Social media in 10 years

I think it is pretty much impossible to predict what social media is going to be like ten years from now. The whole idea of social media has developed so much even within just the last few years and technology has evolved even more! But some changes can be seen coming in the near future. I asked my father what he thought as a consulting expert in the field of IT. He said that we haven’t truly realized the potential of social media yet.

Companies have only now started to actively use social media as a tool for marketing and customer service. In the future there will most likely be more different kinds of social media sites intended just for business use. And there will absolutely be sites that are meant for internal use in companies, organizations and schools. Even I myself know this to be true since I’ve heard about how Turku University of Applied Sciences planned to include some social media type elements to Messi. They might have already done those changes but at least I haven’t seen a real difference in the past year.

And who knows, maybe there will be a whole new type of social media like we have never seen before. The children today are born into the age of internet. The road has been paved for them to make great inventions! Even programming is easier than ever before, and now schools are starting to include it in their curriculums.

I am not smart enough to predict what the future is going to look like, but I sure am ready to see it for myself in 2025!

- Viivi

Social media fails

Social media fails

I found two good examples of times when companies failed on social media. This first example I’m gonna tell about is actually so bad, it is the number 7 on the list where I found my other example from!

American Apparel – Fail: Not checking the photo is appropriate before posting

http://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2015/04/valuable-lessons-5-shockingly-bad-social-media-fails/

The clothing company, American Apparel, wanted to celebrate 4^th of July 2014 by posting a cool picture of fireworks on Tumblr.

However, that “cool picture” was actually of the Challenger space shuttle accident that killed seven people in 1986. They blamed the fail on the fact that their social media manager was born after the accident and didn’t realize what the picture was.

In my opinion this is a rather weird fail to happen. I could understand if the picture looked even a little bit more like actual fireworks but my first reaction was that the photo looks like an exploding missile. I have never, ever seen a firework leave behind so much smoke and obvious falling pieces. But whether it was an honest mistake or just plain ignorance, it was a bad fail and it definitely deserves a spot on the list! Especially because it could’ve been avoided so easily! Just check the facts behind the photos and don’t simply copy and paste because something “looks cool”.

Smuckers – fail: deleting negative comments

http://www.inc.com/rebecca-borison/top-10-social-media-fails-2014.html

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/the-smuckers-facebook-fail-how-to-protect-your-brand-027083.php#null

Using GMO’s (Genetically Modified Organism) in food products has been a hot topic on social media for a long time now and it still is! So it shouldn’t’ve been a surprise to the company Smuckers, known for its jams and jellies. According to the Cornucopia Institute, the J.M. Smucker Company is one of the top financial contributors to oppose the law mandating that food companies label packaged foods containing certain ingredients as “genetically engineered.”

CMSWire contacted Marybeth Burns, the vice president of corporate communications, and she sent them a statement about the importance of consumer communication. The statement also included the following:

"We welcome consumer feedback on our products on our Facebook pages and have long-standing Community Guidelines to encourage a positive community. Consistent with those guidelines, we remove posted content – including those related to GMO and other political campaigns — that includes political commentary, deceptive and misleading claims, or are simply repeated postings or spam.”

As CMSWire noted, the comments above don’t really seem to fall under any of those categories. But did that stop Smuckers from deleting them? No. And that is an epic fail.

It is NEVER smart to delete negative comments on social media because it ALWAYS just ends up biting the company in the butt! And still companies don’t seem to understand this. The mess that followed deleting the comments is way worse for their publicity than anything that could’ve followed just answering the question. Deleting the comments just makes it seem like the company is trying to hide something and that’s most likely exactly what was happening. Especially because they deleted the messages so shortly after they were posted.

Bad idea, Smuckers, BAD IDEA. And that is why you were the second example.

- Viivi

Case study: My choir - Sekakuoro Kulkuset

Case study – Sekakuoro Kulkuset

I think the easiest organization/association to tell about for me is my choir. I am a part of the board and the marketing committee so I am (or at least I should be) pretty on top of things.

Our Facebook page was created on March 15^th 2011, a little less than a year before I joined the choir. And for these past 4.5 years Facebook has been the only social media site Kulkuset has been using. The posts didn’t get a lot of likes and if they did, most of them were from the choir members themselves. Of course the focus wasn’t to use Facebook actively for marketing.

But when we got a new conductor, everything changed. It reminded us that maybe change is good! Our website was horribly outdated - as were our attitudes. We started to make changes. We changed up our board members and activated the marketing committee which had been dormant for years. Now we’ve held regular meetings at least once a month.

We started to actually think about marketing. I was the one responsible for updating our website and designing the look for all of the printed marketing material such as posters, tickets and the program for our concert. Under is the poster design I made.

