Social media strategy in organisation

Michaela Tuomenoksa
Assignment 14.7 - 14.8.2015 / WEEK 11 - 15



CASE STUDY

For this last blog assignment I have chosen a company named Mainossatama. I chose this company because I think they are a good example on how to use the social media to build up the company.

Mainossatama is an advertising company located in Forssa, Finland. They currently have seven people working in the company and they use the social media actively for marketing. I have been following them on Facebook since 2013 when I completed my first internship there during vocational school.

Currently Mainossatama uses Facebook and Instagram (or as they call it themselfs "Mainosgram"). I think a Facebook page is a must these days for a company and they post works, news and happenings there also as on their homepage. They joined Instagram some months back and in the beginning I thought it was too much. Or not that they joined Instagram, but the amount of posts and pictures made me question the point of doing that. But I actually enjoy their Instagram these days and they have a good sense of humor in their pictures. I think Mainossatama is a very professional advertisment company with some seriously skilled graphic designers. It's really important to share the  work they do, because that's the biggest way to advert your company. It's also very nice to see what a great team they are and it also shows the potential customers that these are really great people to work with. They take pride in what they do and also add a bit of fun to it.

Mainosgram

Mainossatama gets a lot of feedback on their Facebook page and also directly from their customers. That's the way they evaluate their success, and also the likes on their social media sites are a way to count their success. Their objective is obviously to get their company out there and advert their services. It's a though time to have an advertising company today and the competition is hard. The company that takes time in marketing itself the most, also succeeds the most.

In Mainossatamas case and I believe in most of the companies it's really important to represent the company at all times, especially in the social media. Everything can be found via Google and it's really important to think about how your actions can effect the company you work in/own. Mainossatama is a company where the word "team" really means something, as I said before. They all take part in using their company social media, and no one is left out. And the fact that they do all this togheter so they can build the company and set goals togheter makes this an good example. If I could give any advice to other companies, I would ask them to check out Mainossatama's social media sites. Ofcourse it depends on the company, but in general.


SOCIAL MEDIA CRISIS

I absolutely love this topic! 

The first example that came to my mind is the Midhill water glass disaster. You guys remember this? So... This guy went to the Midhill resturant for dinner, ordered a meal etc. He also asked for a small glass of water. Later he found out that the water glass actually cost 1,5€. Everything else had it's price on the menu except for the water. He then commented on their Facebook-page that the burgers we're okay, but in Finland you shouldn't ask for 1,5€ for a water glass without even saying it costs. Then the shitstorm (excuse my french) started.... Midhill replied:

" Yeah and the staff that brings you the water don't cost? Come on. You can always complain and you should, but you have to have an argument. It's (water) free at home. Not in resturants."

In this case the customer wasn't rude. He just simply said what he thought and I get the point that the resturant should mention that the water costs, even if it's about 1,5€ or less. But the way Midhill responded was childish, unprofessional and stupid.

One thing that makes situations worse like this are when a company then deletes the post. No.. What did you just do. By ignoring the feedback you just dig a deeper hole. And that's exactly what Midhill did. But fortunately many people had already seen the post and then things just got way out of hand. Someone even commented Midhill's reply by saying that it was a very unprofessional and stupid reply, like saying "stay at home if our prices don't suite you.", and I agree.

People started spamming their Facebook-page with sarcastic commens... Once it goes on the internet, it won't be forgotten:

"If you order a glass of water, do you get ice as well? Or do you have to pay for them? Per icecube?"
"I was the 1000 liker, do I get a free glass of water?" <-- Someone else replied:
"No, they still have to bring it to your table. 1,5€ please, come on."
"Vesi sihisi Midhillissä" 

It was hilarious reading the comments! Hans Välimäki who owns the Midhill resturants did give a statement about the case. But I just feel like he thought th customer was an idiot and that the resturant didn't have anything to apologize for. How did the case affect Midhill? Well... Bad publicity is publicity after all? This is just not the way to handle things...

The second case that also came to my mind was the Turku Energia disaster. An 80 year old man got his electricity cut off during christmas holidays. Turun Sanomat wrote about the incident that the man had his electricity cut off because he had two unpaid bills (aprox. 90€ worth). He had asked them if he could have paid them in January when he was supposed to get his pensionmoney, but Turku Energia refused. Unfortunately the social welfare office couldn't process his application to get help in time.

Fortunately his apartment kept a steady heat during winter, but he had to get his food from his neighbours fridge and there was no way he could listen to the radio or watch tv. A friend of the old man commented how absurd it was and aggravating. For the article Turku Energia had nothing to say... This really angered people and they started commenting on their Facebook.

People offered to pay the bills but Turku Energia did not agree to this. For some reason you couldn't pay for anyone else and I don't understand why? It's not like you have to give a persons private information to pay a bill? In the spirit of christmas this was a really sad case. Things just got ugly and Turku Energia kept deleting comments.

After the shitstorm someone had donated money so the man got his bills payed and finally got his electricity back on. Turku Energia posted on their Facebook that things had gotten out of hand and they thank everyone for the help. They informed that they will (once again) delete all the comments regarding the incident and in the future hope that people will give them feedback trough mail.

