I logged into Facebook recently to find the following ad next to my news feed:
Rent a movie now and watch it now on Facebook, you say?
I hadn’t seen any Australian companies yet using the Facebook Credits platform to receive payments for products or services, so I was eager to check it out.
We’ve already posted about the #QantasLuxury social media fail, where a promotion turned sour on twitter. Below is a wordcloud that used 500 tweets from that evening to look at the most common words (besides common English words like ‘the’ and also ‘qantasluxury’ and ‘RT’)
Some very interesting results can be seen. As would be predicted, ‘Qantas’ is significant, as is ‘fail’, ‘blog’, ‘QantasPR’ (one of the parody accounts), ‘gold’, ‘hilarious’, ‘LOL’ and more. It would be great to see a wider collection from all the tweets…unfortunately Twitter limits the number you can search back to.
Update: We generated a second cloud from 1,500 tweets saved earlier in the day (around 2pm). See the results below!
Today we saw the trending of a new hashtag on Twitter, #qantasluxury. Find out more below, and at the end we have written 5 tips on how Qantas or anyone with a recent social media disaster might rebuild their online brand .
Update: Qantas have announced that today was part of their ‘ongoing social media strategy’. Time to head back to the drawing board on that one. (link)
Update 2: Read our follow-up article with a tweet word cloud analysis here: #QantasLuxury a la Wordcloud!
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1. Keep it professional but light
Consider Twitter a professional cocktail party. The tone of Twitter content should be professional yet engaging, enthusiastic and passionate.
2. It’s not all about you
The fundamental principle that should be used when posting Twitter content is to consider what interests and engages your target audience, rather than focussing on the marketing needs of your organisation. Straight promotion of an organisation’s services achieves little attention or positive feedback.
I’m in love, obsessed, addicted. There I said it. I have to get a hit four or five times a day. Nothing else can make me feel like this. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to give it up. What is the object of my obsession? Reddit.
Reddit is an online aggregator: users submit links and the community votes them up or down and make comments. The most popular content can range from cat pictures to Occupy Wall Street. It has thousands of devoted users and countless more “lurkers” (individuals who simply view the content without signing up or contributing content).
Like its more immature and slightly vulgar cousin 4chan, Reddit is the birthplace of the internet. Heard Rebecca Black’s Friday or been rickrolled? Blame Reddit. It’s the source of the vast majority of memes (funny jokes or images) you see. For example, Reddit made Nate Dern a viral superstar due to his one-word appearance (huh?) in an AT&T commercial last week.
According to youth mental health organization Inspire, there has been a prevailing attitude amongst young people that teachers, parents and youth workers don’t undestand technology and how young people use the internet.
Young people therefore feel that adults weren’t in a position to credibly advocate safe internet practice.
The internet is clearly a vital and important tool in the every day lives of young people:
• Research has shown that Year 5 is the most common entry point into social media
• 90% of 12-27 year olds use social networking services
• 97% of 16-17 year old use social networking services
• Social networking is the number one online activity for 16-29 year olds
Key concerns adults hold about social networking include cyberbullying, cyberstalking, sexting and inappropriate content.
But at the same time, there is a lot of research that social media is a core part of how young people grow up and develop. Social media has been found to be key in education, development of media literacy, identity and self-expression, creativity, connectedness and relationships, and ultimately wellbeing.
But how can parents, youth workers or youth organisations minimise the risks that they are concerned about, while maximising the significant benefit that social media can provide to their children?
Of course, there is no simple and straightforward answer. But here are three suggestions:
- No amount of monitoring, surveillance or computers in a particular location will replace having a supportive relationship that encourages the young person that they can seek help from you without concern of social media ‘bans’.
- Swap roles. Find out how much they know by becoming the student. “I’m not very clued into Facebook, can you help me set up a profile? How do I change my privacy settings? What privacy settings should I have?” If they don’t know, then you can both find out together.
- Don’t freak out. Social media can be scary, but things can and do go wrong. From a parent’s perspective, this doesn’t mean that the sky is falling down. Treat it as you would ‘in real life’. For an organisation, this is the key reason you need to have effective and well-written social media guidelines and policies.
Online engagement with consumers presents organisations with an interesting challenge: sharing their brand with consumers.
Unlike traditional marketing channels such as television or print advertising, social media allows consumers to speak back.
Many consumers view Facebook pages as a community and have little hesitation in making their views heard. This has enormous benefits but also presents a challenge: can organisations let go and participate rather than control the conversation about their brand?
