Talking about measuring, Facebook seems to have added a new feature to Facebook Pages! I can't say its a "FEATURE" but it is quiet interesting. I was looking through my online store page, and saw this...
"43 are talking about this"...is this a new analytic tool for marketers to look at? I have no idea what it is yet, but it seems like an indicator indicating the number of people talking about your page!
I couldn't click into it...but want to find out more! What do you think it might me?
This morning went into my online store Facebook fan page & saw THIS!
I guess Facebook is trying to become a better Social Media Marketing Tool?
From my previous post about how generous they are to give out free ads, now they are trying to improve and encourage consumer engagement, relationship, and interactions between brands and consumers.
Sadly the "Review" function is gone! But! Does it really matter? I guess this would definitely generate more interactions and build stronger customer relationship with different brands and fan pages.
Just read from Mashables Facebook is targeting small businesses, seducing small businesses to jump on the bandwagon of Facebook marketing! The new marketing tool of 'Facebook Marketing Solution' is giving away $10 Million in Free Advertising! It is also mentioned that by the year 2012, Facebook will be giving out $50 for each qualified businesses and in the same time providing guidance and information on how you can easily advertise and market through Facebook!
Very generous of them to do create such a program! What do you think? Will it Work? Will they survive? Will small businesses be able to gain benefits from this?
There seems to be an increasing social media platform in sharing photos. From my previous blog about mobile social media "Instagram", and Kates blog about "Pinterest", I would like to continue on introducing new photo or picture based social media platforms.
Tumblr is a social media platform that allows you to "effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be". It is a Blogging platform that allows users to customize and share their blogs and interests through medias and texts. The platform currently has up to:
With such large audiences, marketers will never leave such opportunities to 'capture more fans and build brands'. Many companies have already stepped into Tumblr, making use of this social media platform as a marketing tool increasing its fan base and brand awareness, where in the same time, many of them are still updating and getting on the bandwagon of Facebook marketing. There are 6 Ways that brands can earn more exposure on Tumblr, which I thought was quiet interesting and new!
1. Use Tumblr Curation as a Compliment to Original Content
2. Like and Comment on Good Content From Tumblr Blogs in Your Space
You can also check out "30 Reasons YOU WILL LIKE TUMBLR" here (@ the bottom of the page)!
This is interesting, where it seems like Tumblr integrates a lot of the existing social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Bloggers, and even Instgram, where most of the time there are "Cross-Post" of contents especially Photos, complimenting the original posts, and extending your audiences to a larger group of people.
I would love to try it out, and see what I can get out of it, especially for my online store :)
So! What do you think? Would you give it a try? And how do you think platforms like this will affect social media marketing?
There seems to have been a big big big big big discussion going on about Facebook & Google+ in the past few days, especially after Facebook has modified and upgraded its NEW LOOKS! And in the same time, many of our classmates has blogged about Facebook vs. G+. Many of us like it, dislike it, or are still getting used to the new looks and new functions, however did you realized that we are moving into.....
"F-Commerce"!?!?!?!
In the past years online businesses are done normally through E-Commerce, doing business through websites or over the internet. Consumers are able to purchase through websites and pay through different payment methods such as Paypal or Credit cards. The use of mobile devices has also increases, where M-Commerce was introduced, where consumer are able to purchase through connected mobile devices.
NOW! With the rise of Social Media, F-Commerce or Facebook Commerce has emerged! Businesses are utilizing and exploiting Facebook as a business platform, yet in the same time a marketing tool to increase engagement and awareness.
An article from The Age: Look Out Here Comes F-Commerce mentions about how businesses today are selling directly through Facebook to its target market. Several examples such as JC Penny, Petco, and Gilt are given to illustrate usage of F-Commerce. However, The Age also mentions that for Facebook to be widely accepted as a selling platform, it depends on the purchasing experience through Facebook, and most importantly the overcoming with different Noises in Facebook such as personal "News Feed". Therefore, not many companies and brands are doing this, but instead using Facebook as what we learnt as a promotional tool.
I do think that more and more businesses have exploited E-Commerce, M-Commerce, and will definitely move to F-Commerce very very soon. Like what we discusses in class, Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Payvment has already been highly accepted. Therefore, if more and more businesses are trying to sell over Facebook, Facebook may come up with new platforms to fit the companies needs, bringing a new era of Online commerce to consumers around the world.
Do you think we are striving to F-Commerce soon?
What do you think?
Let me know! Down Below :D
Last week, we had a session on Twitter, and learnt some interesting things about Twitter and how businesses can go about using Twitter as a business tool. A few weeks ago! I was trying to find some technical help for my Mac, and thought of a Mac store "Next Byte" which is located behind my house. However, I was too lazy to go down so i decided to find some help online first.
