NYU CE9785001: Social Media For Journalists

Social Media for Journalism

Jose (Otto) Campos

  Through the exciting world of nightlife and the melodic ambiance that surrounds our nights; DJs have taken the masses to a musical journey. They have always incorporated the realist, sincerest and most honest music for people to enjoy and experience. That is why our favorite DJ mixes is a historic soundtrack to our lives.

  My brand, DJ TV Show, focuses on the creativity, musical talent and performances of top DJs. The brand’s blog feature’s new music produced by DJs, or mixes compiled by DJs. Also, the blog showcases many of the successful DJs that have contributed to the DJ genre. Nothing is better than seeing artists perform in their own element and DJ TV Show gives audiences the opportunity to have a sneak peak of these events.

  DJ Jazzy Jeff, of the duo Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince (Will Smith’s rap name), once told me that DJ TV Show should be a window for music fans and not just for DJs. Therefore, when I looked at other brands that had similar principles of entertaining their audiences while introducing artists, I discovered Pitchfork and Red Bull Thre3 Style. These two brands have utilized their social media tools to inform audiences of their new content as well as creating an online presence.

  Pitchfork, a magazine style website that focuses on the “essential guide to independent music and beyond,” has established itself as an expert on popular and independent music. The website features artists, music and events. Like many music based website it has reviews, introductions to new music tracks and interviews. Yet, what sets Pitchfork apart and makes this brand unique (kind-of) is that they review and feature a wide range of music like rap, electronic, rock, and other genres.

  Pitchfork hasn’t relied on just delivering this awesome content on its own website, they have been able to communicate with its audience on social networking platforms. Pitchfork provides content on Tumblr, which allows them to get immediate feedback from their audience on the blogs they write. Their Twitter account has tweeted over 28 thousand times to over two million followers and has received more than four hundred thousand likes on Facebook. But the biggest impact to their brand awareness efforts is from Youtube. More than 73 million viewers have watched at least one of their videos and they have over two hundred thousand subscribers waiting for the next showing. I like that Pitchfork understands that their brand is respected for its critique on music (pop and indie) and tries to showcase the music that they appreciate through Spotify and Soundcloud. And even though Pitchfork has only provided 280 instagram photos to more than 70 thousand followers, they understand quality over quantity when providing still images. The photos are backstage passes, on stage shots and pictures of fans at these events for everyone to see and enjoy.

  However, Pitchfork, who provides great video interviews and videos of live show performances from independent bands, rappers and DJs, have not taken advantage of the strong online presence of Vine. Vine is a social media platform that lets people share short looping videos in six seconds. News Media Company, CNBC, has written about artists that are using Vine and have become popular.

  Another website that has not taken advantage of Twitter’s Vine power is Red Bull Thre3Style (pronounced Three Style) DJ competition blog. The energy drink, Red Bull, has ventured in the DJ competition realm that originated in Toronto, Canada. After their acquisition of the DJ tournament, Red Bull has made Thre3Style a must watch and must listen to massive event that has DJs in 21 countries competing for the top spot. Thre3Style showcases the creativity of today’s DJ and how the DJ utilizes today’s advanced equipment to perform a live set.

  “Red Bull Thre3Style is a DJ contest that promises to be a night of dance-floor mayhem. The participants have to play a selection of at least three genres or styles of music in 15 minutes. It doesn't matter what genres of music are chosen so long as the DJ can make them work together,” said Red Bull.

  Thre3Style blog posts have captured the essence of the event. The website features the competition’s champions, finalists and their performances. The blog also interviews legendary battle DJs like Jazzy Jeff, A-Track, Qbert and many more. The way Thre3Style intertwines its social media platform with the brand is effective but not original. Thre3Style has over 29 thousand likes on Facebook and provides links to its blog. On Twitter, they have tweeted over 2,500 times. They’ve provided photos of events featuring legendary DJs on Twitter. The blog has more than seven thousand followers on Twitter. Yet, the most impactful Red Bull Thre3Style social media network is their Mixcloud. According to Wikipedia “Mixcloud is an online music streaming service that allows for the listening and distribution of radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts, which are crowdsourced by its registered users”. Thre3Style showcases finalist’s DJ set (mixes) to over 32 thousand followers on Mixcloud. This strategy is working very well for the blog because the mixes reward the competitors for being finalists and showcases the DJs to the fans, who get a really good free DJ mix (win, win).

  What I enjoy most about the blog is the content Thre3Style provides. What I would try to do better is control the conversation by having more of a social media presence. In Tumblr the conversation of the popular DJ battles is lead by DJs and enthusiasts and not by the brand, Thre3Style. On Twitter the brand is only informing, which is very important, but Thre3Style has an opportunity to interact with its audience. There are many people that are excited about who is going to compete for the championship and win, but unlike the NFL or NBA there is no conversation with the fans.

  Similar to those brands, DJ TV Show showcases new mixes and features DJs in interviews. And like those brands DJ TV Show’s audience will be interested in music. The main subject of DJ TV Show will always be about the DJs. Because of the DJs we have opportunities to provide amazing mixes, remixes and new tracks from DJs of all genres. DJ TV Show will acknowledge and feature relevant content published on other websites. DJs have been providing interesting music videos and have not been able to find an audience. DJ TV Show will be that hub of relevant content for DJs who produce great music and videos for fans to appreciate. Audiences will also be introduced original content of DJs that are producing tomorrow’s hottest dance hits. DJ TV Show will have original video interviews and performances of the hottest in the hottest clubs.

   DJ TV Show uses the content management system, Wordpress, to share posts and control the conversation, which is convenient and efficient. Wordpress provides Search Engine Optimization support with plugins to help attract more visitors, which will improve DJ TV Show’s search engines rankings. The higher DJ TV Show ranks the easier people can find the website when searching for similar content.

  The social media networks that DJ TV Show will primarily use are Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. The brand already has Google+ and Vine and will utilize RebelMouse but will first focus on establishing itself on those other platforms. DJ TV Show will use Twitter to inform of posts and start conversations with DJs and music enthusiasts. The website will use YouTube to share original video interviews and club performances and become acquainted with what the audience likes. DJ TV Show will mostly focus on showcasing entertaining videos on the website and on YouTube. This strategy will help establish DJ TV Show’s brand. Just like YouTube, where I’ll become familiar with my audience, I’ll provide links to the website and create conversations.

By Constanza Correa

In this paper I will discuss about three very different Chilean brands that in my opinion have done a good job regarding the use of social networks. The brands which I will discuss below have a very strong presence mainly in Facebook and Twitter and to a lesser extent in Youtube, Vimeo, Flickr and Instagram, which is very relevant because Chileans are becoming more and more involved with social media. A study performed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau in Chile (IAB) carried out in 2012 showed that “the penetration of social networks among the total number of Internet users is 95.3%.  Almost all Internet users in Chile have some degree of participation in the available social networks.  Furthermore, the same study showed that in Chile the most used and popular network is Facebook, followed by Linkedin and Twitter.  It is worth mentioning too that the number of users of Tumblr and Linkedin grew by 87% and 42% respectively in a year.

In the following pages and based on public available information and on the feedback provided by their respective community managers, I will briefly describe the digital strategy of Zuko, Elige Vivir Sano and Universidad del Desarrollo.

I.Brand: Zuko

Zuko is a powdered juice brand created in 1975 and is on social media since 2011. Currently it uses Facebook, Twitter and to a lesser extent Youtube. In Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/zukochile?fref=ts) Zuko have 206.710 followers and 931 people are talking about the brand. On Twitter (@ZukoChile) have 2.620 followers and they follow 2.114 people. Youtube is only used to upload videos of commercial spots that appear on television.

In January 2013, Zuko hired ByL Communications (www.grupobyl.cl) who have been responsible for creating a strategy, updating content, bringing the brand to the people, organizing promotions, among other things. As described by ByL, the strategy consisted of four processes:

Define target audience: The target audience for Zuko is described as women of 30 years and older, lower or middle class housewives who have children, and who likes to be with their families and do activities with them. The target audience is captured in the slogan "Zuko meets the family". Additionally, they also focus on young children who are involved in social networks and in certain groups of men who participate in their promotions.

Create an editorial line: The priority was to generate content and image information about different products of Zuko, since eventually that is what people want to see and read. It also was created content regarding consumption occasions or suggestions on how or where could people consume Zuko (which intended to make some content viral by asking the public to like or share something). In addition, they created content that did not have an strict relation with the brand itself but that are somehow connected with concepts that relates to it such as: marriage, family, joy, sharing, etc., which in turn were used to post weekend plans, motivational quotes, tips, promotions aimed to increase the consumption of the product. Finally it also included rigor content like greeting or good-bye messages and other content intended to get feedback from users in order to generate response and participation of the people.

