Case study and social media disasters

1. Case study

I work at Suomen Nuortentalo. I wanted to do a case study about a social service company, because usually their use of social media differs from other kind of companies.

In my field of work there isn't much that we can post on the internet. We need to make sure that clients and residents don't appear on the photos and on the texts that we post. Social media is mainly a place to inform people about the diseases and difficulties our residents have. For example Suomen Nuortentalo has posted on Facebook articles about Asperger syndrome. In Facebook there are also information to the youngsters for example about camps and summer jobs.

The most important thing to remember is that we can't have our residents as our Facebook friends. We need to make sure that the residents understand that this our work, in our personal life is our own. If a residents mind is unstable, being friends on social media could also be dangerous.

We workers cannot use our Facebook page. Superiors are the only ones who can. I think that they should assign someone to be in charge of the social media, because now the page isn't updated too often. I think that Facebook would be a perfect place to "sell" our facilities and to tell people about the methods that we use.

So this was a bit different case study but I felt that I wanted to incorporate social services in this blog somehow!

2.Social media disasters

In November 2015, Australia's Victorian Taxi Association launched its #YourTaxis campaign to get customers' feedback about its service. It didn’t go quite as planned. The hashtag quickly became a repository for stories about drivers committing horrible violent and sexually abusive acts against customers. The campaign was launched at Monday and by Wednesday night the situation was so bad that the agency tried to make things better, only to make it worse. They used Remembrance Day hashtag on twitter to promote the campaign, a move which many social media users called-out as being disrespectful. The tweet read: “#RememberanceDay 600,000 taxi trips are taken by war Veterans and widows for treatment purposes. Lest We Forget. #yourtaxis.” All of this in just a few days. At the end, the agency behind the campaign was fired.  

In March 2015? SeaWorld opened itself up to complaints with an #AskSeaWorld hashtag. The company had

been on rough path ever since the movie “Blackfish” became popular on Netflix. The hashtag was then hijacked and became a trending topic on Twitter as pointed questions went viral. SeaWorld could have save the game by apologizing and changing its policies. But it didn’t.  Instead, after #AskSeaWorld, the brand has used Twitter to fight allegations stemming from Blackfish, gaining retweets along with angry comments. Not very smart move, but luckily for SeaWorld, people are starting to forget this disaster, and their follower growth has now been steady.

3. Social media in ten years

I think that social media will more and more in peoples’ lives year after year. Customer service will become more reliant by social media and internet. I a bit worried if our children will be so used to talk via social media that they communicate through screens more than with face to face. On the other hand social media connects people from all over the world and people with same interest find each other. 

Future of social media

1

I follow some bodybuilders at social media, and I would consider them as a brand, because somehow, they need to “sell their image” on social media. A famous bodybuilder that I have been following for a long time is Jeff Seid, He basically started making videos to YouTube about dieting and training.  After sometime he got famous, and because of it, at one of his videos, he said that he got many new job options as fitness model and new Sponsors, because of his high numbers of followers in social media. he also sell clothes and his website (www.seidwear.clothing).  In a nutshell he used the social media to grow his “brand” and also as able to reach people from other countries.

Initially, he mostly used YouTube and Facebook for videos. After some time, Instagram got more famous, so, he started using it more often. And currently, he is also using Snapchat, which is kind of the new trend. I would say that his strategy is to stay present in the most used types social media for entertainment (such as :Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and snapchat), so that he is able to reach more people from different social medias. His goal is to stay well known in bodybuilding and not be forgotten. Therefore, he need to  post often on his social medias. I would say that he measures his success by the number of followers that he has at his social medias, and his acceptance.

Many of those fitness models have other people helping them, to take care of their social media. I would say that the forbidden things that the staff should never to are: first, post something about dedicated topics such as religion and politics, I have notice that mostly of famous people avoid sharing their option on those topics. Which I consider the right decision, because it could bring more harm than good for the brand.

Second, the staff should never be rude with the users. Because social media enables users to post comments, sometimes the comments are quite rough on the brand but the company should never reply its public in a impolite manner, because it could damage the brand.

2.

I would say that the main goal for companies in social media is to create awareness for its services and products and also create a channel between the company and clients. I would say that a company fails in social media if the company has not been able to reach its potential customers. Therefore the company should evaluate the reasons for that this, it could be because the company is using the wrong social media or its contend is not good enough.

Companies should react immediately against false claims raised on the internet.  For instance, if someone makes an article claiming that Sara uses slave labour to manufacturing its clothes. Depending on the situation Sara should immediately disclaim those accusations, so that the brand is not damage by a false accusation.

3.

In my view, in ten years the mostly used social medias at the moment will be obsolete. People would be using more often social media, plus users will find new roles and ways to use social media. I also think that the social media in the future will improve even more, the way companies share information and communicate.