SO! After going into "Next Byte" website, I discovered this Online Technical Help! Not what we usually see and use, where we are redirected to a chat box, and wait for ages to get connected, and get disconnected half way through! Or waiting 15 - 30 Minute for our call to get connected to a representative and wasting our phone credits! Instead! We Tweet it!
TwelpTribe! is a partnership of a technical support website with other existing Mac supports and Experts (Next Byte & iConcierge) in Australia. All tweeters needs to do when facing a technical Mac problem is "Tweet", and mentioning,
@twelptribe
in your tweet. Soon after, an expert of a technical support will tweet back, guiding you through your problems.
In my opinion, this is extremely clever, in terms of using Social media as a tool of Customer Supports. Since many users nowadays have Twitter, why not make use of it more usefully. I do think that this type of customer service would be beneficial for many organizations out there. However, there may not have been many followers just yet, but I do think that this is a very good way to get fast free instant responses on your technical problem.
What do you think? Let me know...Down Below! :D (Quoting Peter Chao, from YouTube!)
After reading Kate's post about Pinterest I realized how addictive I've got with this photo sharing program called "Instagram". Many of you might have known it and used it already on either you iPhone or iPad. The program was initially designed for iPhone. Users are able to take photos and share it instantly on the Instagram community. Just like Facebook, you can Like, Share, Tweet, Comment, Follow, Geotag sharing your photos to anyone who uses the App.
This leads me to talk about how Mobile devices has taken over the social media world, where everyone is using social media on-the-go, with their mobile devices (e.g. iPhone & iPad).
I have also found that there are a lot of brands who uses this to share snapshots of their life. Starbucks for instance, uses Instagram to engage with consumers, allowing consumers to take photos while drinking Starbucks and #Tagging it to be shared in its Instagram page. This is extremely interesting, where it allows users to engage with the brand more through sharing their life and events with Starbucks with everyone in the Instagram community. This has got me curious in understanding how Instagram relates to business and how it can be used as a business tool.
Here are some benefits for businesses to use Instagram,
1. It helps brands to find products for their customers not just customers for their products.
2. It’s an opportunity to conduct real-time market research.
3. To drive momentum.
4. To get people talking about what you do and why you do it.
5. For customer engagement and intuitive marketing.
6. To deepen relationships.
7. It enables you to put the customer front a center.
8. For running competitions.
For me I would use this for Competitions and Engaging my customers to share their products they bought from me, for example Sneaker wise, "What they are wearing today?". This would be an extremely fun platform to share how they are rockin their kix everyday.
Do you think that Businesses should move more to mobile social network apps, providing a new way to build relationship and engage with consumers...? (E.g. New Innovative Apps) Most importantly! Would Apps like these be considered as a Social Media?
What do you think?
Anyhow! Don't forget to follow me "chunfs" :D and I'll follow you!
Interestingly, brands continually to exploit Facebook as a marketing tool and a place to engage customers. Vacant a US company who deals with a lot of large and small brand pop-up store has enabled Facebook users to create Flash Sales and Earn Money through the use of "mypopupshop"! MicroMarketing a Swedish company who has designed an App for Facebook, allowing online users to open "Pop-Up Shops" for their selected brands.
All users need to do is download the App, Choose and Brand, and Promote it to their friends. Commissions will be paid to each sales made by the users. After 30 days representing the store, users can choose to continue to sell the selected brands or choose other brands. This is interesting in terms of what we discussed in class yesterday about Forrester Classifications: Owned, Paid, and Earned. Would this be a Paid? or Earned?
I really think this is a very clever strategy to expose a brand through the use of social media and actually earn some revenue from it. As many marketing classes has mentioned WOM is a very powerful in terms of influencing ones network. In this case, users benefits from paid commission by the selected brand, and brands benefits from getting to sell more products and exposure of products through these users. What do you think?
Unlike eBay, you have to choose your own products and sell, you can represent a brand selling its product to your friends and social network, through the use of an APP in Facebook! How good is that!
I would use this to make some extra income! :) Unfortunately, this App hasn't been launched yet! :(
Yesterday in class, we were discussing some Facebook functions and Marketing functions on Facebook. As we seen in class, there are many things that organizations and SME can use to expose themselves on Facebook. However, there are more functions in Facebook that businesses can use and can be beneficial to ones business.
As a page, you are allowed to add Apps or Customize your own Apps, as mentioned in class. There is an App call "Review", which allows fans to rate and comment on your business. This is extremely suitable for restaurants and service industry allowing customer to "Give Stars" and give a "Review" about the brand or the company.
This App was developed by Facebook but doesn't seem to be popular among businesses. I looked at several restaurants Fan Page e.g. Hardware Societe and Thai Culinary (Some of the restaurants I go to! Great Food!) The Review function is not there. Which I think would be beneficial for businesses such as restaurants to drive more traffic through opinions, comments, and ratings.
