Taylor Jones; Assignment #3

As of Friday, November 1^st, Taco Bell’s twitter account has 873, 017 followers and follows only 16 accounts. Taco Bell uses its social media presence to interact with a youthful audience and open the dialogue between customers about their products.  By using effective marketing techniques and leveraging celebrity fans, Taco Bell has created a social media footprint that encourages participation and rewards.  Taco Bell currently has a number of premiums available to customers. To promote their  new “5 buck box”, the restaurant has teamed up with Sony to give customers a chance to win a Play Station 4. The twitter account instructs users to buy the box for the chance to win the game console. In addition to this, Taco Bell has asked their followers to send in pictures of them eating the 5-buck box in order to get digital coupons to the restaurant.  The request brought in a surge of submissions.

From a participatory standpoint, Taco Bell does an amazing job of creating events around their products and giving the users a chance to get in on the action.  Taco Bell hosted a number of large-scale events in the Los Angeles area to promote the release of their Fiery Doritos Taco in September. Users had a chance to attend these events by retweeting certain tweets from the Taco Bell twitter account. Taco Bell’s twitter page contains a great deal of user-generated content. Taco bell routinely asks followers to post pictures of them doing fun, eccentric things with Taco Bell products. For example, one user proposed to his girlfriend with a Taco, and one follower dressed up as a Doritos Taco for Halloween and submitted the photo.  Taco Bell not only retweets these photographs but they also include them in their Twitter background photos.

One of Taco Bell’s biggest strengths is the dialogue they create between their customers. The restaurant creates an environment where not only can the users communicate with Taco Bell about their products but also with users all around the world. Taco Bells routinely ask fans to use hastags and tweet their usual order at the restaurant.  Taco Bell also asks users to post reaction photos and videos after trying new items on the menu. Taco Bell has also done an excellent job providing relevant, engaging content for followers. Taco Bell has garnered a large celebrity following largely due to their relationship with MTV where they have sponsored a number of awards shows and giveaways with the networks. Stars of MTV shows routinely tweet about Taco Bell and send pictures of them eating the restaurants products. By leveraging these celebrities’ star power, Taco Bell has been able to tap into markets they may have not been able to infiltrate before.

Company: Comcast Sports Net Bay Area
Social media page: Facebook
Status:  27,595 likes · 3,220 talking about this

 

Over the summer I had the opportunity to work with Comcast Sports Net Bay Area. Comcast Sports Net is one of the most popular networks in the Bay Area and reaches a large audience every day. As a member of their Public Relations and Events team I was often in contact with their social media websites to engage our fans and provide them with breaking news on the Giants, A’s, and other Bay Area sports teams. They have several social media pages on multiple sites including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Their most collective and comprehensive site is their Facebook page.  The Comcast website on Facebook has over 27, 500 likes and is useful for fans because it includes a variety of interactive resources that keep the fans up to date and informed on players, teams, and upcoming events. Almost every day the site uploads several photos of players or current events happening in the sports world. Some of the most recent uploads are photos from Joe Montana’s London football clinic, the Forty Niners progress during their season, and to keep it even more entertaining, a Halloween special of Bay Area sports figures in costume. Along with photos, the site also uploads many articles on what is currently happening in the sports world and beyond. Comcast keeps their fans’ attention by not simply just focusing on sporting events but also popular culture surrounding sports. One of their most active posts was an article on Kanye’s recent proposal to celebrity, Kim Kardashian at At&T Park. This article sparked a wide range of conversation topics, opinions, and comments. Not only does Comcast constantly post links to sports articles, videos, current events and photos but they also engage the fans by opening the floor to discussion, asking fans how they feel about certain topics like whether or not Harrison Barnes will start the season as the Golden State Warrior's sixth man or if $14 million is too much money to bring back Bartolo Colon. In addition to the page, the website promotes attendance to sports games by providing fans with schedules of game times and locations. They also present a comprehensive list of several other events for fans to participate in like the “Post Game BBQs” or the “Authentic Warriors Road Viewing Party.”

 However, the site falls short in a few categories. One feature that the website can improve upon is providing fans with premiums. Unfortunately, the site does not offer any free give a ways to attract the fans which definitely can hurt the fan base. By engaging the fans in promotional give a ways, Comcast can certainly increase their status on Facebook as many more fans would be enticed to join the page.  The site also has very little user-generated content and focuses more on their own products, articles, and photos rather than the fans’ materials. The site could be more engaging if fans could contribute their own threads of discussion topics and photos rather than simply replying to the one’s Comcast provides.
            Overall, though, the Comcast Sports Net Bay Area website is effective in providing an atmosphere that is appealing to their fans through a variety of means. Participation is one of the biggest components to this site as a “dialogue” environment is ultimately created through open ended questions with room for endless comments, concerns, and discussions. They also have an active content flow in which photos, videos, links, schedules, and events are posted and updated every day.

