Social Media and Green Marketing

1.0 Introduction

Traditional media does not lend itself to niche types of marketing trends nor does it support narrow marketing messages. This is why traditional media forms such as television, print and radio are often termed as mass media and also why many industries or market segments have difficulty having their messages heard in mass media channels. However, over the past decades, the development of social media has engendered a new channel for marketing the narrowest of messages such as green marketing. Firms that are concerned about sustainability, social responsibility and environmental balance in one respect or another are those that are involved in green marketing (Pujari & Dangelico, 2010; Lee & Chen, 2010). Social media provides the perfect marketing channel for green marketing because these two phenomena share a set of core values and principles that are sympathetic to one another.

2.0 The Social Media Phenomenon

The social media phenomenon of the last decade is really a phenomenon that has its roots in the underlying principles of the Internet and the World Wide Web (Web). The Internet is really responsible for fracturing the mainstream media and for providing the basis for diluting mass media channels. Essentially, what the Internet accomplished was that it allowed virtually any individual or entity to become a publisher of some type in print, video or voice or even all three (Berners-Lee, 2006). Since the Internet’s earliest inception, a few individuals found that they were able to network with other individuals who were like-minded or were involved in similar industries or with similar interests. As the Internet developed and when the Web became more widespread and accessible in the early 1990s, the tools to publish websites began to democratize beyond the relatively few technophiles that had access to the Internet prior to the Web (Ruotolo, 1998). This democratization of the Web was facilitated by technology which tended to lower the barriers to web publishing and the tools to post text in the form of web content, web-logs or blogs and in chat rooms evolved into the ability to stream voice and video (Blogging, 2008). Once these tools became widely available, the true capacity of the Web as a social and cultural force became apparent.

Social media is really just a continuation of these early and developmental capacities of the Internet and the Web. While the early Internet and the Web comprised what was referred to as the Web 1.0 in which communications tools such as email, chat and web postings allowed for individuals and firms to publish content in a mono-directional manner, social media rests on an Internet and Web platform referred to as the Web 2.0 in which these functionalities are combined with unique Web-based applications that support inter-activity and sharin (Cashmore, 2008; Tyler, 2002). That is, social media not only encourages but facilitates community building. This is community building in which individuals and entities are allowed to identify, contact and interact with others that share their values, opinions or beliefs. Social media platforms are those such as Facebook.com and Orkut.com among many others that are focused on social grouping and communal interaction.

The quality of interactivity and meaningful feedback is one that truly defines social media. In mass media communication, the flow of data and information is primarily outward towards the audience with no opportunity for establishing a feedback loop (Chang & Wang, 2008). However, in social media platforms and through the social media process, feedback loops are critical. Individuals and entities engage with social media because of these feedback loops and information, one type or another, moves constantly back and forth from one party to another. In this respect, social media as a phenomenon is comprised of several different categories. For instance, social media consists of social networking in which various web applications such as Facebook, Myspace or Orkut support the interaction between individuals; social bookmarking is an activity supported by social networking sites as well as sited dedicated to social bookmarking such as Digg in which users constantly share news, websites and similar items of interest with the members of their communities; social gaming where players are able to play online games with others who are actively engaged in the same game simultaneously; and finally there are social wikis in which individuals or groups act in unison to build and maintain some type of publicly accessible database such as Wikipedia (Capel & Johns, 2010; Losinski, 2007). Clearly, social media is a concept that is primarily concerned with removing the boundaries to open communication.


3.0 Green Marketing and Social Media

Green Marketing and social media tend to go hand in hand for a variety of reasons. Primarily though, green marketing and social media are so sympathetic to one another because they share a set of core principles regarding purpose as well as form. For example, companies that are focused on sustainability in some respect and social media platforms are focused on the following: a) achieving transparency in communications between all parties, b) communicating with meaningful but brief messages, and c) sharing a desire for not just interaction but for influence (Scott, 2008; Dimaggio, Hargittai, Neuman & Robinson, 2001). These shared principles empower entities that are focused on green oriented messages with the capacity to develop their message but more importantly to establish a relationship with the members of their shared communities. Sustainability in almost all aspects and across virtually all industries is a concept that requires transparency in order to be successful as well as widely adopted. It is difficult for the members of a community or network to embrace a green message if they lack faith that the entity in question is actually adhering to its own principles.

