Mysterious Self-promotion Through Social Media

So now I'm working with a great musician, Terry W. He is a very nice person, and more importantly, he is such a talented artist. For Terry, one big problem for him is that the public haven't seen his talent. I searched "self-promotion for musicians". What I've found were mostly done by Terry, except he haven't upload his album on YouTube and other free online music websites.

Musicians treasure their work, for sure. However, people now are very used to listening to free music or downloading music for free. As Terry said, nowadays, musicians can hardly earn money from selling CDs. They make living by holding concerts.

Well, how can an independent musician who got less than 100 followers on Twitter promote himself/herself through social media? Some people say the number of followers doesn't mean anything. I respectfully disagree. At least you need followers to see your posts in other to convey your messages to the public.

Yes, "there is no such as thing as a general public." Let's see who is the target audience. Terry said those who likes his peers are his target audiences. Now, how to get these audiences' attention then? You can tweet them about the musician you want to promote, but that will be spamming for those who follows you. Or you can send them messages, but unless they follow you back, you can't.

Self-promotion through social media? It is still a question for me.

Saving Money or Spending More Money?

"Hey, what are you going to do on the Thanksgiving break?" My American friend Roxanne asked me.
"I'm going to have the Thanksgiving Dinner with a local family... Nothing else." I replied.
"You know, if you don't have any plan, you can go shopping and experience the American consumerism."
Suddenly, "Black Friday" jumped out from my mind. "You know what, Roxanne, I've already experienced it."

In the past few months, I purchased tons of clothes, shoes and facial cares. I didn't need to go to Carousel Center and the fact is, I didn't even want to -- everything I bought was from the Internet with considerable  discounts.

You may ask how I got all the information about the sale? From ads?
Honestly, I don't like ads because they always come to you when you don't want them to disrupt your favorite TV show. The interesting thing is, now, many ads don't come to you, instead, you follow them.

This is how "ads" on social media work:

• Many brands or "info agents" have their social media Webpages to let you to follow them. 
• They offer you bewildering discount information and tell you to "save money". 
• Then you buy the items that you never think you will buy if you don't follow those brands or info agents on social media. 
• You feel so happy that you bought them at such "low prices", thinking those who do not know the coupon codes will spend more money than you did.
• You are now obsess with those ads.

Social media change the way you see ads by:

• creating your loyalty to brands you are interested in
• providing discount information you want to know
• having conversations with you

Those brands and info agents are like "friends" of yours on your social media Webpage. They act as opinion leaders who select "valuable info"for you rather than those regular ads whose target is no more than sell products to you.

Ads, whether on social media or anywhere else, are always trying selling products to you. However, when they come to social media, their tone and wording changed. Ads become more humanized and closer to the customers.

When regular ads tell you to save money when you are watching TV shows, you know they want money from your pocket. But when social media ads tells you to save money, you really think they mean it. Because they are following you like real world friends. And you listen to what your "friends" tell you.

Everyone, Happy Thanksgiving!

It all started with a complaint: Refrigerators and Siemens' crisis management

The “war” between Luo Yonghao and Siemens started on Luo's blog post on Weibo, a Chinese microblog website:

“My Siemens refrigerator and washing machine that I bought three years ago were broken one after the other," said Luo. "-- I won’t buy products from this unfortunate brand anymore. Japanese electrical appliances are more reliable.”

Luo is the founder of a private English School -- Laoluo School, an Beijing-based company. He is also a blogger, bestseller and movie director (his first movie Xiao Ma released online on October, 2011.). With more than 1 million followers on Weibo, Luo’s posts are often reposted and commented by a great number of Weibo users -- hundreds, or even tens of thousands.

 

(1136534 followers by Nov. 4, 2011)

For only a few days, there were hundreds of arguments following Luo’s post, from the quality of Siemens to the comparison between Japanese and German electrical appliances. Of course, online comments never lack remarks.

How do you close the door of your refrigerator? Slam it without looking at it? Or slowly close it as if it is something very fragile, and you have to recheck the door in case it is not firmly closed?

If you never thought about it before, congratulations! You bought the right one! According to customers who commented on Luo’s post, they have to recheck it every time when they close the refrigerator, otherwise, it will have leaks and freezing problems. Family members were blaming each other because they thought it was the others’ fault for carelessly close the door, yet they did not know many Chinese Siemens’ customers were also suffering from this problem.

