Firstly the question that business owners must ask themselves is: Do I need an app at all? For instance, if you are own a law firm who primarily interacts vis in-person consultations or over the phone, then no, you probably do not need a mobile app. The same is true for a owner with one or two locations.

An increase popular option for companies that are looking to move into mobile, but lack the budgets to support separate apps for each mobile platform and without the needs of something more complex such as mobile web App. However, if you offer an existing web service for users logins and account management, a mobile app is probably going to be a worthwhile investment, as it will provide tremendous performance benefits over using mobile web (Warren, 2013).

If you have a business that is delivered through technology such as (AirBnB and Uber), it could be tough choice whether to go to a website or an app first. The answer may lie in your understanding of your target audience (Varshneya, 2014).

How best do you think you can reach out to them? How are they currently performing the tasks that you wish to simplify? Answers to this will help you determine whether your product merits a web first or a mobile strategy.

 64% of App users stated that they view brands that have Native Apps more favourably than others that don’t have (Luxury Institute, 2012). Forrester Research estimated that sales from consumer shopping on mobile phones would increase to $38 billion in 2014. Sucharita Mulpuru, the Forrester analyst behind the research, attributes the increase to the fast pace of consumer adoption of smart phones. American is growing this “comfort shopping”devices and for this reason more merchants are working to improve the mobile shopping experience. Mulpuru estimates for 2018 that mobile commerce sales will top $293 billion in America.

Below are examples of how successful an app can be:

 Great invention -mobile coupon.

Who wants to carry around a bunch of pieces of paper, when you can do everything from a svelte mobile device? Smart mobile marketers knew that mobile coupons were next frontier. Humans are wired to love discounts and deals. Why not deliver them on the smartphone? That’s why users love mobile coupons. As study from Key Ring reported, mobile users- 75% are using coupons and 80% of shoppers said their perception of a retailer would improve if the retailer offered mobile deals and coupons as reported by Mobile Commerce Daily (Patel, 2014). A user will probably download an app if the coupons are given only via native app.

Clever Marketing with Mobile during holiday season.

One third of all ecommerce purchases were made on a smartphone during 2013 holiday shopping season (2013).Instead of calling it “Black Friday,” Custora dubbed the day “Mobile Friday”. Nearly 40% of purchases on the biggest shopping day of the year were made on mobile devices. Black Friday is traditionally the day when shoppers wake at ungodly hours, freeze in long lines, and trample one another in an effort to buy big-screen TVs and discounted vacuum cleaners. But who wants to risk life and lose sleep if they can cozily snag a deal in the comfort of their very own bed? Cyber Monday is giving way to a cyberized and mobilized Black Friday.

Lessons learned:

• Get creative with discounts such as discounts on a holiday season. Think about the timing.
• Mcommerce is on the rise so Ecommerce professionals should not ignore the benefits of it.

Below are the technicalities behind, Responsive Web, Native Apps and Mobile Web:

Responsive Web

Applications with a responsive web design apply a different style (or set of styles, depending on device size) primarily based on cascading style sheets (CSS). The server can decide the design when serving the application, the design can be applied at the client level, or both can occur. The idea is to have a single source of content that renders differently based on a device’s features. In addition to being a solution for mobile web applications, it’s also useful for other types of devices such as tablets, game consoles and televisions (Serrano et al, 2013).

 Native Apps

The companies that build mobile Oss want Apps that are specific to their own environments that can take full advantage of their particular features. This requires developing the app using that provider’s language and framework, ie: using Xcode with Objective-C for iOS and Eclipse with Java for Android. Thus, one project must be maintained for each OS, which leads to an increment in developing a team, costs and time. Moreover, developers must address the fact that in addition to multiple existing Oss, new ones continually appear (Serrano et al, 2013).

 Mobile Web

It usually has a better feel and touch than the responsive web because it renders the user interface controls (such as buttons, selectors and text boxes) in a way that’s similar to a native app.

Warren (2013) suggests that businesses should absolutely start with a mobile friendly site and make sure that it is frequently updated to be fast, efficient and work well on multiple devices. However, Serrano et al, 2013 argued that there isn’t a single solution for choosing which mobile application will be best for every situation. Several technical criteria can help us narrow down our options to select the most suitable development approach for a given situation. If the goal is to build an app with the support for multiple platforms, a Mobile Web approach is a better choice than a Native App, which must be developed specifically for each mobile platform.

