How Social Media Can Flourish or Fail Your Company....

"Where the Hell is Matt?" - I won't venture out and say that everyone who will read this has heard or seen this video, but I would assume that many have.  I didn't know about this video until last semester when someone from WKU came and spoke to my ENT Marketing class about the up-and-coming "social media marketing."  The video struck me, first of all, as really interesting - seeing someone who traveled around to so many places all over the world dancing with people from many different cultures; because although values, morals, and languages might be different around the world - everyone can dance; and dancing was Matt's way of making a small connection with strangers.  At the very end of the almost-four and a half minute video, Stride posts their advertisement for all of 3 seconds, and that's when I realized how effective "silly" videos on the internet can be.  Matt didn't attend college and his life ambition was to sit on his couch and slay over beating the latest video game. However, in 2003 he realized that he needed to do something with his life and that's when he saved up his money in order to travel all over Asia.  While taking a picture one day, one of his traveling friends suggested he do "his dance" in the picture.  And to quote directly from Matt's personal website, 

     "A couple years later, someone found the video online and passed it to someone else, who passed it to someone else, and so on. Now Matt is quasi-famous as 'That guy who dances on the internet. No, not that guy. The other one. No, not him either. I'll send you the link. It's funny.'
     The response to the first video brought Matt to the attention of the nice people at Stride gum. They asked Matt if he'd be interested in taking another trip around the world to make a new video. Matt asked if they'd be paying for it. They said yes. Matt thought this sounded like another very good idea."

From there, it seems, the rest is history. Matt did travel again and made another video, and yet another year later traveled back to Asia to record a third video that would include others dancing with him this time.  


Stride saw an opportunity and jumped on it immediately.  They realized how many people were viewing this video and seized a perfect opportunity to gain brand recognition from millions of viewers who would eventually see the video.  All they had to do was pay for Matt's trip expenses, although the trip expenses may have been costly, they realized their return would be much greater.  


Stride Gum is an excellent example of how social media can help your company flourish - don't be hesitant to try to something new.  


While poking around the internet while doing this research, I found one article on how social media can FAIL, rather than help, a company.


Back in 2009, Pizza Hut announced it was searching for a summer intern to manage their Twitter presence.  However, apparently whoever posted the job announcement had not yet been "schooled" in a professional social media presence -

 "A representative for the company stated that 'The successful applicant will speak fluent OMG and LOL and correctly use the terms DM (direct message), RT (retweet) and # (hashtag).'"  

Clearly, as a professional and global organization, announcing a job in such casual and "dumbed-down" format makes applicants hesitant to apply for the job because it belittles their importance and also educational level.  Also, Twitter is a VERY PUBLIC social networking site so why would Pizza Hut want an intern who knows nothing about the core values of the company posting tweets for the world to see??  It's obvious the announcement was meant to be quirky and fit the job-description; however, there is a fine line between being professional and witty, and just not consider the possible outcomes of the situation. 


"Where the Hell is Matt?" Video
Matt's Personal Website
Pizza Hut Article

How Social Media Helps or Hinders Job Searches...

We have seen how social media has begun to infiltrate our society through all of the social networking sites that are popping up everyday.  Since this new phenomenon there has been quite a lot of chatter about how social networks can help job-seekers or cause problems.  


It seems a couple of times a year we hear news reports and stories about teens and college-aged students posting pictures or writing comments on Facebook, Twitter, etc. that have caused problems.  We are constantly warned to be extremely cautious in what we put out there for our friends to see because one you enter the job market business professionals can easily search for and see everything that has been put out there. It is scary to think that once something goes on the web, it is there forever - there is no getting it back.  And once something gets passed on to one person - it's like a virus because that person passes it on to five people and those five people pass it on to another five people and before you know it millions of people have viewed it.  We hear stories on the news about celebrities who have tweeted ill-feelings about another person or made threats or seen how tweets can just be misconstrued and come across in a negative light.  


Having said all of that, it is hard to only argue the negative side of social media because it's positive side has so many things to offer.  First of all, social media is free! (unless of course, you opt to use the paid version). You can completely build an entire profile and "resume" online all for free.  In the past you had to seek out specific jobs and apply to each one individually.  Although this method should not be completely neglected, social media should be your main focus because now hundreds of business professionals who work for hundreds of different companies can see who you are, your experiences, and skills without you having to specifically hand-pick them and send them out individually.  It was interesting to me, in the articles we read online, how the author stated more than once that you need to "build a brand for yourself."  Building a brand for yourself based on your strengths, and then "decide on a personal brand statement" which could be a picture or some sort of avatar representing who you are.  As a marketing major, I am so used to hearing about the best ways to market certain items and categories - choosing the right target market and using the correct distribution channel, that I never even thought about how that could apply to marketing yourself.  But this only makes sense.  We build our brand based on who we are, our strengths, what we're interested in and passionate about, and what experiences we have had and then we build off of that.  We want to appeal to business professionals and companies that might be a good fit for us where we know we will be able to contribute, and we also want to use the right "distribution channel" to do that - social media.  


It's hard for me to believe that business professionals have time to spend on looking for new-hires and job applicants online and social media sites, but I keep hearing over and over again that this is the way to do it now so some of it has got to be true.  I believe that social media is great way to search for jobs and just get your name out there.  Even if professionals don't end up contacting you after you posted "laid off - looking for a job," some of your friends might see it and mention it to one of their friends and then you can start networking.  We just need to keep in mind that whatever we choose to put on the Internet has the possibility to be seen by some people we might not want it to be seen by. But I'd rather be cautious and keep my name out of trouble, than to neglect social media all together and perhaps miss out on the best way to find a job.

Social Media: Fad or Fake??

I guess a lot of traditional marketers are beginning to ask themselves this question more and more as social media "infects" our culture on a daily basis.  I remember when Myspace gained popularity and if you didn't have one the only reason was because you didn't have a computer.  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flikr, Smugmug, Youtube, and so many more social websites come to mind when I think of social media or places for people to go online and share memories, stories, interests about themselves and connect with other people who have similar interests.  Marketers who still believe that traditional marketing is the only way to go and social media will begin to fade obviously have not done the research on how effective social media marketing is.  The book, "Secrets of Social Media Marketing," written by Paul Gillin, lists several different facts about how often these "social places" are visited daily and monthly: "The average Youtube visitor watched 41.6 videos in a month", "Emory University...found that 97 percent of the students had Facebook accounts and 24 percent logged onto Facebook 18 or more times a day."  These 2 facts themselves are staggering because it shows us that people are no longer spending time watching tv, reading, or spending time on other forms of entertainment to relax - people are spending their extra time online.  Yes, social media marketing is very new and a sort of scary, unknown territory for most companies who are used to using traditional media forms as their way of marketing.  However, my belief is that this so called "trend" is here to stay.  Ten years from now social media will no longer be a trend but absolutely imperative if companies want to survive.  Technology has and will continue to evolve tremendously for us to just ignore social media as a great marketing tool.  Cell phones, Ipod, Ipad, Kindle, and the next new gadget to hit the market will replace television time and the times when reading the newspaper was the way to get the latest news.  We will be bombarded with new links, advertisement listings on the sidebar of websites, popups, "groups" that share a common interest in a certain store, restaurant, or hobby, all because this is where our audience will be.  Why waste millions of dollars on a television commercial when our target audience will only be exposed to it 1/3 of the time??  And our other marketing option is social media that will expose them to our marketing efforts 2/3 of the time for a fraction of the price because social media is CHEAP! So, to all those marketers out there who believe social media is just a fad, I gotta tell ya' - I think it's the real thing.