Abstract
This project examines the increasingly large responsibility bloggers hold in today’s marketing and advertising worlds. With the number of blogs on the Internet surpassing 152,000,000 (Gaille) and blog topics ranging anywhere from fashion to health to photography to gardening, bloggers now – more than ever – possess the power to highly influence consumer’s buying decisions. But how many of these product and brand recommendations are solicited to bloggers, and how many are truly word-of-mouth suggestions? What are bloggers getting out of promoting these brands? From free products to paychecks, are PR and marketing specialists taking advantage of these “undercover salespeople”, or instead are the “undercover salespeople” taking advantage of consumers?
Research
For this project, I decided to take a look into statistics on social media use, how those numbers impact marketing strategies for companies today, information on how and why consumers put so much trust into bloggers product recommendations, what role these bloggers play in the marketing world today, and what the future of marketing through blogging may look like. The main social networks my project focuses on are independent blogs and their linked Instagram accounts, specifically focusing on fashion and beauty blogs. The terms “brand”, “company”, “business”, and “organization” can be used interchangeably. For this project I examined the scholarly research that’s been done on the topic of social media marketing and viral marketing, blog posts on the topic of blogs and marketing, and interviewed two successful bloggers via email. The questions I sent the bloggers overall requested them to reflect on their role in the marketing world, and the success they’ve found in promoting products and why they think that is. I also asked them to provide feedback on their opinion of the ethics of viral marketing, and what they see for the future of viral marketing.
Video Intro
http://www.wsj.com/video/how-do-fashion-bloggers-make-money/B8345F40-478A-484C-B5BE-C5C6A542BAC1.html
Undercover Salespeople: The Ethics Behind Viral Marketing
Michelle Kirchner, fashion/lifestyle and beauty blogger better known by her blog title, “GirrlsScout”, says she gets approached almost everyday to solicit products on her Instagram account. With over 18 thousand followers on the blogger/photographer’s Instagram, she prefers promoting less-known brands, and says what she loves the most is, “the satisfaction that I’m helping out a small business owner reach a greater audience”. She also regularly receives free products and occasionally even receives commission for including a personalized coupon code for her followers to use.
Fashion stylist turned stay-at home mom Becky Ankrum, owner of the blog “Whistles and Clovers”, says that although the majority of her posts on her blog and accompanying Instagram are solicited, the products she promotes are essentially items and brands that she would wear. “I like to help out brands (I enjoy) as much as I can to drive traffic to them.” She goes on, “I normally get free product but have also been paid to mention things on my Instagram or blog. There is one brand that my reader’s get a discount through a code via me and I get a percentage of those sales.
Michelle and Becky are two of over 152,000,000 bloggers in the world today who consumers look to for recommendations on products. With blog topics overall ranging anywhere from fashion to health, photography to gardening, and car maintenance to cooking – consumers turn to bloggers for opinions on what to buy. Both Michelle and Becky agree that the most of their success in marketing is thanks to Instagram. With Instagram’s over 300 million active users (Smith) and 1.6 billion likes a day (Delo), is Instagram the new “it” marketing platform?
With the continual rise of social network/social media use – over 300 million Instagram users, 1.44 billion active Facebook users, and 302 million monthly active Twitter accounts (Smith), digital marketing has become a major way brands are able to connect with consumers. Adweek reported that brands are now posting more to Instagram than Facebook, as brands know everything they post on Instagram will appear in fans’ feeds. “On Facebook, if brands don’t pay to promote their posts, much of their content doesn’t appear in followers’ News Feeds” (Sloane). Forbes.com says that a study done on brand advertising on Instagram found that it’s “remarkably effective as a toll for driving follower acquisition and engagement” (Bercovici). While Instagram is in fact in the process of integrating an ad system for companies, many brands are turning to influential bloggers to advertise for them. One business Insight and Strategy Director explains, “Instagram has a highly creative community who use the platform to connect and share primarly with each other, not with brands. Marketers must reflect the creativity of the audience in the content they produce and promote” (Media: Q). In the study titled, “The Effect of Social Media Marketing Content and Consumer Engagement: Evidence from Facebook”, researchers explored what drives “likes” and engagement on Facebook, and found that, “A consistent pattern is that messages with photos will always obtain highest Likes across industries” (Dokyun), also factoring into Instagram’s photograph-based application success.
