Social Media Comparison

I chose two company to compare their social media strategies:
The first company I chose is Ford Motor Company.

Ford has made social experience through social media the biggest part of their marketing efforts; each time they add a new blog post, they pull in the image, headline of the post and the comments from readers onto the front page of their website; and the company is infamous for their path breaking principles that it launched through thorough marketing and quality control techniques and over the years going through many patches of changes, they have managed to evolve a successful social media Strategy that works.

Along with their Social Media sites they also have a popular blog named “The Ford Story” which a huge help to let potential and current customers discuss and read other people’s reviews and experiences and also stay current with important topics within the company.

When viewing this blog, those new to the site or those browsing and looking to find out what type of experience they offer when buying a new car from the company and their culture from a social viewpoint right from the start. Click the following link if you would like to check out their “New on Ford Social- All the Buzz” Website.

 In the sample image to the left, you can see their innovative layout where viewers can start breading the comments before they read the article, putting their fans’ and followers’ viewpoints first. Introducing your blog and your readers’ comments to new viewers sets a welcoming and friendly first impression for any company.

One of the Ford’s first social campaigns was its “Ford Fiesta Movement”

in 2009 was to build buzz about the car in the United States where Ford gave 100 digitally connected people at Fiesta for 6 months Each had to create a themed video every month, while documenting their time with the car on social media and then posting real time content about their experience that was unedited and unfiltered, essentially turning over the brand to its consumers. The result of this campaign was amazing; receiving 132,000 hand-raisers looking for more information, 82% of which were new to Ford and 30% of which were under the age of 25.

Ford has a special Social Hub for customers and fans to consumer information, interacting, which is a great way for people top with other users and provide feedback and suggestions to the brand.

Ford also created a badge system:

This badge system allows users the ability to select badges that matter to them and share on their social networks. Ford could then target their audience and deliver relevant content based on the types of badges that users selected; there were events around the country in which Ford could secure earned media because of this awesome tool as well as targeted digital ads and the results revealed that the first day they received 100 million social impressions, 400 million browser impressions, and reached 66 million Americans.

By utilizing sentiment analysis and predictive analytics into their incentive-modeling tool, their goals are to be able to make smarter and cost effective decisions about how to spend incentive dollars. By broadening their understanding of customers' other interests, like what are Camry owners' favorite TV shows, and what other brands do they like? This would help Toyota to be more effective with their ad placements and brand tie-ins.

A key difference with their segmenting tool is that they can correlate our social media results internally with their own important data to be on the lookout for new insights and figure out whats currently trending, like what a wide cross-section of people think of the Camry versus what new Camry owners think; or even if they see a customer expressing concerns about an experience with another dealership, they have the opportunity and knowledge to be able to work with other dealerships to possible offer assistance. 

The second business I chose was "Toyota Dealership"

Toyota began testing various methods of social media monitoring and sentiment-analysis tools a few years ago, when the social media was just starting to take off like it is now for helping to grow businesses.

Their data analysts submitted a prototype using public data collected from Facebook and Twitter; they found that by filtering to find words such as:

"Lexus," "decide," "buy" and "BMW," they could quickly identify active shoppers who were choosing between their cars and other similar brands. By taking extra time to research their competitors, it gave them more funding and bandwidth, which was what ultimately evolved into Toyota's award-winning sentiment-analysis system.

Toyota's CIO says "The carmaker analyzes social media commentary to learn what customers think of specific vehicles, identify quality problems and increase the accuracy of sales predictions
."

Toyota uses social media data analysis across many areas--sales, service, quality, marketing and product development; for instance if a customer were to express their interest in a car, they would be able to determine engagement through analyzing the frequency of dealership visits via their Foursquare check-ins, understand their dealership experiences, and even understand what features may have sparked their interest in a similar competitor's product. 

Toyota Scion of San Francisco region partnered with ReachLocal,

who was able to provide search, display, and mobile advertising solutions. During a pilot program,

ReachLocal built location-based campaigns to drive more traffic to the dealer websites and increase leads via Google Ad-words.

The infographic to the left shows the campaign results at a glance. They had amazing

results, the first result ended up giving them more Quality Leads & Traffic through creating car campaigns focused on Scion’s ideal customers. ReachLocal generated quality traffic resulting in quality leads by also using location targeting to get in front of only relevant prospects who would potentially see the participating dealer’s ads; these targeted ad campaigns increased website visits by 200%, generated nearly 2,000 new calls and form leads, and drove over 28K ad clicks in a four-month period.

ReachLocal search advertising also was able to bring in 56% of total new website visits to the participating dealerships and in turn grew car sales as years went by which obvious was the primary goal of Scion’s marketing strategy in the first place, using ReachLocal was a social success for growing their sales/business. In fact, the results from the pilot helped to convince Scion corporate to co-fund the nationwide roll-out of a similar program, so that more dealers would have the opportunity to benefit from an online marketing strategy as well.

For more information on why Social Media is an essential for businesses now days, check out my blog post: Social Media- How Businesses use it to Brand

Social Media & Buisness

Social Media Use to Brand Businesses 
The use of social media has overpowered everything now days; people use it as a form of communication to keep in contact with close and long distance friends/family. However, it's no secret that social media is used for more than just communicating among friends and family. The power of the impact that social media can have on the business of marketing is outstanding, and has become a major part of branding and promoting businesses all around the world, now days if a company does not have a social media presence and activity; it can seriously affect the growth of their business.

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Pinterest represent a huge opportunity for businesses to grab the attention of customers, let them see what’s new and trending with their company in real time while simultaneously building their brand image. 

When creating a social media marketing strategy, it's worth thinking carefully about who is being targeted; as there will be people within your social networks who may not necessarily be customers, but who could possibly have a big impact on your marketing efforts. Social media is not a campaign, it’s a commitment that we always need to be active on for it to be effective.

So, what does this mean for your business?
Even though it seems as though all social media platforms can essentially do the same things, each platform actually can offer something different to your business. It's important to recognize and consider these differences when developing a social media strategy and deciding which platforms are best for your company. For help developing an effective social media strategy on any of these platforms, check out this link: Differences between Social media Platforms

I also wrote a post about two Companies (Ford and Toyota) that seem to have a nice hold on their social media strategies, feel free to check it out: Social Media- Strategy Comparison