More on Social and How to Get All Your Participation Points
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Hello students,
I'm up to bat on answering your questions!
First and most important, some of you have misunderstood the purpose of these Q&A's. For these blog posts you are supposed to ask questions regarding the subject matter of this weeks lesson. This is not an area for questions about your grade, your specific homework assignment the midterm or the final. You need to ask those questions on the assignment comment area itself.
Make sure you ask a question this week about building a following on social media, creating an effective social media account and other things related to your Facebook Fan Page midterm.
Q: I noticed that my brand, Heineken, is very internationally focused. Because of this, I noticed they use more than one brand homepage. Is that a smart thing to do, as an international brand? Also, will this give Heineken a boost with their SEO statistics?
This is a very smart thing to do for international brands. When you have an international brand your end up with many very different target markets. Different cultures have different values, meaning that a message that is effective in the United States could be totally ineffective in other countries.
Having multiple homepages not only allows you to communicate in the cultures native language (another huge benefit) you can also tailer the message as needed.
You are right that there is also a SEO benefit to having location specific landing pages. If you're searching using Google.ru (Russia) Russian sites are prioritized over other languages or .coms.
Q: My brand is Heinz, it is a food company, and it is a low involvement product. i don't think customer would go the website and search for information. i just wonder, how to attract people to go to the website at the very first time? since if customers don't even try to visit the website, no matter how prefect the website is, no body knows.
This day in age people will assume a company the size of Heinz has a website and people do actually visit the site. The question really is "Why do people visit Heinz.com?"
While you'd have to do some fairly in depth research to find out for sure, just looking at what information Heinz chooses to put on their site you can get a fairly good idea.
They talk about their health, wellness and sustainability. So Heinz.com isn't a site that a college student would likely visit in their spare time in between homework assignments, nor is it something that you'd e-mail all your friends. It's more likely targeted towards older folks with families who want to know if Heinz are safe and wholesome products for their children.
Heinz is also a publicly traded company so there is a good portion of the website with information for investors. This section of the site is geared towards keeping and attracting investors, communicating why purchasing Heinz stock is a good investment.
Q: I was very interested to see in this weeks blog post that there can be legal ramifications to a website if it is not accesible enough? What exactly does that entail? Meaning the colors have to be able to work for color blind and not color blind? What if a website is not updated, I know that is bad strategy all together, but an older design might make it unaccessible?
Eight years ago or so there was a lawsuit against target.com by the National Federal of the Blind which set some of the first legal precedent in this space. The argument was that because Target.com was built in such a way that screen readers (software that actually reads off what's on a page) could interact with it Target.com was violating national accessibility laws.
Despite the ruling in favor of the National Federation of the Blind this is really only a concern for large brands like target and government agencies. There is an accessibility law called Section 501 that requires any website that receives government funding to be accessible.
Big brands that would be targets for accessibility lawsuits should have the funding necessary to make their websites conform to accessibility guidelines. Smaller brands and companies are unlikely to be a target but should still realize that by not being accessible they are turning away customers (1 in 10 people in the US have some accessibility issue.)
In terms of what one should consider when making their site accessible there is a whole host of considerations, such as:
- Making the site usable for blind or low vision users who need a screen reader
- Making the site usable for those with motor impairments and can't use a mouse or keyboard
- Making the site usable for color blind users
- Making the site usable for those with cognitive impairments
- Making the site usable for those who are deaf (closed captions, translations, etc...)
- Making the site usable for those with old technology (text based browsers, etc...)
Q: In completing the audit of my company's website I found that their search tool is not functioning. How big of an impact do you think this can have on the popularity of a site? Do you think it would be significant enough to lose consumers? Would my brand's IT department be to blame?
This could have a huge impact on website success. A large portion of users will use the search function rather than try and find content using a menu system. This could be the IT department's fault or the agency that built their website if they hired an outside firm.
Q: I have fedex for my company. It is hard to communicate with its costumers becuase shipping isnt a everyday activity for majorty people. How can I make it revelavt and start converstaion with them?
Shipping is an everyday activity for most people! Consumers are having items shipped to them more than ever before. Recievers of packages are just as important to Fedex as those who are shipping items.
Thus starting a conversation is easy. All FedEx needs to do is first listen to what people have to say about their shipments. What excites them, what frustrates them. Once they understand how people feel they can respond, learning how to improve or what they can do to make their service even better.
