from the United States to Australia. The company is popular across different countries in Europe and even in Japan. A detailed discussion of the SM strategy of the company is to be done.

Market and user research on SM to access HelloFresh marketing needs

HelloFresh is one of the leading companies of meal-kit. The company currently possesses 11860 employees (hellofreshgroup.com, 2022). The aim of the company is to provide wholesome, homemade meals to consumers. The company showed great responsibility during the pandemic by donating food to charitable organizations which build a great reputation in the market. This company is a solely customer-centric brand. There is no such competitor as strong as HelloFresh but still, the company emphasized more on customer satisfaction.

• Marketing Strategy: The common marketing strategy of the company was to make collaboration with the SM influencer. They share their experiences with the product of the company. These ideas and the use of selected hashtags remain useful for the company.
• The strategy of Advertisement: HelloFresh mostly used traditional methods of advertisement, such as magazine ads, television, ads on the websites of various publishers, and banners. There are several popular marketing campaigns done by the company, such as the collaboration with Mindy Kally (iide.co, 2022). This collaboration consists of a series of short videos. This collaboration helps the company to reach bigger customers. The brand uses almost thousands of micro-influencer among the target customers.

Formulation of SM strategy to achieve aims and objectives

The aim of Hellofresh is to provide every people healthy food items. They have various objectives and they give their complete efforts to achieve their goals (hellofreshgroup.com, 2022). The objectives of this organisation are:

• To provide healthy ingredients to its people.
• To provide high-quality food and beverages to the people.
• To reduce the wastage of food.

SM is a platform that can help every organisation to make its position in the marketplace. It supports gaining the attraction of different people from any part of the world. The goal that Hellofresh has is to bring healthy food items before everyone, on the other hand, it avoids the wastage of food and supplies high-quality foods (hellofreshgroup.com, 2022). It focuses on letting people learn to prepare food by themselves, by following the recipes of Hellofresh.

SM is an effective example that can help them to campaign for the achievement of the aims and objectives of the company. Publicity through SM would help its users to learn about those food items and the procedure of preparing that food (Evans et al. 2021). This will support the people who watch the recipes that Hellofresh shares and prepare those in their kitchen. It would support the publicity of the organisation and its products, along with that it will help the organisation to grow faster.

Required technology platforms and tools

The visibility of the company on the different SM platforms is high enough. The most common SM platforms the company uses are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

On Facebook, the company has a presence but they are not that regular. Usually, they upload videos and posts regarding their service. The positive side is that the company replies the comment of the customers. This is an impactful strategy to make communication with the customers stronger.

The Instagram page of the company is more regular than the Facebook page. As the company is associated with a number of influencers, the company is well popular on Instagram. They have 500k plus followers.

The company expressed itself in the most presentable way on Twitter. Generally, the fundamental content of digital marketing is moreover the same in each SM platform which is posting different recipes and the photo of foods.

• Values Proposition: HelloFresh emphasized more on the data-driven design of meals and optimization of the menu. This data can be gathered from SM. The optimization process helps the company to identify the customer’s demand.
• Customers: The report suggested that 75% of customers of HelloFresh are aged between 25 and 54 (thestrategystory.com, 2022). This age group is also more involved in SM. Hence, the company can target this age group more efficiently. Nowadays the involvement of older people in SM is also increasing. The company can target people with age 54 plus. This can be more effective, especially for empty nesters who are not fond of a cooking rut.

Strategies and metrics of SM

The strategies of SM are the outlines of those things that people posts. It includes the responsibilities of the SM teams to maintain its ethics to promote any business organisation (Hassan Zadeh and Jeyaraj, 2018). It includes the goals of this platform that gives compliments on digital marketing and its strategies. It maintains various terms and conditions while making any publicity.

The metrics of SM include the data that are used to get effective support and attention of this platform and its users. There are various SM metrics that provides effective support to the organisation (Pencarelli and Mele, 2019). Its metrics are divided into different types that are:

• Awareness metrics: It informs about the audience growth rate, impressions and reach, based on its followers and non-followers.
• Engagement metrics: This counts the viral rate, amplification rate and engagement rate of the viewers.
• Video metrics: This includes video completion rate and the views of the video and its counted based on these two things.
• Customer experiences and service metrics: The net promoter score (NPS), customers’ satisfaction score are calculated based on this matric.
• ROI metrics: This helps to find out the click through rate (CTR), conversation rate, cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM). This is calculated based on the data that are achieved from the analysis of social networks.
• Share of voice and sentiments metrics: This consists of the social share of voices and social sentiments. This deals with the opinion and views of customers which counts about how many people are taking about the post (Pencarelli and Mele, 2019). Their opinions get special emphasised as it's the main part of this metric.
• SM strategies are used to find out these data. This helps to know the opinions, reviews and views of people. The strategies play an important role to gain the attention of the people and make the post viral.

Critical evaluation of SM strategy

SM has an enormous influence on the business strategy of HelloFresh. SM made a great impact on the sales and revenue of the company. The major two competitors of the company are Blue Apron and Plated. Among these three companies, HelloFresh is leading in all platforms of SM. This is clearly stated that the company has an effective strategy regarding SM. Generally, the collaboration with the micro and macro influencers remains fruitful (Cocker et al. 2019). This idea reduces the cost of marketing promotion. The traditional way of advertisement takes more charges to promote the services. The changed way of promotion remained fruitful for the company.