Language: in all publications and posts simple, conversational, understandable, short and practical language is used. Considering the target audience, it was defined that it was not necessary to use redundant, serious or contrived language.

Postings hours: ByL Communications analyzed the time at which most fans enter to the Fan Page of Facebook and accordingly created a calendar that focus on generating content during those peak hours (i.e. 10:00am, 1:00pm and 5pm.)

Zuko’s community manager expect to maintain the basic aspects of this strategy in the long-term but making gradual changes in order to keep it updated to new developments and trends.

Regarding the pictures that are used in Zuko’s posts, ByL Communications has access to a bank of professional images but when they generate content for specific products they usually use images sent by the client.

To increase the number of followers, the community manager of this brand daily post in Facebook and Twitter contests, interesting comments and quality content. In Facebook a tool that has really helped in increasing the number of followers is Facebook Ads, which has added an average of 2,000 to 3,000 followers on a monthly basis. As reported by ByL, this has been a good year for Zuko in the social networks because between January and November 2013, it has had an increase of 160.355 followers, mainly due to Fan Page is believed to be consistent with the target audience, entertaining, dedicated and practical.

The main strengths of Zuko’s use of social networks is that by showing a friendly and approachable attitude, the brand is perceived to be close to the consumers. It is a platform that allows users to review, comment what they think about the brand, raise concerns, criticisms or suggestions. In turn, by having feedback from consumers Zuko’s executives feel that they are considered and heard by their public. One thing that is perceived as a weakness in Zuko’s strategy is the lack of a plan to face a crisis (i.e. bad publicity, product contamination, etc.). At this moment, they have not yet developed content tools to properly resolve the concerns of the consumers in case the brand is going through a bad time.

II. Brand: Elige Vivir Sano (“Choose Healthy Living”)

“Choose Healthy Living” is a government program created in March 2011 by the Chilean First Lady, Cecilia Morel, in order to encourage healthy eating, increase physical activity, promote the benefits of family activities and promote contact with nature, respect for the environment and outdoor life. Since it was created the program is in Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and Youtube. In Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/EligeVivirSano?fref=ts) it has 508.365 followers and is a very active page because there are currently over 20.000 people talking about the brand. On Twitter (@eligevivirsano) has 49.322 followers and they follow 4.165 people.

At first, the agency (ByL Communications) in charge of the program’s social media met with the sponsoring brands (such as Quaker, Carozzi, Jumbo, etc.) and agreed to publish once a week some information about the program on their respective Facebook Fan Page to get the sponsor’s followers to also follow “Choose Healthy Living”. That has been one of the main strategies and has given good results. Another useful resource is that famous people who is sponsoring the program talk about it on Facebook and Twitter.

The content uploaded to social networks is about food and sports, to promote healthy living but specifically food tips, recipes, runs, outdoor activities, competitions, activities in different places of Santiago and regions of the country. In summary, is a public educational content aimed to lower and middle class groups since it was assessed that those groups have less awareness of what it is to have healthy eating habits and live healthy.

The program only occupies advertising on Facebook and Google for specific campaigns or contests because the program is funded by a foundation and resources are extremely limited.

III.Brand: Universidad del Desarrollo (University of Development)

The Universidad del Desarrollo (“UDD”) opened its doors to 100 students in Concepción, Chile in 1990 and it wasn’t until 1999 that it open a campus in Santiago, the country’s capital. Today this private university has more than 8.500 students, 23 undergraduate degrees and more than 70 master's programs. UDD is on Facebook since September 2010 and since that time, has been used consistently along with Twitter. In addittion YouTube and Flickr are used with less frequency and Instagram only for specific events. In Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/udd.cl?fref=ts) UDD has 9.902 followers but only 85 people is talking about the brand. On Twitter @UDD_cl has 7.785 followers and they follow 7.532 people. However there are various other accounts related to specific schools or departments that remain active. For instance UDD Extension (@extensionUDD) has 691 followers and 994 following; Office of Student Affairs of the UDD Concepción (@DaeCcp) with 1.215 followers and 1.041 following, Director of Student Affairs of UDD Santiago (@DaeUDD) with 997 followers and 708 following. They also have twitter accounts for specific events such as UDD Undertaking Week (@eWeekUDD) with 119 followers and 173 following (@StartUp_UDD) with 329 followers and 339 following (@UDDVentures) with 1.739 followers and 147 following, in addition to accounts created by career is the Faculty of Engineering (@IngenierosUDD) with 1.174 followers and 875 following. There is also a UDD Alumni Network account (@exalumnoudd) with 1.234 followers and 1.202 following, among many others.

The University's strategy on social networks is focused on derived traffic to the institutional digital media and to promote activities and achievements of the university community. According to UDD’s community manager, so far the strategy has been rather reactive, but the idea is to work in integrating the use of social media with other means and needs, and complement such use by developing metric and statistics in order to enhance medium-term decisions. However it is perceived that with social media is hard to make plans in the medium or long-term because they are constantly mutating.

  The content used in UDD’s social networks is related with university activities, photo galleries, videos and testimonials. Pictures are mainly used to display events and videos are used more generally for corporate concepts and testimonials.

The target audience are students, alumni, high school students, faculty members, parents and community close to UDD. The community manager of @UDD_cl thinks that "listening to questions and comments from your audience is the best way of putting together interesting and value-added content".

In terms of strengths, being a university helps that the public is very active in social networks and thus achieves a constant closeness to the target audience. One thing that could be improved is the quality of content in images, as there are many activities that promote. They also need to fine-tune their strategy to reach out to each specific audience because is different to talk  with a student, to a parent or faculty members. In connection with this,  I think that having a lot of UDD-related Twitter accounts might be confusing. For instance the university main account has more than 9.000 followers but others have only about 100. One way to fix it would be to have an institutional account, another for alumni and other for careers in order to unify the information and ensure that what is informed is true and correct. The Facebook page has many followers but few people talking about it, so it would be a good idea to make contests for students or questions on various topics with the aim of generating a conversation with the audience.

UDD uses Facebook and Google advertising but just do it to derive traffic to institutional websites.

IV. Conclusion.

After analyzing the social media strategy of the brands described above, it comes to my attention that certain common elements can be found in all three brands. One is that it is particularly important the way in which they communicate with their audience. The three brands prefer to address their audience with a simple, direct and conversational language. Zuko, Elige Vivir Sano and UDD use Facebook as the leading social network, followed by Twitter. The three brands have a more powerful strategy and content on Facebook, such as most Chilean firms. With respect to advertising, they all use Google and Facebook tools for different purposes. Zuko uses that kind of publicity constantly to increase its number of followers, Elige Vivir Sano only to enhance certain specific campaigns and UDD with the aim of deriving traffic to institutional websites.

On the other hand, the strategy used in each brand differs on certain aspects. For instance Zuko appears to have a very clear strategy with regard to the target audience, editorial line, language and  postings; Elige Vivir Sano has taken advantage of being a government related program by using its sponsors as a constant source of "advertising" and followers and also by using "ambassadors" who constantly talk about the brand. Finally, UDD has a more reactive strategy principally focused into deriving traffic to institutional websites.

By Samantha de Oliveira

Danio is a new Danone’s product launched a couple months ago in Brazil. The differential of this yogurt is its super consistency, its low fat, and the presence of small pieces of real fruit.

The website

Even though the product is highlighted on Danone’s Brazilian website (danone.com.br), the product has its own website (danio.com.br), which design is very dynamic, modern, and easy to browse. The content is presented either scrolling down the home page or browsing the two pages presented on the Menu: (1) Danio, where the product is presented as well as the flavors option and the nutritional information for each one of them; and (2) O Segredo de Danio (The Secret of Danio), where a graphic explain the process that makes Danio a better.

  By screwing down the page there are three buttons option: Conheça Danio (Get to Know Danio); O Segredo de Danio (The Secret of Danio); and Onde Encontrar (Where to find it). The consumer don’t necessarily need to click on it to see it, they just have to scroll down the page to see all the content, which are presented in order of importance and in a very simple way. The texts are minimum and instead of a hard text, they opted for important key words and graphics, which I believe makes the website more attractive, as at the end people are not looking for news, but for a simple easy information about the product.

  The menu topic Danio is presented on the scrolling page as Conheça Danio (Get to Know Danio) and Onde Encontrar (Where to find it) it’s not on the menu, only on the scrolling home page. Here the consumer can select a state and a city and it will be shown on Google Maps where Danio can be found on that location. As Google Maps have been used a lot I believe that this also should be on the menu bar.

