It is true that by using social media, organizations that against bullying can reach and educate more people (especially teens) about bullying and its impacts in a shorter length of time. Not only organizations can reach more people, but they also can advertise their campaigns cheaper compared to other types of advertisement channels. Rather than printing a thousand of flyers, organizations can post one video in YouTube, and they can reach more people with that one video.

We also know that people have the freedom to express their opinions in the online world, and they have the choice whether to reveal their real identity or being an anonymous user. However, this has lead to what we called as Cyber-bullying on both personal and business front. In the recent news, “Two girls [was] charged after [a] 12-year-old, who was bullied, killed herself”. It is also believed that “[the girl] Brag[ed] on Facebook After Alleged Bullying Victim Commits Suicide”.

Yes! Organizations can use social media to educate teens about bullying; however, teens can also use social media in order to bully other teens. In fact, according to this article, “Cyberbullying is often a lot worse than bullying in the real world because the bullies can easily hide behind the anonymity offered by the Internet.”

So, how to manage social media bullying?

• Use your creativity to find an inventive way of laughing the attackers
• For businesses, it is important to monitor what your customers are saying about you, and respond the negative comments. Acknowledge your mistakes if necessary. Therefore, other customers will see that you care about them. To do so, we are required to apply the Social Media Triage, where we need to identify whether we should respond or not.

So, what do you think of cyber-bullying? Which side of the sword you think will outweigh the other?

Browsing through The Globe and Mail website, I found this article posted. It is about “How Luxury Hotels Mine Social Media In The Name of Comfort”. When I read this article, somehow, I felt that things they mentioned in the article about how to mine social media don’t apply only to the hospitality industry. Since social media channels help company to interact and engage with their customers in real-time and more people are using social media, I believe that mining social media also applies to every business.

So, how to mine social media?

As listed by McKinsey & Company, there are four specific functions of social media. They are Monitoring, Responding, Amplifying, and Leading.

In the case of those luxury hotels mentioned in the article, they have a 24/7 monitoring system in order to track what their guests are saying about the hotel and their services in website reviews, such as TripAdvisor and Travelocity. It is believed that “online reputation can dictate the rise and fall of revenue per available room”. “It also cites statistics that 92 per cent of Internet users read product reviews”. In addition, they had orders to respond to complaints within four hours.

In my opinion, it’s important to apply all the McKinsey Principals in your business, since it affects your consumers’ decision whether to buy or not to buy your products or services. Companies are expected to monitor and understand their customers, and to respond their customers’ questions and problems fast. It is also important for the company to encourage their customers to spread the words, and lead them to discover new ideas and aware of the brands.

In the article, Daniel Edward Craig, a Vancouver consultancy, mentioned:

“The power has shifted, and we’ve lost control of our reputation, but there is a lot we can do to regain that control.”

I agree with what Daniel said in the article. In my opinion, one thing we can do to regain the control as marketers is to know how to utilize the power of social media in order to take part in the consumers’ decision journey, and to influence their decisions.

Nowadays, there are more people using the social media, and many companies has started to use social media to interact and engage more with their customers. Thus, the boundary between professional and personal lives has started to become blurred and unclear. In our COMM 202 – Career Fundamentals course, we always have been reminded to maintain our reputation and be professional in both offline and online world.

As an employee, you are representing your company. With current technology, people are able to access your profile through social media. It is required to be sure not to have posts or pictures that will defame your company’s reputation. Moreover, things you posted in Facebook or Twitter are visible to everyone around your network, including your colleagues and employers.

This fact applies not only to employees, but also to people who are currently looking for a job. You will see that many companies have started to use social media to search more about their applicants. They wanted to see whether those applicants fit in to their company.

So, how to manage your online profile?

• Always try to Google yourself and see what others will found when they are searching about you
• Personalize the privacy setting
• Un-tag yourself from any unnecessary posts or pictures
• Think twice before you post or share
• BE PROFESSIONAL

Are there any other tips that you can give? Just leave a comment below…

When I read an article from Social Media Today by Anita Loomba, I felt that this article relates to my previous post. So, I decided to write about this article and add some ideas that relate to my previous post.

To have a right content in your social media, you need to have a defined goal or objective. But, how to come up with a right goal? As I mentioned in my previous post, you need to understand your customer first. By knowing and understanding your buyer, it will be easy to understand what information do your buyers actually seek. Once you understand all that, I believe you will be able to set a clear goal that will also tie to your business objective.

Anita is also pointing out that without a good teamwork and communication within all content creators, it would be hard to set a specific goal for your content. So, in order to have a consistent content, you are required to have a good collaboration with each department. An inconsistent content will definitely lead both your exiting and potential customers to confusion, and eventually result in customer loss.

As I said, to establish a good and interesting content, you need to understand your customers. To do so, you need to interact and engage with your customers. In other words, you are required to consistently monitor and listen to your customers, and then create and tailor your content to specifically target your readers.

In addition, Anita also mentioned that it is important to explore different channels to market your content. I agree with her. I also believe that understanding each available channel and how your customers use them will help you to tailor your content.

It is just a fun video we watched in class, showing how you will lose customers by not listening and understanding them.

In terms of a website, many of you might have heard a statement, saying that “Content is King.” Some people might disagree, while others might agree with this statement. As for me, I definitely agree with this statement. Indeed, Content is King!

People who disagree might argue that people will judge and decide whether to trust your website based on its look and feel in just a few seconds (it is just right before people even read your content). Well, it’s true that you do need a good layout and design for your website. In fact, context is one of the 7Cs of Customer Interface. However, I would like to argue that without an interesting and engaging content, people will not stay long, revisit the website, and even share it. In other words, you need to make your customers come to you through content marketing.

So, Content Marketing: How to Attract People With Content? Recently, I listened to a podcast from Social Media Examiner, where Michael Stelzner (Founder of Social Media Examiner) was interviewing Joe Pulizzi (Founder of Content Marketing Institute) regarding this topic.

First, we need to understand who is our buyer. Then, know what is our objective and what is the outcome for the buyer. Knowing and understanding your buyer will definitely help you to understand what information do your buyers seek. Therefore, this will help you to “create a conversation through social that will not only make an impact on [the buyers’] lives, but also tie into your business.”

By “[providing] valuable, relevant and compelling content, and [delivering] it consistently”, people will see you more as a trusted source, and eventually sales will increase.

In short, it is important to understand and know who do you target your content or ads to. Herbert Bayard Swope (1882 – 1958), U.S. journalist, once said that:

“I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure – which is: Try to please everybody”

Moreover, we also heard that Google had launched a new algorithm called Hummingbird. Well, I believe that this new algorithm will definitely bring more people to an agreement that “Content is King”, since the algorithm is based on semantic search. In other words, it will focus more on the meaning of the whole sentence or content, instead of matching some particular words.

So, what are your thoughts? Do you agree or disagree?