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

Second Life

Virtual worlds and games are an area where I have no experiences at all. I know that the library of Turku University of Applied Sciences has its own Second Life world but I’ve never used it and don’t even know much about it.

I don’t quite understand why Second Life is needed because there are all kind of chats and discussion groups that could be used to same kind of purposes. Maybe SL makes work and meetings feel more casual and fun. To me Second Life looks quite like the computer game called the Sims but it is used for different purposes. I could try it if for example a company that I’m working in uses it but otherwise I’m not really interested about it.

I looked for companies that use Second Life to get more information about it and I found a Business Insider’s article from about a year ago where it was said that Second Life was quite a hit over five years ago. According to the article, many companies like Amazon had virtual stores in Second Life and the users could for example buy stuff for their avatar. Universities also used Second Life to have classes in there. This came as a total surprise for me. I guess that SL never had the same kind of popularity in Finland that it had for example in USA and that’s why I don’t recall hearing about it back then. Especially after reading the article I’m pretty sure it won’t reach same kind of popularity anymore even though some people and organisations still use it.

- Jenna

Twitter in Business

How to use Twitter in business?

In the book Twitter for Business: The Ultimate B2B Guide written by a company called Optify there was listed three things how marketers can use Twitter effectively. Contributing and sharing are the things that first come in mind when using Twitter and that is of course important. What I considered important that should also have attention are the other two things which are listening and engaging.

Companies should listen (=read) what is being said in Twitter. They should not only focus what is said about their company but also search for specific keywords about their industry. Engaging with customers and public is really important too. Communication in Twitter is quite casual which makes it possible for a company to communicate with customers personally and not so formally, which is a style that many customers like. Many people tweet about products and services in Twitter so it good for a company to have customer service used also by Twitter.

Successful Twitter user

I chose Arman Alizad as a successful Twitter user to follow. Alizad is mostly known for his television programs Kill Arman and Viimeinen Ristiretki. Alizad has been in Twitter since 2010 and he has about 134 000 followers. I think that what makes him so popular is that he balances well between funny and serious tweets.

Last week he tweeted for example about a brave girl in Mongolia and also posted funny pictures or tweets. Of course he tweeted also about their upcoming program. He likes to tweet about things that he keeps important but also to entertain people. He is an influential person and I’m sure he knows it so he likes to tweet about things that matter in the world. He also retweets quite a lot and other users like to tag him to their tweets.

If I were on Twitter, Arman Alizad would be a person that I would definitely follow.

- Jenna

AM Sharing tools and Social Media - productive x2!!

Slideshare and marketing 

Slideshare is a site where you can find educational materials downloaded by different educators. When searching for information about how to use social media sharing tools for marketing, I got interested in Instagram-marketing as well.

The most important thought in this slideshare is the fact that we live in visual era and we're doing it like we were in a hurry. This is where Instagram comes in - the pleasing, fast idea of using social media. Why use it in marketing purposes? Well, this is a easy way to reach out to customers, tell the story of your brand and get feedback - fast. However, IG is not that common than FB when it comes to using it as a marketing tool, not yet at least: only every 10th of Finnish FB-marketors use IG too.

Another very good point is that in IG there's no need for you to "sell" your business, it is already there, seen, it'll sell itself! This on side, IG is not thought being enough as a only tool: the most effective thing to do is "cross platforming" which means to use different social media tools together, for instance posting in FB "Follow us in IG too!". It is important to show that you're active and this is only one of the ways of doing it!

How do ZARA uses Youtube? 

Zara which is a known Spanish based, international clothing store has a interesting marketing strategy called "Zero investment in marketing".  In a way, the brand relies on the word of mouth advertising and this only. The idea is to focus on exclusivity, experience, differentiation and affordability.

Even in their showrooms the most attention is given to details, elegance and simplicity.  And this applies to their Youtube-channel too. Even though the company does not use advertising in a huge volume, they are quite active in Youtube especially: this is the channel where they release their newest collections. The latest update is from last February introducing their customers to the new Zara summer collection "You gotta have summer". The video represent everything that Zara is about, the message is clear: summer is coming, relax and have fun. But remember, be unique! The atmosphere is created with the music, all natural models and crazy scenes in which the clothes stand out even more. This video is artistic, very exceptional, very Zara!

Instagram and ZARA - get unique!

Since I have a long lasting passion for Zara, I decided to stick with it in this part also! Before, I've loved it as a clothing store only, but this year when I started my studies in production engineering, I got more familiar with the company and its interesting, effective and very one of a kind production system and marketing strategy.

In Instagram, Zara is faithful to their already known image: simplicity is one of the key ingredients. Clothings are presented and shown but there's no fuss about it, it's casual, relaxed. They for instance post a look created for each day of the week (#monday/#tuesday...).

There are also pictures (#zarapictures) of their customers wearing Zara and telling something personal about themselves below the photo. This I like to call "Humans of New York" -approach since HONY has created a phenomenon in FB this, but however much more personal, way. People like to tell their stories nowadays, and this itself could be a motivation for the customers to be part of this kind of activity. And well being part of Zara.. Who could reject this kind of opportunity, to be one of the "Zara models"?

-Azma

Customers participating in marketing

I feel that sometimes companies spend a lot of time and money to get to know what customers want even though they could just simply ask it from them. 
 
For example Starbucks has made their My Starbucks Idea very popular. My Starbucks Idea is a page where customers can give improvement suggestions. Other customers can vote the ideas and some of them are put in to practice. Like Starbucks says it: “Share. Vote. Discuss. See.” The ideas can be about products, experiences and involvements.

Hashtags are really popular nowadays and they are a good way of participating customers. In my previous post I wrote about Coca-Cola’s marketing in Instagram. I think that their Share a Coke campaign is a really good example overall about participating and also using hashtags in it. Many TV shows also use hashtags and even show them during the program. For example Twitter users might feel happy when their tweet is shown in television and at the same time their followers might see their tweets and get interested about the show. For example popular Finnish shows Putous and Enbuske & Linnanahde Crew use hashtags and encourage people to discuss.

Sharing is the key word in my opinion. Companies should do marketing that people want to take part in and share to their friends. Good accomplishment is that customers share your posts, pictures, news etc. even though you didn't ask for it. 

- Jenna