Ole Martin Ellingboe Nilsen Assignment 3 Soc 167

Sociology 167, Fall 2013

Assignment 3: Social media marketing analysis

Ole Martin Ellingboe Nilsen

UC Berkeley

I choose to evaluate the Facebook page of DNB, which is Norway’s biggest bank company. It’s being evaluated in terms of premiums, content & content flow, participation & user-generated content and finally customer service portal.

There is hardly any free stuff or gifts to collect by following the page, so the bank is clearly not trying to attract customers on the basis of offering exclusive premiums.

Most content on the page could be classified as commercial for the bank’s own product and neither of which is participatory, meaning user-engaging. However, there is one big exception to this. Last spring, the company launched a major multiplayer online treasure hunt, where the treasure was hidden somewhere in the physical world. The game immediately went viral in Norway. The rest of the content is informing about on-going campaigns and offers for its many different products. Events held by the page are usually information seminars about different financial topics, which are considered to be both educational and relevant for today’s economy.

When it comes to content flow, the page is providing new materials on a weekly basis.

The company always seems to find new ways to attract interest from the public due to an innovative marketing strategy. Examples of the types of contents are links to articles written by the company’s CEO. As well as uploading the bank’s own TV-commercials (which is really cool, as long as the commercials are funny!). Once again, I’ll emphasize that most of its content is clearly meant as commercial for the banks own product.

The page does not offer any user-generated materials, beyond (1) conversation treads and (2) the ability of Facebook to allow for pages to be tagged in private photos. Thereby resulting in the bank being tagged a very high number of times by its many Facebook followers. All these photos are made available for the public to look through, from DNB’s tagged photos album folder.

The banks customer service portal is answering questions and concerns from users very fast and at every hours of the day. Also, the page is replying to its own posts, if it got additional information about the topic in question. At the moment, many of the different conversation treads are warning other people about recently on-going 419 scam attempts. These treads are all written using interpersonal communication style.

The bank is for some reason liking other volunteer organizations pages on Facebook. One example would be the Norwegian Red Cross. This might be due to some sponsorship/partnership related stuff, or it could simply be due to controlling its social appearance, namely impression management. Getting associated with well-liked organizations and ideals are a good idea to achieve this.

My overall impression of the page is very good. The most important reason for this, in my opinion, being that the bank is offering fast responding- and easy to use customer support service through its Facebook page. The downside here is the increased risk for its users to engage in information oversharing. Such as revealing private and sensitive information, through a medium where everyone on Facebook can read it. However, this is not the banks fault.

Reference:

https://www.facebook.com/dnb

Lena Kardos Assignment 3 Soc 167

Lena Kardos

21699958

Assignment #3: Social Media Marketing Analysis: Starbucks

Starbucks’ Facebook page provides accurate and relevant information as well as many engaging features for customers to enjoy. Initially upon visiting their page, I noticed 35,360,277 people have liked their page. This shows that either their company is popular or their social media page is popular, or both. Next, their latest post was 1 day ago, which means they provide regular new content. This post is a picture of a girl and a boy holding up pumpkins as heads while holding Starbucks cups. It entertains audiences while also advertises their product.

Another post shows that they changed their cover photo to one that a customer posted on Instrgram, which demonstrates that they showcase user-generated content. The Starbucks page also provides premiums: “Get a drink of choice free when you join our loyalty program by 9/22.” By offering this deal, they attract new customers.

Yet another post provides participation of users: “Like this post to add your voice to the #ComeTogether Petition that we are sending to our leaders in Washington D.C tonight: 1. Reopen our government. 2. Pay our debts on time. 3. Pass a bipartisan budget by the end of the year.” About twenty-nine and a half thousand people liked this post, which provided a way them to participate and have their voice heard through the Starbucks’ page.

