Carry out a focused search for a recent (within last the three years) and relevant academic/business video which contains a succinct, focused and relevant contextualization and definition of social media and mobiles. Key concepts should be clearly identified and explained in the video. The video could cover any aspect covered in the notes on social media and mobiles (as listed in the Table of Contents). This includes, social media, digital marketing, technologies supporting, mobile application development, advantages, and disadvantages. The video should be a maximum of five minutes long. You may cut/edit/splice videos. Place the URL link for the video into a Word document.

1. Kapinga Kabuya IT Management Assignment 6.1
Name four social media and/or digital marketing strategies that could be employed by
Ithemba to promote its image to the eyes of the patients (with concrete examples). You should
name and describe each strategy as well as its benefits. Also specify the supporting tool/social
media platforms which could be used as part of each strategy.
Digital marketing is refers the execution of marketing using a form of electronic media, such as,
e-mail, wireless media, the web, interactive TV and social media, while making use of digital data
about customers’ behaviour and characteristics (Ahmed, 2016). It is similar to traditional
marketing except it includes a technology component (Ryan, 2016). Digital marketing promotes
the creation of relationships with consumers whereby the marketer is required to understand how
the consumer uses their technology to communicate with them Ryan (2016). The internet and many
digital mediums, such as, email or websites, are used to promote a company’s products (Ryan,
2016). A digital marketing plan consists of two main components. Firstly, the “push” of digital
information in its marketing efforts and, secondly, the “pull” of conversations with customers and
the sourcing of data and metrics (Serra-Cantallops, Ramon-Cardona, and Salvi, 2018). It is
imperative that Ithemba as an organisation creates value through digital marketing. Digital
marketing is linked to the organisation’s overall strategy and that there are digital business models,
as well as, operations and a digital mind set (Seitz and Burosch, 2018). There should be only one
strategy in an organisation, not several strategies that are aligned with the overall strategy
(Johnston, 2014).
Social media marketing is a subsidiary of digital marketing. It refers to companies using social
media to communicate and share a company’s information with its consumers (Tuten and
Solomon, 2017). Categorizing social media into zones can assist organisations who want to use
and benefit from specific aspects of social media (Kim and Chandler, 2018). Social media
marketing can be divided into four zones, namely, social community, social publishing, social
commerce and social entertainment (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). Social community includes social
media sites like Twitter and Facebook whereby a company can build a relationship with their
customers by being amongst them. Social publishing focuses on content distribution and consists
of blogging whereby people share content. Social commerce includes sites like Facebook,
Instagram and TripAdvisor whereby companies offer services. Buying and selling is also included
in social commerce (Tuten and Solomon, 2017). Social entertainment is about entertainment and
refers to social media channels that “offer play and enjoyment like social games, social music and
social television. Social commerce refers to social media channels that assist in the online
exchange of products (Kim and Chandler, 2018, p.146).

2. Advantages of social media, digital and mobile marketing are cost reduction in marketing
expenses, increased brand awareness and traffic, improved search rankings, as well as, increased
customer loyalty.
Social media marketing does not have high costs like costs related to sales people associated with
it, unlike traditional marketing (Nadaraja and Yazdanifard, 2013). This is because many social
media sites are free (Kaur, 2016). Literature concur that SMEs adopting social media marketing
can now reach a larger market share than before (Jones et al., 2015; Nobre and Silva, 2014). Cost
reduction and increased reach are achieved because instead of connecting and communicating to
a restricted small community, they now can connect with consumers on an international scale
(Jones et al., 2015).
Literature agrees that implementing social media and mobile marketing in a business increases a
company's brand awareness and brand recognition, in turn, increasing the traffic (Blair, 2018;
Jones et al., 2015; Nobre and Silva, 2014). Increased brand awareness, recognition and traffic is
achieved when companies implement web pages that have meaningful company information and
promotions (Jones et al., 2015). Company’s sales would increase with the increase in consumers
(Nobre and Silva, 2014).
Improved search rankings are achieved by implementing a product through a social media web
page so as to improve the company’s search engine optimization. Social media marketing also
improves a company’s search rankings on the internet (Mahajan, 2015).
Social media and mobiles have extended the relationship between companies and their customers,
in turn, resulting in increased customer loyalty (Blair, 2018; Floreddu et al., 2014). Some authors
have advised that social media has resulted in companies’ customers communicating in an open
and honest way. This enhances customers’ engagement (Dijkmans et al., 2015; Floreddu et al.,
2014; Tiago and Verissimo, 2014). Enhancement of customer engagement refers to customers
engaging with the company by expressing their thoughts through online communications (Tiago
and Verissimo; Floreddu et al., 2014). This results in loyal customers as the customers feel heard
by the company (Nobre and Silva, 2014). Nonetheless, this open and honest customer engagement
can also negatively impact the company by the consumer ruining the reputation of the company
(Ryan, 2016).
Social media and mobiles create brand awareness by displaying one’s brand many times helps the
audience remember the brand (Blair, 2018).
The disadvantages of social media, digital and mobile marketing are the possibility of a company’s
corporate reputation being damaged, lack of adequate skills, trust and security issues, and time-
consuming online presence. There are also specific challenges to mobile app development.

