Final: Online video marketing

When videos meet social media... on Prezi

Social media monitoring project for NIKEiD

I organized all the information I collected into a report, at Google Document. Please say details and leave feedbacks.

Personally I love this brand, and I do believe it can be improved.

Energizing and embracing the customers - how NIKEiD can enhance its groundswell

In the past two weeks, I monitored more detailed messages about NIKEiD's groundswell and did some deeper analysis. Here are some new findings:

1 Different tones are used between Twitter and Facebook

• Even for the same topics, LeBron X iD being launched and “pick your kicks”, it appears different tones on Facebook and Twitter.
• Twitter's tone: talking to a friend, interpersonal, casual and more willing to get feedback. 
• Facebook' tone: cool, short and unwilling to continue talking

2 The most common messages are least effective

• NIKEiD, delivering too many messages about new products result in turning NIKEiD’s groundswell another medium of advertising or another product catalog. However, talking more about the design and styles and highlighting customers’ achievement and contribution are what groundswell should do. 
• In addition, besides the topics around products, messages related to fashion, health and lifestyle should also be involved in order to show the spirit of NIKEiD and make communication more emotional and interpersonal.

3 No feedback on Facebook and limited feedback on Twitter

• No feedback on Facebook even for the hottest discussion
• No feedback to either positive or negative comments
• Great feedback on some tweets about customers' design
• Limited feedback on Twitter

4 Failed to create buzz & poor engagement

On November 12, NIKEiD Facebook met 2 million likes, and only an activity message posted. There is no more words to express thanks, no supporting messages to celebrate on other platforms, and no marketing strategies, like deals or coupons, to energizing sales. Nothing has been done with this event to create buzz. As a customer, I disappointed.

5 Reduce cooperation with social media
Last week, NIKEiD delate the social media update part on its official website.

After Monitoring NIKEiD's groundswell, I would like to make the following recommendations:

• Goals:

Ø  Use groundswell to raise interpersonal conversation in order to better understand customer needs

Ø  Create buzz to increase social mention, attentions and unique visitors to benefit marketing

Ø  Increase effectiveness of groundswell in marketing and branding and take advantages of unique features of social media instead of turning them into product catalog

Ø  Energizing customers and make them the power and resources to produce more sales as well as improvement to the products and the brand

• Recommendations:

1. Give more feedback showing you are listening: The groundswell should always be there when customers are talking. It may be impossible to response all the comments, but it is needed to show you are listening even by participate in the discussion. For example, for the hot discussion of navy or orange (Picture 11-1), there is no need to respond all the comments, but it would be helpful posting “Kobe prefers navy according to our interview” or concluding “Orange wins!” In addition, customers’ design and opinion should be high valued, which means it’s important to give feedback to customers’ design and the positive and negative comments about the products and brands. If you don’t give feedback to the negative comments (Picture 11-2), this customer may spread the words and the negative sentiment.
2. Speak social media language showing you are a friend rather than you are a brand: The tone needs to be changes, especially on Facebook. Posting messages in a talking tone will lead to more positive sentiment and make customers more willing to talk. On the other hand, talking like a brand may turn the words into advertising. Speaking your customer’s language will make you closer to your customers, or you will lose your customers.
3. Release multiple messages and enhance richness attracting more talking: The topics of groundswell should concentrate more on designing of customers and discussion of features rather than products. Groundswell is not a place to do advertising or release new product catalog, which repeats the messages from other media. So NIKEiD needs to focus on the topics which other media are not able to talk about and the messages of your customers which you cannot know from other places. Also, more topics about fashion, health and lifestyle should be involved. Now the marketing is about branding and communicating instead of only products and sales.In addition, NIKEiD should use more videos and even a little more words in groundswell instead of only pictures, since the pictures have been proved not that effective. Videos are more effective and easier to attract customers attention. Besides, the pictures should contain more content instead of only showing the products.
4. Focus on what your customers care: NIKEiD has paid enough attention to the products, while that’s not what customers want. Groundswell helps you understand the needs of your customers, and should be used to embracing these needs. From the monitoring, it’s obvious that NIKEiD’s customers care about new fashions, their own and others’ designs as well as the discussion about styles. As a result, NIKEiD should highlight these things and show full attention and respects to its customers.
5. Create buzz for energizing your customers: It’s important to create buzz in groundswell to raise more attention and discussion. Every special event can be a buzz, like the 2 million likes millstone (Picture 12), then the buzz will turn to more unique visitors and more sales. Much more efforts should be made to energizing the customers, especially when they are young and energetic. If your customers are ready to be energized with high passion and loyalty, there is no reason to keep the groundswell quiet.
6. Create NIKEiD style and NIKEiD groundswell: NIKEiD need its own style in page layout, color and especially social media marketing strategies. NIKEiD has its own target audience and mission, so this uniqueness required independent social media marketing strategies. In addition, for NIKEiD, groundswell should be stressed because it’s the best way to energizing people to design and participate instead of only purchasing.
7. Embracing the groundswell and turning the number of the audience into improvement of your brand: Now NIKEiD has 2 million people who like its Facebook, more that one hundred thousand people who follow its Twitter, and numerous visitors on other social media platform. The groundswell definitely needs stronger strategies to play to its strengths to make more contribution to NIKEiD and its products. Social media can be used as a platform where customers can improve the brand, so just do it.