Customers are going to have obsessive compulsive disorder because of a refrigerator!

Where was Siemens when this topic about its products fiercely continued on Weibo?

As a foreign corporation which has the largest share in China’s electrical appliance market, Siemens apparently has someone monitoring how people talk about itself online. However what they did led the story to a more intensive direction. 

A staff from Siemens’ PR department contacted Luo, trying to persuade him not to post such negative comments on his web page. She also promised Siemens would send technicians to Luo’s house to have the devices fixed for free. What a “great” idea! A special offer? It might work for some people, but not Luo. The call almost irritated him, as he later posted on Weibo, she contacted him and offered him the service only because he was somewhat influential. How unfair it was to other customers?

Know your publics, and know whom you are talking to.

Siemens is an international corporation, and you might not expect it to be irresponsible to its customers. However, it seems that Siemens is unwilling to admit that is a quality problem. 

The following days, Luo post a video on Weibo showing how poorly the door of his Siemens refrigerator worked. He also advocated his followers to shoot a video as evidence and post it online if they had the same problem.

Hundreds of videos were posted and shared by Luo, and then by more from his followers’ and then their followers.

Click here to see a video uploaded by a Siemens' customer. 

Siemens did respond to the criticism on its Weibo, but denied its products having a quality  issue. Also, it promised to provide maintenance service for its customers (but didn’t mention its costs). 

This response received more critiques on Weibo. 

For most of the day, comments on Luo’s posts were mostly criticizing Siemens, but at late night, a considerable number of posts were all compliments on Siemens’ response. The situation was quite uncommon, thus those commentators were assumed by Luo as “mercenaries” of Siemens. 

Customers want honesty, not spin. 

More posts criticizing Siemens’ refrigerators and irresponsible announcement were published by Weibo users. (Note: In order to solve this door problem, Siemens suggested installing an alarm to warn users when the door is not firmly closed, rather than solve the door problem itself). 

The CEO of a PR firm contacted Luo again, hoping to solve this problem, which, apparently not the quality problem of the refrigerators, but Siemens’s reputation. The conversation was recorded and later posted online as evidence by Luo. 

This is the recording of the conversation in Chinese.

Luo, as a customer on behalf of other customers, simply wanted Siemens to 1) admit its quality problem; 2) admit its first reckless announcement; 3) promise free customer service to fix this problem or recall its products if necessary. 

The PR person even sent a draft announcement to Luo first to see whether he was satisfied with it, or he wanted some changes. However, the draft did not fully meet the three demands listed above, and was later published officially despite the fact that the PR person promised Luo that Siemens would use Luo’s edited version of announcement.

Luo has stopped trying to talk to Siemens, but keeps posting about Siemens.

It is a long story, and if there is an award for the worst crisis management cases in China, this case should be one of them. 

Let’s  learn something from this case to see what a PR practitioner should and shouldn’t do when facing this kind of crisis on social networking websites:

Should do

1. Monitor your publics’ comments on your company and products from your company.
2. Respond to your publics as soon as possible when an issue raised.
3. Respond thoughtfully and responsibly.
4. Be HONEST!
5. Keep in one voice.

Should not do

1. Hire people to comment on your side (because this is not only unethical, but also easy to be discovered).
2. Spin.
3. Break the commitment.

A phenomenon that is worth mentioning is, often when some people are criticizing a company on social media, the employees from that company will go to that person’s page and argue with him/her. It seems that the employees are helping the company by showing their loyalty to and praise of the company. However, what they do is jeopardizing the company’s reputation.

Since the employees are considered as representatives of that company, their arguments with its publics will only lead to a worse situation.

The “war” is not over, yet. We shall be glad to have such a “paranoid” person here who is actually trying to tell everyone that we have the right to be well served, simply because we are all stakeholders, and we are customers.

Amy Goodman

I missed the speech on Thursday at Hendricks Chapel, Syracuse University! So, I'm going to watch this video.

It's about democracy, journalism, war, and lots of global issues you want to know!