  There are also two videos ‘hided’ on the home: (1) A fome já tentou enganar você? (Has hunger already tried to deceive you?) and (2) Jânio Semdanio (Jânio withoutDanio). In order to see it it necessary to clic on the arrow on the flash of the first image, but as the website has a flow that goes vertically, it can be easily lost. Even though the first video has already been broadcasted on television as an advertise, I believe that as they are good pieces they must be better exposed on the website.

  The first video plays on the website page while the other, a short film, is redirected to Danone’s YouTube page.

While browsing the website we can also find Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest icons. Some of them redirect us to Danio’s Social Network pages, other allow us to publish the content on our Social pages.

  Danio’s Social Medias pages

  Facebook (Danio Brasil) – 83,997 likes · 22,954 talking about this

The way that they use this platform is very compelling and I believe that they got the light funny spirit of things that people like on Facebook. They post almost every day, and some days more than once. They use a lot of hashtags and quality pictures and images. Some of the images are related to jokes that are around in Brazil right now; some bring nutritional information; some are, as they named it, #daniothoughts; and some are #janiothoughts. Most of the posts have comments and all of them are answered in a polite or creative way.

  Instagram (daniobrasil) – 2,843 followers.

I believe they could have much more followers as this app is very popular in Brazil. On their page there are only 11 images. The hashtag #daniobrasil is mentioned on 70 posts and #danio on 6,480 posts. Recently they did an action that consists on giving to 30 famous Brazilians a mini fridge (full of Danio, of course) with a printed art and their faces on it. The intention, I believe, was to introduce Danio to this people who have some influence on media and have them talking about it, as well as publish pictures of Danio and their exclusive mini fridge on Social Medias. I believe this was an amazing idea because most Brazilians are influenced by famous personalities and everything they do/wear/eat became trendy. People also want to look good as these celebrities so the healthy appeal of Danio is another great attraction. Though the action was great, I think it could have had a greater impact. Maybe Danio should send to some of these famous people more yogurts and healthy recipes that they would feel compelling to take a picture and post. Furthermore, I believe that Danio should post more daily pictures and create a contest, that could be ‘The most different place I took my Danio’, ‘My Danio Recipe’ .

  Danone’s Social Media

  YouTube (youtube.com/user/DanoneBrasil)– they use Danone’s page for it and I think it is ok. It would be nice to have more videos but I don’t believe that YouTube would make a difference as a platform.

  Social Media which Danio don’t have a page

  Pinterest – they have some really good quality images on Instagram and Facebook that they could use here. They also could use Pinterest for images of recipes.

Tumblr –I think Tumblr could be a platform to continuous Jânio Semdanio story. They could crate a story where Jânio get to know Danio and how things change from there; the ‘difficult’ moments, when he can count on Danio; how it all changed his life; and in the future, his special recipes.

By Marianne Rizk

LEGO is an international Danish family-owned company that produces and sells toys. At first the company only produced wooden toys, but during the last 40 years, LEGO has been making LEGO bricks and other products like clothes, board games, computer games and lunch boxes. However, their main product is the LEGO brick.  

Up until 2011 LEGO has been doing most of its branding through TV commercials and advertising in the printed media. But two years ago the company starts seeing social media as an interesting and new channel to be used for marketing and communication.

The LEGO concern launches its social media strategy in 2011 and this with seriousness. Prior to the launch a Social Media department is established and a social media expert, Lars Silberbauer, is hired as the head of this department. Furthermore LEGO is educating more than 200 employees in using social media in their job function – an effort that today is known as LEGO´s own development program, “Social Media Drivers License”. So social media as part of a branding strategy is important to LEGO and the company presumably is very competent when it comes to using the social media platform business wise.

Today LEGO is active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Youtube – and this with great success. Lego has more than 6 million followers on Facebook, 100.000 on Twitter, 78.000 on Instagram, 52.000 on LinkedIn, 215.000 on Google Plus and 224.000 on Youtube.

The social strategy At LEGO social media is placed organizational in the company´s marketing department. Geographic the social media team is placed in Denmark, England and USA. This to make sure that LEGO is present on the largest platforms in all the relevant time zones and also to make sure that the team has the necessary cultural insight in the important markets.

It is the employees and no one else that are allowed to represent the company on social media. According to Lars Silberbauer, the reason to this is as follows:

“We don´t want to outsource the voice of the LEGO brand. We want to make sure that we always are seen as sincere and authentic. It´s hard work and there is no shortcuts, but that is what we have to do if we want to build long-term relations. We are humble to the assignment and we hope that it will make us closer to the customers and the customers closer to us”.       

Silberbauer also establishes that making the customers closer to LEGO and the other way around is part of the main goal by being on social media - namely to increase the bottom line of the company. It is essential that the presence on social media is creating a provable increase either in direct or indirect sale, new knowledge to the company or other measurable improvement of marketing. If this is not the case, LEGO will retract from social platforms.   

LEGO on Facebook – A way to discover your inner child But how is LEGO implementing this in social media? Facebook is one of the platforms that have proved to LEGO that increase of bottom line can be reached in a social online form.

Facebook is LEGOS absolute largest social media platform with 6.190.323 followers. LEGO is posting new status updates, images and videos daily, and the site is mainly used to share information about new and old products, contests, stories behind the products, information about charity that LEGO is participating in etc. This makes the followers up to date with news and relevant information at all times, and it also makes them a part of a LEGO domestic sphere that cannot be found outside social media.   

LEGO is posting a lot of images of their products on the Facebook page – both images of products that stand alone and images that support the information written in words. An image can simply show one LEGO character – this alone is obviously to expose a character, and an image like this can be a little boring to look at. However LEGO compensate for this by posting even more images that is part of a story and therefore really engage and appeal to the viewer.

In these images it is very clear that focus is on creating a story that inspires the viewer through consumption of the product instead of having focus on the product itself. So an image can be informative about the use of a product but at the same time it, implicit, can express the qualities that LEGO wants their costumers to possess – being a child, being creative and being imaginative (this is a very strong part of the general LEGO brand).          

Considered communication So LEGO is communicating a lot on Facebook. However, the company is not encouraging two-way communication. LEGO´s postings are in general strictly information, and only rarely include questions of any kind. But this does not mean that the followers are not making comments, they are, but LEGO never respond unless upset followers are posting. An example of this is when a shocked follower posts a question about a STAR WARS production that is ending. LEGO responds very quickly with a nice and detailed answer to the question showing the follower that LEGO will be there as an understanding part when it really matters. Of course one should not be blind to the fact that LEGO at the same time probably do not want bad critique on the site and therefore will do what they can to prevent that.  

But all in all, even though LEGO is doing a great job entertaining, education and inviting their followers into both the public and private LEGO universe, LEGO is not making use of one of the greatest strengths of Facebook – the potential to create dialogue with customers. But this is not a coincidence.

In a recent online video interview Lars Silberbauer explains that LEGO is not on Facebook or any other social media to create dialogue. He explains that even though LEGO being on social media is about making the followers feel that they get closer to the brand, the company does not see the need to be in dialogue on the site. To LEGO dialogue on social media is the same as customer service and in the concern customer service is reserved communication by e-mail or phone.   

However – even though LEGO is not engaging directly with the followers, they are including them in other ways. One of them is very clear in the welcome greeting on the site:

“Hello! You made it to the official LEGO Facebook page. We know you’re all awesome builders, so we want to see your LEGO photos, videos and stories too!”

And the followers are embracing this to a great extent. Therefore LEGO´s informative postings are not dominating on the site. Most recent LEGO requested that their followers would post images regarding Halloween including LEGO bricks. And this with great success followed on Twitter and Instagram too. Because when LEGO makes requests like this, they do it on more than one social media. They thereby create correlation between their use of social media at the same time as they engage and inspire the followers.

LEGO on Youtube – The builders of tomorrow   Compared to a lot of Danish companies that are using social media in their branding, LEGO stand out in the way the company is using their Youtube channel.

LEGO is uploading own productions like “The LEGO Story” - seen more than four million times, and it has even won the price for best commercial in the world in 2011. “The Lego Story” utilizes storytelling to a great extent. The company history, its activity, values, mission and vision is all included in the 17 minutes long video that is very compelling. Facts are made in to an interesting short film that in images shows the companies values (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr_dTySMl7s).

The rest of LEGO´s own productions are build with the same kind of appealing storytelling but in a much shorter form. But every video is very entertaining and very well made as regards to both content and quality. And it seems very likely that close to every child who will watch one of these videos concerning will want the product at the same time as they will want to build LEGOs with their friends and family. The videos are namely compelling to parents and other adults too.