Have you spotted any Facebook Fan Pages using this "Reviews" function? If so, do you think that it can be as powerful as food blogs or other food rating sites such as "Urbanspoon"? I personally think that it would be quiet useful for businesses such as restaurants to integrate everything in one platform.
I was watching "Gruen Transfer Season 4, Episode 2" just now over the ABC website, and came across an interesting topic for Social Media Marketing. There was a part in the show talking about users generated content going "Viral". In this particular topic it was a user generated commercial posted on YouTube and Vimeo and has received massive views and feedbacks.
To start things off, let me just explain a bit about what the term "Viral Video" & "Viral Marketing" means.
According to Wikipedia (2011),
"Viral videos are videos, often containing humor, shared through an online social networking platform such as YouTube and has gain its popularity in a short period of time."
"Viral marketing is a buzzword referring to marketing techniques that uses social network platforms to increase brand awareness or achieve other marketing objectives."
In the show, they talked about a user generated video of a "Fake Skittle Commercial". The clip has gone Viral and received more than 3 Million hits in less than a month through YouTube and Vemeo. In the clip it also mentioned that the video has nothing to do with "Skittles", therefore making it a fake ads spreading across the internet. Check out the video below.
Note: (I am really sorry for the inappropriateness of this video ><", but it is the actual video that was shown on Gruen Transfer (Half Censored - This one is Original Version) and made me want to blog about!)
Apparently, in the Gruen Transfer show, it mentioned an interesting point about how "Viral Videos" are normally taken down by the companies due to the image and contents that social media users generates about the brand. However, this video hasn't been taken down just yet. Why is that?
The experts mentioned that the video is actually helping "Skittles" to increase its brand awareness through its attention catching content. Moreover, many viewers also suspect that this is an actual "Skittles" banned or leaked video, where the experts in Gruen Transfer also mentions that it has all the characteristics of a real branding commercial. However, it is mentioned that it has nothing to do with "Skittles" at the beginning clip, which makes it interesting in the fact that "Skittles" has not taken any action to this particular "Fake Ad".
Should "Skittles" take any action on this viral clip? or should they keep it on there since it is somehow beneficial their brand?
In my opinion, I guess because it is beneficial to the company, may not be the right image to convey but definitely did a great job in increasing brand awareness, Skittles should not take any action towards this clip. However, the image and content of the video in my opinion is quiet inappropriate, since Skittles is a candy brand targeting children.
What would you do if you were Skittles, and what do you think about the Viral Video? Comments :)
PS. I couldn't post the "Gruen Transfer" Video in here, if you would like to watch the show, you can follow this link. It is at the "Ad Cruch" part at around 19:20. Enjoy!).
I have just came across our class mate Mary Wong's blog, and read an interesting blog about the benefits of social media for an organisation that she provided. Like I mentioned in my previous blog post, is social media platform such as Facebook a good marketing tool? Mary Wong's blog post has answered the question of what social media can do and the benefits of it.
However, What are the risks, threats, and issues that marketers might face when not managing their social media properly?
I mentioned eWOM (Electronic Word-of-Mouth) as one the threats that marketers should be aware of in Mary Wong's blog post. I also came across a blog talking about the threats to social media marketing, and "lack of control of the message" was one of the top 10 threats that these marketing seniors face. I thought it was equally important for us to look at the threats versus benefits, where after all we may all face these problems and frustrations. Therefore, what are some other existing threats that organisations may face with social media?
Hello everyone, this is my first time blogging seriously :). Hope to hear some comments and gain some knowledge from everyone.
From my observation and also being an online store owner myself, Facebook seems to be one of the "MUST HAVE" Social medium nowadays. However, it is quiet Tough to do things right and get the traffic going, especially when wanting to engage to your consumers and earning a "Like" from them.
I have been running my online store for more than 4 years, and have just recently (6 Months Ago) created a Facebook Fan page and still can't get a hold of HOW??? to increase sales and reputation through the use of Facebook. Facebook advertising has also been used a lot to gain exposures to the public. Does it really work? From my experience (I have actually attempted to advertise through FB with the "Pay per Click" ads). It does work to an extent in increasing traffic. However, it did not increase interactions and sales.
There are many successful cases and examples of both individuals and firms using Facebook and gaining a fortune out of it. How do they do this? and What is the key to success of using Facebook as a marketing tool? However, there are also cases of FB pages that fails.
This leaves a question to us to explore the issue of whether or not "Facebook is a Good Marketing Tool?" Also, how should marketers actually manage their FB pages?
Talking about measuring, Facebook seems to have added a new feature to Facebook Pages! I can't say its a "FEATURE" but it is quiet interesting. I was looking through my online store page, and saw this...