 Perspective form user preference:

Warren (2013) argues that users feel more comfortable making large dollar purchases using a native app rather than a mobile web especially because it works along side your device’s built in features offering:

• More advanced graphics and effects,(native code offers better user experience)
• Strong mobile engagement
• Full support from concerned app store.

However Patel says that most users want a mobile experience without the barrier of a mobile app. Patel (2014) says that is unnecessary when a user has to download an app in order to browse or complete a transaction as many users don’t want yet another app. What they want is the lightweight experience of being able to do what they want to do without that extra step since they are not interested in becoming loyal customers of your brand or store. They are just looking for a good deal. In addition, user still has to click on a link and then click to download it, incurring data charges if they are not using wifi (Johnsons, 2012).

Flurry, a mobile as agency, performed a comparative study of app downloads over three consecutive holiday shopping seasons. What they discovered is that the number of downloads during the peak holiday shopping had declined year-over-year local businesses and retailers have to decide whether they are going to develop an app, or whether they are going to stick to a mobile-optimized experience (Patel, 2014). Which shows that downloading an app may not be the best option.

Native Apps have a lot of advantages to mobile web, but users are willing to forego this in order to have the quick and easy solution of browsing directly from their mobile browser (Patel, 2014). As early as 2012, ABI Research predicted that “smartphone users around the world would be downloading and using fewer and fewer apps”.

 Perspective from Business preference:

 Even though companies are looking to move into mobile, they may lack the budgets to support separate apps for each mobile platform also they are (Warren, 2013):

• Expensive to develop
• Maintenance costs are high
• Require frequent update

 Varshneya (2014) suggests that when you are not sure which mobile platform you want to build first (because building both at the same time is more expensive and makes the iterative process tedious), a responsive website can come to the rescue as they are:

• Built using style sheets that make them responsive to different operating systems (Johnsons, 2012)
• Easier to maintain and less expensive
• Instantly available (no download required)
• Can be updated instantly and also it is found easily
• Broader reach

 A responsive website enables both Android, iOSA and any other mobile OS users to interact with your brand with a similar experience. You build only once and get your desktop and all mobile platforms covered. This also helps you in validating your source of traffic, building your product with analytics integrated at this stage to get a sense of the traffic flowing from different devices.

Once you realize which devices your customers are using the most to access your responsive website, you can then build a customized native app solution for them (Varshneya, 2014). However, Warren (2013) suggests that before Mcommerce companies should look at who their users are — what platforms they use, the average transaction price (studies continue to show that users feel more comfortable making large dollar purchases using a native app rather than the mobile web) and how well their current web solutions work with features such as shopping carts, time outs and more.

 Most importantly businesses must pay attention to how many sales need to take place each month through an app to pay for its development. If that seems feasible, building a native app to offer alongside the responsive experience is a great idea (Warren, 2013). A website makes more sense for information dissemination, which educates the customers about the brand and its offerings. A responsive website helps kill two birds with the same stone. You get the attention of the desktop surfer as well as those who are browsing or researching about on the go (Varshneya, 2014).

While you will build a responsive website, which is the natural choice to inform your target audience about your brand, you can further engage your prospective and existing customers through a mobile app.

You could build a small app that enhances your brand value, such as what Coca-Cola did with its fun iOS app.

Final thoughts:

Even though there is a debate between responsive web and a native app, if your are building a website it has to be mobile or tablet enable (responsive). Thus, a responsive web seems to be a better option especially for businesses that have a small budget. It is important to bear in mind that customers will make purchases on a mobile web, but they will only do so if it’s easier than downloading your mobile app. If you don’t have a mobile web already, you’re missing out on a huge potential audience.

Commerce is a tricky area for native app vs. mobile web debate because the answer can really vary depending on the type of products being sold and the audience (how frequent the person visits the online shop). It can be argued that mobile web will remain competitive until apps can offer a substantially better user experience and will be cheaper for business to develop.

