Baru-baru ini dunia per-twitter-an dihebohkan dengan tweet-tweet kontroversial dari seorang stand up comedian ternama. “It’s dark n I don’t know where I am. GW GA BERCANDA!!” diikuti dengan rentetan tweet serta link video yang mengesankan seakan ia disekap di sebuah ruangan. Awalnya, hal ini tentu saja menimbulkan kekhawatiran, tetapi tak beberapa lama ditemukan sejumlah kejanggalan lewat tag video, ketersediaan wifi bila tidak ada password, akun Youtube yang dibuat sehari sebelum kejadian dan hal yang paling krusial adalah mengapa sang brand ambassador tidak langsung menghubungi istrinya saja.

Ternyata tweet-tweet tersebut adalah bagian dari campaign sebuah brand automotif premium yang ingin mengenalkan produk terbarunya lewat social media. Strategi promosi berkonsep ‘anxieties’ dengan maksud mencuri perhatian banyak orang malah menimbulkan sederet kecaman dari berbagai pihak. Dengan terkuaknya ‘penculikan’ tersebut hanyalah taktik promosi belaka, banyak orang merasa kecewa karena merasa tertipu sehingga melempar komentar pedas kepada sang brand ambassador.

Hal yang harus kita sadari dengan adanya social media adalah sebuah informasi dapat tersebar luas ke segala kalangan sekaligus dapat mengundang respon yang sangat cepat. Sebagai digital agency, kami melihat kurang matangnya strategi pada campaign ini  sehingga merusak citra dari brand ambassador yang seakan menipu para follower. Tema-tema radikal yang memicu kecemasan tidak patut diangkat karena tidak sensible terhadap nilai-nilai kemanusiaan. Namun, campaign singkat ini cukup berhasil diperbincangkan oleh banyak orang. So, what do you think about this campaign?

Currently, Nescafé Hungary runs a competition that required a contestant to submit an idea for project (picture/video) and get the most ‘likes’ to win $5000.

A member of the 9GAG.com community, Janos Szolnoki aka Jani posted a video to Nescafé Hungary and posted a comic to 9GAG.com asking the fellow members to like the video of his 11-year-old handicapped brother to enter the contest in hopes of giving his brother a special Christmas gift. The contestants needed at least 20 ‘likes’ on Facebook to be considered  and before being assesed by the judges. With over 47.000 ‘likes’ at time of posting, it turns out that Janos and his brother were banned from the competition for the way they had appealed to get the votes. Now, the Nescafé Hungary’s Facebook wall is getting flooded with thousands of negative comments from the 9GAG community.

Nescafé Hungary posted on its Facebook page:

“Dear All,

“Regarding the rules: in the first round of the game you had to upload your project and satisfy the minimun requirements – meaning collecting 20 likes in order to be short listed. ( So in the first round, not the high number of likes was basis of the decision!) Then the jury subjectively assessed them and chose 30 to go to second round. In the second round there will be 5 winner…s, out of them 3 will chosen by the jury and 2 of them are those who collected the most likes. Refers to the rules of the game, not the ones who collected the most likes get the chance to be shortlisted. Those who were not selected to the shortlist are not banned, but only 30 them were selected for the second round (at the basis of the decision was not the high number of the likes, but subjective assessment of the jury).”

With so many negative comments, Nescafé Hungary responded as below :

“Dear All,

“Many of you have asked for clarity about the voting and judging process for the Nescafé 3in1 Effect and specifically asked why János Szolnoki didn’t win it. We have looked into this carefully and can confirm the the rules of the compition were followed fairly and we have been in direct contact with János Szolnoki and have been able to reassure him that no guidelines were broken. For those who want to understand a little more about what happened, here is the detail. We at Nescafé created this competition with aim of financially supporting project ideas and were delighted to receive 637 applications. All entries were considered by a judging panel and shortlist of 30 project ideas were selected – these included an ambulance for children and a shelter programme for homeless people. The judging was based on a broad range of criteria, not based on the number pf ‘like’ received (a minimum of only 20 like was required). No personal circumtances had any bearing on the judges’ final decision. We are looking forward to the rest of the competition and helping the winning entry its charitable goal with a donation of 5 million HUF.”

What we can learn from this case is, the internet has been a huge part of many people lives. With Social Media trends that constantly changing, companies need to start to think about their strategies a lot more and execute it in proper manners. If companies wanted to create a competition, they need to go into the details in making the rules. If the rules are not clear enough, it could backfire the companies itself. Crisis that Nescafé Hungary is facing right now can cause severe and even fatal backlash on their company, it’s often resulting in brand reputation damage, lost customers or drop in stock market value. In our opinion, Nescafé Hungary has handled the situation in a pretty good way. They gave a clarification and they contacted János Szolnoki in person to reassure him that no guidelines were broken. As a digital agency, we should do a digital monitoring more often and accurate to anticipate a case like this. 

As you all know, Twitter has announced a new look on Thursday, December 8th. Along with the redesign, Twitter also followed in Google+’s and Facebook’s footsteps with the release of their new Brand Pages. Although it’s only available right now for a selected 21 companies  including Coca-Cola, Dell, American Express, Nike and Disney, it’s said it will be available to the public soon.

A Brand Page will bring benefits to social media campaigns and allow brands to create a great professional-looking page. So, these are a few things on what we like about the new Twitter Brand Pages:

Intriguing Pages
The more intriguing your page, the more followers you can get! The Brand Page provide an 890x90 banner on top, which can include all the information, logo, taglines even links. At the top of the timeline, this page also includes a “promoted tweet” which can be used as a welcome message. Displaying not only just text, this “promoted tweet” area also has the capability to put a pre-expanded video or picture to drive further engagement with the customers.
 