3. Damaged corporate reputation can occur because the open communication between a company
and its customers is controlled by the customer and not by the company (Ryan, 2016). The
company’s information on a social media web pages and their brand could potentially be
misunderstood. The content that is being put out by the customer could have detrimental impact
on the company since the customer can say something to ruin the reputation of the company (Ryan,
2016). Some scholars agreed that a company’s corporate reputation is crucial and could be easily
tampered with by the customers. Social media has changed the way customers see companies and
a company’s reputation is not based solely on what the company does (Floreddu et al., 2014).
Companies need to respond quickly to any negativity and communicate with their customers
before further issues develop (Ryan, 2016).
Companies have struggled to implement websites as they struggle to hire the appropriately skilled
staff. This occurs as a result of a lack of adequate skills since there is a global shortage of digital
and analytical expertise (Gregori et al., 2015).
Having an online presence is time-consuming for a company. The social media web pages have to
be constantly monitored so as to create a long-term relationship with customers. The customers
are posting comments and asking questions 24/7 on companies’ social media web pages and the
companies have to monitor and respond to the customer interaction otherwise the customers can
lose trust in the company (Leeflang et al., 2014).
Companies who have an online presence must be aware of the trust, privacy and security issues
that may arise. Customers’ trust issues stem from security concerns. The customers fear that their
personal details are not secure and private and this can negatively affect their buying decisions
(Leeflang et al., 2014). The development of mobile applications has factors that could be viewed
as challenging, including fragmentation, development tool selection, app stores, and skills.
With regards to mobile platform fragmentation, the wide variety of mobile standards and operating
systems on devices often means one application can work very well on one mobile device while it
doesn’t on the other (Trajkovic and Mishev, 2014). Rewriting applications for each platform is
costly and requires skilled resources (Ribeiro and da Silva, 2014). A major challenge to the
development of mobile applications is that of fragmentation, which runs across the mobile
landscape (Trajkovic and Mishev, 2014). The fragmentation of mobile devices refers to the various
separate properties that make up each device such as: screen size, storage space and camera
specifications etc. Developers need to take the properties of different devices into consideration,
as they affect the user experience (UX) on an application, as well as the application's functions and
performance (Kaleel and Harishankar, 2013). Devices with different memory, processing,
communication and displaying capabilities are examples of device fragmentation (Trajkovic and
Mishev, 2014). Because of fragmentation, mobile applications show different behavioural
patterns, and this costs developers in terms of time and efforts in testing a variety of mobile
environments (Ham and Park, 2014).
Developers are often face obstacles when deciding on an appropriate development tool for a given
project (Appiah, Hayfron-Acquah, Panford and Twum, 2015). The two main options at hands are

