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.