United Breaks Guitars

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

          Social media has completely transformed how companies deal with customer service. This video was made by a band after they saw United Airlines baggage handlers throwing their guitars, only to find out that the guitars were broken in the process.
          They spoke to three employees after they saw their guitars being thrown, and were dismissed by all three. Over the next few weeks, United was extremely difficult to work with and Dave Carroll, lead singer of the band was directed to places all over the North America, including Halifax, Canada; Omaha; Chicago; and New York. United Airlines did virtually everything possible to not deal with Carroll. Even nine months later, they still refused to take any responsibility for the broken guitar.
          He posted a total of 3 music videos regarding his bad experience with United Airlines. After just one day, the first video had 150,000 views. Rob Bradford, United's managing director of customer solutions, apologized to Carroll and United mentioned it hoped to learn from the incident, and to change its customer service policy as a result of the incident. Bob Taylor, owner of Taylor Guitars offered Carroll two guitars and other props for his second video.

"United has demonstrated they know how to keep their airline in the forefront of their customer’s minds and I wanted this project to expand upon that satirically. I’ve been done being angry for quite some time and, if anything, I should thank United. They’ve given me a creative outlet that has brought people together from around the world. We had a pile of laughs making the recording and the video while the images are spinning on how to make “United: Song 2” even better than the first. So, thanks United!  If my guitar had to be smashed due to extreme negligence I’m glad it was you that did it.  Now sit back and enjoy the show." -Dave Carroll

          This story proves how big of an impact social media can make and how quickly things can spread on the Internet. This incident was a disaster for United Airlines, and they would have been better off responding to Carroll's complaint's right off the bat. The great part about social media is that when consumers post negative things about your business, you can quickly respond to complaints to soothe their negative feelings and ultimately transform their opinion of your company.

Fangager

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-engagement/brand-managers-rejoice-manage-engage-reward-with-fangager-010571.php

                I recently came across FanGager, a database that allows companies to see the activities of their fans on their social media accounts. Fans and followers can be sent emails from within the database, and the emails can be sorted according to certain demographics. This way, they can target different groups with information that would be more appealing to them. This will ultimately help them maintain strong customer relationship management.

                The article says, “Brand managers can assign values to the actions they consider to be top priority. Once assigned, you can begin to measure and identify the fans who are engaging the most. For instance, if you think it’s valuable when users comment on your Facebook page, then you can assign a high number or points to that activity.” With FanGager, you can direct fans toward different types of engagement, based on their activities, to get the feedback you want. Fans can then be rewarded for their actions.

                These types of technology are taking social media to the next level. For companies, this seems like an awesome venture and a great way to maximize the success of their social media. They can compare different timeframes of data and see how their different campaigns are working. However, I can see where some “fans” may see this as an invasion of their privacy – stalking, to some degree.

                I personally think that when you make yourself visible to the public through the Internet, you should expect for this sort of thing to happen. I do understand, however, that people hate being bothered with this kind of thing, especially on their personal email accounts and profiles. What do you guys think?

http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/03/how-social-media-internet-changed-experience-of-japan-disaster-074.html

We are all familiar with the disaster that just happened in Japan. The article linked above comes from the perspective of a journalist who also covered the earthquake that occurred in 1995 in Kobe, Japan. At that time, he was living in Japan while he was reporting, but he says that he received more information today, thanks to social media, than he did when he actually lived where the disaster occurred.

There was access to information through TV, iPads, Twitter, and Facebook. He also notes that a photo slideshow on the front page of the New York Times a few hours after the earthquake provided interesting information.  

This phenomenon just goes to show how quickly social media has allowed information to spread. Not only is the rapidity a positive thing, but the author also notes that it has more impact on people than when there’s newspeople talking. He says, “The media and communication technology of course do not change the scope of the disaster but do change the way we are able to experience and share it.”

I believe that we can apply this to marketing for a company. When you have a product or promotion, get people talking about it through social media and it WILL spread...quickly. You can post information and send it to your followers and if it’s a good product or promotion, your followers are more than likely going to talk about it. We saw from the article that the information is like a virus.

Word-of-mouth marketing is arguably the most effective form of marketing, and social media is the best way to reach millions of people. GET PEOPLE TALKING!!