But why do consumers put so much trust into bloggers product promotions and suggestions? “The development of online communities has reshaped consumers’ information seeking and sharing behavior”(Bronner) one study published in the International Journal of Marketing Research points out. “Information provided by suppliers of consumer goods is no longer the major factor influencing these decisions and is now quickly being equaled by widely available opinions and experiences from other consumers” (Bronner). Another study titled “Persuasive Messages, Popularity Cohesion, and Message Diffusion on Social Media Marketing”, published in the Journal of Business Research explains, “Suspicious of traditional advertisements, users prefer trustworthy friends, or even information coming from strangers online” (Chang). One significant and rare study done on blogging, titled “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities”, published in the Journal of Marketing, looks at blogs high level of self-disclosure, crediting that factor as a main reason readers trust bloggers. “Personal information can be very important and can contribute in a positive way, as it makes for easier identification with the information provider – an important precondition for trusting information” (Kozinets). A different study further defines self-disclosure as “based on the degree to which people using the medium can disclose personal information and identity”, and says that, “in the context of providing information for decisions others have to make, this personal information can be very important and can contribute in a positive way” (Bronner). Readers typically know personal information about the bloggers, making them more relatable, personable, and trustworthy than blatant advertisers.
The marketers and advertisers who already seek bloggers to advertise are well are of this factor. A study done on the effect of social media marketing content explained, “The competition for consumer attention across media outlets is intense, especially on social media platforms. Consumers, in turn, are overwhelmed by the proliferation of online content, and it seems clear that marketers will not succeed without engineering this content for their audience” (Dokyun). It’s clear marketers understand the importance of word-of-mouth marketing – but do they use bloggers to manipulate that originally organic type of advertising? And is this ethical?
As bloggers Michelle Kirchner and Becky Ankrum see it, there is nothing unethical going on. “If it’s something that has positively enhanced my life, you bet your ass I’m gonna tell everyone about it” Michelle expressed. “I won’t ever promote a product I didn’t actually use and like”, and Kirchner also says when companies to approach her to promote products, she does her research. “I have had companies come to me and tell me to pick out something from their site to promote and I genuinely wasn’t a fan of their product so I had to respectfully decline. I’m not going to say, “Hey I love this shirt!” if in two seconds it’s thrown on my floor and never seen again”. She also says she tries not to team up with higher brands that approach her with products the average person could not afford.
Becky Ankrum of whistlesandclovers.com, says that the products she promotes are also items and brands she would wear. She even reaches out to companies to try to promote products she truly loves. She values the trust both her readers and companies that work with her put into her, relating it to her sales background, “I had been in sales for years…now I still do sales, only I have to sell people on me and my blog. So when a brand/product trusts me and believes in who I am as a blogger to promote their clothing, it is SUCH a great honor”.
Becky brings up the interesting aspect of selling herself as a person to her readers, one that is also focused on in one major study titled “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities”, published in the Journal of Marketing. For this research, a “seeding campaign was studied – that is, “a campaign in which the product is placed among influential consumers so that they can communicate favorably about it to other consumers” (Kozinets). To overview that specific campaign – a mobile device company, MobiTech, sent a group of different bloggers they selected (based on factors such as frequency of posting, reader comments, and overall followers) a cell phone valued at over $300 free of charge, and just asked that the bloggers provide some sort of feedback (good or bad) on their blogs. While the blogger’s extent to which they mentioned the product or explained the campaign itself varied, interesting factors played in to how receptive each blogger’s audience was to the “solicited” message.