TED.COM AS A CASE STUDY AND THINGS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA

TED started in 1984 as a conference where Technology, Entertainment, and Design converged, and from then on, it has built up a reputation as the best channel for spreading ideas to large and general-interest audience (Heimans and Timms, 2014; TED.com). Its talks cover various topics from science to businesses to global issues, and especially in more than 100 languages (TED.com).

In June 2006, TED posted first videos on ITunes, and in July of the same year, videos were posted on YouTube (Zhao, 2013). Within two months it had gained an incredible result - one million views, but that result did not stop at that moment. In 2011, It was estimated that there were 225 million views of TED talks (Zhao, 2013). With such a great strategy and creative topics, I believe that TED is continually expanding its scope and strengthening its influence to worldwide communities. 

Figure 1: TED Talks views from 2006 to 2011 (Zhao, 2013)

So, how has TED created that miracle? June Cohen, Executive Producer of TED Media pointed out that a well-written and creative content was essential, but it was not enough to prompt people to share (Cicero, 2012). There is a need to have a strategy and a patience to do so. The first attempt of TED to draw the crowd attention is to empower the communities, who are willing to translate talks into different languages (Cicero, 2012). Until now, most of TED Talks have been translated into 86 languages thanks to the contributions of volunteers around the world through “Open Translation Project” (Cicero, 2012; TED.com). The second attempt is to promote sharing by reducing barriers between the ideas and their intended audience (Cicero, 2012). The huge amount of mobile users is a challenge for TED Talks, so enhancing the quality of videos to be suitable for watching on phones is important. Capturing the trend of modern society, it has adjusted all videos for small screen, cut long intros and started the videos strong; therefore, the audience can receive videos with high quality, even clear emotions of speakers, and hear perfectly as they were there in the auditorium (Cicero, 2012). One of the core value of marketing is to satisfy your customers’ needs and wants, so many companies have put a lot of investment in research and development to identify their customers’ needs and wants. For TED, it considers consulting its viewers as the best source of generating many creative subjects and gets closer to what its audience want (Cicero, 2012). 

The audience can follow TED.com on the following social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and TED Blog. Generally, there are four channels of TED.com in social media - TED, TED-Ed, TED Fellows, and TEDx. The contents for each program of each social media channel are designed differently to be suitable for different target groups. TED is the official page for TED.com and home of Ideas Worth Spreading, and in there, the audience can find daily TED Talks, news from TED, conversations, photo and more. Different from TED, “TEDx is a global movement devoted to bringing Ideas Worth Spreading to communities around the globe through independently-organized TED-like events. The TEDx Facebook page and others are run by TEDx staff. They share outstanding TEDxTalks, jaw-dropping images from TEDx events, TEDx event news and exciting stories from TEDx communities around the world. The TED Fellows program share news, awards and upcoming events pertaining to the 390+ trailblazing TED Fellows. The TED Fellows program helps world-changing innovators from around the globe become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities. TED-Ed is TED's education initiative. Their mission is to capture and amplify the voices of great educators and students around the world.” (Facebook.com)

Well-written contents, good strategies to get the attention of viewers, and good management of social media are a cornerstone for its expansion in today’s world.  

References

Cicero, N. (2012). How TED used social media to evolve from a single event into a global media brand. [online] Social Fresh. Available at: https://www.socialfresh.com/ted-social-media/ [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].

Heimans, J. and Timms, H. (2014). TED’s Shift from Old to New Power. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2014/12/teds-shift-from-old-to-new-power [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].

TED, (n.d.). Our organization. [online] Ted.com. Available at: https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].

Zhao, Y. (2013). TED Case Study. [online] prezi.com. Available at: https://prezi.com/duazhgh3wdbz/ted-case-study/ [Accessed 10 Aug. 2016].

2) Sometimes the organisation or company doesn't succeed in social media. There are risks and in critical situations the company has to react immediately. Answers to customers can be terribly wrong and the negative effect accumulates. Or the company might have chosen wrong media for communication. Find two examples and tell what went wrong and why. Could the social media "disaster" have been avoided?

In an attempt of advertising the offers of flights to Ghana’s capital, Accra, Delta Air Lines did make a terrible mistake on Twitter (Schenker, 2015). In World Cup 2014 championship, Team U.S.A won Ghana 2-1 (Schenker, 2015). At that moment, Delta congratulated the Team U.S.A with a tweet and a nice picture, but the attached picture seemed not alright as you can see below (Schenker, 2015).  

The problem, here, is that there are no giraffes in Ghana, and instead of solving that error, Delta did another hilarious mistake, when referring that tweet as its “precious” tweet instead of its “previous” tweet (Schenker, 2015). It was a big matter for Delta and affected its image seriously. Delta’s business is to attract passengers to Ghana; however, the tweet revealed its lack of knowledge about the country’s culture and basic unique things.

