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The Monitoring Report #2: Target

In my first monitoring report, I talked about my client " Target" successfully use official website, face book, twitter, and Youtobe to get connection with customers. I provided their different active data of each social media tool; through tracking website, social mention, google insight, icerocket to see people's attitude and brand's market popularity about Target. And also conclude the ways and tones when Target communicate with customers.

This time I will observe each social media tool of Target particularly and detailed to see their social media development level and current situation. And summarize the goals of Target, and some of my suggestion for Target.

Target official website

I use compete.com tracking website to see target,com 's popularity, and rank. It also provide the monthly and yearly visit contrast. It helps to analyze their popularity goes up or down, and based on this data to opportune their content and strategies on website. Through the line chart we can see different peak visit in a period of time. In November and December the number of visitors increased for almost 20 million. That also shows that the approximate level of selling performance.

Twitter

As I showed in last post, Target has the pleasant tone to communicate with the customers. No matter the customers complains, feedback, and advices, this kind interactive communication could increase customers' brand identity and conflict understanding.

Through the icerocket.com, we can see the Target twitter rate is 3.4posts/hour. If it doesn't mean anything we can compare with the Walmart twitter rate is 40 posts/mins. It means as the biggest competitor, Walmart could cause more discussion, discussion could attention and market popularity. Target need more fun posts to increase discussion.

Blog

Sometimes discussion on blog are deeper than discussion on twitter, because people are taking more time on this topic.

Through icerocket, on March28, Target post rate is 57.63 per day, connect with the line chart we can see post peak, to see the Target news on the Peak day, we can analyze which action and news could cause discussion. On March 14, Target has daily deals, and a talk show. So maybe that’s the reason to have the peak posts.

Regional interest

This chart shows brand popularity in different region, it is also could be regarded as the potential market. Target has stores in U.S., Canada, and Australia. Depend on this number and the economic data of these countries, Target may consider to decide which is the next market location.

 

Target goals

Those datas are like branches of a tree, all these branches and leaves' exciting come from their origin---tree root. What is tree root? What are the Target's aims to manage social media market? I will solve this question now.

Get connection with customers

I think the nature of social media is fast, convenient and cheap. So social media world is irresistible market for brands to get connection with the customers, attract them, affect them and guide them. I think it's a kind of soft relationship, use twitter facebook to communicate with customers advice, complain, and ideas exchange of products, to affect customers day by day.

Know the market plus save money

Customers' opinions are most important for the company. All the big companies need spend human and material resource to know what the customers think. Social media is the platform to do this job, only more saving and quick. Here is examples of customers leave feedback on tweitter, and Target answere .

Improve company itself

Improvements could happen in many ways. Improve by the customers' feedback, through compare with competitors to adjust social media strategies.

To monitoring the competitors

Monitoring have two direction, you can see people's feedback about yourself, you can also monitoring competitors. To see the different advantages and disadvantages could find the breach to win more in the market.

This chart shows that Target also is the Walmart list competitor.

Advices

make the twitter and facebook attractive, to post some connection knowledge and interesting personality test, to attract customers. For example, when new facial product comes out, post some product based background knowledge like how to fade dark circles..

Based on the popularity rate, to find out which kind of topic, customers like most.

Base on the interests over time, to see the biggest opportunities during the year is November and December. To set more discount activities to sell more in this season, during the off-season to see the potential consumption, to set theme month, to attract different target customers. Through twitter and facebook to collect ideas could cause sensation. 

Compare data with competitors, to find the breach to win the market. Find the lowest data they have compare and consider your market strategies to make a plan to win.

Conclusion

In this monitoring progress, I learned more deeply of how to use social media to do more things for business and for personal. In this report I present the data and analysis I found about my client, their current social media situation, social media strategies, each social media tool’s popularity, and people’s attitude about Target, and the trends. And based on those data I see their goals and try to think deeply to help the client to do better in social media world.

The midterm monitoring report #1: Target

Why: the reason of why do i choose Target to be the monitoring client is because Target is the second-largest discount retailer in the U.S., just behind super Walmart. People have studied and talked about the NO.1 Walmart lots of times with data and market analysis and their influence. i want to find out how is going on the NO. 2, does it have the change to exceed the Walmart, it it is keeping growing? I'd like to go shopping in Target, and I have the interests to learn more about Target, especially in social media world. What are their social media strategies? Do they work well to expand Target influence? I will find out..