Companies should learn that wat once gets on the internet will stay there, forever. You can't just hide from a issue and delete comments. It will only make things worse and the company will be seen as an ignorant and unprofessional copmany that isn't ready to take responsibility.


SOCIAL MEDIA FUTURE

The social media is growing really fast. It's kind of scary in certain ways, how obsessive we've become of it? Everything evolves around the social media and it's a constant competition for companies and also private persons. I believe companies will be using the social media more and more in the future and there will come new sites that will be as popular as Facebook (etc.) today. It's about keeping up all the time.

But I kind of hope people wouldn't be so obsessive about it in the future and rather focus on living the real life and not the virtual life (me included). It's okay to use Facebook and all the other sites from time to time, but it shouldn't be the only thing you think about (how many likes did you get and so on). But then again I hope the social media can be a place to raise awareness of things, share and educate people around the world. As long as it is used right it can be really powerfull. But by using it wrongly, it can also have a negative impact.

This was my last blog assignment and I thank you guys for keeping up with my posts. I really enjoyed this course! Did you?

Facebook and Linkedln....Assignment 2-3

2. No, I have not used Facebook and Linkedln as job search. I recently created my Linkedln account but haven’t used it much. I just have a basic profile. 3. OnePlus is a start-up company which was founded in December 2013. The One was designed to be a low-cost smartphone (290€) comparable in performance and quality to competing devices released at around the same time, and features Cyanogen OS as its operating system.

The phone was first made available for sale on 25 April 2014. The customers could buy the phone from their websites and had to have an invitation system to buy one. These invitations were primarily distributed by the company to the registered emails randomly or through contests in Facebook and other social media platforms. Since the phone is cheap, there were thousands of people all over the world wishing for the phone. As of April 2015 the invitation system was removed. And alongside the company has announced the release of their new phone “OnePlus Two”. They have mentioned that the phone will be available to buy without any invitations but also it is rumored that the phone won’t be as cheaper as the old one. They inform about the new product and events from their websites and from their social media pages. They are active in the social media, posting almost every day. They only manufacture smartphones and they only have one Facebook. They do answer their clients, sometimes in Facebook but mostly the questions are put in their forum in the website. The company got success in Facebook after the rumor about the phone started. The phone was appealing and the reviews were good. Everybody wanted to have one, but all they could do was wait for the invitation and scan Facebook or twitter for new information and new competition.

Sharing more

Michaela Tuomenoksa
Assignment 24.6-13.7 / WEEK 8 - 10

Sorry, sorry, sorry guys... What's up with this lazy summer? Time just seems to fly by!

SHARING

1. I think it's really awesome that companies include customers in their business. It unites the copmany with it's customers. It's also one way for a company to get free ideas how to improve their business.

One example that came to my mind (I took part in it) is when Sisu had a campaign where anyone could participate and design a new look for their Sisu package. They had loads of people taking part in it and as a designer myself it was really nice to see so many different versions and designs. And they saved money on not having to employ a professional designer, hahaha... The winner was granted a 3000 euro reward and Sisu pastilles for a year. People also got the chance to vote their favorite that should win, but Sisu still had the right to choose their own winner... And one thing that was rather funny about the case was that the design that got most of the votes had an Italian flag on it... If someone is not aware, Sisu's are made in Italy today, not in Finland anymore. So the whole campaign also got some protests.

The italian Sisu that got 717 votes (2nd in most favorite category)

One of my designs.

But it was very fun and I was really amazed how innovative people were. Sisu got a lot of great designs!


2. Twitter is still very new to me. But Twitter is one place to get information, news and updates in almost realtime. In the beginning of June I was on Twitter all night following a few reporters updating about the Lisa Holm case in Sweden. It was really intense and unfortunately it had a very sad ending... Aftonbladet and Expressen updated their Twitter almost in realtime.

(35 minuter later....)

Argh, I really serached the internet troughout for this! I had a Twitter account but deleted it because I didn't use it at all (wasn't for me) but I really tried to Google for an marketing example for the blog. Sorry teacher, I failed this part. My brain is totally empty.

In general I don't necessary find Twitter as the best marketing place for a company? And marketing for me means advertising the company. I mean, for example: a plumber company may not reach their customers via Twitter. What would they update about with limited characters? I find Twitter most usefull among celebrities and politicians (I'm probably sooo wrong), because they activly use Twitter and can via Twitter get their voices heard, like Obama did. A lot of followers = action.

3.  I've heard of Second Life! Though it was trough a really weird documentary where people met there online and had the weirdest relationships... Like a virtual romance where they spent all their time. People got married or had a virtual wedding.. Ehm..

But for me SL is just weird... I would never take a company or anything serious that uses SL. Why would you need a character in a virtual world to have meetings or something? Does not seem professional at all... If you need to have a meeting with people that are elsewhere, you can use Skype. I just don't see this as a professional thing, I think it's a bit childish to sit and "play" this online and chatting with others as if it was a meeting, "McMuffin_1655 (name of Georges character), do you have that report ready for our client? By the way I love that shirt on your character!" :D

But if you use SL and can point out why it's good, please feel free to comment why!