On May 7^th we had a meeting with the marketing committee and we decided to create an Instagram profile for our choir. That has also been a real journey because the responsibility of managing it has kind of also fallen for me now. Luckily my father (yes, I share a hobby with both my parents) learnt how to update the website so at least some of the pressure has been lifted. But my new task has been interesting because I only started using Instagram a couple of day before we created the profile for our choir! Luckily the app isn’t too difficult to use so now it has been more about learning to become a more organized person so I actually remember to post! :D

So now we have a website, a Facebook page and an Instagram profile! We have also been talking about filming some videos and posting them to Youtube. That would be an ideal social media site for a choir like us, because then people could actually hear what we’re all about. We thought about using Twitter, but that just doesn’t work for us since we don’t have enough things to post about for the rate of which we should be tweeting. But I think three channels is enough for now! We still have to first learn how to use those effectively and how to get people interested in us. Luckily it is easy to measure our success – how many people are coming to our concerts!

For internal communication we’ve been simply using email and telling to people directly in our practices. But that doesn’t really work since people forget to read email and there are always some people absent from practices, so information still gets lost. Luckily we are changing to Microsoft Office 365 as our intranet, so all internal communication would be in there and wouldn’t get lost in the piles of email most of us get on a daily basis.

We don’t have a proper strategy for social media yet but we are having a meeting about it next week, so this is a good opportunity to think about what I’m gonna suggest in the meeting! Because as it is, there is a serious need for some guidelines. People post whatever they want on Facebook on their own profiles and that means that none of that person’s friend come to our page to see our posts. It is like an employee from Apple decided to just blab about an upcoming product on their own channel – it just isn’t how thing should be done! All official pictures and ads should be posted via Sekakuoro Kulkuset and then our choir members share that post on their own timelines. That way it would be more controlled and most of the visibility would come for our choir’s page.

We also need a proper strategy on what to post, where and when. Right now we tend to post only when something is either just about to happen, happening or has just happened and then there is a long pause. And that is not good because people forget in that time. We should have something to post in-between concerts so that people have the time and opportunities to get invested in us! I am trying to post a picture every Wednesday about our practice that is held the night before – although after seeing that Slideshare presentation, I think I should start posting them straight after our practices even though they end at 9 P.M. But that one Instagram post a week isn’t enough. We did talk about starting a series where we would have a “choir member of the week”. We would post a photo and a teaser on Instagram and then direct the readers to Facebook to read more. That would allow us to have at least two topics to post about every week.

We have a lot of ideas but progress is slow because there are such few active members – a common problem in all associations. But we are trying our best! And we have big plans for the next two years since 2018 marks our 100^th anniversary! :D

- Viivi

P.S. You are more than welcome to follow us! ;)

http://www.kulkuset.net/

Facebook: Sekakuoro Kulkuset

Instagram: @kulkuset

Co-Operative visioona how we work and how we pray never to do

I'm using as a company our own co-operative Visioona. I was one of the creators of our social media sites and kept them up until january. Then the lead was in my fellow students hands. We are using Facebook and Instagram as our social media sites. We also have blog and main site. We decided to keep our social media in the "basics". Facebook was for more business like updates and instagram for the "behind the scenes" stuff. Because our main way off keeping contact to our customers was face to face contact and emails we usually handled these things outside the internet. Business to business kind of work that's easier. We did have student party Eerikin Kadun Appro where we had some discussion with the customers but it was in only one project.

Inside our company we use facebook group and whatsapp to tell what's up. Facebook is for bigger things like important meetings and such when as whatsapp might be even us as friends talking to one another.

As a way to follow our users we follow the statistics and see what people like and ignore. As we have been working just a year the results have been smaller but we have seen some behaviour that gives us hints on how to improve. I also made rules that our board went thru and gave thumbs up. We always show the update before posting it to someone in the marketing team. We have schedule that we keep up and everyone has turns posting. Also everyone is asked to tell when something interesting pops up.  We do post in good manners and respect others. We are careful to ask permission to use the pictures in our social media. We haven't had any problems in our company because we agreed on the rules also together and because double check it makes us think what is really the idea we are going for.

Social media is dangerous when used wrong. Some companies have found it out the wrong way. The hashtag is fun way to share but sometimes it should be checked out what it stands for. #WhyIStayed was used to tell story of victims in abusive relationships. Then Digiorno Pizza: #WhyIStayed You had pizza was seen as an insult. The company told they were sorry but joking with so delicate matter was seriously bad judgment. Trends aren't always meant to be made fun off. 

HMV gave every employee acces to their twitter account. Punch of unhappy workers don't make company look good. Harsh truths are sometimes too harsh and company's reactions were judged and they had to openly deal with the problem. It's wise to keep the accounts in control of group off people. We are humans and social media rules aren't always clear. In our co-operative it works because there are only 12 of us. We control it together. Bigger companies don't have that and marketing should be left to those who get paid to do it.

In the future I don't believe that social media is going anywhere. Our need to share cute cats and personal lifes might be a bit too strong. The users benefit from these medias and corporations get valid information about their consumers. It will be intresting to see what kind of laws me might have and how social media is used at the time. It might be bigger part of our working lives giving opportunities to work from home and networking thru internet. I'm very intrested in how we will use this technology and skills in the future.