Targetcorporation:

Target is an American retailing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's the second largest discount retailer in United States . The company is ranked at number 33 on the fortune 500 of 2010.

Founder: George Dayton             

1902: Dayton Dry Goods               

1969: Dayton Hudson

2000: Target

Revenue          US$ 67.390 billion(FY 2010)

Operating income   US$ 4.495 billion (FY 2010)

Employees        355,000 (FY 2010)

Market expansion:

-By the end of 2000, Target expanded to 977 stores in 46 states.

-In 2000, it separated its e-commerce operation from its retailing division,     called-target.direct

-In 2006, it expanded to 1488 units and sales reached $5914 billion.

-On March 4, 2009, Target expanded outside of U.S. continent. 2 stores in Hawaii and 2 stores in Alaska.

-On Jan 13, 2011. Target announced its expansion into Canada. It will open 100-150 stores in Canada by 2013.

Market Strategy:

Target corporation has many different forms of store. Like target, a chain of discount store carrying clothing, shoes, jewelry, healthy, beauty, electrotonic products..etc. Target Great-land, a chaine of general merchandise superstores, carry a large  selection of general merchandise. Super Target, a chain of hypermarket, and feature double entrance on one-story stores. And also City Target and Urban store

Social media monitoring

On Target's official web site, there are some social media links like Target twitter, Target face book, and Target Youtobe channel. These are the tools for target to connect consumers. And also through some website like Addicttomatic.com, IceRocket.com, Social Mention .com.and Gooogle Insight.com .I can monitoring Target social net work's growing.

This data I found in social mention.com on March 20, it shows when people talk about Target, most of them are without positive or negative trend. As I found in other web site, people who are talking about Target are most about the coupons, discount, and gift card. Maybe there are number of people talked about Target's revenue or strategies, they are in the neutral attitude. Compare with the date I collect on March 14( positive 156, neutral 448, negative 25), there are no big differences. There are more positive talks because on that day, Target provide lots of discounted new products.

This chart shows the key words people use when they talk about Target, compare with the ones in March 14( founded 55, symbion 5, phones 4, free 4, goal 4,.. Etc) we can analyze the data are more active on March 20. Comparing people talk about some brand products, people on March 20 talk more about the economic data.

Positive and Negative

Which part of Target people like, and which part people are complaning, through some key words, the managers could overall have the expression.

Negative                                                                                                              Positive

 

There are also provide these talks are mainly from which tools, this is one of the most important one,Target managers will see which social media work well to rise people's attention or participation. Compare the data in Mar 14, the twitter, blog, flicker, youtobe are the stable channels.

On Addictomatic.com and IceRocket.com, the top topic are about new products ads, target feature video, target commercial, gift cards, and target market plan or financial news.

Google Insights provides some chart about comparing Target with their competitors' social media activity.

We can through this chart see which topic people are most concern about Target.

Target on Twitter:    299,929 followers by 3/19

                                 299,117 followers  by 3/14

                                 5851   tweets

Target Twitter interact with the flowers, the followers feedback, complain,advice, and share intersting ads with Target.

Target on Face book:  10,015,088 likes 3/19

                                      9,962,475 likes 3/14

Target update new post almost everyday, mainly about their new coming products, coupons, or some links to know more about the products.

Target Youtobe: Target owns its own Youtobe Channel

Subscribers 7507

Video views 23,545,395

Upload video 419

Target featured video 63

Current TV spots  98

Web Exclusives  24

Favorite video   9

Holiday ads     61

Video has its vision tension to attract people's attention to see Target, there are also some famous people take part in some activities in Target. People like to watch them, it's a kind of successful advertising propagate. This is the most popular video in Target Channel, David Beckham sold perfume in Target.

Overall, this report explains the reason of why I choose Target as client; Introduction of Target; Target market stategies and expansion; Target's interaction with social media users; tracking the cutomers' attitude of Target..i will keep monitoring to see if Target's social media influnce is expanding or not.

Connect with Your Employees Inside the Company through Groundswell

The first 10 chapters explained how to get connected with the customers step by step， through listening to the groundswell, talking with the groundswell, energizing the groundswell, and embracing the groundswell. these are all about attract customers outside of the company; chapter 11 and 12 are talking about something happened inside the company, company’s transform through groundswell and communication through groundswell inside the company.

