The Infamous SEO - Final Presentation

Disney - Social Media Monitoring Project 2

Need for Speed

Marching on with the my second set of social media observations, I decided to see what kind of social media tools were used in Need for Speed (NFS), a car movie that came out on March 14th, just two weeks ago. The movie is based on the video game with the same name that has been extremely popular since its inception in 1994. Here's a quick look at the trailer.

Social media promotion for NSF was mainly focused on Facebook page, two Twitter hashtags, Tumbler and the movie's official website.


Website

Just like the Saving Mr. Banks, the website is extremely interactive with movie's music playing in the background giving the website a sense of mystery. The website is the central platform that connects number of social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and Tumbler. What makes NF website different from the Saving Mr. Banks website is that the marketing team has made an effort to connect the social media with the website as much as possible by making it easier for people to share site content via social media and connecting Twitter comments by users in the website.

Twitter comments in the NSF website

Facebook

The Facebook Insights shows the NFS page demographics is the 18 to 24 year-olds. Facebook Social graph search shows that the most people who "Like" the NSF movie page are single male. Looking at the page content it is clearly most people are car enthusiast. Compared to Saving Mr. Banks, NFS page has a someone replying and driving conversation on the page instead of simply posting on the wall.

There are six Facebook pages affiliated with the Need for Speed, the game and the movie. Above graph compares number of Likes on two Facebook pages, NFS movie page and NFS game page two weeks prior (week of 2/23 and 3/2)  and two weeks after (3/9 and 3/16) the movie release. On Average, Likes on the NFS page increased 444% while the number of Likes on NFS game page, increased 498%. Part of the reason most book based or game based movies seems to be so common is because of its built-in fan base. In NFS case, the movie is also an attempt to bring the game to life through the real life car chases and actors. It is clear from  the above statistic that NSF movie had increase the conversation about the NSF video game. In fact it had made a bigger positive impact on the game than the actual movie.

Ask for Comment Facebook Post

Above graph summarizes the Facebook interaction for the month of March 2014 by the post's content type. Posts that asked people a question, like the picture bellow generated the most amount of Likes. Again, like the Saving Mr. Banks page, trailers generated the most amount of shares. Interestingly, unlike Saving Mr. Banks movie posters got a lot of people's attention as well.



YouTube Trailer Release

The official trailer release reached over 500,000 views within nearly a week. The release generated mostly positive reviews. The negative comments after the movie release points out the story-line does not have enough substances. There were number of references to the TV series Breaking Bad that the star of the movie, Aaron Paul also known for.

Twitter

The movie trailers announced two different Twitter hashtags #needforspeedmovie and #NSFmovie. Most of the comments on #needforspeedmovie was from average movie goers sharing their experience. EtcML sentiment analysis shows that the #needforspeedmovie hashtag has mostly positive sentiment.

Sentiment analysis on #needforspeedmovie hashtag

On the other hand, the #NSFmovie hashtag was not as active. The hashtag was mostly used by movie bloggers, social media movie reviewers.

IMBD

Wordle word cloud on IMBD comments

It is evident that the NSF movie is not one of the movies that will be loved by the critics. Critics averaged the movie at 4.3/10 with compared to the IMBD user rating at 7.3/10. The movie was in number three position in the IMBD moviemeter ranking. The word cloud summarizes commonly used words in the 114 IMBD comments (the words film and movie has been taken out). Words cars, racing, action are very prominent in the conversation. Though several negative comments were pointing out the story should have more substance.  

Conclusions

The NSF movie is catering to a narrower movie goer segment, mostly consists of NSF gamers, car enthusiast. So, groundswell is a very important part of the marketing campaigns. Overall, Disney has made an increased effort to incorporate groundswell with Facebook comment replies, and increasing the social media connectivity in the websites. However, it is clear the marketing efforts on Twitter has fallen short. Even though the hashtags were announced there was not as much activity in #NSFmovie. 

Recommendations

Studio entertainment is in direct competition with online services such as YouTube, Netflix and Hulu that provide the convenience of choosing the content type and on demand availability. Social media delivers a crucial outlet to personalize the studio entertainment. Disney has undoubtedly recognized the importance of the social media in the movie distribution process. Goal of the movie distribution is to tell the right story to the right people in the right time at the right place. In other words, the type of movie affect the audience, number of theaters and countries the movie will be released and the time of the year the movie will be released.