 

-Melissa Russi

Becca Bressler – Assignment 3: Social Media Marketing Analysis

 Company: Ford Mustang

Social Media Platform: Facebook

Popularity: 5,497,021 likes/ 200,002  talking about this

Ford Mustang focuses its social media energy on engaging the user and focusing on participation. By doing so, it has fostered a community among both Mustang owners and admirers of the car, which in my opinion marks their great success in the social media-marketing world. Ford Mustang publishes about 1-2 posts each day, and they are very creative in their use of contests and games. In the spirit of Halloween they released an application where you could customize your own Mustang and “Monsterize it”. This ploy alone has garnered much user-generated content and a few people each hour have been submitting their own design to the Ford Mustang Page. Fans of the page also regularly upload pictures of them and their Ford Mustang from all over the world. Ford even has attractive premiums – they put on a Ford Mustang 5.0 Fever Sweepstakes in which one grand prize winner actually won a 2013 Ford Mustang. 

Another way in which Ford Mustang encourages participation is through their events. The Facebook profile has an events page noting a variety of performance tours and racing challenges all over the country. There is a general forums page, which allows for fans to talk directly to each other, however it is seldom used. They even have a top fans page where they rank fans on a point system where they receive points for liking Ford Mustang on Facebook, contributing through posts, comments and likes, and based on the quality of their participation. For example, their current ranked #1 fan has 35 posts on Ford’s Facebook page and 468 comments. It is unclear what the incentive is to be a top fan, but I would imagine there are some neat prizes involved.  They don’t offer a direct Customer Service “portal” on their Facebook page, but their page description does include a phone number and website for people with customer service questions or concerns. I think their content flow is what makes them so successful and relevant. They post daily and are varied in their material, which could be a cool video, picture, question, or combination. Each of their posts receive an upwards of tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. In all, Ford Mustang fans seem very enthusiastic and pleased with their relationship to the company on Facebook.

Claire Ebben - Assignment #3 Social Media Marketing Analysis

Facebook Page: Coca-Cola
Page Description: The Coca-Cola Facebook Page is a collection of your stories showing how people from around the world have helped make Coke into what it is today.
Popularity: 74,896,915 likes, 610,672 people "talking" about it

The Coca-Cola Facebook page is hugely popular. Over 74 million people have liked the page, allowing Coca-Cola access to these people's news-feeds, updating daily so that Coke becomes a part of their everyday lives. The page is a great social marketing tool because it is a way of making a large corporation like Coke to seem more accessible and personal to the consumer. The page features posts of Instagram pictures, such as one post that features a woman eating at a table, with the caption "Thumbs up if you're enjoying those leftovers..." continued with "...with a side of Coke!" printed on the picture. This can be seen as an example of effective social media marketing because not only is the post being utilized as a kind of print ad to associate eating food with drinking Coke, it also invites people to "like" the post, therefore generating popularity for the post and the page itself. In this way it is both the Coca-Cola company and the consumer who are working together to advertise and market the brand of Coke over and over.

The page is very successful in its different features. Coke employs both premiums and participation together through "America's Favorite Park" contest that they held earlier this year. Consumers were invited to have meet-ups in different parks in cities across America where Coke would be given out for free. The winning park received a $100k grant from Coke to restore or maintain the park. This enables consumers to engage directly with the product and actively participate in its promotion. Another feature on the Facebook page is a customer service portal in which customers can have a dialogue about Coke. On the page, there are many posts of a photo in which there is a blank space, asking fans to comment what they believe the missing word should be. For example, there is a post that says "I'd trade ______ for an ice-cold Coca-Cola right now!" inviting the users to share what they were "trade." There are many posts like this one, encouraging people to say positive things about Coke's different products. Another feature on the page is content flow. The page is updated daily, ensuring that the people who like the page already will be updated, but also encouraging people to like new material that will then be placed on non-fans news-feeds, hopefully garnering more people to like the page and increasing its popularity. One feature that the page does not have is user-generated content. All of the posts are clearly professional photos or generated material from Coca-Cola, demonstrating that the company wants to maintain authority on the page. However, the page admin does tag certain fans in each post, giving some sort of personal user interaction on these posts.

Assignment 3 - Chris Larson - Social Media Marketing Analysis

Bush's Bean's Facebook Page
Likes: 129,000; Talking about it: 1,680

Bush's Beans is probably one of the more popular brands of canned bean products, but that certainly isn't due to their Facebook page. While it certainly attempts to fulfill some of the qualities that signify appropriate use of Facebook for branding, it fails to construct an attractive and engaging social media presence. This is best demonstrated by the behavior of its contributors. While some comments say that they love the product, most mention how a user found mold in the can or a vole leg or how Bush's Beans uses GMOs in their products. This was Bush's Beans's only attempt at creating a customer service "portal" and it was relatively ineffective at that. The reason being that they only responded to the "vole leg" complaint and did so by urging the user to send their issue to a separate online customer service form, so even then they aren't completely utilizing Facebook in that respect.