The second company which makes a mistake in social media is American Apparel. In a promotion campaign, the company ran a promotion of “offering 20% off to anyone living in states that were affected by Hurricane Sandy” (Costill, 2014). The reactions of customers towards the company were angry because it should not use a devastating natural disaster as an opportunity to run a promotion (Costill, 2014).

3) What do you think will happen in the next ten years in social media? How will it change our working life and communication? How do you see the future of social media?

Technology is unpredictable, and of course the same to social media. It can be sure that the position of social media in working life and communication is not changing due to its advantages and conveniences. However, its difficulty and complexity will evolve to another level which requires us to update continually.

Case Study and Outlook On Future Media

I interviewed a co-founder, Joona Kotilainen of a company, Tovari by sending list of questions to him through email. Here is his opinion about the kind of social media strategy his company has.

1/What kind of social media is being used / not used? Why? The objectives? Consider three aspects in working life communication: communication inside the company, management and marketing and customer care. How do the company evaluate the results?

At Tovari business we have company profiles in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Out of these four, only Facebook and Instagram are in active use. Twitter and LinkedIn are not in any use at the moment.

Facebook allows great story telling, videos, photos, long texts and links. We use it to tell about our work, provide information to our followers and promote our training sessions. Instagram is more like “behind the scenes” of the company. We take photos and videos from interesting situations we end up in.

We do our company internal communication in Slack, WhatsApp and via telephone.

The entrepreneurs of the company use WhatsApp with key customers to communicate tasks, requests and more in detail information.

We have not established any KPIs for social media usage, we are not doing it at the moment with a heavy strategy in mind.

2/The strategy usually includes rules for the staff. What is expected from the staff? What is forbidden? What kind of roles they have in social media? How should the staff act in social media as representatives of the organisation?

The social media marketing in the company is done only by the entrepreneurs. The staff is not using Tovari social media at the moment. The staff have their own social media accounts and they use them as they wish. We do not impose any limitation on how and what to talk there.

If we were to let staff use social media accounts of the company, we would design a content strategy on what to share, how often and how to reply to the people reacting to our posts.

There are two examples I can show out about social media "disaster". First, I would like to talk about Ronald McDonald failed on Twitter.

Back in April, McDonald’s made an announcement: Their newly made-over mascot, Ronald McDonald, was going to start tweeting, under the hashtag #RonaldMcDonald. At first blush, that sounded like an idea with some fun potential. But it didn’t work out that way. What happened instead spotlights how difficult it is for big brands to pull off successful social-media campaigns.The big problem: Not everyone likes Ronald McDonald, or the company he represents.

The second example I want to mention is Starbucks. 

Starbucks ambitiously launched #RaceTogether in March, following the killings of unarmed teenagers Michael Brown and Eric Garner by the police and subsequent rioting. Spearheaded by CEO Howard Schultz, the campaign aimed to spark a national dialogue about race both in-store and on social media, which unknowingly catalysed a negative Twitterstorm.

Unsurprisingly, the white billionaire CEO of Starbucks naively thrusting the brand into the emotionally charged issue of racial inequality was considered superficial by most consumers, and so the campaign ended a week later.
Networked Insights found that most of the social media conversations that ensued about #RaceTogether were either not about race, or were negative reactions to the campaign and brand.

More than one-third of social conversation was categorised as “hate” directed at the brand, the Race Together campaign, or Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and nearly 60% of all conversation from the public contained some specific negative emotion.

Social Media has been a powerful tool in our busy world, especially in working and studying environment. It will continue to develop further in the future in the next 10 years. At that time, people will stick to social media and cannot live without them. They consider it communication tool to keep in touch with everybody. Companies have more chance to connect with their customers and so do their customers. At present, everything is done online in the brisk way. Therefore, social media is popular. I think social media will be useful in our world as information technology is dominating our daily life.

Customer participation and virtual worlds

 To companies it is important to get customers to participate in marketing. Because of the internet it is easy to find reviews about products and companies. Social media enables customers to help branding. Customers can post product pictures and tell others their experiences about the product/company. For example different travelling sites, such as Trip Advisor and Hotels.com are based on customer reviews about the hotels, restaurants etc.

I have no experience about virtual worlds. When I was a kid, about 11 or 12 years old or something, I did use Habbohotel with my friends, but that's it. I tried to log in Second Life, but it didn't work for some reason. The idea sounds interesting but I'm pretty sure I would never use it. I prefer to use Skype if I have to attend to a meeting virtually. Although it would be interesting to try out one or two education courses.

I'm really sorry that this post is so short and uninformative but I've been so busy with my personal life :(

Case study: TK congregation union

Congregation unit’s objectives for social media communication are to create positive mental image about church, make church more easily approachable, being active, being responsible and being straightforward. They also want to keep up with the constantly changing society.