Yet, social media offers those with green marketing messages and endeavors a set of clear and well-defined strategies to make these efforts heard and accepted. Green marketing messages are not effective if one simply posts them on a website and hopes others to read the message or posts a video of a spokesperson explaining the message. Rather, social media is effective as a green marketing platform because it accomplishes a mix of the following (Blogging, 2008; Chang & Wang, 2008; Capel & Johns, 2010):

· Provides insight into current trends in sustainability and environmentalism by allowing parties to search keywords and terms across social platforms to find out what people are actually saying and thinking regarding an issue

· Provides venues such as blogs, videos and podcasts in which green practices or, alternatively, practices that lack sustainability can be brought to the public’s attention

· Provides a platform upon which entities and individuals can become an advocate for change and improvement by working with other organizations and bureaucracies

· Provides a platform for organizing events and disseminating information such as hosting webinars or seminars that are broadcast across the Web

These and other strategies supported through social media applications and principles have allowed green marketing to flourish in a manner that would otherwise have been deemed impossible. As mentioned previously, in the era of mass media and mass communications, there were significant barriers to developing an audience. Mass media channels are, by definition, large and monolithic in character. Mass media channels are channels of communication in which the stream of information is broadcast to everyone through an architecture that is limited in terms of capacity and size (Montgomery, Rennie, Brennan & Hartley, 2002; Mehta, 2005). For instance, while television may be fragmenting into numerous smaller channels broadcast on cable, digital satellite and even the Web, it was once dominated by several large networks in each major market. Thus, these operators controlled access to mass communication through price-setting as well as in-house censorship disguised as the editing process (Cooper-Chen, 2005). The result was that entities with niche messages that were limited by funding concerns or with messages that were viewed as somewhat controversial were largely ignored by the mass media. Thus, while green marketing can still make effective use of mass media channels, with the rise to prominence of the Web 2.0 and social media, green marketing simply does not require mass media anymore in order to have its message heard and adopted.

The natural symbiosis of the Web and social media in particular and green marketing is apparent by the sheer number and size of the firms that are taking their green messages to social media platforms. The automotive industry has begun to shift most of its green marketing efforts to social media platforms and venues. For instance, in the United States, the automotive firm General Motors developed its own microsite or wiki that it terms “Chevy Voltage” in which it hosts a blog, videos and photographs of its new sustainable electric vehicle, the Chevrolet Volt (Parekh, 2010). What the automotive industry has learned is that consumers rely on each other for information as well as feedback regarding trends, styles, and important social issues. Consumers who share the same values and belief system that the firm’s Chevrolet Volt is eco-friendly and built on a sustainable energy platform but rather will trust the opinions of those who own one and who choose to discuss whether it actually fulfils the manufacturer’s claims.

In other words, green marketing via social media is not structured in the same manner that green marketing would be in traditional media channels or in the way that any marketing would be in traditional media. Traditional media communications are all concerned with structuring and controlling the message whereas green marketing through social media is about creating a topic and then allowing the message to develop among the audience itself as readers comment on blog posts or rate videos or similar activity (Mehta, 2005; Burrows, 2008). Green marketers must be willing to control the message and allow the market to develop and then disseminate that message. There is great risk associated with this type of social media marketing but the potential rewards are so much more powerful. This is because social media is word-of-mouth advertising on an exponential basis and green marketing messages are poised to take advantage of this quality in a way that other general marketing-oriented firms are not. Many firms have realized that formulating green marketing topics are most successful when they are based on real actions such as when a business decides to use sustainable energy sources or to change to green production practices despite added costs to do so (Finora, 2010). By starting a social media conversation regarding this type of business decision, the actual act of the company becomes the topic of the green marketing message as members of its community and their own individual shared communities recognize this act as being legitimate.


4.0 Conclusions

Traditional media used to serve as an effective accountability agent for entities operating in both the public and private sector. As the number of media outlets in traditional media have continued to decline and fallen into ever-larger corporate conglomerates, these outlets serve this purpose less and less (Blethen, 2004). Social media has adopted this character of public accountability of the media in the spirit that traditional media once did. Green marketing and messages that relate to sustainability and corporate social responsibility have found an effective platform for disseminating their message in a fashion that not only amplifies their message but being also extremely cost-effective. Firms, entities and even individuals that are focused on green marketing messages are often limited in terms of resources available that they can commit to their marketing efforts. In this fashion, green marketing and social media are well-suited to each other.

Social media as a communications and marketing platform is itself a sustainable and socially responsible medium. Social media is a communications platform in which the social media firms are fundamentally based upon a sustainable business model that is able to take advantage of economies of scale in which the cost of reaching 1,000s of individuals is virtually the same as the cost of reaching a single individual (Walker, Gountas, Mavondo & Mullins, 2009). Because of this unique quality of social media, green marketers are able to legitimize relationships with each member of their target market. This relates to the approach that green marketing takes with respect to social media which is that green marketing on social media platforms allows green marketers to focus on why they want to establish a relationship with their market rather than on what they want to communicate. Thus, green marketing and social media benefit from their shared core values as well as their emphasis on sustainability.