-Sini

#NotForMe 2nd life

I started just using twitter - again. I found this #likeagirl. At first I didn't even realize it was from a company! Allways has this campaign to chance "like a girl" to positive meaning instead of something to say to insult. As a feminist and social media junkie I think it's brilliant idea! As a woman I can relate to their campaign and I have used their products like most of the women.

Because topic is relatable and you get your tweets maybe even shared by the company many users tell their stories. It's empowering and I would like to give high five the genius who thought about this. They also have video where little girls talk about this. It's so darn cute! Kids and puppies are allways good choice because they are cute and internet loves cute things.

Twitter marketing is also well designed for companies. You have worth to your money. I think social media is great for small businesses and organisations to be seen. Because they don't need to use that much money on it they can keep growing!

I have no experience in virtual worlds or games. Well… In games maybe if we count me yelling at the screen while playing Assassin creed in internet but that wasn't anything else but fun. I prefer face to face meetings and skype calls are the furthest I could go. I think it's important to see others face and really hear their voice. Sometimes just writing doesn't go deep enough and some people have hard time expressing themselves thru written word.

My computer wasn't having the game in it's system so I used youtube instead to see what kind of worlds would they have. I watched the Louvre videos of museum. I think I won't be interested in this "game". I love art and I see that someone has made amazing job but… I prefer the real thing. I'm not really finding this form of social media interesting at all and would let it be.

-Sini

Speedo and Rukka Pets doing someting right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HLW2AI1Ink

I love swimming and looked for different swimming techniques. I can't afford to pay anyone to teach me and I don't want to compete. So… I wen't to youtube! Surprisingly the one channel I found to be useful was from speedo! They had amazing technique videos and I loved them. My swimming went so smoothly after that! I have experience with the sport so I was already good swimmer but now… My going is dreamy.
The "teachers" were good swimmers and they shoved off their products in the form they should be used. The newest swimsuit models were shown off also and I didn't feel like I was watching anything commercial because I learned something new at the same time.

In the video the swimmer is what is considered to be the model swimmer. Good muscles, posture and skill. The learning has been broken down and movements are slowed to show how to do it right. Music is energetic but the speaker and the movement are the key.  Speedo Fit just feels like good way to learn to improve yourself as a swimmer and when you go to the store and see swimsuits back in your mind you might think about how much they gave you and how did they look even under water. 
 

I'm following in Instagram Rukka Pets that makes clothing for dogs. I myself share my products with others because # rukka or @rukkapets is so easy to add! They actually found me and started following me and I felt special. That makes me more involved and these days when I buy my dog goats it's mostly rukka. It made me love the brand because I feel like they are interested in my dog and my needs. Just as easily as following and liking my pictures they have one consumer that uses their products and tells about them to others.

The companies that use instagram shud post something around their product or work. Rukka is easy because they work with animals and internet loves animals! So That's how they do it. Humour and being creative is sometimes the best way to bee seen. Sometimes I might now even now if it's a user or a company.

 -Sini

Walkers, Twitter and wait what...?? Virtual Games??

My example of a way to include customers to share and develop the product is Walkers crisps company with their "Do us a flavor" marketing trick, find it HERE (last years ad). The idea is that Walkers lets customers design their own flavor for crisps at their website and the winner flavor will be sold in stores. Also the winner will receive a cash price. To include the customers like this, and give them the chance that "their product" could be sold and also include a cash price is a guaranteed marketing method. This is also a way to listen to the customers and make the most perfect product for them.

Twitter is an excellent way to communicate with other businesses and customers. It is an easy, cheap and fun way of keeping contact. Followers/customers can ask or comment almost anything and the company replies in the same way. Usually specially younger people are more drawn to Twitter when asking, because of its easiness and because it is more fun. Replies are short and have the information needed. No long fancy words, that only professionals understand and it also has the chance of "15 minutes of fame" if you get tweeted a lot. Twitter is still a growing media in Finland, but soon it will be here too. In for example USA and UK it is much more bigger and almost every company can use it in a positive and productive way these days.

I was really shocked to actually read about the Virtual Games in working life.. Myself I have not stumbled on that yet and to be honest I hope I won't. This world is already going way too much towards social media, and working life in virtual games is just too much... That will not feel as work anymore and we will just get more and more outcasts. I really hope I will personally not meet this! :-D

/Nelli

Slide the Youtubegram!

Slideshow

 I found the slideshow site really weird... I di not actually get how to use it and what I was supposed to get from it. Also the fact that I had never heard of ti before made me a little bit skeptical. I do see though that The idea of the site is good, but I think it needs some instructions for new visitors. I also did not find one particularly slideshow about sharing in social media, so I think I failed this point a little bit in the tasks. From my own opinion sharing in social media has become one of the most powerful marketing strategies and it is used by many. Also the fact that social media is often combined with young people, which means fresh ideas for the company.