Communication unit has the main responsibility about managing the social media and they have a special schedule for it. They make most of the updates, handle the customer care and are responsible about marketing. They also take care of inside the company communication which mainly happens through e-mail and intranet.

In each congregation there is a selected “communication priest”. Each of these priests are expected to use social media (Facebook and Instagram) and make updates from their congregation’s perspective. They also need to notify communication unit if they want more visibility in social media for some current event. This also makes the communication inside the company more flawless.

Updates are expected to be appropriate, short, well put together and visually pleasing. Staff is encouraged to be more active on social media so there isn’t much don’t dos. Still all the bigger announcements and updates go through communication unit. Communication unit is expected to update social media regularly, on average twice a day. They are also expected to answer all the comments on social media.

Social media channels

Unit’s social media channels are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram. The unit is most active on Facebook and Instagram, but all the social media channels are updated regularly. Facebook is the most important social media channel they have, so their Facebook-page is embedded on their website. When there is some sort of bigger event they usually put together own social media channels for it.

Facebook is the most important social media for them as it reaches most of the congregants. The Facebook updates are mainly about different events congregations organizes and news that concern church. This is the most important marketing and customer care channel. Union has 780 followers on Facebook.

Instagram is also updated regularly but the objective is a bit different than Facebook’s. Communication unit and also other congregations’ workers update the union’s Instagram-page with a theme: “my church”. There is supposed to be pictures from behind the scenes and pictures of regular workdays. Instagram updates aren’t as serious as Facebook updates and it’s supposed to appeal on younger audience. Union has 545 followers on Instagram.

YouTube and Twitter channels aren’t updated as regularly and I personally think that they aren’t used very effectively. Even though they have 740 followers on twitter (almost the same as on Facebook) they don’t get much likes or shares. The content is mainly same as on Facebook. YouTube on the other hand works as a channel to store videos and audio files so that they can be easily shared on other channels and websites.

Evaluation of the results happens mainly with Facebooks own evaluation tools. Otherwise evaluation happens mainly through feedback and by observing shares and likes. Also it’s easy to evaluate if marketing of an event was effective by counting how many people showed up and asking if they came because they saw the update on social media. I personally think that evaluation could be done more precisely so there would be more data on it. With this data union’s social media could be developed.

 1-

Customers have an important participation in the marketing of product/services. Because, Every time a customer is using a product and the other people see, It is a type of marketing. Plus every time that a customer recommend or talk about one service , it is also a type of marketing and creates awareness for the product.

Customers are the essential part of the development of products, because companies design services/products with the consumer always in mind. And the way companies get the customers opinions are through feedback and marketing research. Some example:

Zara

Amancio Ortega is one of the richest man in the world and co-founder of Zara. An interesting feature of Zara is that, when clients ask for a product that does not exist in the store, the seller write it down. So, if the same type of product is required several times, Zara tries to obtain and starting selling that product also, Once they know that there is a demand for that product. In a nutshell, Zara is actively listening to their clients and gathering feedback, in order to sell what clients are requiring, therefore customers are developing the company service/product.

Open source website/application

Those type of websites/application normally enable the users to suggest  changes and modification within the website or application. For instance, Google translate enable users to suggest better translations for a sentence/word. Therefore, customers are actively helping with the development of those applications as well.

2-

In my view, it is valid to use Twitter for communication and marketing propose, but the companies  have to check whether it is a tool which reaches its potential clients or not. Because at least, my friends and I never use twitter. Therefore, that marketing would not reach us.

ESPN Sport Twitter

I have been following their twitter account for one week. Most of the ESPN twitters aim to create awareness for their articles and videos, which are at their website. I have watched and read some of their videos and articles, the contend was quite interesting and polish. However, even if I had a twitter account, I would not follow them, because ESPN sends too many twitters every day, they twitter around 22 twitter every day. I feel that it is way too much for me.

However even though, I would not follow their account. There are 29 million people following their twitter account at the moment, plus ESPN is the thirtieth most followed twitter account in the world. Therefore, ESPN is able to reach a huge amount of people with their twitter.

3

SL

Virtual meeting is a quite great option for companies and Universities. Because it enables people to save time and money with travelling. However, for more important meeting I think is best to have a face-to-face meeting.

I have learned quite many things at the internet. It can make the studying more flexible and save some time for the students. Virtual courses work really well with theoretical courses, but some other courses require face-to-face interaction with other students and teacher. I really like the possibility of studying online, especially because, it gives a wider variate of option for courses and teachers from other cities and countries.

Online ZOO(http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/webcams/lion-outside.cfm)

Some ZOOs integrated the online world to the zoo. Through a website is possible to watch some animals live. It is an interesting way to create awareness for the ZOO, and make people want to go there to see the animals which they were watching online, perhaps.

