Social media has been a focal point for businesses since the establishment of social networks as major marketing platforms. Facebook is offering businesses the chance to advertise; Twitter allows businesses to tweet to their fans; LinkedIn gives companies a feature that promotes their products and services.
A recent study from Useful Social Media has shown an upward trend of the ‘hub and spoke’ model being used for social media management in businesses. The model has been implemented into the digital strategy plan of many businesses over the years for organising social site marketing. It has been predicted that the use of the ‘hub and spoke’ will accelerate in 2013.
The ‘hub’ represents a small core coordination unit e.g. a marketing department in a small company. The ‘spoke’ narrows down to individuals or small teams within multiple departments who are responsible for carrying out social media tasks which includes the role of updating social network accounts.
The number of ‘spokes’ has increased (within the companies that were surveyed), indicating the wider awareness of social media and its marketing uses. The likelihood of an employee not being familiar with social networks is relatively low which comes to highlight that ‘spokes’ don’t have to be masters in social media, they can be just about anyone.
Learn more about the popularity of the hub and spoke model in the infographic below.
Source: Nahida Meah, Marketing Apprentice at Xcite Digital Ltd
Image courtesy of Flickr, kevin dooley