Naturally the products have a central part in the stories, but just like in LEGO´s images on Facebook, the company masters to create a feeling of family and a sense of community between kids, parents and adults playing with LEGO products in the stories – again they create a desire to bring out the inner and creative child in the viewer at the same time as they inspire them into being the LEGO builders of tomorrow. Therefore the gold – to create growth on the bottom line through communication on social media – definitely seems reachable on the LEGO Youtube site too (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwQqkX3qZak&feature=youtu.be ).

Dialogue or costumer service? However maybe LEGO could get even closer to reaching this gold if the company would change its position regarding dialogue on social media? Because on Youtube two-way communication does not exist just like on Facebook -  and again very intentionally.  

But is LEGO doing itself a disservice by not wanting to optimize the power of social media fully? If you agree with the assertion that if a business is using social media as a marketing tool only to talk TO the user and not WITH the user – the business has absolutely misunderstood the part of social media that is actually being social – then yes!

But then again no? Because it may be that dialogue on social media creates the opportunity to change, maintain and raise the way people are seeing a company, but LEGO seem to be able to obtain these things without entering into dialogue. And maybe it is okay to be using social media differently according to which platform is entered? In LEGO´s case – Facebook to build the brand, Youtube to teach the subscribers how to use the product and Twitter to inspire and even engage a little with the users?     

One can claim that the idea of using the platforms differently is good, but at the same time it somehow seems essential to remember that social media in fact are SOCIAL! People are developing ideas, inspiration and thoughts – both negative and positive on social media. And they do it exactly when the thought comes – at the exact place and time where and when they are online. And therefore a company does not have to be present for it to get talked about. Therefore it seems most likely that the company that is embracing dialogue will get further by being accommodating and attentive, and that the company will probably maintain its present and satisfied customers more than the company that eliminate dialogue will?

Nevertheless, it is not easy to argue with this, because of the fact that LEGO is both successful when it comes to user satisfaction and bottom line. But if LEGO did go back on the company´s strong position on dialogue, it most likely would make the users feel even closer to the brand and the whole company – in short feel even more valued by LEGO. Specifically – through dialogue LEGO has every opportunity of getting a lot of ambassadors on social media that will pass on their good experiences with the company or its products. But to get such ambassadors – of course you have to first identify and acknowledge them and then nurse them so they will keep being your ambassador!

Compromising on Twitter But maybe LEGO believes that the brand will be better protected by not including what they call customer service in their branding on social media. However, some of the largest success stories about companies on social media are about dialogue and service – for example BestBuy and Zappos in the USA. But LEGO is actually making dialogue to some extent on their Twitter site. Nothing like Bestbuy or Zappos that both have created Twitter profiles exclusively concerning customer service, but on Twitter LEGO´s dialogues are both factual (e.g. regarding new products), informal and grateful (e.g. when LEGO is thanking a user for a personal images of LEGO creations).

So on Twitter LEGO is engaging with the users in a way that they don´t on any other social media. However, knowing LEGO´s position on dialogue on social media, LEGO may compromise on this because dialogue and re-tweeting basically is what increases the amount of followers that again increases a business´s bottom line.

And the users seem to be okay with LEGO not being a part of dialogues. The large number of followers bear witness of this. So no matter if LEGO is misunderstanding a part of social media or not, it does not change the fact that the company is extremely popular on every social media it engages with. Therefore there is no doubt that LEGO is reaching its number one goal without using online dialogue on social media.  

Successful – but maybe even more successful? All in all – LEGOs present on social media is a success. LEGO is present almost everywhere, and the company is active and take its presence very seriously. This ensures that LEGO is in position to reach a very wide audience.

And LEGO is one of the few Danish companies that actually understand the advantage of using social media as part of a branding strategy. The way LEGO is using social media is very considered and intentional. The company is alert to new developments and the social media team is debating in public about their motive to act on social media the way they do.

Patagonia: Your Experience Builds Our Brand

Patagonia is a California based clothing company, focusing on high-end outdoor clothing for skiing, surfing and rock climbing that was founded in 1973.  The company is a member of several environmental movements.

Patagonia is using its social media sites to focus on the ideas and themes relating to its products rather than focusing on the products themselves. In the case of Patagonia these themes are outdoorsy fun in the spirit of environmentalism.

Social Media and Content Strategy

I reached out to Patagonia’s social media manager via their media contact for this project, but received no response. Patagonia has a robust social presence and is active on these channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vimeo, YouTube, Google+.

Their social strategy appears to have a number of goals including: Go where the audience is (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter); Use images and video in posts; Don’t sell the product, sell the experience. 

They do a marvelous job of using images. They have their “Ambassadors” sharing content while they are out and about (using Patagonia gear) and they also have consumers sharing content of their own (while using Patagonia gear).  The conversation is aimed towards the activity taking place, rather than the gear, but it of course generates a discussion about the gear. 

In an interview Patagonia’s digital creative director Bill Boland said “We use Facebook and Twitter a bit differently from each other. Twitter is more of a response engine for customer-service queries. Facebook is for distribution of content, so we may put something from one of our books for some quick real-time interaction. Facebook is more storytelling oriented. The other critical thing is that we have Facebook and Twitter presences for each of the stores we have, so there’s a local interaction going on as well.”

I appreciate the fact that they are aware of the importance of having local interaction. While it takes a larger team and an understanding by senior management to put social media as a priority, it certain pays off in dividends in the long run because of the increased level of engagement. After looking at their social presence, I’d add that they are also using Instagram (and Rebelmouse) to distribute content and interact with their customers.

On Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook, people are engaging around storytelling by asking questions about Patagonia products and sharing their own experiences with the products and also, importantly, by sharing their experience with the outdoor lifestyle that Patagonia promotes. “Our content stays away from the hard sell,” said Bill Boland, Patagonia’s digital creative director. “But we are finding that our customers are interested in talking about our products. Even with the climbers out at Patagonia, customers want to know what gear they are wearing, what works for them and what does not, so that is something we are looking into for the future.” This is a rather unique and fortunate situation for a brand. While they are not feeling pressure to make a hard sell, they are receiving adequate engagement from their customers on their products. 

Apparently Patagonia noticed customers speaking quite a bit about the old Patagonia gear that’s still usable. This is obviously a big part of the brand’s environmental message, so it set up a new Tumblr called "Worn Wear" to capture customer stories about their old gear. The most recent post is from Tony in Tennessee who bought his first pile jacket while working on a black bear research project in Sequoia National Park.  This Tumblr points to the future for Patagonia.  “Going forward, we’ll be focusing on becoming more efficient in communicating with people in real time,” Boland said. “It gives you a better sense of what customers want and the types of conversation they are willing to have.”

  From interviews it seems that they have a solid content strategy, but that they are seeking to formalize the planning to make it more predictable and less improvisational. 

“At this point, I do feel like we’ve got our content strategy figured out,” said Boland. “We’re just trying to figure out operationally how we should be going about planning our content strategy. Currently, it’s very organic, and I’d like for it to get to a point where it’s more formalized, much like a newsroom is run. This way we know what’s coming, and we could even put together an editorial calendar. We need more structure.”

He said “Our biggest challenge is that we have more content than we could possibly publish, which makes it hard to figure out what gets in and what does not.” This puts Patagonia in an enviable position.  Not only do they have a very engaged and active following on social media, but they have a boatload of content that they can harvest for their social channels. This also paves the way for some changes in the way that Patagonia uses social. 

Marketing & Audience Research

As discussed above, Patagonia is trying to reach the outdoor enthusiast with an activist bent.  As Patagonia’s Bill Boland said, “I would say it’s not about chasing different platforms or technology. Know yourself as a brand and know your brand voice, and then just evaluate platforms based on whether they are able to tell your brand story to the right people.” Patagonia is clearly a step ahead of many of their competitors in terms of knowing themselves as a brand and retaining clear, consistent messaging. So what else can be done?

What to change?

Based on the above it is evident that Patagonia could continue to use social as it is and continue to have certain levels of success.  However, I think there are some ways that they could improve their social content.  A few ideas are below. 