YouTube video

It is clear to everybody, that the idea of YouTube is to share videos, so I looked up an advertisement for a company on YouTube that I think is one of the best ones done. I chose WestJet airlines Christmas Miracle video that came out around Christmas 2013, you can see it HERE. The AD in it self is really good and gives the customers a great picture of the company and get new customers by that. They show their kind side and that they give back after everything. In the video they surprise their customers with Christmas presents they wish for.
As our culture of social media just keeps going forward and forward a video of this event was absolutely the best way of showing this to the world. Very few companies report from this kind of events in newspapers anymore. More and more pictures and as said, videos are coming up. By sharing a video of this, they reached an even bigger field of potential customers.
A living picture, sounds and feelings are the reason why a video is more liked than for example an article. This is why YouTube is an excellent way of sharing your company.

Instagram

Instagram is a social media site where you can share photos and short (max 15 seconds) videos. For the companies to get the customers to share their posts or "tag" them in their own posts, the most used technique is a competition. Ask the customers to share them or post something about them with some hashtags that will bring them publicity and to get them to do this is to promise them something. Raffle out a winner and give them a price that is also connected to the company products. This way you get many many people to share you in the social media and one to actually use your product.


/Nelli

Customers participation and twitter and virtual worlds

Customer participation in marketing

As I am an avid user of Youtube and follow several vloggers, I tend to see a lot of product reviews even if I don’t search for them. However I am also the kind of consumer that can spend hours online reading and watching reviews in search of the “best” product. And in my years of experience I have found that Youtube is a true blessing also in this regard. It is exponentially easier to watch a 10 minute video than read a 10 page written review. And because any one can upload their video on the site, companies can go there and see what people are thinking about their products.

Another perk that comes from finding those people who review them is that companies can send their products for them for review and get free publicity – good or sometimes bad. This is a really effective way though since the effect of word-of-mouth is considerately better than any ad they can make. I have personally bought especially a lot of cosmetic products after several vloggers’ reviews said they were amazing.


I couldn’t find any examples of products customers helped to create except the same one I used in the last blog post (Erin Condren planners) but even that video didn’t have any concrete examples.

Samsung Mobile - Twitter

Samsung’s Twitter channel Samsung Mobile had a nice mix of original posts and retweets from people who have tweeted about their currently newest smartphone Samsung Galaxy S6. Although most of their posts are traditional informative marketing posts, they also have some posts that have a humorous element. They even have a cat post!

They do not really join in on the conversation which is a big minus – yet again. Although my other example option (EA Games’ The Sims) does actively connect with their followers and that just made the feed way too crowded and it is hard to find their actual posts. So I guess it is just the golden medium that companies seem to struggle with!

Virtual worlds

I don’t really have any experience on virtual worlds/virtual realities after the infamous Habbo Hotel phase. I however have dabbled a bit with MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. And because my younger brother is a hardcore gamer, I have grown up with watching him play pretty much all of the MMORPGs there are. That is why I know about that side of the internet/games.

I watched a video of a group of friends visiting Second Life and what I saw was pretty much what I expected from a site that is not strictly gaming or business. I saw the parts where people couldn’t think of anything better than to troll everybody with a pouring rain of Marios falling from the sky accompanied by the ah, so lovely Mario theme. And I saw the parts where people were using the site to fulfill their sexual fantasies. Even though I can appreciate what the site is trying to do with letting people build freely – And don’t get me wrong, there are some AMAZING masterpieces the players have created! – but I just cannot see the site as a good, supervised, SAFE environment for businesses and especially for schools. I think in order for that to happen a new platform should be made and it should be marketed from the start as a place JUST for these kinds of activities. The youth is going to see the dark side sooner or later. No need to corrupt them any earlier than they already do. Apparently I have a little lady with a flower hat inside me. :’’D

-         - Viivi

AM Final task

Nike - silent, powerful, rememberable

This is amazing. Nike seems to get you. It happens without notice: you're hooked, you need more, you want to just do it.

There are three main points in Nikes marketing strategy. One of them is Swoosh logo, which is always placed in the most effective way in the athletes uniforms: you'll see it, even if you don't want to. The second point is the focus on hero athletes, such as LeBron James and Tiger Woods: if you don't admire them by now, you will, after Nike is finished. Finally, the most clever thing that Nike does, is its creation of ads that become news stories: the media is tricked to promote the ad messages and, the most important of all, the Nike brand itself, for free.

What comes to social media strategy, which is one part of marketing, Nike is well organized at this level too. The company is everywhere: Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. It even has its own social platform called Nike+, which has at least six million members by now. 

In Facebook, Nike has separated its products in categories and furthermore to different pages, for instance Nike basketball and Nike football. The latter one even is divided in two parts: one page for American version of the sport and the other one for the version that is played in everywhere else in the world. Nike also has special interest in empowering women athletes, so Nike Women is also active on FB. All the  different pages are often updated, it's all about the Nike's stars, athletes and products. 

The same idea is applied on Instagram, in a more visual way, though. There are mind-blowing photos combined with short, emotionally strong-minded sentences, such as "A sunset is not a stop sign" or "One step forward. No steps back." And of course, every now and then #justdoit is referred to, because why not. 