Monitoring NIKEiD Groundswell

• Introduction of NIKEiD

I have kept an eye on NIKEiD for more than a year for its extraordinary performance in customization. It is a service allowing customers to customize Nike products with colors, materials and "ID". Launched initially in 1999, NIKEiD has become the key part of Nike in both production and revenue. Although customers can design the shoes in NIKEiD studios, most people choose to design it online through nikeid.com. NIKEiD set an great example for e-commerce and especially for customization.

• Social media platforms

NIKEiD has various social media platforms and keep updating frequently, ensuring NIKEiD always show up among its community. For the appearance, these platforms share the same color (black and white), logo, and name, so that customers can easily recognize NIKEiD's account while using these social media platforms.

Facebook of NIKEiD

Facebook of Nike

Twitter of NIKEiD

Twitter of Nike

Blog of Nike/No independent blog of NIKE

YouTube of NIKEiD

YouTube of Nike

Flickr of NIKEiD

However, from the list of pictures, we can easily find it's hard to tell the differences between NIKEiD's groundswell and Nike's groundswell. Furthermore, NIKEiD's groundswell design just reprints Nike's, instead of creating a new one. The colors and format of NIKEiD hardly express the spirit of NIKEiD which is creative.

• Target Audience

From the audience demographics provided by Facebook insights, the target audience of NIKEiD, at least for Facebook of NIKEiD, is mainly teenagers from thirteen to seventeen years old. In addition, the products of NIKEiD determine its target audience is a group of energetic people. If someone would like to spend probably hours on your site for designing, he or she must love your products and brand. Also, this customer would be willing to engage in your social media and even promote the product and the brand. To sum up, NIKEiD's social media has nearly perfect audience  who are young and energetic and can be easily embraced.

• Social mentions

social mention for ALL

Social mention for pictures

The analysis of social mention shows NIKEiD has high rate of reach and mentions, but the largest part of sentiment is neutral. This also prove that the contents NIKEiD provides are failed to energizing the customers. Considering the large group of customer paying attention to NIKEiD, failure in creating social buzz may not regard as a big problem for the manager of NIKEiD, but may lead to harms on customers' loyalty and weakness in branding.

The second picture show the social mention of NIKEiD's pictures which are main part of its groundswell content. We can also tell that these pictures gain less passion than the general content, so the content strategies of NIKEiD are not really successful.