Listening to the Social Media

There are several ways to listening to the social media can help improve the movie promotions. People’s reactions on movie trailers can be a powerful telling of the different ways people interpret the movie based on what they see in a two minute video. YouTube comments on trailers are from much more diverse group of movie-goers compared to Facebook. Reviewing the YouTube comments on trailers can be a great indicator that the marketing is reaching the correct audience or whether it is necessary to adjust the distribution strategy if trailer does not show people are interested in the story.

Second, social media outlets such as IMBD and Rotton Tomato can be a tool in the production process when selecting actors and directors. Aside from the obvious and most important fact, the talent, social media can show the star power and stigma attached to the actor or director.  Finally, tool such as Google Trends can give an idea on what are the areas to plan a promotional tour, promo events or offer a limited movie release based on popularity for pre-existing fans. For example, following map shows the Google search interest for the NFS game from 2004 to present. It is clear the San Francisco- Oakland, Hagerstown are two of the best metro areas for promo events.

Talking with Social Media

Disney already has a powerful social media presence and experience in talking with the groundswell, which is evident from the tone of the most posts to the conventions the social media pages has created like the trivia Tuesday. On the performance standpoint, number of “shares” is a key performance indicator for movie promotions. So it is important to note that on Pinterest, posts with Quotations generated the most amounts of shares while trailers and other videos generated most shares on Facebook.

Energizing with Social Media

Energizing is the power of word of mouth channeling across the social media platforms. Disney is already using energizing strategies such as, posting people’s positive Twitter reviews in the movie’s website. Energizing can be especially important for a low budget movie with a limited release. There are number of YouTube channels and blogs dedicated to movies. Especially for book to movie adaptations or game to movie adaptations like Need for Speed, it is important to recognize the existing community. For movie promotions like Need for Speed with an existing car enthusiast could get the NFS game community engaged in the production process that can spark people’s interest earlier in the movie making process.

Conclusion 

Overall Disney has set a high standard for other organizations looking to adapt to social media. Disney Studios have already established a strong social media presence that conveys a personable organization. The company has taken the initiative to adapt to number of different social media platforms relatively quickly. It is also important to integrate the social media interaction with the Disney enthusiast into the company’s creative process. 

How Social Media Can Transform Any Business

I wrote a lot about how big brands integrated social media into product development and marketing, and our textbook Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies quite exclusively talks about well recognized brands. Instead of focusing on big brands this time I wanted to take some of the main points from the how social media can transform a business and see how those ideas apply into Start-up or a small business.

Small business or a start-ups' success hinges on either recognizing a small target market and build a product/service that connect with the audience (customer centric)  or build a product/ service and understand how it will connect with the people (product centric) like the Google Glass. Either way social media can help. Though in this blog I will focus on how a customer centric organization can be transformed with groundswell and give three things you should consider before taking off with a social media marketing strategy.

1. Listen to what people are saying

Organizations big or small have a lot of benefit in listening to what people are saying about you. The textbook extensively talks  about how Dell, a company that rely on direct sales business model  without a brick-and-mortar presence faced a PR disaster in 2005 when the company failed to listen to what customers are saying about the company on blog space. Your business does not have to be a fortune 500 company, even the Mom and Pap pizza place cannot avoid groundswell. I'm sure you've hear of Yelp. Customer reviews from websites like Yelp have a direct impact. Michael Luca's working paper on how Yelp reviews affect on restaurant revenue found that "A one-star 
increase is associated with a 5.4% increase in revenue."

2. Start Small

Even big names get groundswell wrong. Remember #AskJPM Twitter fiasco. So, it is important to start with one strategy, whether its listening to what people are saying, talking with the customers, energizing the most enthusiastic customers, supporting the customers through social media tools like wikis, Twitter customer support or embracing customers ideas. If you are small business just getting started with social media its best to start with social media site like Facebook where there is a lot of built in support for small businesses. For instance, Facebook's small business Saturdays has over three million followers who are enthusiastic about local businesses. Facebook also have a page that let small businesses share your story, where small business can talk about who they are, what they do and how Facebook helped.

3. Who is the Social Media guru?

Its very easy to let the person who have the most free time to run your organization's social media page. Though that may not be such a great idea. The key to success, Li and Bernoff points out, "taking an idea that typically starts with a few employees who understand groundswell..." Remember your social media page talks to the entire online world. What your FaceBook page, Twitter or any other social media platform say is very important.

So, do you have any experience in running the social media page for a small organization? Can you share what kind of resources you found helpful and what were your biggest challenges?