First, Patagonia could use Twitter & Instagram (with a dedicated Rebelmouse site) to build on the success of their environment campaigns such as “Vote” for the environment with new campaigns aimed at engaging Patagonia’s audience at the local level. The campaign could be run as a contest and ask people to submit their own photos documenting how they are helping the environment in their local communities.  The campaign will act like a kickstarter where the winners, based on the number of ‘likes” on Instagram, will have their cause supported (either through money or a donation of Patagonia gear or both).  They will also have a chance to meet the Patagonia ambassador of their choice.  The goal would be to engage consumers at the local level, while staying true to the activist pillar of Patagonia’s mission statement. The campaign would be kicked off with an appropriate hashtag that could be used on Twitter and on Instagram. Content announcing the campaign would be shared both on digital platforms and also inside Patagonia stores.  Hashtags could be something like: #getmotivated #getlocal #localgood 

Second, while there is solid content coming in from consumers and going out via the brand Ambassadors, the level of interaction/conversation between the two could be improved. I’d work to have better interaction between their brand Ambassadors and their consumers. This would build on their Tumblr concepts and could be done through in-person Q&As at stores or via video.  The direct in-person events would help build relationships and would be a great way to get people engaged with the brand. In addition, a great possibility would be to host a series of AMAs on Reddit. For example, one of their rock climbing ambassadors might be about to go on a big adventure and they could do an AMA beforehand where they could discuss preparations underway and then they could do an AMA after completing the climb and discuss how it went.  The focus would be on the activity, but the gear and clothing would inevitably be a part of the discussion as well.  This would serve to enhance the direct engagement between the audience and the brand Ambassadors. It would also increase the real time conversation that is happening about Patagonia. 

These two concepts, running local campaigns and putting Ambassadors into direct contact with the audience, would also increase the predictability of Patagonia's social content which is something that they have expressed an interest in pursuing. 

Conclusion

Patagonia is trying to reach the outdoor enthusiast with an activist bent. They are using a wide range of social media sites. Patagonia’s written content is very solid.  They have everything from short captions under stills to longer form pieces on environmental causes that they support.  The longer pieces have an activist angle to them. The stills are their real strength and I really like the creative ways that they are using social.  The content on Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook is very strong. They aren’t posting as many videos of customers using the products and they could easily do this by requesting them. They are slightly weaker on Vimeo where it seems they are simply working to maintain a presence, compared to their presence on YouTube.

While there is solid content coming both in from consumers and going out via the brand Ambassadors, the level of interaction/conversation between the two could be improved. Based on the two suggestions above for a local level campaign and direct engagement with brand Ambassadors, I think Patagonia could I’d work to have better interaction between their brand Ambassadors and their consumers.  This could be done through Q&As at stores, via video or though AMAs on Reddit. 

Patagonia is off to a roaring start on social media and they are poised to climb to higher heights by cranking up their audience engagement.

Social Media for Legacy Recordings Broken Down

                                                                     Legacy Recordings                                                        

Legacy Recordings is the catalog Record Label of Sony Music Entertainment.  Their job is to maintain and produce reissues of hit albums from a variety of genres of artists such as popular, rock, jazz, blues, r&b, folk, country, gospel, Broadway musicals, movie soundtracks, ethnic, world music, classical, comedy and more.  In recent years they have been releasing new albums from artists like Willie Nelson and Earth Wind and Fire. Some of their top artists consist of Michael Jackson, Paul Simon, Tony Bennett, Celine Dion, Jimi Hendrix and many more. 

 How Legacy Uses Images and Videos

Whenever Legacy creates a content schedule (daily posts) they always try to include an amazing photo. When you scroll down your Facebook newsfeed, what grabs your attention the most? Of course a photo will have a higher chance of you stopping to see what it is rather than just plain text.  Legacy believes it’s the same situation with using videos. Chances of a fan stopping on their newsfeed and seeing a video link for their favorite artist’s music video and playing the video, is higher than just having a post with just words. 

  "1964, ELVIS PRESLEY’s 16th movie, Roustabout is released by Paramount.” - Legacy Recordings Facebook Page 

Verify Content

 I Spoke with Brian Wong, Legacy Recordings Social Media Specialists who informed me on Legacy’s daily process of how they receive their content and their strategies as a company.

“We have a team member that does a lot of research for us and helps us create the content schedules,” Wong said.  “Once the content schedule is created, our team usually goes over the facts to make sure the posts make sense and then we can schedule them out.”

 Daily Strategy

Wong goes over the main profiles that he controls to see what kind of posts are scheduled for the day and makes sure there are no errors. Whenever he sees a profile with an empty spot, he usually creates a generic post using an image or a music video.  He runs anywhere between 15-20 Facebook and Twitter pages a day including Michael Jacksons.

 How Fans Interact with Legacy Recordings

The best way Legacy feels to get fans to interact is just asking them to.  They believe fans love homework.  “LIKE” if you are a fan of this album!  “COMMENT” if you were at the concert!  “SHARE” this post to your best friend!

Paul Simon- Live Q&A- Twitter

 One way Legacy likes to have fans involved is by doing live question and answer events via their social media accounts.  Music legend Paul Simon sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon for a live social media Q&A at the New Yorker Festival this past October.  During the 90 minute Q&A session, the two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, didn’t leave any questions unanswered.  Fans used the hashtag #AskPaulSimon to get their voices heard, than Muldoon chose which questions would be answered live by Simon. 

Many fans revealed that he is a hero to them, while Simon unveiled a few heroes of his own in the intimate setting.

“I’ve had four heroes in my life- Mickey Mantle, Elvis Presley, JFK and Lenny Bruce,” said Simon.  “After that there were people who I was impressed with, but I wasn’t in awe of, they weren’t heroes to me.”  

The Grammy Award winning artist played his new song, “The Riverbank” to his die-hard fans and explained the inspiration behind it.

“I live in Connecticut, not too far from Newtown and there was something about that communal coming together that very strongly affected me.  Also I visited Walter Reed hospital, so this song comes from a blending of those two things,” said Simon.

By the event being live with an audience and Simon being interactive with fans via social media, this is a great outlook for artist to be more personal with their fans.

 #TonyDigitalDay

Like Paul Simon, Legacy created a slightly different event for Tony Bennett that included him having fans use the hashtag #TonyDigitalDay and ask him questions.  Legacy received 55+ Million impressions on Huffington Post, Reddit, Twitter & Facebook combined.  Online chatter around Tony Bennett as well spiked massively during the live tweeting event.   Events that Legacy sets up with artists tend to drive more traffic to their social media accounts but the only downside is they don’t do events often.    

  How Legacy can you expanding their following on Social Media

I just finished up my Journalism Certification at NYU and for one of my classes I interviewed Aliza Licht, the SVP Global Communications for Donna Karan International. She decided she wanted to directly connect with the fans be creating a twitter account with a twitter handle of, “DKNY PR GIRL.”  By connecting the company name to a person, the followers have related more to her opposed to just the company name.  She said since she has created this DKNY PR GIRL character, DKNY has gained even more publicity and she was even named the top 50 most influential people in the fashion industry of the 2013.  She said this has taken their publicity to another level on top of the everyday press related events.  I listed her sites where she uses the DKNY PR GIRL name to further the DKNY product.

 http://www.twitter.com/dkny

http://www.dknyprgirl.com

http://www.pinterest.com/dknyprgirl

http://www.whosay.com/dknyprgirl

 Legacy Records twitter followers are currently at 17,458, GQ magazine who also added a face to the brand has 351,456 and DKNY PR GIRL has 479,856.  If Legacy could add a person behind the Legacy brand, the goal would be to gain more followers, which would create more re-tweets, sharing of the Legacy brand. It’s just a different view point to get the information out there. 

 https://twitter.com/SonyLegacyRecs- Legacy twitter

https://twitter.com/GQMagazine - GQ twitter

Legacy Recordings News Correspondent

It’s very rare to go to a major news website and not see a video associated with a news story.  It’s important to make short videos, one to two minutes that go along with the stories.  People most likely are reading/watching from their phones or browsing the internet at work during the day, where they can watch a quick video.  By adding short videos to the Legacy website that goes along with the news posted, it gives the fans the ability to also “share” them via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, e-mail ect.  This is just another way to further publicity in a cost efficient way by using the equipment they already have.  By having a Legacy News Correspondent you can send this person to all different artists events and have them interview artists.  Legacy then will have exclusive interviews uploaded to Legacy’s website and social media accounts which could go viral. 

 It is difficult to develop a personal relationship with a company when there isn’t a person’s name attached to it. By making someone, “The Face” of Legacy, it will help fans contact on a personal level with the Legacy News Correspondent but also with Legacy as a brand. 

 Examples of News articles associated with videos

Cnn.com does a video segment called, “iReporter” where fans ask the questions to the artists.  It’s a way to get fans involved and you can play the interviews back on the website by tweeting out the link, putting it on Facebook, and have the link direct them to the Legacy website.  This would be an extension of have fans be involved like Legacy’s Q&A events.    

Cnn.com iReporter questions Example:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2012/05/01/iri-katharine-mcphee.cnn

Different articles with news and videos

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/30/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/willie-nelson-birthday/index.html

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/30/happy-birthday-willie-nelson-rare-photos-from-the-70s-and-80s/

http://popwatch.ew.com/2013/04/30/willie-nelson-80th-birthday/

 It isn’t often that Legacy posts informative videos on their social media accounts with brief news update.  Yes, a lot of the artists have passed away but there are always news events going on that involved theses artists that need to be promoted better. Also, 18 months after an artist’s music is released from their front line record label, ex. RCA or Epic at Sony, their album becomes Legacy’s responsibility to promote.  There are a lot of relevant artists that they could team up with to promote the Legacy brand better.   

