Kriitika Imkamol

Presently, business world have been progressed to involve with social media. Using social media marketing is to convey messages to target customers that will benefit the company. It can be done via blogs, social new aggregators, social networking portals and video sharing sites. However, as social media marketing has become popular, the social media has negative impact on B2B. According to Miller (2008), he state that  ”Since social media rewards popularity, not quality or accuracy, there is an inherent push to write about trendy topics that will get links, not the time-proven tactics that B2B marketers use on a day-to-day basis. “By their interactive design, social media tools like wikis, forums and networks have the potential to deepen the conversation between vendors and buyers.  As a result, it is important to realise that B2B is about relationship driven that if the marketer want to use social media as marketing tool, it needs to make sure that which social media is really can get insight to the customers. Therefore the company should consider to use social media as a general tool to generate brand awareness online, but bare in mind that the old style PR still be useful and more practical. Marketo ( 2008): http://blog.marketo.com/

According to the Google Press, Elliot Schrage who was Google’s vice president on Global Communications & Public Affairs had left Google to join Facebook as VP Communications and Public Policy.  Mark Zuckerberg’s  Facebook’s CEO said welcomes to Elliot:  “Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team as VP Communications and Public Policy. In this role, he will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do. The goal here is to help people understand how the internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.”It showed that social media world has been getting more competitive and complicated. It might be seen as the lost of Google and the gain of Facebook, it depends on how you view this issue.  http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9936886-36.html

To influence other on social media user is not that hard. It just needs to have the powerful influencers who can capture others that can be seen from popular blogers who have a wide audience reach that their blogs can connect people ideas by sharing interesting contents/concepts and encouraging multi discussion. There are many active individuals that connect effectively with users with preference of the community. Social news sites Digg will be an example to look at its successful strategies. Firstly, becoming the influencer, it is acting to involve participating in the community with aiming to authority and influence. Next one is developing network. It is a process of building of social media supporters which can be done through blogging. Getting links from popular blogs can help you to promote your website or content within the community. To find the right user, you have to examine the public user ranking list in order to determine who is has influence. Then you have to check out their submissions in order to get a feel on what topic interests them and then work from that to use these popular public users to help you to develop social networking.  If you follow these steps, it will help you to be influence on social media users. http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to-influence-social-media-users/

Social networking sites have been growing rapidly especially in US and have developed a unique online presence, which can lead to promote ongoing consumer interest and visitor loyalty.It is very competitive marketplace due to the sites also have to provide consumers with distinct content that they can identify with and differentiate them from other sites.  These below tables are examples that will give clear indication how well social networking site in US growing.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/24/social-site-rankings-september-2007/

Nowadays, many companies have hired PR agency to promote the companies online by creating blog. It is because it’s difficult sometimes for a business to project an intimacy with their target customers; therefore, company websites via blog is very useful as it facilitates corporation to allow personal interaction.  But some company has tried to create the blog that telling all good things about services/ products with good comments. The blog is gone wrong to be a fake blog known as a flog, so instead of attracting target customers it becomes vice versa. The company should not fill it up with propaganda of how grate of your products/services are because nobody will be interested in reading it, but talking about what the company has been doing lately would be more interested.!!  Moreover, when the company receives a comment, all comment should be addressed even though it is a negative comment. Because it is expressing of dissatisfaction from customers, so it is like wake-up call for the company to improve products/services to satisfy customers. It likes the company response to the feedback, which can help your company to get insight and closer to target customers leading to better products/ services to serve the customers.

Many companies use PR stratrgy in term of creating well-established campaign and routes to gain creditability for the companies. Strarbuck is one of the companies that relies on PR to expand and capture more target markets. As you know, Starbucks is a well-known company in which its strengthes are prime locations, brand loyalty, brand image and dristribution network. Moreover, it is not only coffee shop but it also offers fast and convenient but comfortable services that provides customers a cozy and clam atmosphere to be relaxed from hectic world. Many people tend to hang out with peers, read magazines or newspaper during their coffee break, as a result Starbucks realized that in order to extend target audiences it needed a media partner that shared and emulated these values. The Times is the perfect partners because The Times offers the best synergy and demographic match, as well as the best environment for us to communicate the Starbucks brand to likeminded customers. Times readers are very similar to Starbucks customers – cultured, adventurous, ambitious and image conscious.

Starbucks agreeed to sell The Times magazines in stores exclusively in store. The partnership represented a first in the UK and was backed by an extensive co-branded marketing campaign, which included in-store and in-paper marketing and a strong radio and outdoor campaign.

