Digital Marketing Models: The Honeycomb model

Use the honeycomb model to help inform your social media strategy

Back in 2011, a group of professors from Canada; Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens and Ian McCarthy created the Honeycomb Model to review social media effectiveness, looking at reasons why users engage with social media. The idea behind the honeycomb model is that of the 7 key building blocks delineated by the model, companies can select the ones most relevant to their business, and focus their attention on those areas.

We created this simple table to help you evaluate each of the seven blocks, so you can decide which ones, and how many, your organization should focus on.

Building block:	Implications for organisations:
Identity	Data privacy controls and tools for user self-promotion
Presence	Creating and managing the reality, intimacy and immediacy of the context
Relationships	Managing the structural and flow properties in a network of relationships
Reputation	Monitoring the strength, passion, sentiment, and reach of users and brands
Groups	Membership rules and protocols
Conversations	Conversation velocity, and the risks of staring and joining
Sharing	Content management system and social graph

In summary, the Honeycomb model is a great framework for considering social media networks but it is not a decision tree and therefore the final decision as to ‘which network should we select?’, still, needs to be taken within the organization. For more information on digital models, see our digital marketing models guide.