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

The boat of marketers

     Slide Share has been founded in October 2006 and it has been acquired by LinkedIn on 3 May 2012 for $118,75 Million. It is a PowerPoint presentation tool, which could be more easily and more successfully done online.
People choose nowadays to use Slide Share for marketing in a better way their product and according to socialmediaexaminer site, it represents the boat of marketing on social media. It doesn´t have the ability just for marketing, but also for teaching, where many are using it already for presenting useful education material.

     For marketing, many companies had already got enough with YouTube.
I personally like Tesla Motors cars, because are electrical and environment friendly. I choose one example of their YouTube channel which represents the company.
Tesla Company use YouTube for sharing different videos about their cars so, that they could show why to buy their products. So the videos are made so well, that it really make you think about which car you should buy.

     So we see that many are using Slide Share so pages, others videos, but there are also big amount of people and companies who choose picture sharing. For this, there are many social media sites, which allow customers to share picture. For example Pinterest is made for sharing pictures.
Its customers can freely take picture from everywhere and just share and Pin on Pinterest with others. So there are milliards of pictures and every day are coming more and more.
Companies choose Pinterest in social media to show their brand, to maximize their followers so, that later will become their customers.
For companies there is a strategy why to post, share, comment and so. There is a big competition in winning customers and clients, so the companies have to be careful how to maintain and how to win more clients.
I think future marketing will be more online, than in reality, because of increasing number of people spending their time on internet.

-          Gabriel

Branding yourself

In past years, the trend of a good employee has been described indirectly and nonverbal as a multi-skillful person who could do as many things as possible so, that the employer could keep him in stead of two or three employees with one profession.
In order to this, the working-life has been shared in two categories: much and cheap (not good quality) and less but expensive (good quality). We see this big gap of these two categories, between countries from the West and countries from the East.
In West (well developed countries), companies are looking for people who are masters in one thing, so they could develop the product as fast and as far as possible.
So because of this, self-branding has started to occupy an significant place in job seeker´s life. I realize that nowadays most employers are searching for those kinds of employees, who cannot offer anymore a variety of skills, but a well prepared and skillful person concentrated on one thing.
A good help in how to brand yourself, you can find into a simply search on internet. Something that I recommend, is the LearnVest´s site, which presents consistent knowledge of how to personal brand.
I believe that personal branding is the future CV.

- Gabriel