Starbucks sold its first paper in store on 30 March 2004 and, since then, the partnership has gone from strength to strength. Both partners have benefits from media communication,  extend customers base,  generate more profitability and gain competive advandtages over their competiors. in addition, the campaign won Business Idea of the Year in the 2004 Media Week awards.  As you can notice,seeking opportnity to capture more targrt markets can be accomplished depending on  choosing the right PR approach with the right partnership will lead companies to be ahead of their competitors.

Word of mouth is considered to be a significant communication that has influence on other persons in decision of choosing a particular brand (Temporal, 2001). PR people have realized importance about WOM that it can influence customers’ decision making in buying products/ services. Hence, many PR people have tried to own WOM via media online in order to create trust, mutual relationship and influence people. Therefore many brands have hired PR people to mange relationship with influence people. Moreover, because PR company has experiences in making comments where massage are disseminated via internet, so it come up with strategy to hire participatory avenues to reach and influence target audiences. Furthermore, brand trust PR people to do WOM because advertisers/ PR people are expert at creating positioning in a controlled model. For instant, as Temporal Kalbfleish; director of marketing for Blackberry state, “The real story is about the PR way that the Blackberry establishes itself as a brand in people’s minds. It spread person-to-person. The experience of this brand is so personally legitimate for these people they actually defined its meaning. The user created the brand and what it stands for. What happened as these people started to use the devices is that they become badges of cachet. “Hey, I’ve got one, you’ve got one. You must be in the same league with me”. It was getting the Blackberry into the hands of people to whom this thing really connected on an emotional level that established its brand definition and its cult status” (Adamson 2006, cited in Temporal, nd).  As you can see, it is clearly that the Blackberry creates its brand based on the brand idea of mobile communication device that allows movers such as businesspeople to constantly keep in touch 24/7 and let users talk about their experience to one another, which drive the power signal of its brand. Therefore, WOM is useful PR tool to create brand awareness and brand reputation. 

What is Podcasting?

Podcasting is allow you to create and deliver audio content to iPods and other portable media players on demand. It is like creating your own personal radio station. You can use podcast with MP3 player so that it can be listened to at the user’s convenience. The main benefit of podcasting is that listeners can sync content to their media player and take it with them to listen whenever they want to get in touch with your favorite radio programme.How can I do it?

If you want to listen to individual shows, you have to download some free podcast program software such as iTunes, iPodder, Odeo, PodNova and Feedburner. Then , you can enjoy your own audio programme.

 http://www.podcastingnews.com/articles/What_is_Podcasting.html

Some people might haven’t known what is micro-blogging. Don’t worry that I am also one of them,  I have just known this term because of studying in PR and new media course. Alright let’s begin with the meaning of micro-blogging. According to wikpedia, micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allow users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user”. The main tools for this are Twitter and Jaiku. In addition, other social networks that have update status on their services are Facebook and Bebo. This micro-blooging is very popular among people around the world in order to keep update about their statuses. These below key players are examples of micro-blogging. 

 Twitter is the first key player in micro-blogging. It allows users post and update status via SMS, e-mail, or web browser.   

 Jaiku is also one of the key players in micro-blogging and considered to be the main competitors for Twitter. Its features and functions are similar to twitter.      

Frazr is micro-blogging that focuses on the French and German markets.      

 IRateMyDay is micro-blogging that allows users to update a short text along with rating your day on a scale of “Worst to Great”.

Nowadays, micro-blogging has been spread into organizations and companies. As we can notice from Nokia, it has just developed application called “ WidSets” that allows customers to install ‘widget’ internet applications to cell phone, giving access to all manner of Web 2.0 services. And Nokia has just announced that there’s a new WidSets widget for Jaiku, the emerging micro-blogging services (Pocket Picks, 2007).  Hence, we can say that Micro-blogging is not just a short-term trend and still evolve for more.

 http://www.iratemyday.com/

http://www.jaiku.com/

http://www.frazr.com/

http://twitter.com/

http://www.facebook.com/

Newspaper is no longer necessary. If you want to keep update what going on around the world, you just suft on news online. Due to busy life styles, a lot of people tend to update news online because it is convinence and easy and it is also free. As a result, many media organizations develop their sites to attract target audiences to drive traffic to their websites. The example of this development is shown by BBC News Online. It was BBC News Online that was successful and has been named for best news website for the fourth year in a row at the UK’s most prestigious interactive awards. Since the site has launched in 1998, it  has attract internet users more than 200 millions per month into its sites, which won competition over CNN Europe, ITN Online, etc (BBC NEWS, 2001).