Newsworthiness

**Examine a day or two of top news on: CNN.comABCNews.comCBSNews.comNYTimes.comHuffingtonPostFoxNews.comWashingtonPost.comMSNBC.comLATimes.com What do you think these stories indicate about newsworthiness in today’s media climate? What are the implications of the current trends in newsworthiness for today’s public relations professional? Describe your thoughts in a thorough and thoughtful blog post. Examine a day or two of top news 

When I woke up this morning, the top news on most of the major newspapers and broadcasting websites has changed to the suicide attack occurred in Kabul, Afghan. However, except for Los Angles Times, the others all put the attack on the most obvious place with a picture or a series of pictures (such as ABCNews). For Los Angles Times, a long-lasting case related to the newspaper itself was placed next to the attack with a large picture. 

Despite that the attack was given the highest coverage, certainly not all of the news websites have the exact same stories. It is interesting to notice that unemployment issue may not as important as sports. Yes, the news about the baseball game World Series were paid more attention than the protests in the New York City. Editors for different news websites must have their own standard on newsworthiness. But in general, we may find some common criteria to determine whether a piece of news is worth reporting:

1). Impact

2). Timeliness

3). Prominence

4). Proximity

5). The Bizarre

6). Conflict

7). Currency

8). Human Interest

(Click here to know more.)


As an ordinary U.S. citizen, he or she may not feel any impact on the suicide attack happened thousands of miles away from home. Nonetheless, this incident is greatly related to its national security, hence newsworthy. In the contrast, news website in China, such as news.163.com haven't had the news of the attack on the front page of the website. It will that I believe, but not as fast as the American news websites did, simply because it does not meet the criterion -- proximity to Chinese net users. Similarly, Washington Post regarded the local weather newsworthy while others, especially those newspapers from the west part of America, may have the opposite point of view. For example, Los Angeles Times have many articles that related to Hollywood on its home page.


It seems that in today's media climate, newsworthiness is really geographically focused. Although large news corporations may still have "world news", they tend to be more concerned about things happened in local areas. This tendency is determined by how they define themselves as well as their target audiences. 


For a PR professional, the basic idea of newsworthiness does not change. The eight criteria are for sure critical to write a pitch letter or news release. The most important thing is, know who are your audiences? Will people from the other side of the world care about the news? Or just local residents from Syracuse want to know what is happening in Onondaga County? How they related your audiences' life, or audiences' of the targeted newspapers is what you need to know. You can write what you want, but whether they will be seen on the newspaper is not your call.

Social media for internal communications

Some people said online that the smartest thing about Facebook and Twitter is not how effectively they work; rather, it is they fitting in our life so well that people don’t even feel strange when they use them.

Now, we have thousands of social networking web sites and related applications, many of which are for everyone, whereas some of them are more exclusive than the other. Applications such as Yammer, is an application for enterprise internal communications. It allows employees to update their status, including what news they are reading, what project they are working on, what questions they have and what kind of topic they want to discuss.

This kind of internal communication tools seem to be very similar to other social media in general. However, they are more exclusive because the network is determined by net users’ Internet domain.

But people may still wonder – what’s the point of using these tools for internal communications when everyone is using some more popular or inclusive social media like Facebook and Twitter?

One reason that I come up with is many companies do not allow employees to use social media such as Facebook or Twitter on the companies’ computers, because it will be very distracting to use these while working, especially most of the contents are irrelevant with work.

Nonetheless, a company may still need internal interactivities. Therefore, an exclusive tool is the best choice.

The above is just one example of an exclusive communication tool for internal use. Many other social media applications are not necessarily designed for internal use only, but still facilitate communications within an organization.

Digsby, Skype, wikis, podcasts, Slideshare and many others have their specific functions that foster conversations, help distribute information and encourage interactivities amongst employees in an organization. People don’t have to go to their colleagues’ desk say, “hi, I just saw a great piece of news,” or “look at my slideshow, how is it?” Nor do they need to email one by one anything they want to share with others. When they upload a slideshow or share a link through social media, others are able to see them.

Despite the fact that social media enable information to distribute fast and employees to interact, there are some factors that may hinder the communications.

Firstly, there are so many social media tools for people to use. They are not effective unless people who use them make them effectively. And that will cost a great deal of time and energy. Some people may have already felt an overwhelming impact of social media or simply emails on their daily life. The use of social media may cause stress and thus ineffective use of these tools.

Moreover, while handling a heavy job workload, an employee may feel social media giving too much information. People need to scan and find what is most important information that relevant to what they are working on. This process can sometimes be very distracting.