4. mobile web and hybrid development tools (Heller, 2016). Most developers concur that there is no
single silver bullet since each toolset has advantages and disadvantages (Heller, 2016).
Native apps cannot be directly deployed to a device, hence, they need to go through an App store,
such as, Google Play store (Williamson and Sharma, 2014). The largest app stores are Apple App
Store, Blackberry World Store, Google Play Store and the Microsoft Phone Apps Store (McIlroy,
Ali and Hassan, 2016). App stores create an additional asynchronous step to the deployment
process since developers are unable to set up updates on demand. This process becomes
challenging when urgent and critical issues need to be addressed and fixed but need to undergo a
prerequisite submission and review process (Williamson and Sharma, 2014).
Mobility skills' demand are continuously increasing and companies are struggling to keep up
(Leow, Baker, Marshall and Wong, 2016). The demand for mobile applications outweighs
development capacity. This creates an inability of quick front-end development to client demands
(Moore, 2015). Developing mobile applications subsequently become challenging due to rapidly
changing business requirements and technical constraints associated with mobile systems (Flora,
Chande and Wang, 2014). Mobile application development includes customer interaction and
constant change in requirements, in turn, suggesting that management make use of flexible
methodologies, such as agile, in order to accommodate this change (Fuggetta and Di Nitto, 2014).
It is imperative for an organisation to create value through digital marketing. Digital marketing is
linked to the overall organisation’s strategy, hence, there are digital business models and
operations so as to create a digital mind set (Seitz and Burosch, 2018). There should be only one
strategy in an organization and not several strategies that are aligned with the overall strategy
(Johnston, 2014). Like all strategies, social media marketing strategy need to be clear, concise,
achievable, measurable and aligned with the company’s overall strategy in order to be successful
(Fylan, 2018). Social media marketing goals consists of two categories, namely, branding and
revenue-linked goals and metrics.
Step one is to identify the target audience to narrow one’s focus point and define one’s strategy
and objectives. Social Media marketing requires time, money, IT and people in order to be
successful. A destination strategy is where social media activity starts and ends on the same social
media platform (Sussin, Daigler, and Herschel, 2016). For example, a customer leaves a negative
review on a restaurant on TripAdvisor, and the restaurant manager then responds to the review on
TripAdvisor (Sussin, Daigler, and Herschel, 2016). A facilitation strategy refers to customers
being guided to another platform through their journey. For example, a customer visits a motor
vehicle manufacturer's website and navigates to the model page to see the model that they intend
to purchase. On the model page, there is a YouTube video explaining the vehicle’s specifications
and design. A facilitation strategy does not start and end on the same platform (Sussin, Daigler,
and Herschel, 2016). Destination strategies are not appropriate for every company. They are
usually used in high-level customer service situations or when offering vouchers or online deals
to customers, like on Takealot. Destination strategies do not always consider customer behaviour.

5. Many customers prefer a facilitation strategy because they may not feel comfortable disclosing
their private information like payments or account history over a social networking site such as
Facebook (Sussin, Daigler, and Herschel, 2016). Social media can prime a consumer’s interest for
an advertising message in another medium. Having multiple sources of the same message can also
improve message credibility and confidence in the advertised product (Ashley and Tuten, 2015).
Mobile marketing is a multi-channel, digital marketing strategy aimed at reaching a target audience
on their mobile devices or simply marketing for mobile users (Blair, 2018). According to a senior
Vice President of Coca-Cola, a company’s strategy is incomplete if it does not include mobile
marketing (Blair, 2018) and I concur with that. Mobile marketing includes a range of activities
that should be linked to the business strategy, as well as, targets, connects and communicates with
customers through their mobile devices.
The following three steps need to abided to in order to ensure that mobile marketing is effective:
1. Develop a mobile marketing strategy with clear and relevant objectives designed to provide a
good return on investment (ROI).
2. Choose relevant mobile marketing types based on your objectives and business strategy.
3. Track and analyse the strategy by using Analytics then tweak the strategy as necessary.
Mobile strategies commence with a goal and objectives. Hence, companies may opt to capture
leads, run ad campaigns and send out coupons amongst other things. It is imperative that the target
audience and market be defined. Additionally the company website needs to be mobile responsive
and optimised for mobiles but overall, the company’s business processes need to be integrated
with the mobile strategy (Blair, 2018). Characteristics of mobile marketing like precision,
interaction, novelty and effective delivery are more and more concerned and recognised by various
industries (Zhang, Wu and Fan, 2019). There are many types of mobile marketing strategies but at
the end of the day, each company’s choice will depend on their business strategy.