 Britney Spears has been signed to Sony’s record labels Jive and now RCA since her first album was released, “Baby One More Time” in 1999.  She has a new album coming out December 3rd of this year and Legacy has done nothing to promote her past hits.  Legacy could team up with her to talk about her past music experiences with all her albums, reveal personal information about recording, touring and possibly even release some unreleased tracks that she recorded over the years.

 Legacy Records as a Brand

 Overall Brian Wong believes, “Legacy as a whole is probably the largest social media reach than any single brand. So knowing that, we are able to combine all our resources (profiles) to make Legacy as a whole one of the strongest in social media.”  Wong continued, “Maintaining a following is as easy as creating amazing content. Whether it is a rare photo of the artist or a new track that has never been heard before!”

I believe by adding a few of my suggestions to their social media strategy, they could take the Legacy brand to another level of continued success.  I will continue to work with the Legacy team to have more artist’s events and have more videos posted on their social media outlets to have better interaction with fans on a regular bases.

http://www.legacyrecordings.com/

https://twitter.com/SonyLegacyRecs

https://www.facebook.com/LegacyRecordings

By Florença Castro

The Zero Hora, which is one of the largest newspapers in the South of Brazil, has a youth channel called Kzuka - which is quite representative in this region of the country. The channel includes website, Facebook/Instagram/Twitter account and a YouTube channel. As printed media they have a weekly participation in Zero Hora newspaper and a monthly magazine.

The brand, that is totally connected to the young people, need to be consequently connected to their interests too. This is why the presence and the strategy used in networks such Facebook/Instagram/Twitter are so important. The main platforms of the brand are Facebook, with 16,841 likes, and Instagram, with 3073 followers. Kzuka uses Facebook (www.facebook.com/kzukaoficial) to disseminate the stories of the site (www.kzuka.com.br), publicize promotions and show the backstage of the newspaper. Since the audience of the site is not very good, annunciate the stories of it on the Facebook page may be a good idea.  Running promotions on the Facebook page is also a good strategy because makes the audience loyal and raises even more likes for the page - because especially young people do not want to lose any promotion show or party that may occur.

Another positive point is when the brand shows the backstage of the newspapaer. The explanation is simple: The target audience is young and they really dream of knowing who is behind the pages, so, photos of the journalists do make some difference.

Instagram is used more for temporal things. The newspapaer has an Iphone and the journalist who is supposed to cover the event of the day has the obligation to carry the Iphone and shoot all the more important  things - and post momentarily into the @kzuka account. The social network is also used to post teasers of great interviews that the vehicle will publish - which is another positive point because generates buzz for the brand and also new followers.

Another feature often used on Kzuka’s Instagram are the hashtags. The brand establish one hashtag for each day. For example, when it's summer, the hashtag of one day of the week can be #sunglassesday, so, everyone who post #sunglassesday #kzuka will be competing to have their photos published in Zero Hora’s newspaper.

The communication strategy of Kzuka is pretty simple: The brand do everything that the young people enjoy to do, but in a way that doesn’t seems as serious as their parents or as silly as their Brothers. Another thing that can also be seen as a strategy is the public itself that makes the brand: The people who works on this newspaper usually is not more than 35 years old - to don’t escape from the reality of the target audience.

These are some of the people that work there.

The strategy of Kzuka, to be read, is to employ journalists to think like their audience. Journalists that likes almost the same things as their audience likes. The brand gives much value to images. All posts, on Facebook and on Instagram, come with striking images. Kzuka has already create menes too, who are sufficiently shared by all the young state.

The content is stipulated by the young people themselves. There is a meeting every month, with people between 15 and 21 years, to discuss the brand. This is the time when the company listens to what it target audience has to say. And they usually opine in everything: From the colors of the pages of the magazine to the type of words that are used by the brand on social networks. Working on this way is a little harder to make mistakes or to use a language that the public is not expecting.

The target audience is the people that are in the middle of High School and in the beginning of college, because normally this audience, at this time, is undergoing insecurities so nothing better than a newspaper, - not as serious or as casual -, to take the common adolescent questions. The Kzuka, beyond being an advisor, is a trend dictactor - but only for the really young people, who actually they don't want to be. And that can be a problem for the brand. Considering that the brand belongs to a large media company, it becomes easy to understand why they can not have the freedom to post whatever they want as well as small vehicles have. These other vehicles, do not belong to any large company, have totally freedom to do whatever they want - which, sometimes raises more readers. For the brand reaches the public of the age of 21, it's necessary to change the form of their stories: Kzuka usually talks about common problems of teen life, such as sex, men/women, credit cards with high bills, among other things. The solution to reach this audience that they want is to modify the type of stories. Starting on the social networks. Why not talk about career choices? Problems at work, in exchange programs, in college. However it's clear that it's very difficult to change dramatically a vehicle from one moment to another, the solution would be to go changing little by little on social networks. Instead of just making "fun" matters, they could start doing some more serious stories, and announce them on the Facebook page. And, instead of covering an a party or a show, they could cover a fair professions, and post vídeos, on Instagram, of the instructors talking a little bit about each profession. This would help the people that are applying for universities. 

The change can not be sudden, have to be slow and discreet - and, for that, nothing better than social networks. A big quality of Kzuka’s brand is the strong relationship with the young audience. The people who work on the newspaper usually know the "opinion leaders" of the region - and that's a huge advantage over other young brands. The newspaper could use this influence to publicize events and actions to the older audiences. Regarding video, stills , audio and words ... The brand has a YouTube channel called " KzukaWeb " and has videos of all types: From small sketches of reporters covering music events to videos of readers that are about to become potential singers. Recently the brand has created a project which is called "Project 36", which tells the story of one of the reporters who are wanting to turn size 36. The Project has several videos, on various landscapes, and a song that encourages anyone to go to the gym.  This is the kind of thing that the brand is not used to do but that brings access and new registrations for the channel. The problem is that, since they only had this project - readers won’t establish a routine of entering the channel, which explains the low number of registrations (197).

A positive point is that the brand invests a lot in the visual of the videos - which gets the attention of anyone.

As for the words ... They are always younger and relaxed as possible. Slangs and even some bad words are welcome in social medias such Facebook and Instagram.

If there is a brand that should, more than all, be on Facebook and Instagram, is Kzuka. They make the best use of these platforms for sure. Only YouTube stays out. If there were more projects the channel would have more entries but there is only one. This is their site.

Since the goal of the brand is to reach an older audience, create videos with small tutorials might be a good idea.

The first Project, for example, could be about professional life: It could have around five chapters, divided between "how to succeed in a job interview", "how to act on the first day of work", " tips on how to build a perfect resume", "learn how to plan your career", etc. That would move all social networks for sure and would bring more people – of the age they crave - to enjoy their brand.

The purpose of the youth Kzuka’s newspaper is to be a media made ​​for young people - and he has managed to accomplish this goal since it was launched. Its main digital channels, Facebook and Instagram, are not supplied in the traditional way of journalism - which makes many professionals deem as a means futile and worthless information. However it is quite the opposite: This way slight amid slang and some peddling, the newspaper serves as a source of advice for many young people who do not have a good relationship with their parents.

by Luiz Guilherme Alves

  TVCOM is a local TV Channel in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It shows a variety of programming: journalism, entertainment and sports, with a focus on local issues, along with broadcasting the major cultural, political and sport events throughout the south of Brazil.

With more than 3 million potential viewers, the content can be watched on cable, UHF transmission or in the website (www.tvcom.com.br).

The social media strategy is focused on Facebook and Twitter. Their facebook page has 15.300 likes. Their posts are related to local breaking news, what will be broadcasted that day in the the entertainment shows, and even content (like photos and videos) sent by the viewers. The cover photo on changes periodically, depending on what´s happening in the city (Porto Alegre). On 11/11/2013, for example, the city was suffering with the rains and some areas were flooded. Because of the importance of this subject for the local viewers, the cover was the following:

The current strategy is to bring the viewers from TV to the social media area, informing and involving them with breaking news and the programming. Other important aspect is that TVCOM is a part of GRUPO RBS, the largest media corporation in the south of Brazil. The corporation runs newspapers, radio stations, tv channels, besides other businesses. Thus, some content can be shared among the websites and pages. For example, in the TVCOM facebook page, they link content published on the newspaper site (zerohora.clicrbs.com.br): 

Their main strategy for facebook is to focus on the tv channel page (facebook.com/tvcomrs), but the most important shows have their own pages:

These pages don´t have a huge number of likes, but they have their own viewers that probably are more interested on the programming of their favorite shows (maybe only) than the whole TV channel content posted on the main page. This is the reason they don´t give up on these smaller pages. They have an audience that demands information and content.