Raising Awareness
Twitter Brand Pages will also impact the brand awareness. The new design will allow brands to easily differentiate between their @replies (tweets directed at the brand) and their @mentions (tweets just mentioning the brand with @username). By separating @replies and mentions, Twitter facilitates the customer service-savvy companies without interfering with the messaging, which will create interesting interactions

Instantaneous
The instantaneous of Twitter is always beneficial for the brands. Brands can spread out all the information more constantly on Twitter without annoying the people. Twitter Brand Pages are a great place for brand enthusiasts to converse and talk via hash tags. Website owners will also be able to embed a tweet onto their website, giving site visitors the ability to favorite, reply to, or retweet a tweet without even leaving the web page.

So, if you’re planning to take advantages of this new Brand Pages, do consider about how you can make the content as great and relevant as possible. Happy Tweeting!

Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands, is teaming up with comScore, a web and mobile data measurement company. The main goal of this partnership is to provide mutual clients improved measurement for social marketing campaigns

Mutual clients using the Buddy Media social marketing suite and comScore Social measurement service will be able to better quantify the impact of their social media efforts, accessing in-depth data on reach/frequency, demographics, online behavior and benchmarking of competitive brands. The partnership is intended to foster seamless social marketing optimization and performance measurement for mutual clients of both companies.

Linda Abraham, CMO and Executive Vice-President at comScore, said: “Brands and agencies understand the importance of social media marketing, but often cite the need for the right tools to implement their strategies and the right metrics to evaluate their effectiveness. They have largely been designing their social marketing programs on faith, without the appropriate feedback loop to ensure their strategies are maximizing returns.”

Michael Lazerow, CEO of Buddy Media, said: “We have innovated in social analytics organically, via acquisition and via partnership. Our partnership with comScore, the industry leader, enables us to provide an offering unlike anything else on the market. Buddy Media clients will continue to receive our analytics in the social marketing suite for free, but now have the option to purchase a premium product that integrates comScore’s best of breed web-wide measurement service.”

It means, the combination of comScore’s panel-based insight and Buddy Media’s real-time engagement data and social software suite will make your company’s social efforts more effective, we are really excited about this!

Twitter has become a fantastic spot for everybody to share various information, especially the aspiring ones. Magnivate has compiled a list of our favorite social media and marketing accounts to follow on Twitter.

1.     Mashable Social Media: Mashable is a great resource for all things about digital culture, social media and technology, and their social media focused account gives updates on “the latest happenings in social media, plus tips on using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare.” Follow: @mashsocialmedia

2.     HootSuite: A global, multi-city conference on social media, you can count on this Twitter account for interesting news, tips and tidbits about social media and digital marketing. Follow: @HootSuite

3.     Media Ide: You’re not gonna running out of idea if you follow Media Ide, where Indonesia’s online branding, social media, and creativity is talked about. Follow: @mediaide

4.     Saling Silang: Follow Saling Silang, where you’ll see tweets relating to current information about what is being discussed on the internet, especially on various social media channels in Indonesia. Follow: @salingsilang

5.     Daily Social : Another great source of  the latest tech startup news from Indonesia, their tweets and influence in the social media world should not be missed. Follow: @dailysocial

6.     Social Media Today: Tweets of great posts by the  best thinkers on Social Media best practices, tools and social marketing. Follow: @socialmedia2day

7.     Digital Buzz Blog: You can count on this Twitter account for the latest digital campaigns, social media, viral videos, cool websites, online marketing, digital startups, web technology and everything in between. Follow: @DigitalBuzzBlog

8.     Social Media Guide: Social Media is great at posting not only their own informative content, but also sharing links, news and information on social media best practices, digital marketing and media data. Follow: @smmguide

We know that there are more than just 8 Twitter accounts which making useful contributions to those of you learn more about social media marketing, so who’s yours?

Can business turn social customers into brand ambassadors? The answer is a big “yes”!

If social media has forever changed, what would you suggest? Some would no doubt say customer engagement or interaction, and both would be great. However, if social media has changed anything fundamentally, then it’s probably customer service. Nowadays, costumers are so hyper-responsive, they expect instant responses on public online platforms.

All businesses should be seizing the opportunities offered by social media networking sites and using them to build the brand. To do this, they need to spread the word; they have to get the attention of the buying public. Who’s the best ambassador for your business brand? Well, it’s the happy customer. They’re the ones who’ll spread the word and tell their friends.

So, how do businesses attract these loyal customers, and how do they turn them into brand ambassadors?

Fast Responses, when customers turns to social media for a support issue, they expects a brand to generate the fastest response possible. And most people on social networks not bother to post negative comments. So, don’t  make them wait for the response, be fast!

Transparency, private and direct messaging on Facebook and Twitter is fine, but when it comes to customer service, it’s best to be totally transparent and visible. The answer could help thousands more customers. Think of each post and interaction as a resource that future customers can reference.

Consistency, it’s vital that you ensure all customer support answers remain consistent across the web and across all social channels. If a common question is posted on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, then each response should communicate the same solution. Conflicting answers create confused, unhappy customers.

Be Organized, customers can spot disorganization a mile away, especially online. It’s so vital that everyone on the team is on the same page. Each team member must know where to seek reliable answers, and each must source information from the same place.

Human Touch, above all else, customers appreciate the human touch, it feels personal and special. Most of us prefer to interact with another person who speaks the sort of language they understand. The beauty of social media sites is that they’re informal, so people feel at ease using them. Brands can use this to their advantage by treating customers as individuals.

If companies treat their customers well, then they’ll become your biggest ambassadors.

Source: http://mashable.com/2011/11/22/social-media-customers/