I have more feelings about get connection with employees inside of the company. “They are a natural constituency for social connections.” (p234) Employees are actually a part of the company strategy to win the market; employees are the ones to give you inspiration to make company goals, they are the ones to work for your goals, they are the ones to directly get connection with the customers, and they are the ones to show your enterprise’s spirit and figure. So employees and employers’ relationship like water and fish, they live with each others.

We can see the importance of employees, so in the groundswell environment, companies need to pay more attention on the internal communication, through the groundswell to give employees the platform to get connection with each other; express skills, feelings and even stress internal the companies. These will make the companies more comfortable for them to work; they will feel respect and will get the sense of belonging.

So it’s a good idea to pay attention on groundswell work in the internal of the company. But what the groundswell can work for this? Like internal net, chatting room can allow better participation and an overall better atmosphere in the workplace. Groundswell can also be used as tool in which it can effectively bring an employer closer to employees. And most important, because of the platform is used to share the ideas; it could cause some creative ideas. They employees communicate each others and come out with brilliant ideas, before it showed up to the decision making desk, all the employees who are participating in the discussion will contribute their ideas about feasibility, practicality. And it would save the “new idea costs”.

We can’t ignore the power of internal participation.  When employees of a company can share ideas with top management, they feel more attached in helping a business succeed; this gives those who are in low rankings of the company the feeling that they are worth more to the company then in the past, they are important that cased motivation.

I have been thinking what build great success. It must require good inside various elements of “chemical reaction”, and the strong outside attract strategy and campaign.

“If You Are the One”-Success Comes from Social Media

 

     In the resent years, the average ages of people getting married are getting older in China. Some of  reasons maybe people are tending to have career foundation first and then consider about marriage thing, as Masculinity society( societies in which gender roles are clearly distinct and men and women are assertive, tough and focused on material success. People live to work.) Financial foundation is truly an important necessary element for marriage. That’s very understandable, and also there are other reasons in the modern cities, people are too rush everyday, and social circle are too imitated. You really want to have a relationship or you really want to get married, but you don’t think you can meet someone special in your current social circle. You can consider participating in the blind date television show-If You Are the One.

If You Are the One—Chinese means if you aren’t seriously, then don’t come. It as the most famous date television show is such popular in China, it has been a fixed habit for each family to watch, even I’m abroad, I still catch that show from time to time. I think it’s popular because it’s focusing on the popular social issue. People are actually meet their goals in the show, but I think one of the most important reason is it provide lots of channels for audience to participate the date show, even you are not appeared on the TV.

First, there are 24 female guests in the stage are waiting and choosing for the five male guests (the female guests are more stable, they wont leave until they find someone or they quit), if the male guest is really popular, the right to reserve, the male guest can choose the female gussets. Interesting part is if the male guest is fail, they will provide his email address, twitter address for the female audiences to consider contacting him. On the other hand if you are a male audience you want to know more about the 24 female you can edit payable text to the column group to get more information of female address. And lady gustes will also provide personal information like twitter, blog, photos and videos and etc. so it seems that everyone has more than one channel to get the chance to get rid of being single.

Second, male guests will have a video tape to present himself both to the 24 ladies and the female audiences. This is the most important information in the short 5mins you can get the general pictures in work, personality, habits about the male guest.

Third, the column group presents the hosts twitter to communicate audience to get commons and advices. At the end of year, they will provide online voting area for audiences to pick up their favorite guests to have the other change to come back to the show for dating.

Forth, the ways of registration most are from social media. You may log on the office website, official twitter address, or Google the current respiration places.

Fifth, if people missed the show, you can also find it in the official website, and it is available for free in almost every video web in China, well organized and easily find. 

This is a part of the show, no English captions but you can have general idea about the show

Sixth,"if you are the one" has become the popular social web topic, some audiences wrote some guidelines for male gustes to teach them how to sucess find a date in that show. also there are the dates of the success rate of different area the male gusts from, the suceess rate of different careers. and that caused lots of intersting talk.

No doubt, “If You Are the One” has a great success in China, it concerns the social issue, and most important it’s smart to bring all people together for the show. Their success is on social media.    

No Matter If You Care or Not, Viral Marketing Is There

No Matter If You Care or Not, Viral Marketing Is There

I have taken a marketing course before, and most of the detail knowledge and definition have already fad out of my head; but viral marketing is one exception. Before I read it again in the 7^th chapter of Groundswell, I can hardly summarize the accurate meaning of it, but I remember its amazing spread speed be used in market, it’s kind of description of one advertising champion strategy, or a propaganda to promote the products selling through the word of mouth marketing.