When questioning Nike's customer care, there is no need for that. Nike has created a separate Twitter account, @NikeSupport especially for communicating and satisfying their customers' needs. 

The social media communication inside of the company is written in their policy with many details. The main idea is that their staff should communicate appropriately and professionally and it is recommended to use only Nike supported tools for collaboration and networking with other employees. 

The social media "disaster"

There are many examples of the times when companies have failed in their social media actions or been misinterpreted. I choose the two most interesting "disasters" that both are about Apple.

In a way, I am a Apple-defender, not a fanatic but a defender. I have their products and admire their business. So this one is for Apple. When the iPhone 6 was released there was an information that the new smart phone could bend if it was in a pair of tight pants. Because LG did have the GFlex, that is already-bent phone, they thought it was a perfect situation for them to take a jab at Apple: "Our phones don't bend, they're naturally curved :) #bendgate." The fail aspect is that the tweet was sent from an iPhone noticeably. There is a thought that claims LG hiring an outside agency to take care of its social media actions. One way or another, it is a fail if you mock Apple while using their product.

The other example is the fail of Apple itself. The company and comedian Joan Rivers promoted the iPhone 6 on her social media accounts. And after she passed away, her posts went live still nearly two weeks since the incidence: Apple proves there's life after death. Yes, this wasn't maybe the worst fail ever, but this too could've been avoided with active social media updating. Even though the message were deleted quickly, the damage was already there: people had enough time to grab screenshots and have laugh at the expense of Apple. 

The next 10 years

I have no idea how this social media is going be improved or will it even improve itself. You'll never know! However I'm sure that people have to be more and more eager to learn new things and getting familiar with modern technologies. 

Our generations is the first one that somehow grew up with social media. Our parents read the newspaper but we check Facebook for news. The generation after us is having a different approach to social media and so on. The evolutions continues. 

As for working life, till now the improvement has been natural. Education and marketing can be arranged with social media, some of the job interviews are organized or held using social media, communication and interaction is made possible by social media anytime, anywhere. 

In the future, social media will be used as a more important, even essential tool in working life and communication. It might all depend on the improvement that faces the technology that makes social media accessible. Without that, only humanity can stop this evolution. 

-Azma

Slideshare, Youtube, Instagram

Slideshare

I found it difficult to find slideshows that truly interested me. I didn’t really want to focuse on just one site but rather to find a show that would’ve told for example how to use customer-created content in marketing. Since I couldn’t find anything like that, I chose a slideshow about when it is best to post content on different social media sites and another one about 5 different youtube channels that know how to utilize both youtube and sometimes another social media site to either market their content, add to it or just get their point across.

http://www.slideshare.net/TrackMaven/when-to-postslidesharepdf
http://www.slideshare.net/brianthonigman/5-youtube-marketing-lessons-from-unlikely-sources?qid=2dda3b12-e62b-4734-b819-211610b296b3&v=qf1&b=&from_search=1

The point of the first slideshow was that most companies post during the “work times” (Monday to Friday 9-18). However, that is not when people are using social media because they are also at work. Outside those times people are noticeably more likely to like, comment, share and retweet. This is why it would be much more efficient to post during the evenings and weekends. There is less competition and more people around to see! The slideshow has more in-depth information and a nice little table made of social medias and when is the best time to post on them.

Youtube

Youtube is one of the social media channels that I think companies haven’t truly “found” yet. It is easy to fall into the belief that it’s only for music videos, cats, vloggers and how-to’s. But secretly it is gaining popularity in the business world as well. I think one of the best examples of the impact of Youtube are talk shows such as the Ellen DeGeneres Show and the Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. They post clips of their shows on Youtube and they get almost as many views as the original show. This increases the spread, especially when some of the videos hit millions of views.

I chose Erin Condren again to be my video example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShNHmARsepU
In this video they are telling about the changes in their company as well as their planner. Although the video is 10 minutes long it is still entertaining to watch, mostly because the person telling about the changes is the company’s owner herself! It makes you see that there is a real living person behind the brand and you can really get the feeling that she is truly involved in the product development. She also tells how the customers have been an important part in the process by answering different surveys and sharing their opinions in social media. This is a nice touch to make the viewer feel like they respect their customers and listen to them. The atmosphere in the video is bright and bubbly and that’s what the company’s brand is all about! The sense of family and fun.

Instagram

Instagram is probably the easiest example of a social media site where people can share their content and ideas. Since the whole thing is about tagging and sharing, it is perfect for commercial use! A company can easily advertise a product by posting a photo and in the description start a competition where the customers have to for example take a photo with the product, tag the company and maybe an x number of friends and use a specific hashtag to enter the competition. By doing this the product gets loads of free marketing and it doesn’t seem as intrusive because it’s the customers who are the messengers.

Even without the competition people tend to tag companies and places to their pictures if they are in them. That’s just a part of what Instagram as a social media is about.