In particular, what tended to effect how the audience reacted to the blogger campaign participation dealt mostly with “character type, blog forum, and communal norms” (Kozinets). For example, one male blogger who was known to already be a “tech blogger” had an easier time discussing the phone with his audience, as this was his usual subject of choice anyway. His followers expected him to talk about technology, and they themselves were interested in the topic. However, when a “mommy blogger”, whose main messages focused on family, the struggles of being a mom, and “making it by” financially reviewed her phone – it didn’t go so well. Her audience quickly turned on her, saying she’d “sold out”. Why might this be? For one, for her to talk about technology in general was foreign - it had nothing to do with her usual subject matter. On the other hand, her promoting this expensive phone – one that she admitted she wouldn’t have even been able to afford had she not got it handed to her – didn’t make sense for her audience, who most of which also wouldn’t be able to afford such a phone. It came off as contradictory to her audience, who was once able to relate to her about money struggles. This study is one of its only kind – spotlighting how a blogger’s audience perceives blatantly being sold a product.
Conclusion
After conducting my research on viral marketing, it seems that the ethics behind viral marketing may be less of a concern than I had originally predicted. As the article “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities”, published in the Journal of Marketing, exhibits, if the product recommendations go along with the “character” and lifestyle the blogger has already developed and the reader feels they “know”, the reader will probably still trust the blogger, and therefore it may not matter to the reader whether or not the blogger is receiving free product or commission. However, it is hard to say that the ethical implications are not a factor in viral marketing, as research on the topic in general is lacking and needs to be further explored. I would predict that when more research is done on the topic that consumers may become concerned about the ethics, which could lead to new regulations for disclosing solicited recommendations.
I am also able to conclude through this project that Instagram is and continues to be a powerful marketing platform for bloggers. Both bloggers, Michelle and Becky, expressed Instagram as being their biggest sellers and commented on how it’s a great marketing hub for the millennial generation. I believe that a significant amount of Marketing and Public Relations Specialists are not using this to their advantage, and that utilizing bloggers via Instagram is a very powerful marketing platform that needs to be explored on a higher level in the Marketing and PR fields. Again though, I do believe that as more research on the topic gets published, bloggers marketing on Instagram will become more prevalent.
Further Research Opportunities
Opportunities for further research development include more marketing research from the perspective of bloggers promoting products for companies, as most current research focuses on social media marketing from a brand’s perspective. LiketoKnow.It, the Instagram shopping tool that helps top tier style publishers share shoppable posts with followers, would also be a powerful tool to investigate for the topic development of viral marketing. While there are articles and blog posts expressing different opinions of the Instagram application, not much is known about how the tool works for the “top tier style publishers” – in fact, many in the online blog community wonder how exactly LiketoKnow.It decides what bloggers qualify into such an elite group. It would be influential to the development of viral marketing research to get insider knowledge as to how LiketoKnow.It works for both companies and the bloggers utilizing application alike.
Another topic of interest that lacks modern research in the topic of marketing and persuasive content creation is the study of Instagram as a marketing platform for bloggers. In an article published in the Journal of Marketing, one major study on Facebook and marketing found that, “Whereas the “what” (content) and “who” (senders and receivers) of viral marketing have been researched extensively, the “how” (sharing mechanisms) has received little attention, despite relevant case evidence that suggests the mechanisms consumers use to share viral messages exert strong influences on viral marketing success” (Schulze). Any research that does study the “how” thus far has been primarily focused on Facebook, as prior to the last few years Facebook was the number one social networking marketing tool for companies. Blogging (including marketing within blogging) as a career could be another topic for research under the “how” topic. Modern published studies about blogging prevalence and power in the fashion and marketing industries is nearly non-existent, as the “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities “studies found, “Despite awareness of the complexity of these communal relationships, marketers are just beginning to understand the formation, reaction, and effects of communally based marketing promotions” (Kozinets).
Works Cited
Ankrum, Becky. Blogger whistles and clovers lends an insider perspective. E-mail
interview. 4 May. 2015.
Bercovici, J. (2014). The Surprising Data Behind How Often Brands Should Post On
Instagram. Forbes.Com, 12.