Disney - Social Media Monitoring Project 1

Disney's Story 

Disney Studios has been the foundation of the Walt Disney and Company for over its 90 years history. It all started when Mr. Walt Disney and his brother Roy Disney decided to come to California  from their hometown in Kansas with a short film they made called Alice's Wonderland. In October 16th, 1923 a New York distributor M. J Winkler contracted to release the Alice comedies making that day the official starting point for Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. The Alice comedies ran for four years before Mr. Disney decided to try an all cartoon series called, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.



The Disney’s most beloved character Mickey came to fame in 1928 with the release of Steamboat Willie in November 18th. Mickey became the first cartoon character to have a star on the walk of fame. Success upon success Disney Studios soon became a household name in family entertainment. Not only on the TV screens and movie theaters, but also as a magical place called Disneyland in Anaheim, California.

Even today Disney magic hasn't failed  to dazzle us with stories like Pirates of the Caribbean, Toy Story. Though the Company has expanded quite a bit since 1923. Today, Disney's mission is to become one of the world's leading providers of entertainment and information though its verity of media channels, interactive platforms and movie studios.Walt Disney and Company divides into five main business  segments;                                                                                                                                     

Studio Entertainment

Consumer Products

Parks and Resorts

Media Networkds

Disney Interactive

                                                                                                              

Disney Social Media Strategy

Disney social media strategy is focused on (discounting social media accounts from ABC, ESPN and Marvel) 469 Facebook pages, 116 YouTube channels, and 78 Twitter accounts mostly dedicated to Disney's beloved characters like Disney Princesses, Jack Sparrow, Big Baby from Toy Story. Disney Facebook account lone has 46 million "Likes" and Disney Twitter handle @Disney has 3.5 million followers as of now. Its fair to say Disney's track record deserves a  "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious " rating.

Amanda Grant, the Director for Disney Interactive shared some of the Disney social media magic on an interview with Digiday. Their main goal is to "reach families and Disney enthusiasts and share content that our guests are compelled to talk about and share".  Also, instead of simply promoting a product they infuse personality to the social media accounts. For example, @DisneyMemories is a Twitter handle created by giving each of the Parks a personality and asking, "if Disneyland and Walt Disney World could speak, what would they say?"

Saving Mr. Banks Social Media 

I decided to narrow down  my social media monitoring project into one particular movie, Saving Mr. Banks. The movie is unique to the Disney Studios in many ways. First, the story revolves on the making of Mary Poppins, the crowning jewel of Disney Studios. Second,  it is focused on Walt Disney, the founder of the Disney studios. Finally, the movie strays beyond the Studios' regular slate of movies that centered on family entertainment to cater an adult audience in the drama/comedy category.   

The Studio mainly used Facebook and Pinterest social mediums to promote and connect the movie with the groundswell. The movie also has a website and most video promotions such as trailer releases and video content releases were made on the Disney movie trailers Youtube channel.

 Website

The website is made to be very interactive with the movie's sound track playing in the background and number of automatic carousel elements included in the website design. The content of the website strongly establishes ethos, pathos and logos. First, the home page creates movie's credibility by prominently displaying reviews, and award nominations. Second, it connects with audience using pathos by using Micky and Mary Poppins in the main poster.  

Facebook

According to the Facebook Insights, the movie's page is most popular among  34 - 44 age group and has accumulated over Two hundred and fifty thousand Facebook "Likes" as of first week of March. In the week of the official movie DVD release announcement, Facebook engagement peaked nearly 200% compared to the following week.

I was curious as to what drives people to interaction with the Saving Mr. Banks Facebook page. Specifically, how amount of interaction changed type of post content that the marketing team post on the movie's Facebook page.

Post with a Quotation

I analyzing 119 Facebook posts made between September 2012 through February 2014 by content type. First, the posts were categorized into six segments;
Links to  articles, reviews --> Article links
behind the scenes and  featurette videos --> Other videos
photos of promotion events --> Photos
post that with quotations --> Quoted Posts
Trailer posts --> Trailer
Other posts --> Posts

Second, the median was calculated for the above six segment by the interaction options offered through Facebook; Shares, comments, Likes.

It is clear  most people interacted through the Like option possibly because the "Like" does not display on their timeline. Comments were the least utilized interaction feature regardless of the content type. Trailers has the highest amount of interactions (shares, comments, likes). Out of all the segments, trailers generating over three times more interaction than any other type of posts. Video contents, trailers and other videos are responsible for over 60% of the interactions made with the Facebook page.

