As we come closer to the fifth of December and the discussion about ‘Black Piet’ is coming up, I thought it might be nice to do some research about the ‘Black Piet’ discussion and the influence of social media.

According to the article of youngstartup, research has shown that, the ‘Black Piet’ discussion is the most discussed topic in 2013 on Facebook and Twitter. For the people who do not know what the discussion is about: There has been some disagreement about the black paint of the Pieten. Some people think that it is racism and it should not be allowed to paint people black.

Facebook and Twitter are being used as platforms to show the opinions of people. But it can go really far. Heavy arguments are being brought up and some people threaten others, who do not agree with their statements.

In 2013 there was a Facebook page started, with a petition in favour of preserving ‘Black Piet’. The petition page hit more than one million likes in a couple days. With that the Facebook page is one of the fasted growing Facebook pages ever in The Netherlands. The people who dissagreed with ‘Black Piet’ also started a page, but they only got 7100 likes in those couple of days. It even came to a point, where the United Nations interfered in the discussion, because it got really out of hand.

As you can see, the discussion became really big, just because people started to use social media to discuss the topic. Social media made it possible to connect people to talk about the topic and everybody started to interfere. What do you think, is it right to argue over social media about ‘Black Piet’ or should there be another way to talk about the topic?

References:

• https://youngstartup.nl/blog/post/zwarte-piet-meest-besproken-op-social-media/
• http://www.noordhollandsdagblad.nl/extra/klikhier/article25262593.ece

A facebook friendship request from your grandmother or a like on instagram from the old lady next door, it is all normal nowadays. We are all used to the fact that ninetysix percent of the young adults actively uses at least one social media platform. But research shows that eight out of ten of the people of sixtyfive and over, are now using social media. Last year their were only three quarters of that certain type of group active users. So this type of group has increased a lot over the year.

The reason why they stayed behind past years is, because they had the feeling that not everybody needed to see every aspect of their lives. But right now they admit that social media is really useful. The main reason for becoming an active users is, staying in contact with family and friends, but elderly also have the feeling that they are more independent.

The programs that are being used the most are Facebook and Google plus. As you can see on the infographics below, there has been a big change over the couple of years. All the social media platforms, that are represented in the picture, grew a lot. The first picture shows the users in 2011 and the second picture shows the users in 2015.

Another point being made in the research is, that elderly also have found the mobile chatprograms, like Whatsapp and Facebook messenger. They are starting to use mobile devices instead of computers. The mobile devices make it easier to connect with the chatprograms and use it. Right now the chatprograms are not as popular as Facebook, but we will also see an increase in the use of these programs the next couple of years.

Elderly are not only becoming more modern and in touch with younger people, they are also more careful when it comes to sharing personal information. Elderly are very aware of the dangers that can occure, when you provide the wrong information on social media.

It might seem a little bit weird to see your grandmothers beach photo’s on instagram and accept your friends grandmothers Facebook request, but it also has a lot of advantages to connect elderly with social media. What do you think about older people on social media platforms?

References

• FrankWatching (2015) De online opmars van de 65-plusser: verstand komt met de jaren http://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2015/10/20/online-opmars-65-plusser-verstand-komt-met-de-jaren-onderzoek/

In 2003 there was a conference and the Dutch prime minister decided to refuse princess Mabel Wisse Smit to become a member of the royal family. At that time she was the fiancé of prince Johan Friso of Oranje-Nassau. The princess had had a liaison in her teenage years with a drug dealer Klaas Bruinsma. But she did not recognize any sexual relationship and lied about it as well.

Her Wikipedia page was also telling this story, but the Royal family was not a fan of that. So in January 2006 they decided to remove some words from the page and alter the story. In that way she would not make a bad appearance on Wikipedia.The page did not say anything about lies of the princess anymore. We still do not know who exactly altered the page, but the signal of the change came from a computer at ‘Huis ten Bosch’, the palace of the royal family. There was a lot of media attention on this topic and eventually the prince and princess had to face the fact that they had done something wrong. They publicly apologized, but did not change the alteration.

As we can see, false alteration or misleading information on Wikipedia is easy to create. Dutch people know about the situation of the princesses Wikipedia page, but if some one from outside the country visits Mabel Wisse Smits’s Wikipedia page, they will think that they are being informed right. Wikipedia is not that reliable as we think it is. Wikipedia can easily be manipulated and misused in a lot of ways. So you need to be sharp and do research, before you assume that you have the right and complete information about a subject.

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-479098/Royal-couple-change-Wikipedia-entry-brush-drugs-scandal.html

Would you like to have crisps that taste like strawberry icecream or maybe like french fries?

Nowadays it is all possible. Companies are engaging customers in their business processes. The customers themselves can decide what the end product should be and help the company by generating the exact right product. This way you can kill two birds with one stone: making the customers happy and generating revenue for the company.

The main key of being succesful with customer engagement is social media. Companies need to be involved on social media platforms, before they can be succesful with engaging customers in the business process. At this moment only five percent of the business has a well optimized social media marketing strategy. So a lot of companies have a long way to go before social media will eventually create value.

When a company decides to become involved on social media, the managers also need to realize that there are some factors influencing the corporate reputation. You need to make the right moves to create a successful campaign, that will not harm the company. Policies and strict rules need to be set up in order to keep the social media behavior of your employees safe.

In the guest lecture of KLM we saw the tweet of Holland-Mexico. This is a typical example of how social media can backfire on a company and instead of engaging the customer they ended up losing the mexicans as customer.

Cases that did end up in great success were Lays and Nike. Lays decided to engage the customer by letting them choose their own favourite flavor for crisps. A famous dutch chef rated the flavors and eventually there was a winner. Nike set up a campaign that was called: design your own shoes. The customers were able to customize their shoes the way they wanted.

These are exemples of a right customer engagement. The most important thing for companies is to set up a good working social network platform and interfere with the customers. But they need be aware of the dangers social media can have and set up a specialized team to build the right social media network.

References:

• http://smallbusiness.chron.com/negative-effects-social-media-business-25682.html
• http://www.adformatie.nl/nieuws/klm-verwijdert-social-media-inhaker-na-kritiek-mexicanen
• http://www.marketingonline.nl/bericht/maak-de-smaak-campagne-van-lays-bedenk-nieuwe-chipsmaak
• Giamanco, B., and Gregoire, K. 2012. Tweet me, friend me, make me buy. Harvard Business Review 90(7/8) 88-93
• Li, T., Behrens, G., and de Maertelaere, M. 2014. Corporate Twitter channels: The impact of engagement and informedness on corporate reputation. International Journal of Electronic Commerce, forthcoming
• Li, T. and Soonius, G. 2012. Is your social media strategy effective? An empirical study of the factors influencing the success of Facebook campaigns. Proceedings of the Workshop on Electronic Business, Orlando, FL, December. PDF