Are companies waisting their time with social media profiles?

With the rapidly changing environment that we’re in today, there’s no doubt that social media has and will continue to dominate. Almost everyone has some form of social media account, whether it is Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn or more.

 

 

Because of the success of these platforms, Facebook and Twitter in particular, it’s no surprise that businesses have decided to combine and create social pages. In my opinion, I don’t think any business is wasting their time by having a social media page. Social media reaches hundreds to thousands within minutes and for free with relative ease. The idea that a company can for example, advertise on their Facebook page about their new product, once posted online, word about it will spread like wildfire. Social media is very good at creating “fires” and can sometimes take quite some time in “putting them out”.

 

Of course though, the business needs to put some work in too and gain followers or likes to their pages or Twitter accounts otherwise everything they say or do won’t be exposed to anyone. This needs to be done through thorough research, persistence and aiming at the right target audience.

 

Brands that are already successful and well-known will not usually have too many problems with gaining an audience on their social media platforms. Studies have shown that many small businesses feel like they’re wasting their time on social media. Many don’t seem to see a return on investment when it comes to their activities. Sometimes small businesses just can’t keep up with social media and they only joined in the first place because of peer and media pressure, even though they don’t know how to get the most out of it.

In my opinion though, social media might be a waste of time for smaller organisations but for bigger companies, it is an opportunity to gain extra publicity and to be able to engage with their customers. It's not a waste of time, given they manage their accounts and reputations on these sites properly.

Twitter - the success (and failure) when it came to the Boston Bomber

As I'm sure everyone has heard by now, the Boston Bomber who was on the run for 4 days has been caught and what a lead up it was!

Now that Dzhokhar has been captured, many people have looked back at his social media during the time he was at large and before.

Friends of Dzhokhar confirmed that his account was @J_Tsar. Some of his tweets included "Ain't no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people" hours after he set off the bombs in the city. At this stage, no one was sure of yet who was the bomber. Two days after the event, he also tweeted "I'm a stress free kind of guy". I don't know about you but it's pretty scary and crazy how he can set off this bomb, kill 3 and injure 180 and then easily just sit there and continue to tweet. Although, then again, he decided to set off a bomb and then have a getaway plan that led him 10 minutes from the site - maybe more like a lack of a getaway plan?

 

 

Oddly enough, there were two or three people who made hoax account claiming to be the bomber - why, I have no idea. These imbeciles would then tweet to @BostonPolice and say "I will kill you as you killed my brother". I suppose this was just some people's way of getting a little excitement and entertainment in their life. Very stupid though!

Also, via Twitter during the day last Thursday, it became a big manhunt to find Dzhokhar and while avidly following each new update, I came across an application that you could download where you could hear the correspondence between police officers via their radios. This was mentioned on 2OceansVibe.com. Of course, the top radio that everyone was listening to was that of the Watertown police, Boston Police and EMS and Cambridge Fire and Rescue.

The problem that came about this though was everything the police were saying, everyone was tweeting. Police had to urge the public not to tweet what was being communicated via the radios. It was very exciting though as the police were honing in on Dzhokhar after they discovered he was hiding in a boat in someones backyard. As the police were planning on catching him, he's Twitter account were literally gaining thousands of followers each second. In the space of 10 minutes, he gained over 75,000 followers.

We sat up at 2am, police radio on the ipad, live streaming of them going in for capture and twitter on in the background - it was like an FBI headquarters in our room and I never felt so much adrenalin over something so far away from us.


The unfortunate thing though, Twitter isn't fully controlled and people nowadays are beginning to believe everything they read on Twitter - I mean if a lot of people are talking about it, surely it's true?

Oscar Pistorius and his online presence

Poor Oscar, ever since he shot and killed girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. he's not been able to hide from the media. That's one thing South Africa's media is very good at - getting as much of a story out as they can, digging up what they can and quite simply, not stopping till the truth is out and the story becomes boring.
Unfortunately for Pistorius, with his status, the media frenzy is not going to end for a while.

Within days of the shooting, Pistorius and his team appointed UK Spin doctor Stuart Higgins, changed Pistorius's official website and supposedly deleted tweets from his Twitter feed. I don't know about you but that's already something fishy that the court can pick up.

Having a look further, I found that Pistorius has trended not only on Twitter but throughout the Internet, worldwide. It was found that online searches for information on Pistorius overtook the amount of searches relating to information on Lance Armstrong during his doping scandal as well as that of Tiger Woods when his infidelity broke out.

I do find it amusing though that all three of these athletes are (or were) sponsored by Nike.

"Just do it" - or not.


Another unfortunate image that was posted of Pistorius was the one of him running with the slogan: "I am the bullet in the chamber". Whilst it has been removed, you can't help but get a slight tingle in your body asking yourself, "what are the chances?" and it's kind of creepy too.

The website it seems is where the Pistorius camp can now convey their messages and their side of the story. However, the case will not only be restricted to that website with constant news being fed via newspapers, radio broadcasts and social media platforms.

One thing is for certain, during the bail hearing of Oscar Pistorius, everyone became a lawyer on Twitter. While we wait for the trial to begin in June, people are able to sum up their facts and prepare their case.