Social Media Marketing: Ikea Case Study

Social media marketing is a very powerful marketing tool many corporations are thinking of ways to take advantage. Most of which are using video platform like YouTube as their social media marketing platform.

Here’s a great case study from Ikea. It didn’t really use YouTube but Facebook for its social media marketing efforts. Take about 1 minute to watch how Ikea effectively used Facebook to create a huge awareness and possibly, increased their sales of products.

As effective and tempting it is to copy this Facebook campaign, you may want to check with the Facebook team again. Because Facebook recently revamped their privacy settings and I know they did make some changes to how you can run a marketing campaign on its platform.

Nonetheless, creating an idea to market using popular social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more is not overly difficult.

All it takes is a little; creative marketing.

How to Ask for a Complete LinkedIn Recommendation?

LinkedIn is a professional social network for business people. I’ve heard some successful stories from friends who’ve used LinkedIn to get connected to the person in charge. Some of which have turned into successful dealings. Hence, LinkedIn is a business-oriented social network to be precise.

And recently, a client of Simpleet joined LinkedIn. They provide online printing services from business cards to large format printing. All at an affordable rate you’d second think, “how do they make money?”.

The last part was a snippet of the recommendation I gave them on LinkedIn. And if you’re in business, you’d know (or read) testimonials are a very powerful marketing tool to have in your profile and portfolio. Plus, it’s free!

This was the full recommendation I gave them:

You can only expect the best quality at affordable rates from Colourman. More so, you’ll want to ask him “are you sure you’re making enough money?”

He’s well-versed in printing and has now gone into saving the world by recommending recycled paper for business cards. Only one of the providers I know and will recommend to my own friends who need printing done.

After acknowledgement of our recommendation or reference, he decided to recommend us too. Now, that’s great to hear. Because when clients or people recommend you, it means they like your work or services or product.

However, something was missing. He didn’t describe what inspired him to recommend us. It was a missing the story.

And I was pondering on what to do with it. I could’ve accepted this recommendation without any description. Or, I could’ve accepted but hide this recommendation because it felt incomplete. The latter wasn’t an option because what if he checked my profile and didn’t see his endorsement there.

So the next best option I had was to request a replacement. However, in my request for a replacement I explained how this LinkedIn recommendation is similar to a testimonial.

Thus, I decided to help him start on the testimonial for us on a neutral level.

Danny and his partner; Hawk, didn’t only provide the expertise and solution for us to setup our online printing business. They’ve also given us insight to available opportunities of doing business online and have continue to advise us along the way.

Nothing fancy. General and simple. And seriously, this is a recommended method from a book. It’s an initiative you take to help the client kick off their own testimonials for you.

But of course, it has to be approved by the client. Falsifying an endorsement is easy to spot and is the worst crime to your ‘webutation’ – as Hani calls it.

And after I requested a replacement, my thought was “never settle for second best”.

Ideas for Malaysia Advertisers to Reach Starbucks Customers

Right now, I’m sitting and chilling (literally) at a Starbucks outlet. Brrr. Anyway, if you’ve used the free Internet here before you’d know there’s a compulsory landing page you bypass when you access the Internet. The landing page screens an advertisement from a sponsor to keep the WiFi free – yeay.

On this screen, you’ve a 30-45 second wait time. Once that’s done, you click the Continue Surfing or it’ll automatically load the next screen. By then, you can surf normally.

Loopholes around it

If you’ve Adblock+ enabled on Mozilla Firefox, you’ll have to disable it and reload the page for it to load properly.

And if you’re on an iPhone, you won’t see the video because it’s a Flash video player so it’s much easier to skip. Hooray.

Why it isn’t as effective to me?

Now, for every time I’ve seen this page it’s always a video advertisement. And to date, none of the videos have captured my complete attention. Here are my reasons:

• Content is boring.
• Video is too long.
• No interest for the product or service.
• Working while waiting for it to finish.

Personally, I think I’ve no interest in it because its plain boring and it’s too long. Plus, is video the only media available? It’ll be quite sad if that’s true.

Why haven’t we seen this happening?

If you asked me how I’d use this page more effectively, I would:

• Put a viral video.
• Give a freebie.
• Use a simple game.
• Create something for sharing. Think Photofunia and social media.

There are probably more ways to use this page but I’m having too many cold thoughts racing through my fingers right now.

However, what do you think you could do with a page like this?

Is the Website Losing to Facebook Pages?

I was pondering on this question awhile back. So much so, I wanted to ask a few Malaysian social media enthusiasts and drivers about their viewpoints. Even today whilst having lunch with a client-turn-friend, she was sharing with me how powerful Facebook in general had become in generating business.

From building websites to SEO and social media today, I’m wondering where’s the line drawn in having to need a website for your business. Is it possible to generate business without a website and only a Facebook page?

We used to say an online presence is unavoidable. A Facebook page also does just that. It could be used to establish your online presence. Plus, you can create a Facebook page to:

• Introduce your company.
• Upload works in photos and videos.
• Get clients to become fans. (bonus)
• Get instant feedback. (bonus)
• Organize and manage events. (bonus)
• Get clients to introduce or share your services with their own friends personally. (bonus)

From an apple to apple comparison, I’d say Facebook pages are:

1. Easier to create.
2. Faster to deploy.
3. Scalable with Facebook applications.

Thus, I ponder. Is the website dead? Do businesses only need to create their own Facebook pages in replace of a website?

Or, is a website still prime real estate for a corporate entity? Or, because not all products and services will benefit from a social media strategy, they will still need to rely on a website?

Do you think building a website is dead, or getting there?

How Many Hours Do You Really Use The Internet?

While I was writing my comment on UXMatters, I was thinking; how many hours does a user really spend on the Internet? In fact, how accurate is this data?

I thought this because I remember the time I had to teach my mum (50s) to use the computer and setup her email account. Therefore, I’ve been the one looking over her shoulder and answering her questions when she faces difficulty.

When a new Internet user is online, his/her actions takes prolong periods and pauses because he/she is extra cautious about them. As they become more familiar, their actions speed up with confidence.

So my question to the question; how many hours do you really use the internet? is, what type of user are you?

If you were only taught to use the Internet yesterday or 2 days ago, you could be spending twice the time to complete a task than an average user would.

Therefore, my thoughts and beliefs of the data to the question; how many hours do you spend on the internet? is easily corrupted.

A user who spends more than 4 hours on the Internet on average may not mean the user is Internet-savvy. It could be my mum accessing and sending 2-3 emails to her friends.

Hence, ensure your surveys or questions is directed at the right user.