Bronner, F., & de Hoog, R. (2014). Social media and consumer choice. International
Journal Of Market Research, 56(1), 51-71. Doi:10.2501/IJMR-2013-053.
Brooke, E. (2014, May 29). 'Vogue' Makes Its Instagram Shoppable with
LikeToKnow.It. Retrieved April 26, 2015, from http://fashionista.com/2014/05/vogue-makes-instagram-shoppable
Chang, Y., Tu, H., $ lu, H. (2015). Persuasive messages, popularity cohesion, and
message diffusion in social media marketing. Journal of Business Research, 68(4), 777-782. Doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2014.11.027
Delo, C. (2014). Why it’s hard to be a brand on Instagram. Advertising Age, 85(8), 10.
Dokyun, L., Hosanager, K., & Nair, H. S. (2014). The Effect of Social Media Marketing Content and Consumer Engagement: Evidence from Facebook. Working Papers
(Faculty) – Stanford Graduate School of Business. 1-51.
Gaille, B. (2013, November 20). How Many Blogs are on the Internet. Retrieved April
26, 2015, from http://www.wpvirtuoso.com/how-many-blogs-are-on-the-internet
Kirchner, Michelle. Blogger girrlscout lends an insider perspective.” E-mail interview. 27 Apr. 2015.
Kozinets, R. V., de Valck, K., Wojnicki, A. C., & Wilner, S. J. (2010). Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities.
Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 71-89. Doi:10.1509/jmkg.74.2.71
Media: Q. Is Instagram a good place for advertising? (2014). Campaign (UK). 43.
Schulze, C. Scholer, L., & Skiera, B. (2014). Not All Fun and Games: Viral Marketing
for Utilitarian Products. Journal of Marketing, 78(1), 1-19.
Sloane, G. (2015). Report: Brands Are Now Posting More to Instagram Than
Facebook. Adweek, 1.
Smith, C. (2015, May 1). Social Media User Stats. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-
the-top-social-media/6/
This project examines the increasingly large responsibility bloggers hold in today’s marketing and advertising worlds. With the number of blogs on the Internet surpassing 152,000,000 (Gaille) and blog topics ranging anywhere from fashion to health to photography to gardening, bloggers now – more than ever – possess the power to highly influence consumer’s buying decisions. But how many of these product and brand recommendations are solicited to bloggers, and how many are truly word-of-mouth suggestions? What are bloggers getting out of promoting these brands? From free products to paychecks, are PR and marketing specialists taking advantage of these “undercover salespeople”, or instead are the “undercover salespeople” taking advantage of consumers?
Research
For this project, I decided to take a look into statistics on social media use, how those numbers impact marketing strategies for companies today, information on how and why consumers put so much trust into bloggers product recommendations, what role these bloggers play in the marketing world today, and what the future of marketing through blogging may look like. The main social networks my project focuses on are independent blogs and their linked Instagram accounts, specifically focusing on fashion and beauty blogs. The terms “brand”, “company”, “business”, and “organization” can be used interchangeably. For this project I examined the scholarly research that’s been done on the topic of social media marketing and viral marketing, blog posts on the topic of blogs and marketing, and interviewed two successful bloggers via email. The questions I sent the bloggers overall requested them to reflect on their role in the marketing world, and the success they’ve found in promoting products and why they think that is. I also asked them to provide feedback on their opinion of the ethics of viral marketing, and what they see for the future of viral marketing.
Video Intro
http://www.wsj.com/video/how-do-fashion-bloggers-make-money/B8345F40-478A-484C-B5BE-C5C6A542BAC1.html
Undercover Salespeople: The Ethics Behind Viral Marketing
Michelle Kirchner, fashion/lifestyle and beauty blogger better known by her blog title, “GirrlsScout”, says she gets approached almost everyday to solicit products on her Instagram account. With over 18 thousand followers on the blogger/photographer’s Instagram, she prefers promoting less-known brands, and says what she loves the most is, “the satisfaction that I’m helping out a small business owner reach a greater audience”. She also regularly receives free products and occasionally even receives commission for including a personalized coupon code for her followers to use.