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Now it's time to ask more questions related to this weeks subject matter, building a following on a social media platform. I'll answer questions next week.
Comments & Feedback
Is it vital to actively engage all comments and post on your social media page?
Some brands started to use Location-based social media tools, Do you think they are good platforms to offer promotions? How can the brand benefit from these tools?
What tactics do you think are most effective in getting users to interact with a company's social media site?
How should small businesses approach social media when looking to gain an online presence. For instance, an up and coming clothing brand. What's the best way to relay the product to the consumer and engage followers without constantly saying "buy our clothes or SHOP."
When competing with other fan sites of our selected brand, how can we efficiently get our target audience to "like" our fan page as opposed to others? How can we stand out from the crowd?
How can we know which kind of metric is a website using for SEO?
Is there a certain way we should organize our Pinterest pages?
Are there any ways to boost your fan page's SEO without spending any money?
My brand, Dove, uses their website in a very efficient way. It's to the point and easy for customers to understand. Their creativity, fun and genuine engagement comes from their social media. I can understand why they do this but I wish their website also spoke to their social media strategy. Do you think company websites are hurt by their straight forward layout and content?
What is a good way to create a respectable social media follower base on any type of social media if your brand posts almost every day but doesn't receive many followers or likes on your social media page?
I was reading about different ways to measure the effectiveness of your website this weak and I was curious to know what is the most looked at stat when it comes to measuring that?
The brand I am learning about, Wrigley, does not have any information on purchasing its products. Is this because their products are gum and candy? So they assume that most customers will understand where they can purchase these items?
In this weeks lesson I was really lost reading the SEO article you shared. I am mostly confused with how the relevance of a site's content and queries work together. Can you explain the link between the two?
My company, Estee Lauder, takes advantage of multiple social media resources to market their brand. Each account posts regularly, and uses different contact on each page with very little to no overlap of posts. That being said, would it be a smarter idea to overlap posts(i.e. link a youtube video from the brand on their facebook blog) or to just post the same content on multiple social media accounts?
What tips do you have for generating more organic likes and interactions?
What is the best way to create SEO for your brand even if it's really popular but what it is promoting isn't being SEO'ed compared to other brands?
Does social meida of company help company to effectively promote sales ? How?
In terms of content, is there anything you can do for your Facebook fan page that will improve its SEO?
What are the options to make my fan page more professional other than visual contents such as photos and videos?
Is it a bad idea to boost facebook posts to gain traffic or should the publisher just try and gain organic traffic?
What's the best way to build an online following without using paid advertising?
socail media is a good things for give imformation to people knows and which one is the best popular?
i just want know how to get attention from facebook, some poeple get a lot attention in facebook and some people did not have peopel follow it.
When blogging for business what should one post about besides the benefits of their product or service?
My brand Volkswagen is clearly in the center of the criticisms due to the recent emission scandal. For my Facebook fanpage development, should I post more recent updates on Volkswagen's response to the crisis and acknowledge other consumers the severity of the scandal, or should I post more about irrelevant issues such as new car unveilings or sports events?
On Linkedln, is it better to have a Company page of personal profile? what about a Linkedln Group?
While doing my facebook fanpage, I have a hard time to attract people. How should I make people see more my fanpage and intersting ?
I have my company as Sony. I am trying to build a fan page for Sony on facebook and also followed their official website. Can I copy things from their official Twitter site and post it on my Facebook Fan page?
Do you have any suggestions on how to build a large following on Pinterest? I have used the site for personal use, but I have never really been conerned about how many followers I have. Is there a way to suggest the page to users that "pin" similar products that my brand offers?
My brand Caterpillar communicates to their audience in 13 different languages on their main site. For my fanpage - should I post content that would appeal more to audience from across the globe? Or would that hurt my chances of page traffic coming in from the U.S market? In other words, I don't want to bore any 'fans' of the page by posting content that pertains to a different region.
An observation from trying to build a facebook fan page, I realized that most brands have several fan pages - some official, most not. And in some cases the un-official fan page seem to be more popular and have a lot of interactions and conversations in comparison to the official page. Given the scenario, would it be advisable for the brand to associate with the unofficial pages treating them as influencers? Or would this further establish that the brand is not doing a good job in connecting with its patrons as they are clearly following the unofficial page?
