CONVINCED!

From a previous post of mine “Convince Me to Use Twitter” I received many comments and appreciate all of them! I was given great suggestions, and yes, was convinced!

Most of you told me to just dive in, follow others, and figure it out as I go, which I plan on doing. When I first started blogging I was frustrated with having to think of topics to discuss, thinking none of them were interesting enough. As I have used my blog more I find the topics and discussions coming a lot easier. Hopefully this will happen with Twitter.

Also, in the PPT Josmosis6 posted, I found a lot of good starting points and suggestions. I think the most helpful of the presentation was when he said “Be the person you want to follow.” I am worried that my followers won’t be as interested in my opinions as I anticipate, but I think if I follow his advice and tweet about things I would want to read about I will be able to gaining a following (I hope!). I’ll just make sure not to tweet “sitting on the patio!”

I am currently in finals week and have NO time to start my Twitter account right now, but I do plan on starting it next week, so look out for me!

Thanks again for all your help!

A Social Holiday Season

During this busy time of the year, when television is flooded with holiday commercials, outdoor mediums are splashed with red and green color schemes, and you can’t go more than five minutes without being reminded that you have to buy yet another person a Christmas/holiday gift, it is hard for advertisers to differentiate themselves.

This year it seems that companies are turning to social media to try another way to reach their target market. But, is this really differentiating themselves.

“Retailers are embracing social media like never before this holiday season. More than half are including it in their marketing strategies, up drastically from only 4% in 2007, according to a new survey out from BDO Seidman.”

This drastic jump in the use of social media is both positive and negative. Positive because the media platforms are really thriving from being used by such major corporations as Best Buy and EBay, and for the companies because it is an inexpensive way to reach their target. It is negative because consumers may see the overload of information as a negative and associate this negative with the brands. This relates back to the post I made just before this one about taking your campaign to the next level. How far is too far?

Does anyone feel they are not only becoming overwhelmed with paid advertisements during the holiday season, but also by the amount of social media that is being utilized and reaching you on a more personal level that you may not want to be at with these companies?

No Participation Required…

After my last post I was doing some research and found an article that pretty much answers my own question of how far to take a social media campaign.

In one of his blog posts, Jared Quinn uses Samsung’s “Tap and Take” campaign as an example for an effective social media campaign. I think he makes a lot of great points.

I absolutely agree that a social media campaign should be unobtrusive. Using social media really targets consumers on a personal basis and by being too forward the consumer may see the brand in a negative light.

I also think he makes a great point about participation. A social media campaign should be one consumers have the choice of participating in if they wish, and if they wish to not, the campaign should still make sense to them and be able to be followed. This should especially hold true while using such platforms as Twitter that are made to be able to easily use for information, or easily tune out.

Take a look at this article if you are having trouble with a campaign, it helped me a lot.

Taking It to the Next Level

For an advertising class I had this past semester my group and I had to create an entire internet campaign, including social media. Our fake client was Chiquita Banana and we had the idea to use Facebook and YouTube to create an entire viral social media campaign. Consumers were able to customize banana characters, add picture, clothes, accessories, and make the banana dance to music. The consumer would then upload the video of their dancing banana onto the Chiquita website and the top 10 best videos would win a prize. The videos would also be able to be posted on YouTube and Facebook for the enjoyment of others to watch.

The ideas for this came slowly and as our teacher observed us develope these ideas he kept telling us to take it further, do more with it. At first I was frustrated, but I think his pushing us made us come out with a better plan than we originally were going to stop with.

While making this campaign however, I wondered where it was appropriate to stop. Sometimes I felt as if we were over doing the idea and the mediums, which my cause the campaign to burn out faster than anticipated. How can one tell when they should stop and just go with what they have? When does a social media campaign become to obtrusive?