Using social media as an integrated marketing communication tool

Integrated marketing communication consists of various activities aiming to go beyond the primary marketing methods by using a combination of many advantages provided by communication channels. The development of new information technologies and social media has further developed integrated marketing communication activities and has changed the rules of the game for both companies and consumers. Especially the development of dialogue between firms and consumers is one of the most important results of this process. For this reason, in addition to the basic marketing mix, social media and the dialogue opportunities based on it should be analyzed in order to understand the integrated marketing communication. Today, the diversity of the companies operating in the market makes it necessary for the studies focusing on integrated marketing communication to act on certain sectoral examples. In this context, the telecommunication sector was chosen as an example in order to analyze the new forms of integrated marketing communication in today's developed social media environment. The growing feature of this sector and its apparent intensity in using social media techniques have been effective in determining the telecommunication sector as the main area of analysis of the study. The preferences of using social media as an integrated marketing communication tool are examined for Turkish Telecommunications Companies Turk Telekom, Turkcell and Vodafone Turkey operating in the telecommunications sector in Turkey. In this context; advertising, public relations, sales development, sponsorship, social responsibility activities are evaluated in terms of integrated marketing communication and in addition, the role of social media in positioning dialogic communication principles as part of integrated marketing communication is analyzed. Content analysis technique was used in this study. In this context, the integrated marketing activities and the role of dialogic communication in social media were analyzed with content analysis technique. In the research, it was determined that the institutions used social media for the purpose of developing more advertising and sales as a result of the analysis of the contents of the posts they shared on their Facebook pages. As a result of the analysis, Türk Telekom and Turkcell's social media interfaces were found to be successful in terms of dialogic communication principles. Vodafone Turkey, on the other hand, in terms of the dialogic communication interface principles of social media, has been found to be insufficient.