Although Starbucks’ attracts many users by their regular content flow, entertaining posts, user-generated comments, and premiums, they do not do a great job providing a customer service portal where users can communicate their thoughts and concerns. Some users have tried to comment (i.e.: “ONE OF THE WORST WEBSITES TO SHOP ON… ALWAYS HAS A PROBLEM…”), but Starbucks has not responded with any comments. Furthermore, none of their commercial posts encourage any kind of customer feedback or allows a space where customers will get feedback on their concerns.

Overall, Starbucks utilizes social media positively to market their business and attract customers. Although they do not provide all the features of a completely successful social media marketing strategy, they have shown that they can effectively engage users with their content.

Eileen Zhao Assignment 3 Soc 167

Eileen Zhao

Oreo Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/oreo

One of the main reasons why I love Oreo is not just because of its chocolate deliciousness but also because of how engaged the brand is. Their Facebook page is a clear representation of its active engagement with its audience by providing continuous content featured not only on their Facebook page but also on their twitter handle as well. Their “Daily Twist” campaign where they featured new content every day for 100 years to celebrate their 100 years in business was gorgeous, touching on monumental days such as Gay Pride, the Mars Rover landing and even Elvis week. By offering creative advertising to celebrate the small things that their audience was familiar with, they created themselves as a more active and fun brand.

While their Facebook page does not offer premiums or participatory events such as games or surveys, they do provide a place to share user-generated content and a platform to serve as a customer service “portal,” where users can go to complain about their products or even rave about it as well. While the user-generated content aren’t actively featured on the wall (it remains exclusive to only Oreo released content), audience content is listed under the “Recent Posts by Others on Oreo,” where users post pictures of their baby having their first Oreo cookie to creative arrangements of their Oreos. Most importantly, Oreo is best known for releasing creative and heartwarming content. Their “Daily Twist” campaign really solidified them as a leader in creative content within the advertising community, a title which they have consistently held to this day, especially following their Vine compilations of their #OreoHorrorStories videos. With over 34 Million Likes, they’re definitely doing a great job at keeping their audience happy.

Daniel Kulsvehagen Assignment 3 Soc 167

Assignment 3
Daniel Kulsvehagen

AT&T

AT&T is a telecom company selling: wired and wireless voice and data, broadband Internet, TV and messaging services, as well as many of the leading innovative devices.


In this assignment I have checked out their facebook page to look for things such as: free givaways, creation of events, showcasing of materials, dialogue with the customers and content flow.


AT&T seems like they upload user-generated content almost daily, and they use this content to make a dialogue with the customers. For halloween they uploaded a picture of a dog in a pumpkin costume (this was all a picture on a phone) and wrote: Introducing Blankograms: I'd rather be a ________ (noun) than a pumpkin. People then answered and AT&T commented on the answers. This is a mixture of Participation, User-Generated Content, Content Flow and Customer Service «Portal». They also take part in campaigns such as «Anti text and drive» campaigns.


As for Premiums, AT&T use public figures such as Baltimore's Ravens starting center Gino Gradkowski who signed autographs at the AT&T store in Towson Town Center. After scrolling through almost a year of posts I could not find giveaways or competitions to win free prices on AT&T's facebook page.

I think AT&T lacks Premiums and Participation on their facebook page. More free giveaways perhaps from events or sharing-competitions (share this picture to win a price etc.) would make the page more visited and used. Even though there are lots of posts (Content Flow) there needs to be more interaction between customer and company on the facebook page.

Link to the facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ATT

Jonathan McGowan Assignment 3 Soc 167

Assignment 3 Soc 167

Jonathan McGowan

I looked at Blizzard’s Facebook page for this assignment, and have come to the conclusion that while their page is not bad, it’s also not good.  The biggest reason for this is simply that their page does not appeal to the user visually nearly as much as it could.  The graphics are decent, but ultimately the page looks very amateurish.  It could be much more organized, and have a much more appealing cover/profile picture.  What they have is fine for people that are already interested in Blizzard and its products, but they are not attracting any new potential customers with their run of the mill Facebook page.  Beyond this their participation consists only of users commenting on photos that Blizzard chooses to post.  This is not very interactive at all, and enables as many trolls as it does legitimate users that are just trying to get more connected with the company.

