The new functions of Facebook ------ A story of social media today

Facebook is a famous social media tool that most people accustomed to use in their daily life.

Recently, Facebook held Facebook Marketing Conference in New York, in which it launches three new functions. And then I will introduce you the three changes of Facebook.

The first one is about the design of its Pages.

In the past the Timeline of Facebook is designed only for individual users. However after the conference, it also can be used by business users. It is a piece of good news to the business users because it is better for them to show their brand history, their latest products and services (Wang, 2012) Through Timeline, the business users can communicate with their customers more conveniently. In addition, it offers a good platform for the business users to share their plan with their customers.

The second big change is Reach Generator.

Using Reach Generators the customers can participate into the business activities more deeply. To be more precise, through the Reach Generator, the customers can praise reviews or sharing the business report of the company they like (Wang,2012).

Last one is Premium on Facebook.

Normally, Premium on Facebook helps you maximize the number of people interacting with your brand and talking about you, while unlocking the power of fans and their friends (2012).Its birth is to ensure that the company publishes some valuable information at a right time and in a suitable time.

According to the Facebook Marketing Conference, it can be found the three changes are all with regard to business activities. It also reflects that social CRM becomes more and more important at present.

References :

Facebook (2012) Premium on Facebook. [online] Available at: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Premium_Guide_2.29.12.pdf [Accessed: 25/02/2012].

Wang, C. (2012) Facebook Marketing Conference. ifanr, [blog] 02/3/2012, Available at: http://www.ifanr.com/75970 [Accessed: 25/02/2012].

Social Customer Relation Management

Last week, we talk about social customers, this week I will introduce social CRM to you.

I think it is a shift from traditional CRM to a new social customer relationship management. From my point of view, social CRM combines social media with CRM (Thompson, 2009). Social CRM is about your communications, listening, internalizing and responding (Lieberman, 2012).

In the next part, I will share some examples which reflected the importance of Social CRM.

BEST BUY------Twelp Force:
The employees of Best Buy has grew to 2,200 in 3 months and there are over 13,000 customers  accustomed to interact with the employees on social networks such as asking questions, stating their views. Thus, Best Buy set up a better relationship with their customer though social media. Nowadays, there are 29,000 followers of TWELP FORCE. To maintain the good relationship, everyday the employees of Best Buy will answer 100-125 questions from its customers per day (Petersen 2011).

FOILED CUPCAKES:

FOILED CUPCAKES is a Chicago company which is based online. However, once it’s the lauch of its website can not work normally but its cakes are all prepared. To not to influence it sales, they use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with their customers. The reasons referred by the host are that people can tweet all day long can update their Facebook pages all day long. In addition, the owner Mari Luangrath also pointed out: “people only listen if they know you care about them.” (Petersen 2011)

From the two examples, it can be found that as the power of traditional CRM diminishes, companies should turn to online social networks to catch their customers.

References:

Lieberman, M. (2012) Best Practices for Social CRM?. The social customer, [blog] 13/02/2012, Available at: http://thesocialcustomer.com/mitchlieberman/46089/best-practices-social-crm [Accessed: 20/03/2012].

Petersen , R. (2011) 16 case studies that prove Social CRM . BarnRaisers , [blog] January 13, 2011 , Available at: http://barnraisersllc.com/2011/01/19-case-studies-show-social-media-builds-1-to-1-sales-relationships/ [Accessed: 20/03/2012].

Thompson, B. (2009) Social CRM: Strategy, Technology or Passing Fad?. customer think, [blog] 16/09/2009, Available at: http://www.customerthink.com/blog/social_crm_strategy_technology_or_passing_fad [Accessed: 20/03/2012].

Pinterest：A new visual social directory site

IntroductionPinterest is a new visual social directory site, which looks like a visual wall full of different kinds of pictures. 
The origin of its name is simple, which is the abbreviation of Pin and Interest. 
Pinterest=Pin + Interest.
Pinboard and Pin are the two elements of Pinterest (2012).

Functions
It uses pinboards as unit and you can pin your favorite picture on your individual site, in addition, you can follow other users' flavor (2012).

To be more precise, Pin means that users can pin their favorite picture on their white board. Repin means that if you find a good picture pinned by your friend you can repin it on your board as well. It is similar with the Re-tweet function of Twitter. Share means that you can share all kinds of pictures from other social network such as Facebook. Finally Board is like an individual photo album which is divided by different themes and interests.



Pinterest currently uses invited system, people can apply for an invite code on its home page.

Applications
Now people can pin pictures whatever they like and whenever they want. For example, it can be found the application of Pinterest in iTunes.
Nevertheless, it can be found Pinterest's account on twitter. The users can make comments, give suggestion or ask for help on twitter.

Similar sites

FFFFOUND!------It is an old-launched website, which has the same function like Pinterest. However compared with Pinterest, the design of FFFFOUND is not good enough (2012).













This is My Jam------It is a website like Pinterest in music fields. It contains nearly all the social elements such as like, attention, comments or share (2012).


Reference:


Pinterest.com (2012) Pinterest / Goodies. [online] Available at: http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/ [Accessed: 5 Apr 2012].



Quora (2012) Pinterest: How does Pinterest differ from Tumblr or FFFFOUND!?. [online] Available at: http://www.quora.com/Pinterest/How-does-Pinterest-differ-from-Tumblr-or-FFFFOUND [Accessed: 04/03/2012].