Social Media Tools

Posted on November 30, 2011 at 6:05 pm by admin

I learned a lot this semester about social media more so than I already thought I knew. But the tools I just found out about gives me a better insight on how I can measure topics or discussion in the social media space. I really like Twends and Google Insights for Search as influential tools that can tell you the data in real time and historical data.

Twends gives concurrent post people are making to twitter it goes as fast or as slow as you want and it identifies if what is being said is bad or good. Also the word cloud feature located on the the page gives you a better look at the commonalities in peoples posts.

One of the takeaways I get from this website and a few others that do the live twitter scrolling or generate results based on what people are saying is that a computer half the times can’t tell if the person is saying something good or bad. This happens for instance when someone posts about two things and mentions one thing as bad like “Powerade sucks, gatorade is better.” The computer tends to generate a negative result unless it is used in correct sentence structure.

Google Insight for Search shows graphs and lists keywords on certain terms people have looked for. It also allows you to scan a certain time period. Also a unique thing about this Google feature is you can select a certain time frame to choose from.Its always interesting when you find out that a rival company is the number two search term when searching for your product.

Social Media is the key to the future I read somewhere that close to 75% of businesses in America don’t have Social Media presence by way of Facebook. That amount is astounding when you see how many people are using Facebook alone.

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Sony’s Social Media Marketing Strategy

Posted on November 23, 2011 at 5:22 pm by admin

The brand I chose for this was the first think I saw in front of my face. Sony is the on of the world’s leading manufacturer of electronic products. It is imperative that a big corporation has a presecne in  the internet and social media arena. They have a few Twitter pages, Facebook, Foursquare, and YouTube channel  and each one does a different thing.

On Twitter, the first page I found was @Sonylistens. This pages main purpose is to hear out customer complaints. The official description is “The official Sony Electronics Customer Service Twitter page. We’re here to help Mon-Fri 9am-8pm ET & Sat-Sun 12pm-6pm ET. We look forward to assisting you!” Just reading through some of the comments they answer questions about release dates, questions on what memory card a person should go with for one of the cameras, and asking for reference number for hopes to further assist customers.

The other Twitter page is @Sony with the description of the official Twitter account for Sony in the United States. Believe that anything you can imagine, you can make real. This page tells people about all the different happenings of Sony. Such as referring people to the contests that are going on, any happenings that are going in the charity sector, and of course deals.

Through the Twitter page I was referred to a contest on the YouTube channel. On the page the first thing that you see is a video play of music due Karmin. They are trying to get people to submit cover versions of their song because they are known for covering other peoples songs so well. Here you can interact by viewing other peoples videos and leaving comments on what you think of them. Also on this page their is a make.believe section of videos. Here are a lot more well produced videos possibly by Sony themselves of people who go through anything to accomplish a dream.  The band called Inward Eye was highlighted in a video as going from Canada all across the USA to play concerts everywhere.

A part of their social media that I don’t know much about is Foursquare. The Sony Foursquare has a bunch of their locations available on it and what kind of events or happenings are going on at some of their retail branches. A lot of their post are in the major markets of Austin,TX; New York, NY; and Philadelphia, PA. Posts about giveaways, PS3 tournaments, and chances to win prizes.

The place I started was on Facebook. It is the epicenter of Sony’s social media with 1,247,454+ likes and thousands of people talking about it. Sony does a great job of making posts, and creating interactive user content. Posts about the 5 year anniversary of the PS3 and details about Karmin and what they have going on on YouTube. Also an app on their page sidebar called Sony Ambassador which asks people what role Sony’s has played in you’re life. Of course, their is a sidebar tab that says Sony Giveaways.

They are using create and connect of the 4c’s. A metric they can use is count the new number of likes they received, read the retweets, and see how many videos were submitted through the contest. I think it would be nice to include something to control in one of their next campaigns.

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Online Privacy – Is it dead or alive?

Posted on November 16, 2011 at 10:26 pm by admin

After reading the Wall Street journal article it was clear to me that there should be more concern about online privacy than I had before. It’s astonishing how many of the top websites Americans use install upwards to more than one hundred cookies and cookie-like technology. I generally don’t have a problem giving my information out or divulging my interests to sites to have a better customized experience. The internet has always been known to me as a place where nothing can be placed in secrecy.

One thing that I do not like is when companies sell our information to other companies so if we go to their site the ads and things of the nature relate to the rest of our other online experiences. The article mentions that individuals information is bought and sold like the stock market exchanges and it has sprung in the last 18 months.  One of my pet peeves in real life when someone comes up to me discussing personal information that I haven’t shared with them. Whether I was planning on sharing the information with them or not it should not be discussed.

Privacy in general is not dead however on the internet it is for the most part. People still trust the fact that Paypal is a reliable site that holds onto important stuff like your money. I think that it is important for people to know that everything is archived so companies can pull up information on you at on a whim. I think consumers need protection on what can and cannot be shared. I think things like preferences and likes and dislikes should be shared but not critical information. Critical information I am talking about is name, address, height, weight, family information, health related information.

Laws need to be created and adapted but more importantly for this to have any effect they need to be followed through upon and people need to be fined. This will constrict marketers a little bit but other mediums will become available in the near future.

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