The company needed to put more emphasis on the SM platforms like Facebook and Twitter in the context of regularity. Not only publishing the photos of recipes the digital marketing team of the company needed to be more creative and innovative in the case of promotion of the service on different platforms of SM. A thorough analysis of the contemporary trends in SM is needed to analyse and respond according to that.

Conclusion

Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp are mostly used and followed by people worldwide. It is an important tool to marketwise any product, organisation or other things. It helped every organisation to reach their products to the maximum number of people. This always helped organisations to launch a new product in the market. It let people know about every product and avail them with many options while purchasing any goods. The use of this platform is useful to Hellofresh too as it would help them to achieve their goal and increase its number of users. This platform has positive and negative impacts, hence it needs to improve its shortcomings and help to grow positively. Its improvement will support people make the right selection and provide effective feedback, on the other hand, it would help the organisation to get loyal customers.

References

Book

Evans, D., Bratton, S. and McKee, J., 2021. Social media marketing. AG Printing & Publishing.

Journals

Ancillai, C., Terho, H., Cardinali, S. and Pascucci, F., 2019. Advancing social media driven sales research: Establishing conceptual foundations for B-to-B social selling. Industrial Marketing Management, 82, pp.293-308.

Bala, M. and Verma, D., 2018. A critical review of digital marketing. M. Bala, D. Verma (2018). A Critical Review of Digital Marketing. International Journal of Management, IT & Engineering, 8(10), pp.321-339.

Bhimani, H., Mention, A.L. and Barlatier, P.J., 2019. Social media and innovation: A systematic literature review and future research directions. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 144, pp.251-269.

Bilgin, Y., 2018. The effect of social media marketing activities on brand awareness, brand image and brand loyalty. Business & management studies: an international journal, 6(1), pp.128-148.

Chatterjee, S. and Kar, A.K., 2020. Why do small and medium enterprises use social media marketing and what is the impact: Empirical insights from India. International Journal of Information Management, 53, p.102103.

Cocker, H., Mardon, R. and Daunt, K.L., 2021. Social media influencers and transgressive celebrity endorsement in consumption community contexts. European Journal of Marketing.

Cui, R., Gallino, S., Moreno, A. and Zhang, D.J., 2018. The operational value of social media information. Production and Operations Management, 27(10), pp.1749-1769.

Di Domenico, G., Sit, J., Ishizaka, A. and Nunan, D., 2021. Fake news, social media and marketing: A systematic review. Journal of Business Research, 124, pp.329-341.

Ebrahim, R.S., 2020. The role of trust in understanding the impact of social media marketing on brand equity and brand loyalty. Journal of Relationship Marketing, 19(4), pp.287-308.

Hansen, J.M., Saridakis, G. and Benson, V., 2018. Risk, trust, and the interaction of perceived ease of use and behavioral control in predicting consumers’ use of social media for transactions. Computers in human behavior, 80, pp.197-206.

Hassan Zadeh, A. and Jeyaraj, A., 2018. Alignment of business and social media strategies: insights from a text mining analysis. Journal of Business Analytics, 1(2), pp.117-134.

Ioanas, E., 2020. Social media and its impact on consumersbehavior. JurnalAnalisaKesehatan, 1(1), pp.1-1.

Pencarelli, T. and Mele, M.G., 2019. A systematic literature review on social media metrics. Mercati&competitività-Open Access-It's no more published by FrancoAngeli, (1).

Plantin, J.C. and Punathambekar, A., 2019. Digital media infrastructures: pipes, platforms, and politics. Media, culture & society, 41(2), pp.163-174.

Voorveld, H.A., 2019. Brand communication in social media: A research agenda. Journal of Advertising, 48(1), pp.14-26.

Websites

business.gov, (2022), Social media for business, Available at: https://business.gov.au/online/social-media-for-business [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

emeritus.org, (2022), Analysing the Impact of Social Media On Different Businesses in the Last Decade, Available at: https://emeritus.org/in/learn/impact-of-social-media-on-businesses/#:~:text=Social%20media%20marketing%20applies%20the,profit%20margin%20of%20the%20businesses. [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

hellofreshgroup.com, (2022), About Hellofresh, Available at: https://www.hellofreshgroup.com/en/newsroom/stories/5nlhnE6qLejD6cF2oyOj7s/ [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

hellofreshgroup.com, (2022), Our Mission We change the way people eat forever, Available at: https://www.hellofreshgroup.com/en/ [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

iide.co, (2022), HelloFresh: Marketing the New Way of Cooking, Available at: https://iide.co/case-studies/marketing-strategy-hellofresh/ [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

mediaengagement.org, (2022),The performance of social media platform, Available at: https://mediaengagement.org/research/social-media-how-platforms-can-do-better/ [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

sciencedirect.com, (2022), Impact of social media, Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167923621002177 [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

statista.com, (2022), number of social media users, Available at:https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/ [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

statista.com, (2022), Overview of social media uses and turnover, Available at: https://www.statista.com/topics/1164/social-networks/#topicOverview [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]

thestrategystory.com, (2022), Healthy business model & marketing strategy of HelloFresh, Available at: https://thestrategystory.com/2022/09/17/hellofresh-business-model-marketing-strategy/ [Accessed on: 1st December, 2022]