Arizona State University and the 4 C's

There are many different versions of the 4C’s of social media but most of them include; Customers, Content, Context, Channel, Community, Conversations, Connections and Conversion. (Brenner, 2010, para. 5-6) and (Nelson, 2010, para. 5-8) and (“The Four C’s,” 2009, para. 4-5). Some of these C’s overlap with each other and are focused more on social media marketing. Below the different 4C’S of Social media and marketing.

 

The Arizona State University (ASU) libraries have met each of these 4C’s in different ways and using different web 2.0 platforms. These platforms are the library blog ‘the library channel’ which provides information on events, news and announcements and the Podcasts that the ASU library creates. The 4C’s used to measure the effectiveness of the blog and podcasts are; Customers, Content, Context and Channel.

The blog ‘the library channel’ and podcasts are able to meet the customer part by identifying the customers (university students and staff) and understanding their interests. This is achieved through the use of short to-the-point blog posts about interesting things such as new exhibits and contests. Podcasts are about interesting topics and contain short bursts of information that are easy to assimilate.

The ASU library has met the content part of the 4C’s by sharing “good content consistently over time” (Nelson, 2010, para. 6). This is demonstrated through the library channel blog being updated every few days and a new podcast is uploaded to the website every few weeks. The blog and podcasts provide interesting, “accurate, useful, and FREE information” (Esposito, 2010, para. 8).

The context part of the 4C’s has been met by the ASU’s blog and podcasts by making the blog posts and podcast videos relevant to the people who view the website. People follow and ‘like’ posts because they are interested in the content and find the information relevant.  

The library channel blog and the ASU’s podcasts have been able to achieve the channel part of the 4C’s by making sure that the web 2.0 tools chosen, i.e. a blog and podcasts are the most relevant to the audience. ASU has chosen blogs and podcasts as they meet the needs of the university library and are best able to convey relevant information to students and staff.

 

References

Brenner, Michael. (2010). The 4 cs of social media. In Social Media Today. Retrieved from http://socialmediatoday.com/michaelbrenner/181159/4-cs-social-media

Esposito, Lauren. (2010). Moving from marketing’s four p’s to social media’s four c’s. In Ka+a. retrieved from http://www.kaplusa.com/blog/2010/09/moving-from-marketings-four-ps-to-social-medias-four-cs/

Nelson, Sean. (2010). The 4 c’s of social media. In Social Media Sonar. Retrieved from http://socialmediasonar.com/the-4-cs-of-social-media

The four c’s of social media marketing. In B2B marketing blog: Webbiquity. Retrieved from http://webbiquity.com/social-media-marketing/the-four-cs-of-social-media-marketing/