Online Marketing with Social Media – an overview and the background why SAP Cloud Service Center joined Facebook

Social Web is an important part of Online Marketing – if not THE most important part by now. The term Social Web contains the development of the internet in the direction of unlimited interactivity. Other than in traditional media, internet users have the role of a sender and a receiver at the same time and can therefore create and modify contents actively.

Social Media is the summary of all internet based applications which follow the principles of Social Web (or the so called Web 2.0) and allow the creation and exchange of user generated content. Social Media can be distinguished by two dimensions: Social presence and media richness. The social presence dimension shows the degree of contact individuals have during an interaction. Media richness determines how much information can be transmitted within a certain time frame. The following graphic clusters social media by the above described dimensions.

Social networks which have a high amount of self-presentation and a medium amount of media richness are the most popular social media tools whereas Facebook with approximately 900 million users (Roland Lindner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 13.05.2011, Nr. 19, S. 46) leads all the rankings. Originating from a social network for Harvard students, Facebook proves to be a network for businesses increasingly where vendors connect with customers, partners and beyond. Companies have many possibilities, not only to create their own business page but as well start marketing campaigns and analyze their figures in real-time. The Social Media Marketing Industry Report of 2011 examines 3342 B2B and B2C marketers using Social Media (SocialExaminer.com). 92% of them reported the use of Facebook whereas most of them benefit especially of the increased awareness, traffic and improved search rankings which lead also to increased sales.

SAP itself is represented on Facebook with a couple of accounts about 93 official registered SAP brand accounts). The SAP Cloud Solutions account has an amazing increasing amount of followers (18530) and a high number of engaged users per day (see Social Media Report of SAP Cloud Solutions). After a long process of consideration, the SAP Cloud Service Center also decided to create its own Facebook page. There are several reasons for that: The lack of flexibility in updating news, presenting its service portfolio and benefits in a classical way, the urge to stay in a continuous contact with its stakeholders and at least the fact that already about 55% of its partners and existing customers are using Facebook (more than in every other social media channel). During the implementation process, the SAP Cloud Service Center worked closely with SAP Cloud Solutions and will also in the future collaborate with them in order to follow the same Facebook strategy.

The SAP Cloud Service Center assists customers and partners to get the most out of their SAP OnDemand solution by offering Extensibility, Migration, Integration and Enablement Services. Like this the SAP Cloud Service Center helps to make businesses run like never before. Visit the SAP Cloud Service Center page and share your feedback on www.facebook.com/SapCloudServiceCenter.