In relation to the other factors, Bush's Beans does post new material daily, but it is mostly not engaging (different meal combinations, pictures of their product, etc.). At times they do try to encourage participation by asking a question, but these are rather infrequent and thus encourages little engagement. User-generated content isn't prohibited, but it is sparse as there is not any real incentive for people to post pictures of themselves or anything related. As for premiums, there are no mentions of any coupons or giveaways by the company itself. The only mention is in a comment that one user left after she asked for coupons. So premiums are only present when initiated by the user. In essence, Bush's Beans is an example of what companies should not do with social media marketing as it does not encourage user generated content, makes a marginal effort to increase site participation, provides no premium offers, posts unengaging content, and limits the use of the site for customer feedback.

Laura Bolton - Assignment #3 - Social Media Website Analysis

Company: TechCrunch

Social Media Platform: Facebook page

Likes: 863,000; 63,000 “talking about this”

            TechCrunch is an online news source that focuses primarily on technology start-ups, however also reports on mainstream, corporate companies such as Apple and HP. As a relatively new, company based in San Francisco, TechCrunch is very active in most social media websites – Facebook as their most prominent platform. 863,000 is a competitive amount of likes, however the ratio between posting-likes and the page as a whole is around 1:10000. Since the postings are mainly articles and videos, there is little room for audience participation or user-submitted content. It seems that the page is more of an extension or call-to-action for Facebookers to visit TechCrunch.com. The page is also lacking in premiums (not one contest exists), which perhaps explains this as there is no incentive for people to like to photos, videos, articles etc. Participatory content is also low in numbers - for example, “what would you hack if you could?” is a form of participatory content; it encouraged 31 people to comment, however, this is still insignificant to the 800,000+ likes. There is no customer service portal, but due to the news (as opposed to product) nature of the company, customer service isn’t especially essential, say compared to Apple for example.

On the other hand, I’d say that the content flow is excellent. On average the past week, there has been around 18 new pieces of content per day. Videos, articles, current market trends, and hashtags are constantly being posted around the clock and this variety of content makes the posts less repetitive and the user doesn’t always know what to expect. Recent tech news, TechCrunch event updates, how-to guides for new products, are all just a few of the types of content, and I think the company does a great job, especially compared to its competitors such as the Verge, in generating new and engaging content every hour of the day which permeates in the 800,000+ likes.

Claire Ebben - Assignment #2 Internet Crime

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/11/amanda-todd-suicide-bullying_n_1959909.html

Amanda Todd was a young Canadian girl from Vancouver who was the unfortunate victim of cyber-bullying, and more specifically, being threatened over the Internet. As a young girl, Amanda surfed chat rooms and was coerced into flashing the camera on her computer. A short time later, a man contacted her via Facebook and threatened to send the topless photo to everyone she knew if she didn't send him more pictures. He also knew her address, where she went to school, and names of her friends and family. Regardless of her response, the picture was sent to many people, causing Amanda to develop severe anxiety and depression. After changing schools, the man contacted Amanda yet again, causing her to lose many friends and become bullied at school, once even being beaten by a group of classmates. A month after posting a YouTube video recounting her story, Amanda regrettably committed suicide, leaving many concerned about the effects of cyber-bullying and Internet threats. 

This crime was clearly a result of dissociative anonymity in the criminal who threatened Amanda. The disinhibition due to the sense of anonymity and the disconnect between actions online and in the real world contributed to the criminal's confidence in confronting and threatening Amanda. This man would not have necessarily been able to threaten her on the street in the same way that he did over the Internet. This is a result of the anonymity of the Internet, and hiding behind one's online identity. In this way, the man's threats to Amanda took place solely over the Internet, and were therefore in some way "disconnected" from the actions that the man could take in the real world. This crime was also a result of dissociative imagination in Amanda, as she entered the chat room to make friends online. Dissociative imagination is the perception that actions on the Internet are not "real" - and that any actions on the Internet do not have consequences in the "real world." In Amanda's case, it could be argued that posing for the photo felt safer because she could not see the people she was talking to, and was alone in her room at home. Therefore, her inhibitions were lowered, allowing herself to become the victim of a total creep. In the real world, it is highly unlikely that young Amanda would have taken a topless photo out in public, or even in a more comforting setting in the real world. Therefore, by having this disinhibition, Amanda unfortunately set herself up to become a victim.