Interaction with the Fans

This week in class we talked about how social media has linked in with marketing through TV shows and interacting with the fans. One of the biggest ideas that has just been started to be implemented into the world is the idea of fan made shows. A TV show that I watch and uses the method is on the MLB Network called Intentional Talk. What they do is have their fans send in what segments they want to see and who they want to be as the guest star and many more aspects. It's a great way to get the fans involved and stay intrigued with the show. It gives them a sense of importance to the show, like they can control what happens and have a big say in what they want. This TV show is not the only one doing this either though. In a world where it has become a little bit of a struggle to reach the consumer through TV commercials, this new wave of tactics to reach the consumer has helped marketers through the interaction with the actual show. It's a great way to do this because the TV shows are what the people are actually watching these days, not the commercials. Reaching out on social media and getting people to cast their live votes via hash tags, or tweeting at them directly, or other means is what you want the fans doing to get them involved. I think that these kind of tactics and ideas will only continue to grow as we move forward.
Personally, I don't get into the TV interaction. On almost all of the TV shows I watch they will have a hash tag in the bottom corner for that nights show. I still never use it though. That being said, I think there is still some room for improvement to continue reaching those people like myself, who still don't care as much about the interaction as I do the TV show. Some ideas that might get me more intrigued about the interaction would be a contest. Some shows will do that for like the best tweet about the show or maybe the best picture, but the point being I would be much more inclined to participate if I had a chance to win something.
Interactions with the fans is a very important concept to grasp. With more and more people who watch TV on demand, it's getting harder to reach the consumer, so to grasp the attention of the fans through interaction, is very important for marketers.

FREE!!!

This week in our social media marketing class we learned about the power of free. When you think about it, there really is a lot of power when it comes to free. Think about all the free stuff we get, free samples, maybe a lanyard, and other small things. A lot of the time people will return for that item too. Just the other day I was offered a free sample of a new drink. Knowing I wasn't going to purchase it, I still tried it though and to my surprise kind of enjoyed it. Even though I didn't purchase it at that moment I still thought about and could see myself purchasing it at a later point in time. The point being that I had no real reason to turn down the offer because I didn't really have anything to lose. From a marketers standpoint, they can afford to offer small free things, especially new or start up products. It is a great way to get your name out there and for people to maybe at least ask questions. My friend is a graphic design major and created his own design and out it on t-shirts and tank tops. To get his business going and try and get his name out there he ordered business cards and tried to get people to learn about him that way. However, it wasn't until he ordered a whole bunch of koozies with his design on them and gave them to a bunch of people that he started getting inquires about his shirts and design. A cheap investment in himself paid off because now people can get a product they use at times for free, and in turn market his product. It has really helped his business and it is a smart way for people to market. Free can be good.

Video Marketing

Marketing through the use of videos can be very helpful to a company. In class this week we learned how helpful the use of video can be in marketing. We saw how videos go viral but that you can't really make a viral video. We saw that a lot of the time a video goes viral because a celebrity will pick up on it and show it on their show and then it will take off from there. The other factor that plays in to a video going viral is community participation. If people start making their own versions or spin offs of the videos it creates more opportunities for the video to be seen. The more interaction that can get going the better. The last factor that plays into videos going viral is unexpectedness. Usually videos go viral just by chance, there are some where people are intentionally trying to make a viral video and it will hit, but most the time it just happens by chance. That's the beauty of making a video for a company though. You don't have to get permission to make a video and put it up on youtube. There is no cost to post it so you can do it at will. It's a great easy way for a company to do some inexpensive marketing that can possibly be a big hit and do even better than maybe a commercial on TV.
Commercials are not working as well either. With so much TV now being watched on demand or through the computers, they are becoming less relevant. So many people fast forward through commercials now days that it's hard for commercials to really bring in the customers anymore. With videos though, if they are good enough people will go to find them. Some marketers still don't like the fact of videos being used to advertise but the truth is it's a growing marketing tool and very useful. We even learned that videos can be used for universities to bring students to their school, and it's brilliant.
I found a video that went viral and was a huge hit that made me wanting to go the school very bad. It was a freshman convocation speech were the student goes off and gives an incredible motivational speech about the school. It really was amazing and made me want to know what it was like to be at Georgia Tech. So the point is, videos work! They can sell a product, bring customers in a store, or even bring students to a University. It's a great tactic that needs not be taken lightly.

Blog 1

This week in class we talked about myths in social media. There were seven main ones that we mentioned in class plus a couple of extras that we came up with ourselves. Some of those included that social media is just a fad, just for the young, it's too time consuming, it's free, or that everyone is using it. Well the truth is none of these are completely accurate. Not everyone is on social media, there are still a lot of people that are not on it and therefore the need of the old ways of marketing are still needed to reach out. As for some of the other myths, social media is not going away, it will be there and continue to only grow. Those people who aren't on social media will start to be and social media as a whole will continue to grow. The point of what all we have learned so far is that we need to adjust with technology and time as we are moving towards a more technological world, but at the same time, understand to not ignore the old ways all together and learn to find the medium between both.
In an article I read, they talked about the myth of customers finding the company on social media if they wanted to. This is somewhat true in that people who really want information about a company will go to facebook or something of that sort to find out about the company. I personally used this tactic just a short time ago. I was going to Thailand with the school for a study abroad trip and we were going over there to help out small social enterprises with their business. The first thing I did to find out about the business was go to facebook and check out their page. I was able to find out a lot about they business just from the page and I also noticed how many promotions they had on their page which I thought was very smart. It's good to be on social media as a business but it's gotta be more than just being there. Something that is also talked about in our book is that you want to drive traffic through your business and through the pages. Something that I read was that if a business is good they can drive the traffic to these platforms, and then drive that to their websites and in to their retail stores. So it is something to have a social media page, but there has to be more to it with activity and continuing to bring the consumers in.
So in our first week, we learned some important concepts in marketing through social media. There are the old ways and there are the new ways, some of the old ways are fading and the new ones are emerging, but both are still useful in today's world. It's about adapting and moving along with the changes while still using those building blocks of marketing. Along with that, is that there are a lot of myths about social media, but don't buy into them and understand that social media can and is helpful in marketing.