Television turned social networking

The way people gain information has changed throughout time.  Now, people watch television from their iPod, iPad, computer, and the television set.  Additionally, social networking has become a huge part of daily life for so many individuals.

The UK BBC station created iPlayer which allows people to chat while watching their shows online.  When an individual finds something they like, a friend can click on what is being watched and view it immediately for themselves.  The platform allows connectivity between friends to share, chat, and explore together.  Watch this “commercial” for the iPlayer:

Find more information on the iPlayer.

- Jennifer DeMarco
Marketing Manager

Customer Service: The Differentiating Factor and Social Media Marketing’s Role

With every factor that goes into marketing, many companies, especially major corporations, tend to over look the very basic essentials that can ultimately be the deciding factor in customer loyalty. Two words, customer service. In the article “Can Social Marketing Save Customer Loyalty”,  from the Chief Marketer, awareness is created that shows just how crucial customer service is and uncovers the secret is of some of these big corporations and how they maintain phenomenal customer service, social networking.

Zappos, Intuit, and Comcast, are just a few companies that are crowned as king of customer service and how they have utilized social networking to their advantage. Customer service is essentially the last factor to differentiate companies, however, the experience in dealing with a company and their product is a large percentage of retention in customer loyalty. Yelp is a social networking site that is purely dedicated to customer reviews, ranking their experience and satisfaction with a company.  Studies have shown that through customer service, customer loyalty or the loyalty effect can increase retention by 5% which can inevitably lead to an increase in revenue anywhere from 25-85%.

Marketing Associate, Melissa’s View on SMM

“Twitter, tweeting, poke, hug, tag, buddies, comments, wall posting, blogging…. It almost sounds like a different language, so what does this actually mean besides a bunch of nonsense? The biggest development in networking today is starting to expand at a rapid pace. Social Media has become the biggest development among people of all ages for various different reasons, but yet continues to have split reviews from people of whether or not it is really practical or just an annoyance.

I kept hearing about Twitter from some of my friends who have been hooked into the latest fad as well as on TV from numerous celebrities that religiously give updates on their latest endeavors. I decided to check it out first hand to see what all the fuss was about, but my biggest question was, “why should people care about what someone had for breakfast?” Well I guess some people like to be “in the know”, however that is not the only benefit that Twitter or various other Social Medias like Facebook and MySpace provide.

One article, Two Thoughts

On May 4, 2009 Chiefmarketer.com posted an article titled “Five Must Ask Twitter Questions”. Both Jennifer and Melissa, Marketing Associates at Strike Marketing commented. Here are their thoughts:

Jennifer:

The article focused on questioning a companies’ ability to optimize site traffic, search engine rankings, inventory depletion, reputation management, and news distribution on Twitter. The article brought about some interesting points that many companies are missing out on:

Social Implications of Social Networking Sites

Do you remember the days when people talked by phone or “snail mail”? Years ago, the way we communicated started to change. People talked via e-mail, phone, and instant messaging services. Now, Social Networking sites are changing the way companies do business, people interact, and news is disseminated. But these sites have some major implications for businesses…

YouTube Video in the News

YouTube made the San Jose Mercury News for a video posted by two employees of the famous pizza restaurant: Dominoes. The employees were in jail and fired from the company…check out why athttp://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12152199?source=email.

It is amazing how social networking sites are becoming a tool for hiring and maintain quality employees. Social networking sites allow companies to find questionable employees and maintain a positive company image. If Dominoes’ had kept these employees on the payroll, what kind of damage would their company’s reputation be facing?

Come back soon to see what kind of social implications social networking sites have on companies.