Stay Classy Marketers

Who the hell is Julius Caesar? You know I don’t follow the NBA!-Ron Burgundy, Anchorman

Who the hell is Ron Burgundy? You know I don’t follow the NFL!- Diana Brillhart, My Whole Life

Assignment Two

It’s crazy to think about how quickly news can spread over social media compared to traditional communication forms. Today, as a college student I rarely read the news, and yes I am embarrassed to say that, but I feel that I am just as informed by checking social media routinely throughout my day. I don’t get a newspaper or tune into the nightly news but what I do is follow CNN, OregonLive, BreakingNews and other news outlets on Twitter which updates me with all the same information in 140 characters. I may have to click on a link to read a full article, but 140 characters can keep me well informed on all important matters.

I knew instantly about the death of Nelson Mandela because of the hashtag #RIPNelsonMandela, the Boston Marathon bombing from #BostonStrong, I was updated about the freezing weather conditions from #PolarVortex and I knew all about how Miles Scott, a five year old boy saved San Francisco because of #batkid. The power of social media is undeniable. By using social media to your advantage is something that brands should capitalize on. Trending hashtags inform people of what is going on, but users are still on theses sites looking at their friend’s tweets, and looking at what brands are posting, on average 37 minutes a day.

The article HowAirlines Are Using Social Media to Deal With This Week’s Weather shows how important customer service is, especially in the airlines industry, with a major storm happening. American Airlines blew away their competition in the number of tweets that they sent to their passengers. Many people’s flights schedules were changed due to arctic temperatures, causing frustration and angry posts. By quickly responding, airlines were able to keep their customers happy, create a positive rapport, and create a comparative advantage through social media. By continually updating flight schedules, and replying to their audience through social media, airlines can keep customers choosing them over other airlines because of their quick response to annoying matters.

After my summer internship at DBA, I was offered a contracting position as the weekend community manager for Claire’s and Icing. It was my job to post on all social media channels for them, as well as keep customers happy. It was imperative that all tweets, Facebook post’s and messages were responded to, and extremely important that anyone with a complaint was left satisfied. As a company, it was very important to them to make sure that their customers were left happy after a bad experience, and well informed on all sales and promotions. Claire’s and Icing taught me that customer services comes first when on social media because everyone is able to see their complaint and your answer.

According to the Social Study in 2012, 33% of people follow a brand on social media and that number continues to increase.  It’s important to capture an audience and keep your customers happy, by responding, retweeting, favoriting. The more a company engages with their customers, the happier they are. From my personal experience, I am very happy when I tag a brand in an Instagram photo and they go in and “like” my photo, or when I have complained and I get a response I feel like i matter to them. I think the end of the article summed up my thoughts on this topic very well:

Moral of the story: If your brand isn't on social media, get on quickly because the ship is sailing without you, and when you’re there, put yourselves in the customer’s shoes and ask “what’s in it for me?”, then give it to ‘em.

I think that putting yourself in their shoes is the best way to phrase it. Brands need to see what the customer is seeing: if they are unhappy you should figure out what you can do to change that. An angry customer is likely to write on your Facebook wall, but so is a happy customer. So it is up to the brand- do you want angry posts or thankful posts? Do you want customers to see unanswered angry posts? If they see this behavior on your site, how do you think they will feel when going into the actual store?

Brands need to connect with their fans, though liking or replying. By engaging you form a relationship with the customer, and that in turn creates a competitive advantage. Making sure your customers are happy is a simple yet tedious task for brands, constantly checking every outlet multiple times a day and crafting copy that will satisfy a customer, takes time and practice. But once a brand can succeed and doing this, they put themselves ahead of their competitors and people will want to engage with the brand. 

Assignment One

I am a senior at Oregon State University majoring in Business Marketing and will be graduating in the Spring of 2014. I was raised in Portland, Oregon where I ran track, played soccer and golfed. I am an active member of Delta Gamma where I served as Director of Crews for 2 years. In Corvallis, I am a regular volunteer at Corvallis Caring Place spending time with the elderly, participating in other University sponsored and Greek life community service events as well as raising money and awareness for Service for Sight and Aid to the Blind. I have enjoyed the past few years in Corvallis (especially with the win at the Hawaii Bowl by the Beavers!), but upon June of this year I will be leaving the place I have called home for other opportunities with the hopes that my education and past employment will lead me to great endeavors.

I have had two major internships during my college education that have set me up with knowledge in the social media marketing industry. The first internship I have had was at Postano. Over the course of the past three and a half years I have personally seen this industry grow among users, platforms and brand engagement. 

This past summer, I had my second internship at Digital Brand Architects where I worked with different fashion brands to create the best social strategy for them. This internship helped me gain knowledge of how to best capture an audience though various social media platforms. In addition to a summer internship, I returned to New York City for Fall Fashion Week where I was able to use social media as a driving force in such public way. 

Over the next nine weeks I will be spending just a little more time online, blogging about everything marketing related. I will look at the good, the bad and the ugly while tying it to course topics. I have a strong interest in using social media to share a brands message, and think that it should be a front-runner in brands eyes. With this blog I am hoping to relate course topics and ideas and spin them in a way that I see them best fitting. I think that recent examples, pictures and links as well as personal experiences in both my professional career and my personal life will be a driving factor to how I view course materials. 

 I am really looking forward to learning more about this class and relating it back to previous work I have done with brands. One thing I found very intriguing about our class on Thursday was discussing the importance of having "One Clear Voice" and how it will give you a competitive advantage. Working with many brands, it was very important to make sure that you knew each brand through and through to create the best social strategy. One example was working with Nine West, and we have to make sure that their tweets, Facebook posts and Instagram pictures all were correct according to the website and their overall culture. Though all posts were different, it was extremely important to have the correct promotion, product details or themes such as #StyleResolution. Having "One Clear Voice" is very important, if a message has a mistake on one media outlet it can confuse buyers, anger them, and they could choose another brand. 

Nine West: #StyleResolution