Social media has become an essential marketing tool for companies, allowing them to reach a vast audience and generate buzz around their brand. Content marketing through social platforms like YouTube and Twitter can be highly effective if the content resonates with customers and gives them a reason to engage with and share the brand. However, social media also presents risks as messages can spread unpredictably. Early pioneers of social media marketing like Dove and Taco Bell demonstrate how engaging, authentic content and interactions build customer relationships and drive online buzz. While social media brings risks of loss of message control, it has fundamentally changed marketing and companies must embrace these new channels to stay successful.

1. Creating Buzz
Marketing in the Age
of Social Media
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2. The digital age
has provided
companies with
a marketing
tool of
unparalleled
effectiveness:
Social Media
Photo Source: stokpic.com “White Iphone 5s
connected to laptop on desk” (CC0)

3. Social Media has
created a
marketing
platform with a
reach more
massive, a
process more
instantaneous
and an audience
more interactive
than ever before.
Photo Source: pixabay.com, by WDnetStudio (CC0)

4. “Online – where most of us live
a lot of the time now – the
way we interact with brands
changes”
- Catherine Toole
Photo Source: kaboompics.com (CC0)

5. Using social media, marketers
can not only get their message
to the market, but can…
Stimulate
Debate
Launch a
Viral
Sensation
And above
all, CREATE
BUZZ

6. Why is
creating buzz
so important?
When people are
talking about a
brand, it generates
consumer
awareness at a
speed and scale
that companies
cannot do on their
own.
Photo Source: jeshoots.com (CC0)

7. “Today’s most innovative
marketers create
engagement platforms
that do more than push
out messages. They
create a gravitational
field that pulls
prospects and
customers into orbit
around their brands”
-Mark Bonchek
Photo Source: unsplash.com, “Space” by NASA (CC0)

8. One of the most previously
successful social media
marketing strategies is
Content Marketing

9. Social Media has launched the content
marketing revolution:
“Redefining customer relationships based on
serving, educating, and entertaining customers
with content necessities a shift away from the “I”
of a brand or product toward the “you” of the
customer”
-Rebecca Lieb
Photo Source: freestocks.org (CC0)

10. Social Media and Content Marketing
are arguably the most effective
ways to engage customers…but
what is the risk?
Photo Source: unspash.com, by Ezra Jeffrey (CC0)

11. In Social Media Marketing, the people have
the power; a campaign is must harder to
control than traditional media, in that once
the message is out there, it is hard to
predict what will happen to it.
High Risk, High Reward
Photo Source: pixabay.com, by stux (CC0)

12. “It is becoming
increasingly hard to
recover from crises
of reputation
online. A seemingly
innocuous event
can unleash a storm
of negativity, and
such negativity
spreads directly on
corporate accounts
that were
established for
promotional
purposes”
-Larissa Ott Photo Source: unspash.com, by Pablo Garcia Saldana(CC0)

13. “Chaos can be scary but it can also
be the key to success. There’s
unlimited potential out there, take
advantage of it…
EMBRACE THE CHAOS”
-Tyler Crosson
Photo Source: unsplash.com, by Jon Flobrant (CC0)

14. An example of a company who have
taken an effective, albeit unique,
approach to the development of their
social media presence is American
Fast Food Chain, Taco Bell.
Photo Source: kaboompics.com, “Lunch” (CC0)

15. @TacoBell
Taco Bell has almost 2
Million followers on Twitter,
and for a good reason. The
company delivers a clever
combination of retweets,
funny comments and sassy
comebacks that have
consumers not only just
thinking about the brand in
a positive light, but
relating to it on a personal
level.
Photo Source: freestocks.org (CC0)

16. @TacoBell
Supports their
customers…
…Interacts with
celebrities…
…and acknowledges
other brands.

17. Another example
of a company
who are
considered
pioneers of social
media content
marketing, and
launched one of
the most
successful online
campaigns in a
pre-Instagram
era, is
Dove
Photo Source: janoschka.org

18. In 2006, to propell the launch of their
“Campaign For Real Beauty”, Dove
released a video called Evolution on
YouTube, a platform that not many
brands had used before for this
purpose.
Photo Source: picjumbo.com, (CC0)

19. “I think what made this
campaign perform
particularly strongly is the
content, which elicited the
intense emotional
responses of warmth,
happiness and knowledge
from its target
demographic – one of the
key factors behind a
video’s sharing success.
But, more importantly, we
are really seeing social
motivations behind
sharing becoming a lot
more important. Brands
have to give people a
reason to share the video”
-David Waterhouse
Photo Source: picjumbo.com (CC0)

20. If companies know their audience and
can deliver content that people want to
see, social media can have the power to
promote brands like no other form of
media can.
It can create what is of the utmost
importance for a brand: online BUZZ.
Photo Source: freestocks.org (CC0)

21. The game has
officially
changed: despite
the risks,
companies must
embrace social
media marketing
in order to be
Successful
Photo Source: stokpic.com “White Iphone 5s
connected to laptop on desk” (CC0)

22. “Social Media is
here. It’s not
going away;
not a passing
fad. Be where
your customers
are: in social
media”
-Lori Ruff
Photo Source: jeshoots.com (CC0)

23. References
Course Content Additional Sources
Slides 4 & 9:
Toole, C. (n.d.). Brands as publishers: inside the
content marketing trend. Retrieved
February 28, 2017 from http://
curve.gettyimages.com/article/brands-
as-publishers-inside-the-content-
marketing-trend
Slide 7:
Bonchek, M. (2014, October 10). Making sense of
owned media. Retrieved March 1, 2017,
from http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/
pdfviewer/pdfviewersid=184c0a66-4933
-49de-9f6af8836024d0f7%40sessionmg
r4006&vid=1&hid=4112
Slide 12:
Ott, L. (2015, March). Reputations at risk:
engagement during social media crisis.
Retrieved March 1, 2017, from http://
journals1.scholarsportal.info/pdf/
03638111/v41i0001/97_raredsmc.xml
Slide 13:
Crosson, T. (2012, November 15). Embrace the
chaos os social marketing. Retrieved
February 28, 2017, from http://098-
embrace-the-chaos-of-social-marketing
Slide 19:
Stampler, L. (2013, May 22). How Dove’s ‘real
beauty sketches’ became the most viral
video of all time. Retrieved March 1, 2017,
from http://www.businessinsider.com/
how-doves-real-beauty-sketches-
became-the-most-viral-ad-video-of-all-
time-2013-5
Slide 22:
University of Waterloo. (2016, October 17). The
future of education. Retrieved March 2,
2017, from http://smbp.uwaterloo.ca/
2016/10/creativelive-the-future-of-
education/