Pinterest

The official Saving Mr. Banks Pinterest board has 121 pins and over 16, 823 followers as of first week of March. Following chart analyze 103 pins by first diving them into three segments; pins with a quotation, regular pins and a pint with a trailer video attached Second, the median was calculated for each interaction options offered through Pinterest; comments, Likes and Repins.

Pin that generated highest interaction

                                                   

Pin that generated the least amount of interaction

Over 60% of the interactions by every segment came as repins. Quotes from the movie clearly generated the most interaction while trailers related content generated the least amount of interaction. This is a complete opposite of the Facebook interaction data and a perfect display of how people use the two social interaction mediums differently.

The pin that generated the most interaction quotes a line from the trailer, which might have resonated with people resulting more Repins and Likes. On the other hand the pin that generated the least amount of interactions stresses the movie has holiday spirit, though after watching the movie I think the description does not quite capture what the movie was about.

Youtube Trailer Release

Source: YouTube Stats

The official Youtube trailer release on July 12th  by Disney Movie Trailers channel drove nearly 500,000 views before August. etcML sentiment analysis on 402 Youtube comments  for the official trailer release shows that people were in general excited for the movie. Negative comments were not as accurately recognized by etcML sentiment analysis. Though most of them have similar pattern as the following comments; either the trailer reveal too much of the movie, or the movie is not realistic, factually accurate.

The last comment by DeepThought42 is an example of how the vast reach of Disney trickle down to a Disney movie when the A&E Duck Dynasty star was "suspended due to controversial remarks".

Saving Mr. Banks on Twitter

Disney Studios does not have an official movie twitter handle so the handle @SavingMrBanks was taken by as a fan-run account. However, @DisneyPictures  has created a hashtag #SavingMrBanks. The sentiment analysis on the hashtage filter out the following positive Tweets.

Other Social Media Reaction for Movie Reviews

There are number of websites and YouTube channels that are dedicated to movies and movie reviews by average movie goers. IMBD.com, the 28th most popular site in U.S according to alexa.com ranking is the best example for true groundswell for movie reviews. The site also offers further demographics details in comparison to an average internet user. IMBD users are mostly college graduates or people with some college education mostly using the site from home or school compared to an average internet user.
     

IMDB.com Demographic Compared to Avg. Internet User Source: Alexa.com

Saving Mr. Banks scored 7.7/10 ranking on IMBD based on 37,677 user reviews, while the movie critics' review aggregate, RottenTomatoes shows 220 movie critics averaged 7/10 rating.

Conclusion

Overall Saving Mr. Banks had a positive social media reaction. It is also mirrored in the Academy award and Golden Globe award nominations and estimated over 100 million earnings the movie generate so far. Social media can be an effective marketing tool for movies and at the same time a very effective tool to evaluate a movie's potential performance. 

Oops!...I Did It Again: #AskJPM Twitter Fiasco

I've written a lot about how different brands use social media very successfully. So, this time I thought I'll go the other way and look at one of the biggest social media disasters that happened over the last year, JP Morgan #AskJPM Twitter takeover.



It all started with this Tweet on
@jpmorgan Twitter account announcing a Twitter takeover by the company's Vice Chairman. Sort of thing I've mostly seen done by radio shows or magazine twitter accounts when they have an interview with a musicians or an actors.
JPM's attempt to communicate with the masses soon turned into a hilarious commentary against the company when the Twitter community band together to making fun of JPM.

This is a reenactment of what happen on #AskJPM with some of the most colorful tweets that came to spotlight.

After six days JPM Twitted,

Though the damage was done. Adding insult to injury the next wave of media discussions further dragged on the story.

Huffington Post headline

Bloomberg Discussion on #AskJPM

CNBC report on #AskJPM 

What Went Wrong?

Remember that wonderful line from our textbook, Groundswell, "Your product is not what you say it is but what your customers makes it to be". After the 2007 market crash it is fair to say no financial  institution is in the general public's nice list, and JP Morgan is no exception.  Add to the fact, Twitters are three times as likely to be Creators, more than twice as likely to be Critics and half-again as likely to be Joiners compared to typical online consumers in the social techno graphics ladder makes Twitter one of the most influential social media platforms and at the same time very dangerous place for a company like JPM.

So, what do you think? Do you think if JPM did similar campaign on some where like LinkedIn it may have actually succeeded?

Google Glass - Social Marketing

Its a pair of glasses for people who actually don't wear glasses that is not just a video camera it has a built in GPS and you can put Google searches. Is like having a computer right in front of your face  all the time. Is it just me or anyone else thought this is a bazar thing to explain to an average consumer who never imagined well... wearing a computer on their face?