How the main facebook page (facebook.com/tvcomrs) works? Actually, they don´t have a big team designed just for that (who has?). They have a journalist and an intern, plus the help of the newsroom. Mostly of the photographs used on the page are taken by someone of the newsroom, but sometimes they have content sent by the viewers. In this case, they use the images that are related with something important happening in the city (the local factor is the most important). For example, a viewer sent images from the flood this week. This kind of images are important, not only to make the viewers closer, but also to report breaking news from areas away from the reach of reporters:

The heavy rain and subsequent flooding this week in Porto Alegre is a good example of the way social media is being used for this TV channel. Taking Monday as an example. First, they have the reporting about the weather conditions (during the morning, to help people that are leaving home for work, school, etc.). After, they ask the viewers to send content (images, videos and information) to publish it in the facebook page. Some of the content published come from people in the streets (following the situation by facebook or twitter) and some comes from the newsroom reporters broadcasting or producing the TV content.

Being a local TV channel, the strategy is to keep informing and involving the viewers. Broadcasting local breaking news, sports and entertainment shows is what the channel does. The facebook page has the purpose of add something and, besides that, allow some meaningful interactivity for the viewers. Not always this can be done, but keeping the social media channels active and responding to the interaction made by the viewers is essencial to create and maintain a good image of a business concerned with what the consumer thinks.

Regarding to twitter, they have a bigger audience (something around 21.280 followers) but they drawn less attention to this network. They still tweet, because depending on the programming the twitter has a specific audience that likes to interact. For example, some breaking news or sport shows always use twitter as a way to talk with the viewers and receive feedback.

About marketing, the current number of likes on facebook or followers on twitters keeps growing. A year ago, they made several contests and promotions on facebook to attract viewers. It worked and the number of likes grew. Nowadays, they are trying to keep the viewers they already have and keep the numbers growing, even more slowly.

Concerning the management of the social media, they already do a great job, responding to the purpose they signed for (inform and involve people in the local issues). The things that could be done differently demand specific work (and people) that may not be available for them now. I believe it would be great if they could develop some special content for the facebook page or their web site. The videos displayed in the website are the same already broadcasted on television. This is an important thing, allowing the viewers to catch up with some show they missed or re-watch something they liked. However, it would be better if they could produce and publish specific and original content just for the web. The problem is that it demands people to produce, record, edit, and the small team that exists is already full of work reporting the breaking news on the page, editing and posting the broadcasted videos and curating the social media.

One solution for the short term is to integrate even more the newsroom to produce specific material from their shows to the web. The web team, being really reduced, can´t spend their time doing that because of their own responsibilities. In this way, for example, if someone in the sports newsroom that know about infographics could produce a small video summing up the preparations for the World Cup events in the city, this content could be published directly in the website. Besides that, there are a lot of subjects that don´t have the opportunity to be on TV (because of the short time or other issues) and could be explored better on the web. For the entertainment shows, backstage footage with musicians and celebrities is always something that draws attention.

Thinking about the contents sent by the viewers it is important to notice that most of it is published raw or almost like this, without any treatment, producing or editing. For breaking news it doesn´t matter, because the important thing is to be fast and true. However, for entertainment shows a better production could be done, with web exclusive reportages and better producing/editing. This would demand time and people, but it would show that the network wants to offer more than the usual for the viewers.

Another problem that local news have is that the number of viewers/readers for each neighborhood focused news page or website is inherently small. If this number is sliced further and further down, it gets smaller and smaller audiences. Because of that, it could be hard to have advertisers that support big projects just for the web. Thereby, a good solution remains in the cooperation within the newsroom. Having several shows and a wide variety of programming it could be easier to make a schedule of producing web content. Once a week, for example, each show could produce and publish a special content designed for the web.

In the meantime, there is always the issues of how much it would cost or the time the journalists would have to dedicate to these tasks. Anyway, it´s time of paying attention in the web and the importance of good quality content produced for this media. Maybe, one or two editors could be designated to edit web content. The newsroom journalists could start, with the production, some reporter or even the producer himself could record or write, or depending on the complexity just one person could do everything. It´s the multimedia storytelling world, isn´t it?

By Constanza Correa

On December 29, 2010, the vice president of the National Kindergarten Board of Chile, Ximena Ossandón (@ximenaossandon), tweeted: "I have done my job pretty well, even though my salary is pretty so-so (reguleque)! Sniff ". This comment caused a stir on social media because at that time Mrs. Ossandón was holding a public office and his monthly gross salary was the equivalent to $8,000 dollars, which compared to the minimum wage of about $383 dollars of a Chilean worker caused a lot of controversy. The word "so-so" was trendic topic on Twitter Chile and comments multiplied along social networks.

The polemic tweet came as a response to a comment made by designer and visual artist Mateo Gajardo (@mateogajardo) who publicly criticized Ossandón for her defense during an interview on a well-known magazine to a priest who was accused of sexual abuse. Gajardo tweeted that she was paid to do well her job and "not to talk about hot news, nor to talk about angels and demons". Following the unfortunate tweet and after weeks of critics and accusations, Ximena Ossandón resigned to her position. The next day, she suspended her personal twitter account due to the stir caused by her comment. In November 2012 she opened a new account with the name @nonaossandon.

The so-so tweet was covered by many of the country's most popular newspapers, radios and television channels, but it also led to a profuse development of social media that either criticized Ossandón attitude or made fun of it. As an example, someone posted a video on YouTube mocking the event (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0zK8a3ETfY), showing an scene of a movie in which Adolf Hitler found out about Ximena's resignation because of her “so-so” salary.

But the controversy didn’t stop there. In the following weeks the Chilean Workers Federation (FOCh), created a website called www.sueldoreguleque.cl in order to "continue fighting for a decent wage for working and humble people trying to survive in a country with an overwhelming inequity " and in Facebook more than 27 groups were created with names such as “I also want a reguleque salary” or other derivations.  After this controversy, a famous twitterer called himself @el_reguleque and after joining Twitter on April 20, 2009 has now more than 10.4K followers.

SOCIAL JOURNALISM FINAL PROJECT

By Emanuele Colombo

  STRATEGY OUTLINE

Starting point: Budgetsupercars.blogspot.com. This is my blog about second hand sports cars, affordable dreams for petrolheads. I cover a very specific niche that no one else treats consistently.

  Mission: create a social media and content strategy to promote it and me as a professional on the international market (that’s why it’s written in English).

  Fist step: analyze the blog’s stats before starting to put into practice my strategy, so to be able to measure future gains and losses in terms of audience.

Since the blog runs on Google’s Blogger platform, I have good tools at my disposal right away to focus which posts work better and which are my main traffic sources.

  Second step: what I can do now.

Build a Facebook page and a Twitter account dedicated to my blog, where I can share the links to my posts

Use Twitterfeed.com to publish automatically every new post on Twitter and Facebook.

Build a page on Google+, since sharing my Blogger posts on this social is automatic (and perhaps it will be effective even in terms of Search Engine Optimization, since I use Google’s blogging platform).

Connect my blog’s Twitter account to the ones of well known automotive opinion leaders, like Jeremy Clarkson, Jay Leno and so on, and try to interact as much as possible with these people.

Try to find arguments for my new posts from very important blogs and websites, like Autoblog, PistonHeads or Carbuzz, to link them if I happen to go into cleverer analysis then theirs, and attract their attention (they’re going to see if I send them traffic).

Publish one new post every day to show my blog is active and constantly updated.

Edit the pictures I use to make them appear a bit more original then they are actually (I’m using the ones I find on the Internet, at the moment).

Work on Search Engine Optimization: currently near all of my traffic comes from Google and even if I target a 30/30/30 with other sources (social and direct access) it’s always useful to increase my audience with the means I have already.

  Third step: what I’m planning to do as soon as I go back to Italy

Get in touch with selected car dealers to take original pictures and videos of the cars I write about.

Migrate all the contents of the blog on Rebelmouse to have a more flexible and interactive platform.

As soon as I get considerable and consistent feedbacks from my readers I'd like to add a forum, to promote interaction.

Create a Youtube channel to publish all my videos.

Publish selected original photos on Facebook and Twitter as teasers: now I don’t do that because I take the pics from Google and I don’t think that images have great appeal unless original

Exploit car dealer contacts to build a greater audience.

Interview carmakers’ technicians to write more in-depth articles on specific classic cars servicing and issues.