This kind of marketing is almost internet-based, and it’s one level of groundswell marketing, “energizing marketing” is actually based on the first level listening to the groundswell and talking with the groundswell. When people are really be affected by the groundswell and participate in groundswell world, the function could be used. It takes an energized customer “as a viral marketer, spreading brand benefits to his contacts without any costs of the company.” (p130)Hotmail’s success at the beginning of the establishment is they use this word month marketing, lots of viral marketer to spread their brand and products, in a very short time; hotmail is popular with little cost.

Viral marketing is popular and common in newer days; people can see its big potential-less cost big marketing receive. Companies provide some ways for customers to spread for them, very popular way is to “tap into customers’ enthusiasm with ratings and reviews.”(p134) And people like to join because they like feeling valuable, their thoughts and comments could be taken seriously by company and get reward occasionally, most important they write reviews for others and someday, before they purchase something, they will read other people’s review either. It’s kind of honest tips from customers’ world. It’s believable, “testimonials from customers are far more credible than any media source.” (p130)

Less cost both in time and money, powerful spread speed, and it seems like people are having will to do reviews as a viral marketer. But it’s risky too. If you provide a place for people to share their opinions, you can’t control their months already, and people won’t have same feelings as you do, sometimes it may be wrong, but this “wrong viral review” may affect other customers.

That’s why, companies care so much about these reviews. In China, we have the biggest online shopping website, like Amazon, and eBay, called Taobao. It’s a wonderful place to see all the reviews of almost all products written by the customers. So some brand owners will tell you ahead of time “if you have any thoughts or complain please tell us, we will happy to help you, please give us a high star evaluation.” Sometimes they may give you a key chain or a Handkerchief as a gift to make you happy. I don’t want judge its good or not, but we can see business people can also get pressure from viral marketing.

Viral marketing may bring you the amazing advertising effect without any costs, and it can also hurt you when you’re unconscious. Opportunities on the other side are challenges. Take the viral marketing seriously and use it well. And no matter if you care or not, viral marketing is there.  

original post 2:Can you believe Penguin is Chinese favorite pet?

Can you believe Penguin is Chinese favorite pet?

It’s not dog, not cat, and not snow sculpture. China’s most popular “pet” is penguin. How strange it is! But, yes that’s true. By 2011, there are more than 900 million people have their penguin number. What I’m talking about is QQ，their logo is a cute penguin. QQ is China’s most popular communication social tool. Like msn, but there are more other functions. It’s like msn plus twitter plus face book, and they also provide email service, QQ game center, QQ show to dress up yourself in QQ image, and QQ pet, you can adopt a penguin, a bear or a pig virtually. It’s like a mini three dimensional world.

                                                                                                        QQ chat

QQ is most successful social tools product, at the very beginning, they only provided communication service like MSN, at that time QQ didn’t have today’s absolute leader position. It had competitors, but QQ stood out because of its amazing fast access speed. Easy and stable accessed could attract lots of users. After QQ had a large number of stable users, they start to provide email, QQ game, QQ music, QQ show, QQ pet to keep old users and attract new customers. Some of its services are free, but some of them like QQ show or QQ pet require electronic money, but that electronic money equals real money, you have to buy electronic money and then you can enjoy the game. I think QQ made lots of profits by these services. These games and services were really popular during that time.

                                                                                            QQ show: choose your favorate dress style

                                                                                                QQ zone like blog

                                                                                                           QQ game

When blog wasn’t that popular in China, QQ company already have QQ zone, very much like blog, people can decorate their QQ zone by electronic money and it cost you. People posted their thoughts and feelings about their lives. And cute designs attracted lots of people. And now twitter is more popular, QQ Company presents QQ weibo, just like American twitter. And QQ’s advantages are all of their products and services are all in one account, maybe you don’t need one of their offer, but you must need something, when you log on your QQ, that’s a big market opportunity, because all the logo of QQ products are showed on the same menu, it’s little so it’s not annoy, and it’s obvious to find, how smart. I think the vast majority of QQ users log on QQ everyday. It’s inertial big market.

QQ also provide all kinds of membership services. QQ show membership, QQ pet membership, QQ music membership and QQ zone membership. If you own the membership in particular item, you will spend fixed number money each month but you can enjoy everything on that item, no more costs. So I think QQ is a good sample in both social services area and marketing area.