-Viivi

Social Media´s use with or without strategy

Social Media is not just as simple as probably we know when we talk about companies and for their branding. Social Media is used or it supposed to be used wisely so, that the companies take over clients’ interests in mass. To have an example, I choose a company which in my opinion uses an interesting reason and strategy in social media.

Tesla Motors

Tesla is an electric car company which now days has exceed its own profit aim and is going to produce more vehicles and other models.

Called by Greg Sieck “voice of company”, Elon Musk is a genius in marketing and promoted Tesla´s Company by using social media.

Elon Musk´s strategy was to use social media so, that Tesla will no longer need advertising for branding.

Twitter was the Musk´s strategical tool for getting in interaction with as many people as possible so, that he could “advertise” by sharing different posts about Tesla Motors Company. With more than 176k followers,

The strategy of marketing unsexly, Musk posted on Twitter an announcement which made the Tesla Company to rise its stock with more than 2 percent.

Nowadays Tesla is enjoying its successful business development growth with the power of its well-researched knowledge in electrical vehicles, but also saves huge amount of money the use of social media instead of advertising.

This example is one which made me think about the importance of using social media in profitable ways.

There are of course also less productive examples of the companies which are using social media in their loss just because they are not documented and they not have a strategy. I would like to choose in this way an example less expected which goes wrong in using social media.

McDonald´s

The most well-known restaurant chain in the world tried in January 2012 to promote its brand by engaging with the customers through Twitter. After using hashtags like #meetthefarmers and #mcdstories, McDonald´s brand received the surprising news that same hashtags were used by the Twitter users in their horror stories. Later on, the fast-food chain has admitted that their hashtags went not according to the plan.

So, make sure you learn from other mistakes and plan well your thoughts.

Gabriel

Personal branding

Branding yourself is increasingly important in today’s job market, even though I do not think it is absolutely necessary. It all depends on the individual and their ideal career path and work place. For example if the person’s dream job is an accountant and they want to have a strictly 8 hour work day in the office, after which the work doesn’t follow them home – I don’t think personal branding would be all that important for them. It feels like the benefits wouldn’t come even close to covering the time and effort it takes to maintain a personal brand. But if one is aspiring to become the head of marketing in a global company or editor-in-chief of a magazine you are kind of required to have a carefully planned and executed personal branding strategy. I think the higher you aim the stronger the need and the pressure is to have all of that in check.

Lisa Quast wrote a blog post to forbes.com about personal branding. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/lisaquast/2013/04/22/personal-branding-101/) According to her the most important parts of personal branding are finding out

-          who you are

-          what you want

-          how people have gotten to the position you want to be in

-          what you have to do in order to get to that place

-          how it should reflect in your personal branding strategy

-          creating and maintaining the brand

It all makes sense and isn’t too complicated to actually do. The biggest problems are probably the execution (what and how to do) and the single most toughest part – what do you actually want. How do you brand yourself if you have no point of reference to what you should say or where to say it – how do you complete an equation when a necessary variable is missing? Now there is a topic I would like a 101 post on!

-Viivi

Facebook marketing - Why is it always the social part of social media that fails?

There are three most important things for companies to remember when using Facebook.
1. active posting
2. customer oriented content
3. engaging with the customers

I chose my example company to be
Erin Condren (a company that sells planners, notebooks and stationary accessories)
The company uses its Facebook page mostly for marketing. Since pretty much its whole concept is based on visual appeal their posts are always created around a beautiful picture. Most of their posts are about their products and why you should buy them but occasionally there are posts just for reminding they’re still alive (motivational Monday) or activating posts like “how are you using your planner?”

They do post regularly (almost every day) and the content is decent but the number of likes, comments and shares is usually still pretty low. (likes = 50-200 comments = <50 shares = <50) The only difference is competitions, but sometimes even then the numbers don’t really change too drastically.

The reason is most likely in the third most important thing to remember. Their customer care is minimal, usually just answering random questions in comments but even that isn’t consistent. This is especially a problem since there are several issues with the company. The shipments are often late and missing items – sometimes even the “fixed” package is wrong. In this aspect they aren’t using social media as well as they should. They are completely ignoring whole conversations in the comments where people are ranting and sharing their experiences with problematic orders. Every question and every negative feedback should be answered as soon as possible, but always within 2 days.


They do have all the ingredients for truly successful online presence but they absolutely have to solve the issue they have with keeping up with the actual socializing part of Facebook – joining in on the conversation and answering the comments they are getting. If this problem was fixed, they would most likely prevent or at least diminish this current trend of losing customers from their otherwise extremely loyal customer base.

Why is it always the social part of social media that fails?

- Viivi

Facebook marketing

When reading through our material we were given about marketing on Facebook, there were few "steps" that stuck in my mind and I agree with them. These something you notice as a customer too and value. To fulfill your marketing on Facebook to max you have to be involved with the customers and make them feel like there a person behind the page and not just a machine. This can for example be done by posting about different subjects and not just about the product. Make fun but pretty short postings that will catch the eye. Ask customers opinions, add fun photos, tell jokes. All these have to be short enough to read quickly and fun enough to get likes or comments. The point with the postings is also to get them to be shared by clicking share or by tagging friends so it goes viral.