Sharing business ideas

ELLA HÄRKÖNEN
ASSIGNMENT: WEEK 8-10

1. Participating in marketing

I find it to be rather clever for the companies to include customers to marketing process as well. It gives the customers the feeling of ownership for the company and costs absolutely nothing for the company.

A Turku based restaurant, Shamrock Cafe had a competition "create your own pizza" a while back. Customers could share their ideas of what kind of a pizza would be their absolute dreamy one. The restaurant picked their favorites and then people could vote on Facebook that which pizza sounded the most delicious to them. The winner's pizza was on the menu for a while. So simple yet so efficient! Pizza is this one type of food that I bet everyone loves and because most of us like to think ourselves as little geniuses when it comes to food, Shamrock Cafe gave an opportunity to share ideas (and probably "steal" some of them on the way!) and making customers feel like the winners. Bravo!

2. Twitter and companies

Twitter as many other social media tools are indeed powerful tools for companies or private people. Twitter's speciality is that one can only use 140 characters and so by the tweets are rather short. These days when people don't have "time" (I mean seriously, it's all about time management!) to read longer posts, is Twitter really handy. Twitter is free, it is fast and it is easy!

I followed Ellen DeGeneres for two weeks in Twitter and she totally makes me crack! She posts funny photos and texts and so by makes herself seem super funny. She obviously promotes her own TV show and I think that she is doing good job with it. She normally sticks out of political issues, except for gay-rights hence she is gay herself. For a celebrity or TV persona, it is rather normal to stay "Switzerland" on political aspects in a way of not upsetting anyone.

Her speciality is to photoshop herself in funny photos and she never is scared to make fun out of herself.
I wanted to follow a celebrity instead of a company (I mean, technically she IS a company, but nevertheless) because I wanted to see more personal interaction online. She has a great balance between sharing personal information that is still not too personal. I really enjoy her show and it was fun to follow her for these weeks!

3. Games

In all honesty, I have never heard of Second Life before and had to google it. That is why it comes really hard to comment the opportunities the game has in business life! I have never played any virtual games (oh wait a second! Does Sims count?) so my area of specialty does not lie in here. Anyway after googleing a bit, I noticed that indeed some companies use it very efficiently (oh gosh, does this mean I should learn how to use it too??) and can hereby be a tool in business as well.

Sharing and marketing

Michaela Tuomenoksa
Assignment: 16.-23.6 /  WEEK 7

I did not quite understand the Shareslide task or what to actually look for, but i'll try my best. (Search for educational material or marketing sites?)

I have never heard of this site before. To understand it better I think I would have to use it for a longer time. I'm not sure if this is similar to Prezi?


Sosiaalinen media kasvun ja myynnin työkaluna

Click here to go to the slide

This was an excellent slide for what I was looking for and there were really important points made in the slide. Companies should always take a look at slides like this to really understand the importance of the social media and how much it can affect a company's marketing. Very useful!

"Vilperi ON" / Vilperi Digimediatoimisto Oy

For the next task (video) I chose Vilperi Digimediatoimisto Oy's company video. I think this is a very positive, fun and inviting video showing what Vilperi Digimediatoimisto is about and the video also includes the workers themselves commenting on the company. For some people this might be a bit over the top but then again I think when working with video production you just haft switch it up a little bit. But check it out:

Puts you in a good mood, right? Based on that video I would love to work there! Company videos are really fun and also important. But If a company decides to make one I really hope they do it with the help of professionals and not by themselves. Pictures, videos and adverts always need to be done by professionals! This video can be very good for marketing Vilperi as an employer or marketing Vilperi's services for customers.

Sharing in the social media

For this task I could have chosen several examples and I'm debating on witch one I should chose, Pinterest or Facebook... But I'll go with the hottest social media site right now, Facebook! Haha..

(What a save choice) Facebook is the place to be today (of course Twitter and other sites are popular today) because it is multifunctional. For me I think it's a must that companies have their own Facebook pages. It's free, it's easy to use so why not? There's a big possibility your customer uses Facebook and by following your page they get all the adverts and news right away.

 "Oh, Gigantti just posted a picture on Facebook saying that the first 50 customers get a DVD-movie for free when buying a DVD player, let's go and buy one!"

That's how it works (lol the example, gosh...)! I have also in many cases seen a really good offer or advert that made me use a company's service or buy some products. Todays trend is also putting up draws for the followers, I see them all the time. For example:

Do you want to win a new tv? Please share and comment on this post to be a part of the draw! Good luck!

People share the post and the company gets more viewers. But one company does this waaaaaay too much and uses Facebook way too much and you might know it: Jounin Kauppa

Argh! Sometimes I just want to shout STOP IT!  He uses the company's Facebook page like his private one and he posts stuff there all the time, it gets so annoying. It was okay in the beginning but now it's just like, dude, please leave Facebook alone for a while. Less is more!

I think Facebook still is the number one social media site to use for marketing!