      STRATEGY ANALYSIS: WHY I’M GOING THIS WAY

I have two issues: optimize time and resources; make myself noticed.

  I optimize time and resources taking the pictures I find on the web and concentrating on the media I can manage by automated means like Twitterfeed: I still need a lot of time finding the right ideas and writing my posts.

  Sure images are important to catch the eye and I’ll need to take them by myself to gain more impact and gain more traffic from the social networks. Pity that, for now, it’s impossible for me to have the cars at my disposal: but I’ll be able to solve the problem as soon as I go back to Italy. In the US, infact, I don’t have contacts with car dealers, but in Italy it won’t be an issue to find them, thus it will be much easier to create contents of a higher quality.

  It will be very important for my social strategy to cooperate with car dealers for many reasons: to have the cars and make original multimedia contents; gather information for my in-depth articles and, last but not least, because if I interview them and write good stuff they’ll be eager to visit my blog and share on their social media pages the articles in which they appear. And hopefully this will provide me more incoming traffic and relevance.

  At the moment I have to put into my blog the best quality I can and obtain as much traffic I can through SEO, to have important numbers that will help me to get in touch with car dealers. Unfortunately I can’t count on my Facebook contacts to start my campaign, because they’re mainly Italians, and they are not interested in a blog which contents are US based. This could be an issue also dealing with car dealers, because they might not be interested in gaining visibility far from the market they play in. So probably I’ll have to create some posts more focused on Italian market (and somehow I already started doing that, see for example “Want a Ferrari? Buy it in Italy”).

  Verifying contents, at the moment, is not an issue because I write of well known topics: it’s all about choosing the right sources and I have quite a long experience in the field, as well as very competent technicians I can ask additional opinions to.

  To understand if I’m really engaging people around storytelling it’s very useful looking at the analytics: at the moment the topics that received more attention are the ones about the problems that involve people directly (for instance “How likely you are to be stolen your brand new sports car”) and the posts about the cheapest dreams (The top 5 roadsters under $10.000). 

The post about stolen cars came out from a breaking news related to cars that were suitable to be treated in my blog, but I seldom have the chance to do this due to the nature of my blog: it has little to do with breaking news (but a lot to do with cars that break themselves).

  To be  more engaging It’ll be important to publish rich photo galleries, but I don’t want to do it now, with images taken from the web, to avoid copyright issues and because original pictures could give to my contents much more authority. Moreover Blogger platform tends to mess it all up when I try to publish more than one picture with its caption, thus I have to wait to migrate to another platform.

MARKETING AND AUDIENCE

The audience I’m trying to reach are guys like me, with big dreams and little money, and tell them: “Hey, you know what? Maybe that Porsche or that Corvette you were just dreaming about can really be yours…”. That’s why I try to gather useful information about the cheapest second hand models and find out what are the real issues of owning them. And of course I try also to describe what does it mean to drive them now: are they up-to-date or not? What feels aged?

The language is moderately technical (and I try to link the most complicated concepts to other internet pages that explain them) because I suppose I’m speaking to car guys. Anyway I try to keep my posts relatively short, because I’m still building my audience and I want it to be as big as possible and people are more involved in topics you can write in pills. But surely, since I deal with enthusiasts, I’ll need to write some very in-depth articles as well, from time to time. Also to build my “brand” authority. But to do so I want to interview the car dealers technicians, so to find also the kind of news you don’t find on the internet.

  A GLANCE TO MY “COMPETITORS”

What other people are not doing is dealing exclusively on sports cars on a budget: they’re all about news, news, news. Or they’re about reviews of car of every kind and classifieds as well, like Edmunds and Cars.com.

Unfortunately, even if I have no direct competitors I don’t enjoy a great advantage, because there are millions of websites dedicated to automotive and in this pond are swimming really big fishes. Thus is not easy to make oneself noticed even if he deals with something very specific.

  ELEMENTS

I use stills to catch the eye and try to make the context of each post understandable at a glance. That’s why in my blog you won’t find just car pictures, but also charts, maps and graphics that make it easier to explain concepts and trends.

  No audio, for the moments, but it would be nice if I could record the sound of a loose timing belt (a common issues in second hand Porsche 996 Turbos) or of a worn transmission: that would add something to my “buyer’s guides”. I don’t know if the game is worth the candle, but I’m pretty sure no other sites do it.

  On videos I’m rather controversial: sure people like them, but there are a lot of clips on the Web and it requires a lot of time and money to make them good. At the moment it might be convenient to simply link the best video I find on the Internet (as I did in a post on the Porsche Cayman with a clip from Regular Car Reviews), hoping this will make me more visible to who published them.

Verify a story that started on social media: who's telling it, how was it first reported.

The story of a gunman in the Garden State Plaza Mall in New Jersey (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/nyregion/mall-shooting-garden-state-plaza-paramus-new-jersey.html) was first reported on Twitter.  It was being told by a mix of journalists and first hand accounts from people at the mall. 

Was it #breakingnews or was it a planned event?

It was #breakingnews and the coverage emerged from twitter and then continued to live feeds on networks and coverage by AP, local and international print/digital networks.

Is someone constructing the idea / sharing the story or is it reactionary?

At the #breakingnews phase it was reactionary (evening of 11/4 as the events were unfolding) and then story was constructed by mainstream media (morning of 11/5).  

Step by step, tell the story and identify ways you could fact check what was happening.

An armed 20 something brought a gun to the Garden State Plaza Mall in New Jersey and reportedly fired a few gunshots into the air and walked through the mall. As shoppers realized that an armed man was in mall, some fled, while others took shelter and contacted loved ones and law enforcement.  Thousands of people were in the mall at the time of the incident and police said that at least 400 people were locked into whatever store they were in at the time. There was large scale panic, law enforcement arrived on the scene (including SWAT teams & canine units).  There was a systematic sweep of the mall and eventually the gunman was found dead deep inside the mall with a seemingly self-inflicted gun wound.

The story was quick to unfold, with various news outlets painting broad strokes and then as journalists were dispatched to the scene more details emerged.  The journalists stories were fleshed out by first hand accounts and supplemented – at least on Twitter – by firsthand witnesses posting photos and descriptions on social media.  The way to fact check would be to follow the process that you outlined in class last week, including most importantly to be very sceptical until multiple sources or firsthand accounts could be verified.  Triangulating accounts that came in from journalists, firsthand witnesses and law enforcement allowed the story to be verified. But, in the meantime there were numerous unsubstantiated claims – including at one point references to multiple gunmen in body armour – that were unverified and certainly caused more harm than good.

Should they have told the story differently or was whichever social medium the best course of action at the time.

Twitter is a rapid fire medium that was useful for this #breakingnews story, but as seen during the Boston bombing while useful facts can be quickly circulated/reported, rumors and unverified reports often vie for bandwidth as well, sometimes to with very serious consequences. (http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/20/business/la-fi-boston-bombings-media-20130420 )  This confusion happened during this recent incident as well, since there were false reports circulated via Twitter that there were multiple gunmen involved.  Tweets from the scene came from numerous sources including journalists such as @idasiegal4ny, @spsullivan, @JessicaWCBSWLNY and the local media @Bergen_NJ, @News12NJ, and the @StarLedger. A live feed began to be featured on a number of news channels including News 12 New Jersey.  The hashtags #gardenstateplaza and #gardenstateplazashooting were frequently used.

Was there a better image or a story behind the images from the scene/ event that was lost given the prevalence of the first story? 

As NY Times reported, people posted to Twitter throughout the night as they waited to be evacuated.  There may have been some missed opportunities to collate some of these tweets.  Text messages from shoppers/workers still inside the mall was an interesting angle that @JessicaWCBSWLNY picked up on early in the event (https://twitter.com/JessicaWCBSWLNY/status/397568293986258944 ) While they were obviously busy, first hand accounts from the first responders – SWAT teams, other law enforcement – would always add to the storyline. Comparison photos of a “normal” view of the mall versus the scene during the incident could add to the storyline. Of interest, at 1 a.m., Nordstrom tweeted an update about the shooting (https://twitter.com/Nordstrom/statuses/397604217646366721)saying “Everyone was safely released from our Garden State Plaza store. Our thoughts are with those still involved. We hope for a swift resolution.”

Niketa's Slides! (Niketa's Twitter)

Examples of Liveblogs using Rebelmouse as a way to curate content for their editorial companies: 

WSJ Fashion Week Fast Company Innovation Vines 

AJAM Syria Debate | AJAM Syria Live Blog  

Ann Curry – NBC News 

Quartz IPO Coverage 

New York Daily News' Sandy Coverage

La Nacion Rosario Explosion

Prosieben Flood Coverage

How SF Sees SF

CNN AC 360 Vanished