Fashion stylist turned stay-at home mom Becky Ankrum, owner of the blog “Whistles and Clovers”, says that although the majority of her posts on her blog and accompanying Instagram are solicited, the products she promotes are essentially items and brands that she would wear. “I like to help out brands (I enjoy) as much as I can to drive traffic to them.” She goes on, “I normally get free product but have also been paid to mention things on my Instagram or blog. There is one brand that my reader’s get a discount through a code via me and I get a percentage of those sales.
Michelle and Becky are two of over 152,000,000 bloggers in the world today who consumers look to for recommendations on products. With blog topics overall ranging anywhere from fashion to health, photography to gardening, and car maintenance to cooking – consumers turn to bloggers for opinions on what to buy. Both Michelle and Becky agree that the most of their success in marketing is thanks to Instagram. With Instagram’s over 300 million active users (Smith) and 1.6 billion likes a day (Delo), is Instagram the new “it” marketing platform?
With the continual rise of social network/social media use – over 300 million Instagram users, 1.44 billion active Facebook users, and 302 million monthly active Twitter accounts (Smith), digital marketing has become a major way brands are able to connect with consumers. Adweek reported that brands are now posting more to Instagram than Facebook, as brands know everything they post on Instagram will appear in fans’ feeds. “On Facebook, if brands don’t pay to promote their posts, much of their content doesn’t appear in followers’ News Feeds” (Sloane). Forbes.com says that a study done on brand advertising on Instagram found that it’s “remarkably effective as a toll for driving follower acquisition and engagement” (Bercovici). While Instagram is in fact in the process of integrating an ad system for companies, many brands are turning to influential bloggers to advertise for them. One business Insight and Strategy Director explains, “Instagram has a highly creative community who use the platform to connect and share primarly with each other, not with brands. Marketers must reflect the creativity of the audience in the content they produce and promote” (Media: Q). In the study titled, “The Effect of Social Media Marketing Content and Consumer Engagement: Evidence from Facebook”, researchers explored what drives “likes” and engagement on Facebook, and found that, “A consistent pattern is that messages with photos will always obtain highest Likes across industries” (Dokyun), also factoring into Instagram’s photograph-based application success.
But why do consumers put so much trust into bloggers product promotions and suggestions? “The development of online communities has reshaped consumers’ information seeking and sharing behavior”(Bronner) one study published in the International Journal of Marketing Research points out. “Information provided by suppliers of consumer goods is no longer the major factor influencing these decisions and is now quickly being equaled by widely available opinions and experiences from other consumers” (Bronner). Another study titled “Persuasive Messages, Popularity Cohesion, and Message Diffusion on Social Media Marketing”, published in the Journal of Business Research explains, “Suspicious of traditional advertisements, users prefer trustworthy friends, or even information coming from strangers online” (Chang). One significant and rare study done on blogging, titled “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities”, published in the Journal of Marketing, looks at blogs high level of self-disclosure, crediting that factor as a main reason readers trust bloggers. “Personal information can be very important and can contribute in a positive way, as it makes for easier identification with the information provider – an important precondition for trusting information” (Kozinets). A different study further defines self-disclosure as “based on the degree to which people using the medium can disclose personal information and identity”, and says that, “in the context of providing information for decisions others have to make, this personal information can be very important and can contribute in a positive way” (Bronner). Readers typically know personal information about the bloggers, making them more relatable, personable, and trustworthy than blatant advertisers.
The marketers and advertisers who already seek bloggers to advertise are well are of this factor. A study done on the effect of social media marketing content explained, “The competition for consumer attention across media outlets is intense, especially on social media platforms. Consumers, in turn, are overwhelmed by the proliferation of online content, and it seems clear that marketers will not succeed without engineering this content for their audience” (Dokyun). It’s clear marketers understand the importance of word-of-mouth marketing – but do they use bloggers to manipulate that originally organic type of advertising? And is this ethical?