 

With $1,500 price tag and an invisible screen that hover over your peripheral vision it is a lengthy explanation for an average user who carry a cell phone that can do most of the things Google Glass seems to be able to do. To add to the challenge, Google does not have a retail chain that customers can touch, feel the product and have the Google Glass staff explain the product to them. So, Google turned to the groundswell.  Now you can bet Google's strategy to engage with the groundswell ties very closely with our text book, Groundswell: Winning the World Transformed by Social Technologies. 

1. Embracing the Customer.

So, Google Glass created the Explorer Program in the Glass website to get people involved in the innovation process of the beta product. 

2. Energizing the Customer

The book recognize "energizing" as a word of mouth - "the most honest form of marketing, building upon people's natural desire to share their experience with family, friends, and colleagues". Glass certainly used the Explorer program as an avenue to let people, mostly tech video bloggers review the product and share their thoughts with the masses. It creates an opportunity for Google, Glass Developers and people to recognize how the Glass being used. Second, it created the  buzz around the product and finally, it gave an opportunity for people to hear from average user instead of Google's marketing team (or Mullen advertising agency).

This is one of the Glass reviews,

Google Glass Twitter  and website are constantly in touch with the Glass community re-tweeting about the Glass community engagements and sharing Explorer stories via their website. 

 

Because Google already managed to create an online community around the Glass, it would be great if Glass app development has the same democracy. May be Google can use the same social media channels to  have a Google apps ranking method on Twitter or Facebook and/or create an easy online channel between developers and the users to come up with Glass app ideas. After all like IPod and iTunes, most hardware depends on value and the pertinence of the software.                 

   

The retail version of the Google Glass is due to release this year. It is a product that is born out of Google but brewed in the groundswell. So, I for one is curious how it's going to taste like.    

 

 

 





Its FREE but Powerful!

Of course we all know there are a lot of FREE tools out there that can help make your work easy. So, I wanted to point out few tools that I think easy to use and anyone can take advantage of when you roam the social web or interested in analytics behind the web. 

First Stop, Bitly

This is a utility that allow you to shortern your URLs so you can easily add them to your emails, blogs and especially tweets. For instance, bitly can shorten 

THIS 

INTO

To use Bitly, all you have to do is to go to bitly.com and paste the URL that you want shorten. This can come in very handy when you need to add a URL to a tweet or Facebook page.

Second, Google Analytics (GA)

This is a great tool to learn whether your a web developer, someone interested in web analytics, or actually anyone with a facebook fan page or a website and want to learn how to best reach people you want to reach. 

This is a quick introduction video on what GA does. 

Let me give you an example that you can relate to. let’s say you are promoting an event and you want to understand what are the best ways to reach your group members. You posted the event on your webpage with information on what is the event, where, and when is it. Then you also sent out a tweet with a link to your website telling "hey we have an event and check out more info about it via this link". On top of that, you also sent an email with the link to your website. Wouldn't it be great if you can find out which medium reach more people? With the GA URL builder tool you can find out the answer.

Like any free web tool, it’s not the tool itself but how creatively you use it. Here are few places you can go to get more information about GA and tips on how to use its features. 

1. Google Analytics Introduction can give you information about how it works, what are the different privacy settings available. 
2. Google Analytics Training and Certification has great collection of free video course on what is digital analytics and documents on how to setup GA on your website. This link will be more helpful if you are building a website and want to figure out how to add GA, and this link will be helpful if want to be introduce to the digital analytics.  
3. If you think this is a skill you want to develop GA Youtube channel is a great place to start. Google have created a series of webinars that is intended for people with E-Commerce and marketing background. 
4. Youtube is a great place to learn more about how people use GA. For instance, there is this is a great video about navigating through reports by Scott Bradley
5. I am sure you can find number of paid courses as well. Great thing is paid courses have more structure that can help to learn the tool step by step and you can be sure of the credibility of the content. I personally found Google Analytics Essential Training course very helpful.
6. Koozai Youtube channel is a great resource for tips on how to use different GA features. They also have a great collection of videos on how you can use social media tools.

Finally, CamStudio

CamStudio helps you record your screen with or without voice. This works great whether you are trying to demonstrate a software on your screen or if you want to record a PowerPoint presentation with a voice over. Here is a quick tutorial that teach you where to download CamStudio and how to use it. 

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. I'll try my best to answer or direct you to a good reference.