Another way to make customers feel heard is to answer. If you have posted a question or you just get a questions, make sure you can answer as many as possible. Answer even the comic or bad ones with a hint of humor to be more likeable. Also If you get feedback on Facebook, always answer, both good and bad. When a big company, that is pretty sure busy with a lot of stuff, notices little Petteri from Finland, it makes him feel heard and will probably go for their product again.

Post often. The more you post, the more you will be seen in their news feed. Be careful to post too much though so that they will not stop following because you just took over their whole news feed. Post about 3 times a day and remember what said before, make them short and fun. Also Big, trustworthy companies can have competitions. If it is a small company, people may not believe the competitions, but a bigger one is trusted and good prices bring more likes. My personal opinion is that make them just to like the page and picture to enter and not to share the post! Most of people are bored of posting stuff and do not want to fill their wall with shares. With a like, the picture will still be shown in their friends news feed and get more likes like that, but doe not annoy anybody. Also when the winner has been chosen, make sure you post that someone has won, so they believe it.

For my company to write about I chose Tjärebog Finalnd Facebook page. They advertise their product in competitions, ads, pictures and ask customers to share photos and stories with them. I see that their Facebook page represents their company really well and they have used different methods to post. Something i still would like more from them is just basic posts that does not include an ad right away and more posts general. They post something just 1-2 times a week maybe. But as a customer and follower on Facebook i can say that their marketing is working, since everytime i see their post, i would love to book a trip.

Last but not least, i have used Facebook and Linkedin in job search, but only to find jobs. I have not contacted anybody about a job on those channels etc. But i have used the for research.

/Nelli

Next ten years

Our final task was to think what will happen in the next ten years in social media and how will it change our working life and communication.

I think there are two possibilities that could happen in ten years. I guess social media will evolve even more from now and it will be a big and important part of our private and working life. Customers have more influence and companies have to listen to them really carefully. I also think that social media will have a bigger part in working life communication. The other possibility is that people will reduce their social media usage and are really careful what they post online. People have realised that they are easily being followed by marketers and want to stop that.

However, I think it is more likely that social media will evolve a lot and I’m really looking forward to see what will happen. I’m not using even Instagram yet, not to mention Snapchat, so I wonder also what kind of my life in social media will be in ten years. I guess that some of the current apps and social media channels won’t exist anymore in 2025 and there has become several other. What kind of these will be – I have no idea.

- Jenna

From strategies to tragedies

Sometimes things don’t go as planned and things can get bad especially when you haven’t planned them at all. Here are two bad examples of using social media.

DiGiorno Pizza

DiGiorno Pizza is an American frozen pizza company which failed using hashtags. #WhyIStayed was a hashtag used by women who were victims of domestic violence. DiGiorno Pizza didn’t know the background of it so the company used it in their Twitter tweed to promote their products saying: “#WhyIStayed You had pizza.” They apologised it later. Source: The Telegraph

I think these kind of things happen when companies try to react quickly to popular things in social media. These kind of disasters could be avoided by making background checking even though it might take a little bit of time.

Best Buy

Cult podcast called “Serial” explored a murder of a girl. The boyfriend who killed the girl used a payphone at a Best Buy in Baltimore, USA. Best Buy tweeted: “We have everything you need. Unless you need a payphone”. It could’ve been a funny tweet but because the case was real, it really wasn’t funny. Best Buy also apologised their tweet later. Source: Daily News

These kind of things also happen when not considering the things that will be published. This tweet obviously was not planned and I think that this kind of tweets and everything else published in social media which are trying to quickly react to topical things should be considered carefully.

Well done!

Even though our task was to find bad examples, I bumped into this article in The Telegraph about a week ago and it made me laugh: 'As a bacon fan I can understand your unadulterated anger' - When supermarkets bite back. Sometimes companies handle their conversation in social media with humour and that is great! It won’t of course work with all feedback but when customers give funny feedback I think it’s more than acceptable for companies to answer in the same way.

- Jenna

Social Media Strategy – The Coca-Cola Company

I’ve used Coca-Cola as an example in my posts before and I decided to use it again in this case study because I believe that as a big company they are managing their social media usage well and overall I think they are using social media successfully in their marketing.

The Coca-Cola Company uses many different social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and Google+. Coca-Cola Company has a huge number of different brands and for example Fanta, Sprite, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero and Diet Coke have their own Facebook pages. I decided to use The Coca-Cola Company and their most popular product Coca-Cola as an example of social media usage.

There was a good article in Simply Measured about “Lessons from Coca-Cola’s Social Media Strategy: Cohesive Campaigns and Creative Content” by Kevin Shively. Especially one thing that Coca-Cola has done well in social media is interaction with customers. According to the article for example 83% of Coca-Cola’s Tweets in one month were direct @Replies. I also noticed from their company’s Facebook and Instagram pages that they answer really often to customers’ questions and comments. Based on the article Coca-Cola’s social presence is well planned and their strategy is developed based on audience wants.