The remaining four categories: premiums, user-generated content, customer service “Portal”, and content flow, are all present on Blizzard’s Facebook page, but each of them has significant room for improvement.  Premiums on blizzards Facebook are few and far between, and even where they do exist, it is not simply free in game content for anyone that uses it, it is a link to a raffle they are holding for beta keys to games that are coming out.  This is better than nothing, but it is not as good as interesting content that is accessible by everyone, raffles bring in fewer users than free in game pets for world of Warcraft.  The user-generated content is very limited, and even then it isn’t interesting enough where others could join in, it’s simply a picture here and there of users wearing blizzard gear at one place or another.  The customer service “Portal” is a link to another blizzard Facebook page, it’s hard to tell how effective this is, but at the very least it is present.  Finally Blizzard’s content flow leaves a lot to be desired.  While they do occasionally talk about things that are happening with their company, it has less to do with games they produce, and more to do with advertising.  At times while scrolling through their page it feels as if you’re looking at ads, not the Facebook page of one of the greatest game designing companies in the world. 

Ultimately while Blizzards Facebook page has some of the key qualities needed to have a successful online presence, these qualities are lacking and do not do a good job of attracting new users.  For this reason their Facebook page is neither bad nor good, but resides in neutral territory.

Link to Blizzard’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Blizzard

Susanne Jensvold Ruud Assignment 2

Susanne Jensvold Ruud

Soc 167. Assignment 2

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/September/13-crm-1043.html

My story is about a online crime committed by a Marine resident who used so called “sextortion” to blackmail a women into sending him pictures of herself. When the women denied he said he would send pictures he already had of her around to other people and leak them on the Internet. Along with other private information about her. He communicated with the women through anonymous emails. The man has now pleaded guilty in front of a judge for interstate stalking. He will face a maximum sentence of 5 years.

John Bryan Villegas who was judged in this case used dissociative anonymity. He send anonymous emails and the women he sent them to could not know any personal information about him. John hided his identity because he wanted to blackmail the women he sent emails to. This anonymity is one of the things that create the disinhibiton effect. What Johan says or do to this women through the emails can’t be directly linked to him and affect his life. Which makes it easier to go through with it.

John was also invisible through the use of Internet. The women he sent the emails to couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see her. This makes it easier for him to things he maybe otherwise wouldn’t.

When John and the woman interacted through emails they don’t interact in real time. Which means that they can answer whenever they want. This is called asynchronicity. When they don’t have to react to the immediate reaction of the other person this creates disinhibiton. When people communicate face to face they usually follow social norms. But this can disappear when you communicate through emails. People can then have expressions that avert from social norms. Because they can say something and put it out there, but they can also run from it afterwards if they want to. Because people don’t know who you are.

Logan Hwang Assignment 2

Logan Hwang

SID: 22926285

September 28, 2013

Online dating scam has been a serious issue in Canada this year. One Laval resident reported that she was tricked by an online user she had met from a dating website into giving him tens of thousands of dollars. The man who organized the dating scam told convincing stories to arouse sympathy from the victim and asked her for money several times to help his family pay for bills.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/woman-says-online-dating-scam-cost-her-42k-1.1305348

Interpreting the report told by the victim of this online fraud incident, the main cause of the criminal’s disinhibition was likely motivated by dissociative anonymity. The scammer and the victim communicated only through not-in-person devices and such means of communication made sufficiently possible for the scammer to fabricate a persona that would attract the victim. The scammer constructed a reputable character by telling the victim convincing stories, including one about his adopted son, and the scammer started to arouse sympathy and asked for money as he gained the victim’s trust. Because the scammer has not been interrogated, there is no way of revealing the truths. However, whether true or not, the scammer disguised himself as a U.S. soldier, deployed overseas, and kept his real world, in-person identity hidden. Furthermore, as long as the scammer is not tracked down and arrested, he would not suffer any real-world, outside the internet consequences.