This case study explores how the reach and influence of social media is changing and reshaping the marketing environment. It introduces the Social Media Marketing Framework (SMMF) as a tool to review and plan social media marketing.
Our fascination with the personal and private lives of others has given rise to the increasing capacity of social media to influence every aspect of human activity ( Alalwan et al., 2017). But commercially, the management and governance of this type of digital communication media is often in a state of anarchy (Felix et al., 2017). Nevertheless, research suggests that digital marketing managers can position their organisations in such a way that their use of social media becomes coherent, consistent and more powerful than if they were to adopt social media in an unstructured manner. In this case we look at some evidence from high-profile social media cases and apply the strategic Social Media Marketing Framework (Felix et al., 2017) with the aim of looking into the complexity of this disruptive digital communications channel.

Social Media Marketing Framework (SMMF)

This framework offers a holistic way to consider the strategic application of social media. Felix et al. (2017)
propose there are four dimensions to social media marketing:
1 Scope. This dimension focuses on the extent to which social media platforms are used as a one-way communications tool, which provides content to entertain and inform end users, or as an authentic collaborative environment, which facilitates reciprocal interactions between end users and companies.
2 Culture. This dimension distinguishes between use of social media as a traditional mass-marketing channel or a more modernist approach of being open and flexible and embracing the style of social media platforms.
3 Structure. This dimension looks at organisation and how social media is deployed: is its application subject to centralised control and clearly defined protocols to assigned employees, or is it decentralised and the responsibility of all employees, which removes the need for the role of a marketing director?
4 Governance. This dimension relates to company rules and to what extent employees are told what they can and cannot say on social media platforms.
This framework seeks to highlight the complexities underlying the use of social media, and the importance of taking a multidimensional approach towards its application and management.
Now let’s look at some recent high-profile social media activity to see if the SMMF helps shed light on the reach and success of each of our pieces of evidence.
Evidence 1: Celebrity engagement – Kylie Cosmetics

Social media platforms, from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to LinkedIn, invite sharing of personal and commercial information, in various formats – text, photos, videos, audio, blogs and messages. In 2018, Kylie Jenner, US reality television celebrity and social media personality, reportedly wiped $1.5 billion dollars off the value of Snapchat by tweeting that she no longer read those messages. Kylie, who seeks to constantly engage her audience, posted an indistinct image of her new baby daughter and got 11 million likes in just a few hours (BBC Newsround, 2018). Kylie is related to Kim Kardashian, famous in the United States for reality TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Kim and the rest of the Kardashian–Jenner family have developed a powerful social media presence, which is also financially valuable (Gajanan, 2017). Kylie has utilised the reach of digital social media to build a $400 million cosmetics business in under two years. On her Kylie Cosmetics website, customers are encouraged to use the hashtag #KylieCosmetics to share photos of themselves wearing the makeup products. Her interest in social media came from YouTube teen makeup tutorials and she utilised this knowledge and an online show to grow the cosmetics brand......

Questions

1 Use the dimensions of the SMMF to analyse the following:

a Kylie Jenner’s cosmetics;
b Shannon Coulter’s #grabyourwallet.

2 Suggest how the SMMF helps to:

a Interpret what is happening in the financial services industry in relation to its use of social media;
b Provide strategic solutions for the use of social media that might help to protect banks and building societies from the FAMGA companies.

3 Discuss the extent to which it is possible to strategically manage social media, using case evidence 1 to 4 in the case study.