  

Social media disaster

“I know this post is going to break all hell loose, but would it be too much to ask mothers to cover the baby with a scarf while breastfeeding in public?”

With these words stylist “celebrity” Teri Niitti caused a social media rage in January 2016. He also posted a recognizable picture of the nursing mother without permission only making things ten times worse. Public soon blamed him of desecrating the mother and spreading negative atmosphere in general without understanding the hardships of motherhood and nursing.

The disaster could have been easily avoided if Niitti hadn’t posted the photo and thoughtless comment. He even himself knew it was something he shouldn’t say, but he did it anyway “breaking all the hell loose” as he said himself. 

Another mistake was to take the picture without permission. It is only common sense that you are not supposed to photograph others secretly and post the pictures online. The fact that the woman was recognizable and breastfeeding in the picture made the situation even more unreasonable.

The third mistake was that he posted the comment and picture on an airplane. This made it impossible for Niitti to react the rage he had caused, because he wasn’t aware of it. When he finally landed and saw all the commotion, it was far too late.

Finally Niitti deleted the picture and made his Instagram profile private. He apologized and admitted that he had acted carelessly. Apologizing was the only wise move he made, but it was still too late and it didn’t satisfy everyone. Even now you can find hundreds of breastfeeding pictures if you search #teriniittistyling on Instagram. This is a payback from mothers Niitti had offended with his post.

Turning a disaster into an opportunity

Another example is a potential disaster that was avoided with some smart communication. In March 2016 our school: Turku University of Applied Sciences, got its space on a spotlight as an advance assignments for movie degree entrance exams were released.

One of the assignments was to write a story that was supposed to comfort your friend who has lost their “dear virginity”. Assignment rose understandably some astonishment. The assignment was soon tweeted along with a picture and it got several retweets, they even made a news story about it on the Iltalehti tabloid.

The case could have turned ugly if the University hadn’t handled it with good humor. Soon the #rakasneitsyys (#dearvirginity) was simply a funny joke amongst twitter users and the University. If you don’t want them to laugh at you laugh with them, and most importantly know how to laugh at yourself. 

Dean Timo Tanskanen was interviewed about the case and he turned it around with his well thought answers. “We promise to provide an education where students can challenge themselves and their know-how”, he for example said.

In the end I think that the “disaster” caused more positive publicity than negative.

Next ten years of social media

Social media and internet evolve so rapidly and unexpectedly that I couldn’t possibly know what to wait after ten years. If I should guess something I would say that at least social media is here to stay, no matter what form it is going to take. 

Social media will probably get even closer with our real life entity and will probably be something that follows us around where ever we go as a part of us and our everyday life. At the same time it is going to be part of our normal work life. It might become something that we need even for the simplest tasks. Also social media is going to take more and more realistic forms. Live videos popularity is already proving this.

Internet collects so much information about us, that it will be likely that at some point personalized social media is going to be developed. It could unite all the services one needs. It might act even as our ID in the future, collecting data about our health, diet, location and interests connecting the data to government and removing our privacy almost completely.

At the same time protective services are going to be developed to ensure ones freedom to move around the Internet without being tracked all the time. 

But this is only me pondering and getting carried away :D

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THE PURPOSE OF MARKETING (CONTINUE)

The title of this blog describes precisely the main content; however, the blog is expected to bring you a new perspective of how customer participation plays an important role in a company's marketing strategy. Let's begin the discussion with the below four minutes video.

Source: Market Segmentation for Sport Participation. (2013). [video] Youtube: Australian Sports Commission.

In summary, customer participation in marketing research provides companies broader picture of customers desires and needs so that they can segment their markets based on their strength. As you probably see from the video, the number of non-members in any clubs is high and by understanding their wishes and desires, you can have a better strategy with flexible options gaining more registrations to your organization. It is true that customer participation brings your companies out-of-boxes, innovative ideas and customer loyalty. 

A worldwide famous company like Coca-cola also utilize the advantage of customer participation to gain more customer loyalty. 

Coca-Cola

In the United States, the average person drinks the equivalent of 275 (12oz) cans of Coke per year. So a company like Coca-Cola, which has already “acquired” most of the people in the United States, naturally shifts their marketing focus away from immediate sales transactions, and towards a more long-term emotional connection with consumers. Through their innovative campaigns, Coca-Cola has demonstrated that emotionally resonant marketing creates loyalty among your customers…which, in turn, sells you far more Coca-Cola.

