Social media for brand image manipulation: an automotive industry applied approach

The paper illustrates how social media marketing and analytics can assist businesses in achieving branding objectives by increasing their social media impact through advertising, getting social, using appropriate keywords, and creating effective and interactive communication channels with their intended audience. The multifaceted influence of social media postings is demonstrated by leveraging the Toyota Motor Corporation example. An explanation of how defamatory incidents have impacted the company’s social media atmospheric image is also included. Evidence of how negative intervals of social media presence could have been intelligently reversed through efficient content infusions is presented. Among numerous instruments allowing for analysis of marketing strategy results, “Social Mention”, “Talkwalker” and “Mentiolytics” were selected in order to demonstrate the efficiency and utility of social media monitoring methods using freely available tools. In this study, Toyota’s social media marketing strategy is highlighted by presenting measurements of variables such as the reach, strength, passion and sentiment of the brand over randomly selected time windows, demonstrating the dynamically evolving field of social media monitoring techniques.