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