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.

For CEOs: use your blog wisely

Nowadays, social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, are so popular that some people have stopped writing blogs. Wait! Check out the following websites – they are all blogs of CEOs.

http://blog.craigslist.org/ (CraigsList: Jim Buckmaster)
http://blogmaverick.com/ (Dallas Mavericks: Mark Cuban)
http://www.blogs.marriott.com/ (Marriott: Bill Marriott)

Blog is not dying. For many times, it is more effective to interpret ideas and opinions than to twittering with a limit to 140 characters.

You may keep a blog to complain what happened to you, writing reviews about restaurants you had dinner, places you visited, movies you watched…

But what do these CEOs post on their blog? Today, let's look at Mark Cuban's blog.

Mark Cuban's blog is really a popular one. Every single blog post has many comments, and some of them are quite long and thoughtful, which means those audiences cared about what the blogger’s opinion and they also thought hard after reading the posts.

Cuban did not often write about corporations that he works for (there are some posts related to topics including NBA, sports business and sporting events), on the contrary, he wrote most of the blog posts about current national issues such as tax, employment, electronic books, and social media. He also talked on the blog about himself – his childhood, his experience when he started business and what hardships he underwent.

It is very easy to know what political stance he takes, what exactly his view is to certain events and issues. The pros to this kind of CEO blog are:

1.       The blog gives readers an impression that a real person is writing all the articles, rather than some other anonymous guy on behalf of the CEO and the company. Readers can feel the personality of the CEO from what he has written. Generally people find it interesting to listen to a person, rather than an official voice. When people notice a real CEO is writing a blog, they may feel more close to this person and also the company – a feeling that they are not far away from our lives.

2.       Current issues invite more discussions on the blog. Some of the issues such as tax and employment are under fierce debate. They are closely related to everyone’s life in the country. When the public are discuss these issues and watching how different parties arguing about them, they also want to know how a influential people thinks about these issues. If he/she makes sense to what he/she says, people will feel positive about the CEO, and hence the company.

3.       Posting thoughts about current issues keeps blog updated. People will stop visiting a blog if they find the blogger has stopped writing for too long. Sometimes, CEO may not have so many appealing things to write about their own company frequently. Therefore, current issues will help keep the blog moving forward.

4.       CEOs’ blog promote their own visibility and also the companies’.

How about cons for a CEO keeping a blog?

The blog may be appealing to the public when the CEO post current issues on it. However, as I just mentioned earlier, many of the current issues are under a fierce debate, which means some people may agree with you, while some do not. It would be great that people agree with you and comment supportively, especially when the CEO’s stance is on the mainstream side.

But what if he/she makes a very controversial argument? Remember he/she is a CEO. He/she has the right to express their opinions, but sometimes that reality is so cruel that the person as a CEO may think more times than a nonpublic figure before posting an article on a blog. Because what he/she says may jeopardize his/her company.

I believe there are more pros than cons for a CEO to keep a blog with personal characteristics in it and personal opinions about current issues. Because this is how communication between people (or between a influential person and the public) can continue and how this relationship maintains.

Benefits or pitfalls? When donating time and resources in PR.

I’ve heard someone talking about public relations (PR) when I decided to apply a graduate school. Some companies spent a lot of money in PR in order to get them more attention from the public, obtain good images (although we may think obtaining a good image really depends on sound products or service that a company can provide), and build good relationships with the public.

By sending pitch letters to reporters, conducting campaigns, redesigning logos and slogans and applying all the other strategies and tactics, PR practitioners have spent a great deal of time and used all kinds of resources to do their work.

What are the public relations benefits of donating time and resources?

In my point of view, the benefits will be the results that you are trying to achieve—get more publicity, manage a crises, receive donations and many other different goals.

These are all very ideal situations and PR practitioners are hired to reach these goals. To take an example of getting more publicity, all kinds of tactics are used nowadays. Every time when I watch a video, there will be a advertisement before the video starts. I have to wait till it finishes. And just through these a few seconds, a brand, a new movie or a new product have entered into my brain.