• Traffic

Google trend analysis for NIKEiD for last 30 days

Google trend analysis for both Nike(in red) and NIKEiD(in blue)

The analysis of Google Trend indicate that the traffic of NIKEiD is limited especially compared with Nike. NIKEiD is a part of Nike, but NIKEiD meet special needs of a very creative group which are important for Nike's whole brand and revenue. So I recommend NIKEiD should have its independent groundswell strategies as well as impressive traffic and social mentions.

• Content and feedback

From the content analysis of NIKEiD's platforms, I found these platforms are used as product catalog by releasing newest products, in a neutral and very "company" tough. It's hard to attract audience or energize customers in this neutral attitude, especially for a brand which encourage customers to co-create the products. To be more specific, there are following problems:

1. Repeated information and content.

Post1 of NIKEiD

Post 2 of NIKEiD

Post 3 of Nike

2. Lack of emotional statement. Post 1 is the most common content released on NIKEiD's Facebook, Post 2 is one of the posts attracting most likes and comments recently and Post 3 is the most common content released on Nike's Facebook. Compare with Post 2 and 3, Post 1 drew less attention.

3. Lack of official feedback or even attention to the customers. Most of NIKEiD's Facebook posts has a large number of likes and comments, but there are only posts to raise the topics but no feedback for these hot discussion. As a result, that will harm the passion of these followers.

4. Lack of management for Spam messages. These spam messages will definitely lead to negative results like reduce of the pageviewer or even antipathy of the brand.  

• Possible problems

After these research, I was surprised to conclude that the groundswell of NIKEiD probably is not able to help with energizing and embracing customers but lead to neutral attitudes towards the products. The possible problems are listed below:

1. Similar design with Nike resulting in weakness in recognition  and uniqueness
2. Update newest products as main content misleading the function of groundswell in product catalog
3. Neutral content and tough resulting in low passion and strength on social networking
4. lack of richness leading to limited traffic of social media
5. Lack of independent support resulting in all the weaknesses
6. Failure in energizing customers as a creative brand!

Let the Internal Groundswell be Supportive

After ten chapters talking about external groundswell strategies, we finally turn to internal social networking. The internal groundswell is easy to be overlooked especially for those large enterprise who have spent a lot on the external social networking. In Groundswell, three cases are given showing three benefits from internal groundswell: supporting your external groundswell, collaborating with and supporting each other and building corporate culture.



The most impressive part is about relationship and culture, which are essential in branding. Internal groundswell can express the culture of a corporation, which audience more likely trust and accept. Also, it's a great way to gain more customers' attention and loyalty. After I learnt this, I want to apply it to my real life.

When nonprofit organizations embrace social media...

More and more NPOs emphasize social networking to create the community of members and donors. Like what Bob Alves said, the internal social networking strategies will benefit organizations in increasing traffic, collecting data and feedback from members and donors, and exchanging information. I strongly agree with these points from my own experience of internship at African Community Education(ACE), a nonprofit organization aiming help young african refugee in Worcester area.

• Situation analysis

Since ACE is a small NPO so far with limited budget and staff, groundswell is one of  the best way to connect with all the members and donors with low cost and large audience. However, the current social networking of ACE consist of mainly Facebook group, Facebook place and monthly e-newsletter and other direct e-mails to our contact list. Currently, ACE has 285 members in its group but much less active users to create new content. And for the Facebook places, there are few topics or activities updated as well.

On the other hand, in real world, ACE is a warm community with kindness, trust and happiness. All the staff, students, volunteers and even donors love each other. While getting along with those kids and staff, I deeply touched by their feeling that they are a part of ACE family. That's also ACE's culture.

In addition, ACE can be a powerful community which I found through Chase Community Giving program. From Sep.14 to Sep.19, they collected 453 votes which are just part of ACE's real community but much larger than their Facebook community.