Coca-Cola Company has published their Social Media Principles in their website. They say their company’s role in the social media is to inspire moments of optimism and happiness and build their brands. They guide their associates to “have fun, but be smart” in social media. The Coca-Cola Company offers training to their associates to improve their social media skills.

Coca-Cola has made commitments about how they interact with the public and each other and they expect these commitments also from their representatives. They highlight especially transparency, privacy, respect, responsibility and monitoring. These commitments can fully be found from their Social Media Principles.

Coca-Cola has published separate social media expectations for personal use and for company spokespeople. One thing that I found especially important for personal social media usage was that Coca-Cola encourage people to promote their brands as long as they make sure they reveal that they are connected with Coca-Cola Company. I think this is a really good rule to remember especially because one of their commitments was to be transparent.

- Jenna

AM Customer participation, twitter and second life

Customer participation in Marketing of Starbucks

There are a lot of examples about companies which let customers to participate in their marketing by reviewing or even developing their products or services.

Since I am already quite familiar with Starbucks, I chose to stick with it. In 2008 they launched My Starbuck Idea and its main task was to take suggestions and to generate conversation as to how the company should go about improving itself: "Share. Vote. Discuss. See." The Starbucks loyalists got activated quickly on the site and even now it's active. So far, there are more than 98 000 ideas that have been submitted to the site and over hundreds of ideas have been adopted. (Lähde)

About Twitter

Companies and organizations can use Twitter for communication and marketing in multiple ways. Though, this social media tool differs from FB for instance. Twitter is more strict, you can't post as long texts and posts and the whole idea is way faster: few words and the hashtags, you can't need more!

I wanted to look at the Twitter behavior of Tuomas Enbuske who is a famous Finnish radio and TV host as well as a reporter and a active media person. Enbuske uses Twitter basically to inform his followers and create conversations, give people a reason to think about what really matters. And turn out people are actually been activated this way: they participate in the conversation, mark it as favorite or even re-tweet it!

When Enbuske's show is on season either in tv or radio, he's promoting about it in Twitter but for now he just sticks with politics mainly and every now and then with some more entertaining ideas. Enbuske has powerful opinions and is not afraid to say them out loud, hard and aggressive without a doubt. He has for instance said: "Rukoilu tai homeopatia ei paranna minkäänlaisia tauteja. Osa taudeista paranee itsestään, vaikka ei tekisi mitään. " He basically says how ineffective praying and homeopathy is.

Virtual world

I don't really have any experience of virtual world or even games. After introducing myself to a further knowledge, I think that there could be many hidden possibilities in this kind of working life communication. I however don't quite know how this works in practice. I would love to try it myself and have a meeting or even to study in virtual world because it sounds like a modern way to work and nowadays you have to be or it's better if you're willing to try out new ideas.

-Azma

Twitter in business

There is no wonder why the United States president Obama has over 62 million followers on Twitter. Due the election he made a lot of money because of his mass influences on social media.

Twitter is a social media network which offer to its user’s huge possibilities for become better known. I took the example of Obama even though is private person, not company. But the principle is the same: influencing in mass.

Nowadays there is a lot of social media use in engaging with people and make them to like and to follow, for wining clients.

Twitter has at least two kinds of users: private person/individual user and company/organization user. About these two, I will share in few words how they use social media and what for.

Individuals target is to get better known and to receive attention for growing in personal branding. As I took the Obama´s example, he used social media Twitter for spreading words/sentences that will make people vote for him. There is nothing wrong in doing it is just personal branding and influencing in mass own objectives and goals.

Organizations and companies try to take the advantage of social media for approaching their purpose of marketing and in this way winning clients. For this purpose, companies had to make some effort for winning clients and this is not easy; that´s why before that is good to plan a bit company´s path on Twitter.

Before starting any profile making on Twitter is recommended to follow few steps and to be patient in obtaining enough knowledge before make the mass-strike.

·         First get to know other similar company´s posts and be sure that you understand why they write what they write and read also about their follower´s posts.

·         Make a plan about by which method you´ll influence and gain followers: sharing updates, making few jokes in which are planted keywords, asking people what they prefer/like…

·         Ask yourself few questions about your goals and what do you want to achieve. Get informed, discuss with others and gather knowledge about improving your impact on Twitter.

·         Manage also the Twitter resources and find out what opportunities it´s offering.

When the plan is ready and you know what kind of posts will share and publish, get started by making Twitter profile and make sure that everything that you post are quality. I mean you make sure you choose the right words, give the right information in right time, tweet not too much and not too less, learn from other mistakes. To maintain a good relation with Twitter users (future clients) it is recommended a diligent posting and communication with activity daily or often.

Using Twitter in business and being active with it, it will show the company´s success difference in short time.

-          Gabriel