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.