Even though our Facebook fan page is almost done for the mid-term, I still want to ask how to make the fan page more professional? I have been to other fan pages, most of us post pictures, articles, videos, how can I make my fan page stand out? Is there any differences between running a fan page and running a page for a brand, a company?
In Chapter Nine, one of the topics were based on Great Websites and how the focus is on more art than science. After thinking all about a websites presence and how appealing they are and reading the end comment saying there is no right or wrong way to create a website, had me consider something else. If there is no correct way for a website design, is there a right or wrong way for an advertisement? Does one work well without the other or do they go so perfectly hand in hand? Is it better to do a commercial or have a picture on a billboard? Or even creating a fan page? Will people put much thought into web design if there was not a good advertisement or word of mouth spoken to them to get them there?
Hello, Professor Ross. How deep does the information on the fan page have to be in order to penetrate the community of the brand? My brand is Mazda. Can I provide safety tips on the road, as well as tips of using the Mazda cars, more visitors, especially those who own cars would visit and follow the fan page? Thanks.
Hello Ross,
I try to focus on 3 different products per day on my facebook page since it is a retailer, should I be doing more than that since they sell a lot of things?
My brand is Gucci. And being such a large company with almost everyone knowing the brand, there are several different fan pages for Gucci. Is there a suggested way to get your brand to stand out against all the others?
Hi ross,
do you believe that a company's success in public networking is heavily based on affective social media promotions or other factors like work of mouth?
So far, this class has been centered around traffic. Increasing traffic, increasing page views, making money, etc. But what if you don't want mass visability? What if you want to make something built around quality and intimacy. For example, this doesn't apply to a big company, but say I'm in charge of running a page for my band (hyopthetically). I don't want a million people to follow me if they don't truly understand my music. I'm not really in a band but it dawned on me that... maybe mass exposure is unproductive in ceratin cases. So, to reiterate, my question is what do you do if you don't want the whole world to see your page, account, portfolio, website, etc.?
In Chapter 5 of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, they dicuss blog posting and how it can affect a company. My company is GE which have a variety of consumer products and services. Do companies with a wide variety of products and services benefit from having multiple company blogs? Or is just a main website easier to spred information out about the company? I feel like it could, but I'm unsure becuase of the variety they have.
Hi Ross,
CBS Corporation is the brand I am focusing on this semester. Since they are an entertainment empire, they have several homepages and social media accounts for CBS TV, CBS News, CBS Sports, and even several more for separate CBS programs including 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, and more. Since they don't have a blog per say, do you think these various platforms are working as types of blogs for them or would you say it is more of an overkill in online presense?
Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions!
Best,
Shannon
How much of an influence does the type of product a company sells have on its social media following?
Hi Ross,
In relation to building content on my facebook page, what posting stragtegy to you find most effective to keep the page fans engaged?
Do you think putting informations and advertisements on pinterest is the best way to brand your company? or any other suggestions?
I've noticed after examining my own brand's social media channels in comparison to others, that my brand doesn't seem to link their posts between their different social media channels. For example, when they post an image on Facebook, they will sometimes tweet the image but will rarely post the image on their Instagram. Their Instagram posts are interesting and full of great images, but you don't find the information on any other social media channels. My question is, is it in the brand's benefit to maintain some semblance of consistency among their social media channels? Or is it sometimes actually better to have some information available exclusively through a particular channel?
How do we organize the Unofficial facebook page ? And what kind of information should we post? Can we post the same infomation as the official facebook page?
How long is a reasonable time frame to build a following on a social media platform. Are some platforms easier to grow faster than others? For example, since you can follow people on instagram, but pages cant friend people on facebook, is it easier to for a brand to build a fast following on Instagram than Facebook?
How does industry play a role in the effectiveness of social media? In certain industries does social media advertising work better than in others?
I am wondering for the Pinterest, do we have to put stuffs that relate to our brand or we can also put any interesting things?
Do you think all small businesses benefit from using social media? For example, this summer I interned at a company that sells distressed real estate. Their entire inventory was obtained from bank or tax foreclosure, so not exactly sought after homes. They have social media platforms but they are rarely used. It seems hard to gain an online following for a company with such a unique target market. When I was interning there they were meeting goals and had no issues with sales. Can a company with such a niche market truly benefit from using social media?
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What are some topics can you post to gain more attention to the fan page? comming from a company whos business is mainly for governments and commercial sales