As bloggers Michelle Kirchner and Becky Ankrum see it, there is nothing unethical going on. “If it’s something that has positively enhanced my life, you bet your ass I’m gonna tell everyone about it” Michelle expressed. “I won’t ever promote a product I didn’t actually use and like”, and Kirchner also says when companies to approach her to promote products, she does her research. “I have had companies come to me and tell me to pick out something from their site to promote and I genuinely wasn’t a fan of their product so I had to respectfully decline. I’m not going to say, “Hey I love this shirt!” if in two seconds it’s thrown on my floor and never seen again”. She also says she tries not to team up with higher brands that approach her with products the average person could not afford.
Becky Ankrum of whistlesandclovers.com, says that the products she promotes are also items and brands she would wear. She even reaches out to companies to try to promote products she truly loves. She values the trust both her readers and companies that work with her put into her, relating it to her sales background, “I had been in sales for years…now I still do sales, only I have to sell people on me and my blog. So when a brand/product trusts me and believes in who I am as a blogger to promote their clothing, it is SUCH a great honor”.
Becky brings up the interesting aspect of selling herself as a person to her readers, one that is also focused on in one major study titled “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities”, published in the Journal of Marketing. For this research, a “seeding campaign was studied – that is, “a campaign in which the product is placed among influential consumers so that they can communicate favorably about it to other consumers” (Kozinets). To overview that specific campaign – a mobile device company, MobiTech, sent a group of different bloggers they selected (based on factors such as frequency of posting, reader comments, and overall followers) a cell phone valued at over $300 free of charge, and just asked that the bloggers provide some sort of feedback (good or bad) on their blogs. While the blogger’s extent to which they mentioned the product or explained the campaign itself varied, interesting factors played in to how receptive each blogger’s audience was to the “solicited” message.
In particular, what tended to effect how the audience reacted to the blogger campaign participation dealt mostly with “character type, blog forum, and communal norms” (Kozinets). For example, one male blogger who was known to already be a “tech blogger” had an easier time discussing the phone with his audience, as this was his usual subject of choice anyway. His followers expected him to talk about technology, and they themselves were interested in the topic. However, when a “mommy blogger”, whose main messages focused on family, the struggles of being a mom, and “making it by” financially reviewed her phone – it didn’t go so well. Her audience quickly turned on her, saying she’d “sold out”. Why might this be? For one, for her to talk about technology in general was foreign - it had nothing to do with her usual subject matter. On the other hand, her promoting this expensive phone – one that she admitted she wouldn’t have even been able to afford had she not got it handed to her – didn’t make sense for her audience, who most of which also wouldn’t be able to afford such a phone. It came off as contradictory to her audience, who was once able to relate to her about money struggles. This study is one of its only kind – spotlighting how a blogger’s audience perceives blatantly being sold a product.
Conclusion
After conducting my research on viral marketing, it seems that the ethics behind viral marketing may be less of a concern than I had originally predicted. As the article “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities”, published in the Journal of Marketing, exhibits, if the product recommendations go along with the “character” and lifestyle the blogger has already developed and the reader feels they “know”, the reader will probably still trust the blogger, and therefore it may not matter to the reader whether or not the blogger is receiving free product or commission. However, it is hard to say that the ethical implications are not a factor in viral marketing, as research on the topic in general is lacking and needs to be further explored. I would predict that when more research is done on the topic that consumers may become concerned about the ethics, which could lead to new regulations for disclosing solicited recommendations.
I am also able to conclude through this project that Instagram is and continues to be a powerful marketing platform for bloggers. Both bloggers, Michelle and Becky, expressed Instagram as being their biggest sellers and commented on how it’s a great marketing hub for the millennial generation. I believe that a significant amount of Marketing and Public Relations Specialists are not using this to their advantage, and that utilizing bloggers via Instagram is a very powerful marketing platform that needs to be explored on a higher level in the Marketing and PR fields. Again though, I do believe that as more research on the topic gets published, bloggers marketing on Instagram will become more prevalent.
