Social media marketing on multiple services - the case of the student run organisation aiesec

Social Media Services like Social Network Sites and Microblogging services gain increasing attention from enterprises. This is on the one hand for internal usage but as well for utilizing these services, with hundred millions of users, for marketing purposes. Partly this is induced by customers losing trust in conventional advertisements. However, to date only very limited research exists on the usage of Social Media for marketing, called Social Media Marketing. Moreover, existing studies investigate the marketing activities on one specific service mostly, thereby neglecting potential service induced differences. Further an understanding of the relationship between Social Media Marketing and conventional marketing does not yet exist. We present a case study analysing the Social Media Marketing activities of the student run organisation AIESEC, which utilizes on Twitter and Facebook. We specifically aim at understanding how these activities are integrated into the conventional marketing and moreover whether differences exist in the usage of Twitter and Facebook. We find that Social Media Marketing supplements conventional marketing in addressing specific target groups in a transparent and interactive manner. Moreover our observations highlight differences in the use of Twitter and Facebook, which mainly seem to relate to a focus on different target groups.