The campaign generated huge customer participation, particularly online – there are a whopping 341,000 posts on Instagram with the hashtag #shareacoke. Coca-Cola also reports that 96% of consumer sentiment toward the campaign is either positive or neutral. For example, their “Share a Coke” campaign (replacing the logos on Coke cans with popular names among young people) encouraged customers to share a Coke with a friend. Essentially, Coke was inviting buyers to participate in a massive social/referral marketing experience. (Stocker, 2014)

 Another aspect of customer participation that the companies should take into consideration is customer reviews. Customer reviews are essential and trustful, and they reflect the value of products which your companies provide. Following your customer reviews is the best way to know more how your products are functioning and customer expectation of better version then having improvements if necessary. You can read further the importance of customer reviews of how to use them by a simple click. 

Twitter

Twitter is used to connect people, build relationships, create brand awareness, marketing new products, provide information, survey and feedback, manage online reputation, boost sales with special offers and discounts, and promote your company blog (Imarketingfactory.com, n.d.). 

There are million of users on Twitter and by using Twitter, companies can expand their connections with new customers and enhance existing ones. Through Twitter, the companies might have an idea how customers react to their brands' products. To keep followers and build positive relationships with them, the companies must try to minimize promotions and advertisements instead building up useful information to assist customers in finding suitable products. For a business with a small scale, Twitter is highly effective to gain customer trust. To do so, you should initially create a trustful profile of yourself and gain followers then building up a profile for your company and linking it to your profile. Another effective manner to spread your companies' news is through Twitter. With many followers and cheapest cost, you can easily announce news and get more attentions comparing to other public media. As I have mentioned above, Twitter can be used to obtain your customers' opinion about a product. You can use Twitter to find out their feedbacks by following their conversation about the product or asking their opinions by conduction a poll through your account. More and more functions of Twitter can be discovered in the following link: http://www.imarketingfactory.com/twitter/ 

If you have followed my other blogs, you will probably understand that I am not a social media person. But I have recently built up my interest to Zalando on Twitter. Their Tweets are organized and creative, and they response to customers' tweets as fast as possible. They introduce their products in uploaded pictures to be suitable for current events (famous models, mix-and-match and national events). They involve promotions and discounts smartly to avoid any disturbances to their customers. 

Virtual Games/World

The only virtual game which I have played till now is The Sims. I love the game because I can be creative in design and explore new things. However I don't believe on virtual education and believe that things in real life are more important and practical. 

References

Imarketingfactory.com. (n.d.). The Importance of Twitter for Small Businesses. [online] Available at: http://www.imarketingfactory.com/twitter/ [Accessed 13 Jul. 2016].

Market Segmentation for Sport Participation. (2013). [video] Youtube: Australian Sports Commission.

Stocker, M. (2014). How Coca-Cola and Yoplait Use “Customer Participation” Marketing – And How You Can, Too. [Blog] Marketo. Available at: http://blog.marketo.com/2014/09/how-coca-cola-and-yoplait-use-customer-participation-marketing-and-how-you-can-too.html [Accessed 13 Jul. 2016].

Customer service, discussions, reviews and product development

There are many ways that companies and organizations can utilize their customers in marketing and product development through social media. Customers are important in building the company’s brand as they showcase the company’s products through pictures and recommendations. Customers share a lot of information about products in social media. Sometimes the publicity is positive and sometimes negative, and sometimes customers don’t even realize that they are promoting the company.

Many bloggers review companies and their products as they are given free samples. As more and more people share their opinions and pictures about the product in social media, the more free advertising it gets. Some people can also stand up as spokespersons of the product. These people are loyal users and will stand by the product, even if there are a few bumps on the road. It is easier for a consumer to believe fellow consumers’ views.

TripAdvisor is a great example of a social service where customers are in charge of marketing, reviewing and rating. TripAdvisor is a traveling website where people all around the world can share their traveling experiences, pictures and descriptions. They are able to rate destinations, tourist attractions, hotels and restaurants. 

The website is able to filter destinations with the help of reviews. So you can choose from many alternative filtering options to find exactly what’s suitable for you. TripAdvisor utilizes the objectiveness of the travelers’ reviews and that’s what makes the service so popular. This showcases exactly how people prefer the honest pictures that travelers have taken over the polished marketing pictures of professional photographer hired by the hotel.

https://www.tripadvisor.fi/

Twitter in communications and marketing

As we stated to talk about TripAdvisor I also took it as an example for this task. TripAdvisor has 3.17M followers in Twitter and 15.6K tweets. TripAdvisor tweets around 0-3 times per day. In a week they tweeted a total of 11 tweets.

All of the tweets had a photo in them making them stand out. Most of them had also a link which leaded to their own web content for example a blog or an article. Style of the posts was informative as they provided tips on travel and everything around it. For example: “10 Secrets from a Pro on How to Take Better Travel Photos on Instagram”.

TripAdvisor did a good job in trying to get the followers involved. They had two different posts during the week that encouraged followers to participate. One of the posts was this: “Got a travel moment captured on video? Click here to upload for your chance to be featured”. I think this is important as the whole idea of the website is to share travelers own experiences. 

