Marketers can engage in social media in two ways: They can use existing social media or they can set up their own. Using existing social media seems the easiest. Thus, most brands—large and small—have set up shop on a host of social media sites. Check the websites of brands ranging from Coca-Cola, Nike, and Victoria’s Secret to the Chicago Bulls or even the U.S. Forest Service and you’ll find links to each brand’s Facebook, Google+, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram, or other social media pages. Such social media can create substantial brand communities. For example, the Chicago Bulls have more the 18 million Facebook fans; Coca-Cola has an eye-popping 97 million Facebook fans.

Some of the major social networks are huge. Nearly 1.6 billion people access Facebook every month, almost five times the population of the United States. Twitter has more than 305 million active monthly users. And YouTube’s more than 1 billion users upload 500 hours of video every minute of every day. The list goes on: Google+ has 359 million active users, Instagram 400 million, LinkedIn 100 million, and Pinterest 100 million.24

Although these large, general-interest social media networks grab most of the headlines, countless niche and interest-based social media have also emerged. These online social networks cater to the needs of smaller communities of like-minded people, making them ideal vehicles for marketers who want to target special-interest groups. There’s at least one social media network for just about every interest, hobby, or group. Goodreads is a social network where 55 million avid readers can “Meet your next favorite book” and discuss it with friends, whereas moms share advice and commiseration at CafeMom.com. FarmersOnly.com provides online dating for down-to-earth “country folks” who enjoy “blue skies, living free and at peace in wide open spaces, raising animals, and appreciating nature”—“because city folks just don’t get it.” At Birdpost.com, avid bird watchers can keep an online list of birds they’ve seen and share bird sightings with other members using modern satellite maps.25

Using social media presents both advantages and challenges. On the plus side, social ­media are targeted and personal—they allow marketers to create and share tailored brand content with individual consumers and customer communities. Social media are interactive, making them ideal for starting and participating in customer conversations and listening to customer feedback. For example, TOMS shoes—which gives a free pair of shoes to a child in need for every shoe purchased, one for one—recently ran a two-week #withoutshoes campaign in which it donated one pair of shoes for every person who snapped a picture of their bare feet, shared it on Instagram, and urged others to do the same. The campaign resulted in more than 296,000 pairs of shoes donated, engaging customers in spreading the brand’s philanthropic message to millions around the world.26

Social media are also immediate and timely. They can be used to reach customers anytime, anywhere with timely and relevant marketing content regarding brand happenings and activities. As discussed earlier in the chapter, the rapid growth in social media usage has caused a surge in real-time marketing, allowing marketers to create and join consumer conversations around situations and events as they occur. Marketers can now watch what’s trending and create content to match.

Social media can be very cost-effective. Although creating and administering social media content can be costly, many social media are free or inexpensive to use. Thus, returns on social media investments are often high compared with those of expensive traditional media such as television or print. The low cost of social media puts them within easy reach of even small businesses and brands that can’t afford the high costs of big-budget marketing campaigns.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of social media is their engagement and social sharing capabilities. Social media are especially well suited to creating customer engagement and community—for getting customers involved with the brand and with each other. More than any other channels, social media can involve customers in shaping and sharing brand content, experiences, information, and ideas.

For example, consider Etsy—the online craft marketplace that’s “Your place to buy and sell all things handmade.” Etsy uses its web and mobile sites and a host of social media to create an Etsy lifestyle community, where buyers congregate to learn about, explore, exchange, and share ideas about handmade and vintage products and related topics. In addition to its active Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages, Etsy engages 780,000 brand followers on photo-sharing site Instagram, where the Etsy community shares photos of creative ideas and projects. It also engages almost a million followers on social scrapbooking site Pinterest, with 120 boards on topics ranging from “DIY Projects,” “Entertaining,” and “Stuff We Love” to “Etsy Weddings” and even “Yum! Recipes to Share,” where the community posts favorite recipes. Etsy sells few of the ingredients that go into the recipes, but it’s all part of the Etsy lifestyle. Through its extensive online and social media presence, Etsy has created an active and engaged worldwide community of 24 million shoppers and 1.6 million sellers worldwide in what it calls “The marketplace we make together.”27

Social media marketing also presents challenges. First, many companies are still experimenting with how to use them effectively and results are hard to measure. Second, such social networks are largely user controlled. The company’s goal in using social media is to make the brand a part of consumers’ conversations and their lives. However, marketers can’t simply muscle their way into consumers’ digital interactions—they need to earn the right to be there. Rather than intruding, marketers must become a valued part of the online experience by developing a steady flow of engaging content.

Because consumers have so much control over social media content, even a seemingly harmless social media campaign can backfire. That’s what happened when Sea World launched a “Sea World Cares” marketing campaign to educate the public about its work to protect killer whales and other aquatic species in captivity and in the wild:

As part of the broader campaign, recognizing that “some people have questions about the welfare of killer whales in human care,” Sea World invited Twitter users to pose their questions to the company directly using the hashtag #AskSeaWorld. But rather than the constructive Q&A exchange that Sea World intended, the hashtag turned into a bashtag nightmare. Angry Twitter users used the hashtag to jump all over Sea World for what they saw as animal abuse practices. Some typical responses: “#AtSeaWorld how do you sleep knowing you imprison innocent animals, abuse them for entertainment, lie to the public, and make millions?” and “#AskSeaWorld do you think it’s morally okay to take a child away from its mother? #EmptyTheTanks.”28

There’s a clear message. With social media, “you’re going into the consumer’s backyard. This is their place,” warns one social marketer. “Social media is a pressure cooker,” says another. “The hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people out there are going to take your idea, and they’re going to try to shred it or tear it apart and find what’s weak or stupid in it.”29

Using social media might be as simple as posting some messages and promotions on a brand’s Facebook or Twitter pages or creating brand buzz with videos or images on YouTube, Instagram, or Pinterest. However, most large companies are now designing full-scale social media efforts that blend with and support other elements of a brand’s marketing content strategy and tactics. More than making scattered efforts and chasing “Likes” and tweets, companies that use social media successfully are integrating a broad range of diverse media to create brand-related social sharing, engagement, and customer community.

Managing a brand’s social media efforts can be a major undertaking. For example, Starbucks is one of the most successful social media marketers. Its core social media team connects with its fans through 30 accounts on 12 different social platforms. Frappuccino alone has more than 11 million followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and We Heart It. Managing and integrating all that social media content is challenging, but the results are worth the investment. Customers can and do engage with Starbucks by the tens of millions digitally, without ever setting foot in a store.30

But more than just creating online engagement and community, Starbucks’ social media presence also drives customers into its stores. For example, in its first big social media promotion six years ago, Starbucks offered a free pastry with a morning drink purchase. A million people showed up. A more recent “Tweet-a-Coffee” promotion, which let customers give a $5 gift card to a friend by putting both #tweetacoffee and the friend’s handle in a tweet, resulted in $180,000 in purchases within little more than one month. Social media “are not just about engaging and telling a story and connecting,” says Starbucks’s head of global digital marketing. “They can have a material impact on the business.”31