• Recommendation

Apparently, ACE should enlarge their Facebook community to meet the following objectives:

1.Listening: 

ACE's Facebook group and page can be developed as a channel where all the members, including staff, students, volunteers and donors, can express their comments and suggestions. As a result, ACE can gather information from the students and donors. Even a simple statement like " Yesterday was the best day ever" can lead to hot discussion about latest Fundraiser dinner and drive more traffic, if the manager of internal groundswell provided better listening environment by adding rich information and giving feedback.

2. Talking:
More posts will lead to more discussion and traffic on groundswell. Continuing posting new topics will definitely contribute to more conversations. ACE can post policy changes, problems and challenges, and new achievements to encouraging members to working on the issues or at least informing them where we are.

3. Energizing:
ACE has a lot enthusiastic employees and students, who love their organization. Let them spread the words on the platform where all their audience can see and pass their passion, positive thinking and advice, in order to engage more people in the community.

4. Supporting:
Turn ACE's Facebook group is a place where members always get help and answers. In other words, they should include Facebook and other groundswell as a channel to support each other.
5.Embracing:
Open to new ideas and suggestions about ACE.

6. Branding:
"ACE is a family" should not be just what I experience but also the culture and key messages we should tell others. Groundswell can help with building the community and send the message out. ACE has already developed special culture and  good relationship among the real-life community, and they should put that online and spread the principle -- "We are ACE, and we are a family."

Power of Word-of-mouth

We all know that groundswell is important now, but at the beginning or for those who don't know social media well, It's hard to believe. How much impact will it have if only one of your thousands customers says something to your brands? None? little? If this one convinced ten and each of these ten spread the words to another ten people, how much impact will there be then? The effects can be much more than imagination!

That is the word-of-mouth effects, the power behind groundswell.

Let's look back the history before mass media. The main resource of learning knowledge and getting information is word of mouth. Even after we surrounded by newspapers, radios, and TVs, we still get most of our knowledge from the mouths of our parents, teachers and friends. That's what we trust and rely on!

Marketers know that, so they spend a lot of money on WOM (word-of-mouth) in order to build trust with customers (While mass media are mostly used for public awareness). Mark Smiciklas wrote in his blog, " Word of mouth marketing has the power to quickly build up or tear down the reputations of products, services and organizations."

Let's see how we can make WOM more powerful.

Understand word-of-mouth

• How to make the words be listened and spread?

The content we spread among the customers are important. People has inherent habits of choosing the words they want to listen and spread, even in the years long before social media appear. Heath brother's book, Made to stick, concludes several key factors to spread "stick" content, like simple, unexpected, emotional and stories. Also, engagement and other factors are important. That's why we frequently contains questions, "!" and links in the groundswell content.

• How to make the words go farther?

In fact, not all the participators in your groundswell are the same important. Like what shows in right picture, the social media users, or critics and creators (Groundswell, chapter 3), are keys for the spread of words. If we energize them well, they will help to spread the words, create more contents, engage more friends and followers as well as even support the groundswell system(Groundswell, chapter 7&8). As a result, your brand community and reputation will rapidly grow.

Revolution of word-of-mouth marketing

There are two new trends to strength the power of WOM: multimedia and mobile. Pictures and especially videos can draw more attentions and are easy to be understood and transferred. Flickr and Youtube are required for all companies and brands when social media development. In addition, the rapid growth of smartphone users are definitely revolution of social media. Sharing whenever and wherever seems give the spirit for groundswell. About half of Facebook, Twitter and Yelp users and traffic are made up by mobile users.

Negative word-of-mouth

When the good words are spreading among your customers, the bad words are the same. If you want more promoters and less detractors of your brand, you'd better give responds, especially for the negative comments. Are you wonderring what people will say if you don't treat the negative comments seriously, see what Gitsnjsli say about BodyShop!

On the other hand, the effect of negative words is not a problem compared with the positive impact of word-of-mouth. According to Kisrsten, the negative WOM has less impact than the positive one.