These type of posts also cause conversation among users. The Twitter account stirs up a lot of conversation as #TripAdvisor is used a lot and all of their tweets have a lot of shares and likes.

Possibilities of virtual worlds

I don’t have much experience of virtual worlds and games, but I think that the possibilities of using them in working life communications are almost limitless. Making a game out of something makes it almost automatically more motivating and interesting. Working in virtual worlds makes working life communications faster and straight forward. Virtual worlds and games have also some negative effects on studying and working. Sometimes a face to face meeting is necessary to get all the facts right and to give thoughtful feedback.

Few weeks ago I tested a virtual reality game designed for tablet in Turku cathedral. It was designed to unite gaming, storytelling, social media and learning.

http://www.turunseurakunnat.fi/osallistu/sanan-seppa

You could basically follow the story and see drawn characters immerse in the cathedral trough tablet. The game had a map in it which you could use to navigate through the cathedral. As all the characters were added in the actual camera view of the tablet, it was possible to go stand next to them and take a photo of you and the character together. After taking the picture you could share it in social media.

It’s complicated to explain, but I found testing the game really interesting and believe the game could make learning more fun. There are also several virtual tours in the cathedral. They are tours that you can go through with a QR code reader. Codes are all over the cathedral and it is fun to search for them and learn more about the cathedrals history.

Turku cathedral has a strong presence in virtual realities and they are innovatively trying to find new ways to pump up their presence. They could market their virtual services more so more people would be able to benefit from them.

Slideshare enables companies, teachers and other people, to share their power point presentations on the internet. It is possible to share the slides for everybody or only for certain people. Therefore, companies would be able to share their content only with their employee, for instance. Users can leave comments, share to other social medias and download the slides.

http://www.slideshare.net/WAKSTER_Ltd/why-marketing-should-care-about-entertainment/5-Today_Jack_goes_outprepared_He

This is a quite interesting slide about marketing and why marketing should care about entertainment. The creator (Wakster) of this slides uses a lot of drawing. The author argues that annoying marketing makes people run away from advertisement, and one way to do that is by using Ad Blocker.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Harvard/featured

Harvard University has a YouTube channel which has more than 300 thousand subscribers. On their channel, they share videos about the University, videos of famous people giving a speech (such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg) and also some lectures at Harvard University. Therefore, it is a great way for students to see how the university is and what to expect from them. They post videos quite often, which is an important to keep their subscribers. Overall this YouTube channel helps Harvard to share the university’s message and values to some extent.

Snapchat

Snapchat is a photo and video sharing platform. the feature that makes Snapchat unique, from the other social medias, is because sSnapchat deletes the posted photo after one or two days. And because of it, users post a lot of “informal” photos and videos.

A great thing about advertising on Snapchat is because people basically choose to watch the advertising. So, users can choose which type of advertising they want to see or non-advertising at all. Therefore, it enables companies to reach only the users which are interested about  the company.

Idea of Sharing

Customers play an important role taking part in marketing. Usually, companies will link their customers to comment/review forum. Customers are able to give their feedback there. They will rate (from 1 to 5) and leave any comments about the product/service they are using. They may express their own compliment as well as complaint to the companies. According to that, companies will listen to consumers and create a new strategy for developing the product/service.

Let's take an example of Coca-Cola!

Coca-Cola is an enormous brand in the world which has millions of customers. Coca-Cola used customer participation in their marketing to engage their customers, build loyalty, and ultimately drive greater revenue. This means customers become part of their marketing.

Their “Share a Coke” campaign (replacing the logos on Coke cans with popular names among young people) encouraged customers to share a Coke with a friend. Essentially, Coke was inviting buyers to participate in a massive social/referral marketing experience.The campaign generated huge customer participation, particularly online – there are a whopping 341,000 posts on Instagram with the hashtag #shareacoke. Coca-Cola also reports that 96% of consumer sentiment toward the campaign is either positive or neutral.

And my own example, I did take part in marketing by rating and commenting about the product/service or entertainment industry. Particularly, I did rate and comment about a movie, which is called Coraline. I did this on IMDb website. Coraline is my favorite cartoon. It is mysterious, thrilling and funny. 

According to Twitter for Business guide in learning materials, companies/organizations use Twitter to build relationship with customers in 3 ways: 

• By listening to what is being said about the company
• By engaging with customers and the public
• By contributing and sharing their expertise and thought leadership

Companies can look for new customers by searching tweets or a few key words. Besides, companies usually engage with customers by viewing their tweets and replying their questions.

Bill Gates will be the successful Twitter user that I am going to talk about. I like reading his tweets. I can see that most of his tweets are not really personal about himself. Of course, he did mention about his wife and his family, but it did not matter. Things he usually talks about include charity, world economy situation, famous quotation and books. His style of writing is academic and smart. He discusses about business, what is happening with firms or products. In addition, sometimes he says encouraging words to make people feel confident. 