However, the benefits are not necessarily proportional to time and resources donated.

Think about our non-profit client for the research class, Hiscock Legal Aid Society. It has a nice and well organized website, blogs and media pitch for every event they organized. However, they have undergone lack of donors for a long time.

Invisibility is one of the results even PR is operated. What makes things worse is PR  may also jeopardize the image of an organization or a person.

Recently, one of my friends is complaining about how some companies misuse social networking websites to promote their products. When a Internet user click one of the “new events” on their homepage, the page is actually not how it appears on the “new events”. Instead, it goes to the social website of a company or a product. It looks like a computer virus because as soon as you enter that webpage, you automatically add it as your “friend”. And it is very hard to remove this “friend” from your friend list.

These companies probably want to get their products being noticed by more net users. However, this is absolutely a bad and unethical way to do this, and people are only going to get mad on these companies and their products.

Benefits or pitfalls? It really depends on how you donate time and resources rather than how many you donate them.

Finally, there is a video for you. Maybe you can get some ideas from it.

Have a nice weekend.

Social media, thoughts after the presentation

This is the second week of fall semester in Newhouse! Philip R. Johnson gave us a presentation about social media in public relations. Here are my thoughts about what he present.

There are many insightful points in the presentation. Firstly, understanding the situation of an organization is more important than using social media that are popular at the moment. Many organizations are using social media as a platform to communicate with the public. However, this tendency does not suggest that social media are always good for every organization. An organization should think about contents, frequency of posting, crisis management when something goes wrong in social media and all kinds of situations that it will confront when using social media at the very beginning.

Secondly, I strongly agree with "the big principle"--focus on relationships, not the technologies. Recently, an well-known Chinese English teacher Li Yang has accused of domestic violence. His wife posts pictures and micro-blogs through  Sina Weibo, a Chinese equivalent of Twitter (click here to see his wife's Weibo). Li Yang has  Weibo account as well (click here to see Li Yang's Weibo). However, facing tons of comments about the violence following his regular micro-blogs, he replies nothing and gives no comment about the accusation.

This is not merely a personal crises. As the founder of Li Yang Crazy English, his silence jeopardizes his company. This is an example of how relationship is not well managed when using social media. While social media offer great opportunities for the public to understand an organization or a person, they also allow the public spread negative information widely and fast.

Furthermore, personally, I agree with the statement "relational schema favors benefits of mutual/accurate exchanges of real self-experiences." My favorite GRE teacher Luo Yonghao is a public figure, the founder of Laoluo English School . His micro-blogs are quite different from many other well-known English teachers such as Li Yang and Yu Minhong.

Luo's blog is quite personal, with all the micro-blogs written by himself expressing his own thoughts about anything he finds interesting. He also reply others' comments time to time. Whereas Li and Yu's micro-blogs are always written with the style of chicken soup for the soul. They are less personal and not written by themselves. Few comments following get replied.

It is a common situation that people pay more attention on the CEO or founders of organizations rather than the organizations themselves. Because people are more willing to talk to a person than an organization especially people don't even know who is behalf on it. However, still, many people seem like micro-blogs that share no real self-experiences in China.

I'm not sure whether this situation differs from cultures. One phenomenon in Chinese social media is many people love the style of "chicken soup for the soul". Celebrities are followed and liked by thousands of fans, even though no comments are replied. Probably it is because celebrities are people and organizations are not. However, sometimes the boundary between webpages of a person and webpages of organizations is not quite clear.

In addition,  I do not totally agree with "shorter posts, higher frequency" strategy. This strategy can be very annoying if the frequency is too high. People do not want to see a full screen of tweets from only one organization. When I meet this situation, I will unfollow this organization's twitter in order to leave some space for tweets from others.

Finally, in respect of full truth, Internet users may want to know that, but sometimes, the full truth may be related to someone else' privacy or other rights. Therefore I think people need to fully consider consequences before telling full truth.



Overall, many principles are quite helpful to understand how to use social media. However, it must take great effort to follow these rules for long-term management.