Further Research Opportunities
Opportunities for further research development include more marketing research from the perspective of bloggers promoting products for companies, as most current research focuses on social media marketing from a brand’s perspective. LiketoKnow.It, the Instagram shopping tool that helps top tier style publishers share shoppable posts with followers, would also be a powerful tool to investigate for the topic development of viral marketing. While there are articles and blog posts expressing different opinions of the Instagram application, not much is known about how the tool works for the “top tier style publishers” – in fact, many in the online blog community wonder how exactly LiketoKnow.It decides what bloggers qualify into such an elite group. It would be influential to the development of viral marketing research to get insider knowledge as to how LiketoKnow.It works for both companies and the bloggers utilizing application alike.
Another topic of interest that lacks modern research in the topic of marketing and persuasive content creation is the study of Instagram as a marketing platform for bloggers. In an article published in the Journal of Marketing, one major study on Facebook and marketing found that, “Whereas the “what” (content) and “who” (senders and receivers) of viral marketing have been researched extensively, the “how” (sharing mechanisms) has received little attention, despite relevant case evidence that suggests the mechanisms consumers use to share viral messages exert strong influences on viral marketing success” (Schulze). Any research that does study the “how” thus far has been primarily focused on Facebook, as prior to the last few years Facebook was the number one social networking marketing tool for companies. Blogging (including marketing within blogging) as a career could be another topic for research under the “how” topic. Modern published studies about blogging prevalence and power in the fashion and marketing industries is nearly non-existent, as the “Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities “studies found, “Despite awareness of the complexity of these communal relationships, marketers are just beginning to understand the formation, reaction, and effects of communally based marketing promotions” (Kozinets).
Works Cited
Ankrum, Becky. Blogger whistles and clovers lends an insider perspective. E-mail
interview. 4 May. 2015.
Bercovici, J. (2014). The Surprising Data Behind How Often Brands Should Post On
Instagram. Forbes.Com, 12.
Bronner, F., & de Hoog, R. (2014). Social media and consumer choice. International
Journal Of Market Research, 56(1), 51-71. Doi:10.2501/IJMR-2013-053.
Brooke, E. (2014, May 29). 'Vogue' Makes Its Instagram Shoppable with
LikeToKnow.It. Retrieved April 26, 2015, from http://fashionista.com/2014/05/vogue-makes-instagram-shoppable
Chang, Y., Tu, H., $ lu, H. (2015). Persuasive messages, popularity cohesion, and
message diffusion in social media marketing. Journal of Business Research, 68(4), 777-782. Doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2014.11.027
Delo, C. (2014). Why it’s hard to be a brand on Instagram. Advertising Age, 85(8), 10.
Dokyun, L., Hosanager, K., & Nair, H. S. (2014). The Effect of Social Media Marketing Content and Consumer Engagement: Evidence from Facebook. Working Papers
(Faculty) – Stanford Graduate School of Business. 1-51.
Gaille, B. (2013, November 20). How Many Blogs are on the Internet. Retrieved April
26, 2015, from http://www.wpvirtuoso.com/how-many-blogs-are-on-the-internet
Kirchner, Michelle. Blogger girrlscout lends an insider perspective.” E-mail interview. 27 Apr. 2015.
Kozinets, R. V., de Valck, K., Wojnicki, A. C., & Wilner, S. J. (2010). Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities.
Journal of Marketing, 74(2), 71-89. Doi:10.1509/jmkg.74.2.71
Media: Q. Is Instagram a good place for advertising? (2014). Campaign (UK). 43.
Schulze, C. Scholer, L., & Skiera, B. (2014). Not All Fun and Games: Viral Marketing
for Utilitarian Products. Journal of Marketing, 78(1), 1-19.
Sloane, G. (2015). Report: Brands Are Now Posting More to Instagram Than
Facebook. Adweek, 1.
Smith, C. (2015, May 1). Social Media User Stats. Retrieved May 2, 2015, from http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/resource-how-many-people-use-
the-top-social-media/6/