I am not currently playing Candy Crush Saga online and I extremely love this game. I am now at level 485. I play it everyday.  About virtual world, I used Facebook to communicate with otaku, which means people who are absorbed in manga and anime. I made a lot of friends who had the same hobby with me. Some of them imagined that they were manga characters, for example, Inuyasha or Shinichi Kudo. However, I was glad to talk with them and discussed about manga.

Second Life is an online virtual world, developed by Linden Lab, based in San Francisco, and launched on June 23, 2003. By 2013 Second Life had approximately 1 million regular users, according to Linden Lab, which owns Second Life.

To tell the truth, I have never heard of this website before, but I think it is a little bit similar to The Sims. I am not sure anymore. Using Second Life, people are able to communicate easily and they can create platforms for their own purposes. 

Personally, I find it interesting to attend meeting or to study in virtual world. However, I would like to do it in real life. It will be more realistic. 

Sharing

Slideshare was a completely new site for me. I've never heard about it before. I tried to search slides from my field of work, social services, but for some reasons almost all the results were slides about social media and stuff. I searched for slides about using social media in marketing and this one caught my eye: http://www.slideshare.net/SrujanShinde/social-media-marketing-7844212?qid=bfe04c87-ce34-4786-bc65-d4f58f54d713&v=&b=&from_search=1

This slideshow is very informative, on point, and not too long. I recommend you to check it out!!

Youtube is not a place where I'm used to visit. I don't need Youtube and I rarely watch anything from there. It was a challenge to find out where I can search for users or channels or what they are... :D Emirates airline is one of the most safest airlines in the world. (2nd place in 2015) and their Youtube channel has 112 167 subscribers. They have a lot of videos about the company, including case studies about sky cargo.

Instagram is a great way to advertise your product. It's also cheap, all you have to do is post a photo or a video for people to see. Instagram users usually share these photos and videos with their friends or "tag" them into the comment section. For example Adidas has a 9.1 million followers on Instagram, and their latest photo has gotten over 70 000 likes in the past 21 hours.

FROM SLIDESSHARE, YOUTUBE TO FACEBOOK

If you have followed my previous posts about "Using Facebook as a marketing communication: DO AND DON'T", you would have probably remembered lots of useful tips which might be necessary for your future career. 

If you miss them, you can click on the following links. It just takes you few minutes but I am sure that you will learn something. 

  

Part 1: http://socialmediawlcmmgroup1.blogspot.fi/2016/06/using-facebook-as-marketing_13.html#comment-form

Part 2: http://socialmediawlcmmgroup1.blogspot.fi/2016/06/using-facebook-as-marketing.html

Today, I would like to suggest you a useful lesson about "How to use social media automation to improve your marketing" by Rebekah Radice and Tailwind Marketing Manager Melissa Megginson. It covers various subjects and aspects including tips and tricks to get the audience's attention and enhance your posts' quality. Let's take a look: 

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/postplanner/how-to-use-social-media-automation-to-improve-your-marketing/59

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AZMnhyt-Oo 

In my opinion, Youtube will be an extreme channel for everybody to make money if you use it in a clever manner. In Youtube, a company can upload its advertisement or select Youtubers who are famous in its field to cooperate with in order to popularize its reputation.

I can show you an example of Supercell. This company has a lot of addicted games and I am a huge fan of Clash Royale - a product portfolio of Supercell. If you access to the main channel of Clash Royale through the following link, you will be surprised since there are few videos about tournaments or game introduction. 

Clash Royale: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_F8DoJf9MZogEOU51TpTbQ/featured

You might question how they instruct new players, propose strategies to win opponents, explain each card's function and so on. They actually do by cooperating and watching videos of famous Youtubers who are willing to spend a lot of time to play the game.  

If you are a fan of this game, you probably have watched  videos of Chief Pat, Gaming with Molt, Phonecatss, Nickatnyte, etc (Click here to go there). These YouTubers not only play the game but also inform new changes or updates since they get to use trial version and are informed newest changes before it is officially released to players. By watching videos from famous Youtubers, the players get much information and understand the game even better. For the company, they have better understand current players' strategies, errors and players' needs to make improvements. 

Facebook is one of the popular channels for most people in the world and in Vietnam - my home country, not only teenagers but also adults are using Facebook in their daily life. Facebook can be used to share a picture, invite friends to a restaurant, arrange the locations for hanging out and so on with a simple click and tag. Moreover, Facebook is also a place for customers to share a good product in order to introduce it to their friends and family. It is an easy tool to spread information among groups . I follow several clothing stores on Facebook to know discount period then sharing this event with my friends so that I might find someone to hang out with.