When searching for social media tools on the Internet, some introduction will inform people that how many of Fortune 500 (what is this?) companies are using the particular application. They seem to tell others that by using this tool, your company is going to be successful as these Fortune 500 giants.

But is that really the case?

Perhaps a company may need to experience itself to know the answer.

When a CEO is Gone

At the end of August this year, Steve Jobs quit as Apple CEO. Tim Cook filled in the vacancy right after with the full support of Jobs. The public may have sensed something was going to happen to Jobs, although the company did not detailed the reasons. And it turned out that the public was right. He died shortly after the resignation. 

No panic occurred amongst board and staff in the company. It appears that everything is under control and the legend of Apple will still continue without Steve.

The succession of Apple was certainly planned before Jobs' death. Since Jobs had cancer for a very long time, the board would have plenty of time to decide a succession. 

However not all companies have plans for the death of their CEO or leader before it happens. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) may be one of the examples. It is one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world and the largest and most advanced foundry in China. 

The chair of the board Jiang Shangzhou died in June 28, 2011. According to the press release on the company's website, it does not mention the cause of the death, although cancer is most likely according to some news reports. The next day, an election of CEO was held by the board. Wang Ningguo lost in the election and resigned from all his duties at the company afterwards. 

Until three weeks after Jiang’s death, the company finally announced the new CEO, Zhang Wenyi. During the three weeks, rumors were widely spread that there was power struggles over corporate control at the company. No statement was made during the three weeks to clarify what was going on in the company until it decided whom to be the new CEO. In the meantime, a letter to the shareholders from the new CEO was published. 

The announcement of the new CEO's appointment mainly addressed the qualification of Zhang as a capable and the best person for the position. It further addressed the contribution of both Jiang and Wang to the company. The achievements of the new CEO so far give the public confidence that he is able to lead the company.

But why are the compliments to Jiang and Wang so important? Because they were expected to be a team working together to contribute to the company. Despite rumors that the company was facing turbulence due to vacancy of the board chair and CEO, the statement is trying to convince the public that everything appears harmonious and well-controlled. 

The announcement also include its plan for seeking talent to fill another position at the company. Furthermore, the new CEO's states his plan and hope for the company, which are fully supported by the entire board. However it fails to explain the reason why the CEO resigned.

The letter to shareholders from Zhang, the new CEO, apologized to the shareholders since induced rumors have led to invest concerns. This apology is quite necessary because it shows their care for those shareholders though it may not be enough to compensate them. The letter also indicates how successful the company is and progress the company has made during the recent few years. Again, the letter highlights the accomplishment of the two leaders. Finally he expresses that he is honored to be appointed as the CEO of the company and his team's ambition to  run the company.

Overall, the announcement and the letter are well written. Key messages are covered in the two documents and the wording is appropriate. However, the process of communication of the CEO change looks passive. Especially when news reports about the internal power struggle after the chair of the board's death and the former CEO's lost in the election, the company did not make any statement fast enough to clarify the situation and to stabilize internal and external stakeholders.

See the letter, and the announcement.

I hardly find a company use social media to announce a succession. In the above example, SMIC does not even use social media at all, despite the fact that they hire student from colleges every year. It would be a great opportunity for them to publicize the company by using social media to their potential employees. 

Apple Inc. does not use social media in China, either. However, when the announcement of Jobs' resignation was reported by newspapers, journals and website on Chinese microblog, the information was soon disseminated widely and became the hottest topic for a couple of days. 

Social media actually play a very important role in announcing an succession. Of course, a company does not have to use social media to make the statement. However once the announcement is made through social media, it can spread faster and probably wider than make it through other communication outlets. 

For example, the Wall Street Journal in Chinese version online published the resignation of Jobs at 7:18 a.m., August 25, 2011. Whereas it published on its microblog at 7:09 a.m. the same day. Nine minutes early may seem nothing to you, then try to think about how easy for the users to view just one sentence so that they can get the most important idea,  and how easy for them to click the reblog bottom to share the information to their followers. 

Social media allow people to gather all kinds of information in one page. Many people do not frequently check a company’s website to see its news. Then it may be an alternative or even better way for the company to make announcement to its public through social media. Simply because social media allows distribution of information faster and easier.

The Wall Street Journal Chinese version

Microblog of the Wall Street Journal Chinese version

The Wall Street Journal Chinese version