References:

Johnsons 2012. App Development: Making the case for mobile websites. Sunday Business Post. Available at: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/docview/1221044555

 Luxury Institute, LLC. 2012. Home. [online] Available at: http://luxuryinstitute.com/luxury/

 ‘Mobile Shopping App makes move onto web’. Journal (Newcastle-upon-tyne UK)(2012) Available at: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/docview/1019035636?pq-origsite=summon&http://ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/login?url=accountid=9727

 Patel, N (2014) ‘Surprising Mobile Ecommerce Statistics that will change the way you do business. KISSmetrics. Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/surprising-mobile-ecommerce/

 Serrano et al (2013) ‘Mobile Web Apps’ IEEE Software. Published by the IEEE computer society. Avaible at: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6588524

 Varshneya, R. (2014) Responsive Website or Mobile App: Do You Need Both? Enterpreneur. Availalble at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/235981

 Warren, C. (2013) ‘Should You Build a Responsive Site or a Native Mobile App?’. MashableUK. Available at:

http://mashable.com/2013/08/06/responsive-vs-native-app/

You probably have a local business that you love. Perhaps it’s a barber or stylist who greets you by name or maybe you frequent a coffee shop where you don’t have to tell them that you’re having a “soya latte one shot only”. Maybe it’s a real estate agent with a great newsletter about the going-on in your neighbourhood.

What those all have in common? They treat you like the individual you are. (Yates, 2013)

 Treating the individual as they are is the reason why Content Personalisation is becoming the future for personalised advertising (Henkin, 2012). Having individual insight is a priority for marketers as it helps users cope with abundance of available information (Lavie et al, 2010). Users also state that they want personalised services. ChoiceStream (2008), showed that 76% of consumers would like to receive personalised content. Consumers were particularly interested in personalised recommendations concerning music, books and films. From a psychology and communication perspective, research has shown that people prefer objects or experiences that are closely related to themselves compared to objects or experiences that are not related to them (Petty et al, 2000).

 A frustrated consumer is never good for business. Three out of four consumers become frustrated when website content isn’t relevant to their interests. In fact, if your content doesn’t resonate with your target audience, you might as well ask them to ignore you (Soojian, 2015).

 According to Mummert (2014), marketers see an average sales increase of 20% when employing content personalization. In addition, a survey conducted by Econsultancy in association with Monerate shows that 94% marketers and 90% of agencies agree that personalization of the we experience is critical to current and future success. A good example showing that facts don’t lie is of Amazon.

You must be familiar with Amazon.com’s recommendations feature “Customers who bought this item also bought”. See example below.

 Amazon says that recommendations are hotter than many people realise as 35% of product sales result from recommendations (Marshall, 2006).

 Another great example regarding news is the “Toggle” button on The Guardian website. From time to time events happen that are important to some but irrelevant to others. The “Toggle” button lets readers switch off Royal Baby news. Also The Guardian has buttons that toggle new stories based on where you live and political views. It even has a button marked “ Republican” that will show you news stories that are relevant to Republicans.

 Netflix has had, for a while now, a feature that allowed users to give star-ratings to content they did or didn’t like. This allowed Netflix to recommend content that the user was most likely to be interested in. The Netflix system had one fatal flaw, however: if more than one person had access to the account and each had different tastes in movies, the algorithm would be less likely to select things that either liked(Henkin, 2012).

This was fixed recently when Netflix rolled out the ability to add profiles to your Netflix account. Before, only one person was allowed to stream at a time, now multiple users can stream, and what’s more, Netflix can deliver content that’s relevant to individual users. That means that if you hate horror movies, you won’t see them in your suggestions queue, but your teenage son still will. And if you like quirky comedies, Netflix is likely to recommend some you’ve never even heard of, but will love (Henkin, 2012).

Tumblr network is another great example of marketing personalization as it tracks the tags peope use most often in their posts. When they go to check out their newsfeed or to search a tag, Tumblr can recommend new tags that might be interest heir user base. Tumblr also bases its user experience on the following of other users (Murmmert, 2014). This gives the website a great deal of personalization, because it means each user only sees posts from people they like. Want to see cute animals? Follow a blog about cute animals and tumblr is likely to recommend even more blogs about cute animals, and it can result you turning your newsfeed into wall-to-wall puppy pictures if you wanted to (Murmmert, 2014).

 Personalisation isn’t just for websites, it has made an impact on apps too. The Essential Wine App from Delectable Wines. It allows you to take a picture of your favourite wine and it will remember your choices and recommended related wines based on your tastes. The app will also let you know which wines your friends are drinking, and get their perspective on the wines they love(Soojian, 2015).

 Examples of filters include:

 -FaceBook “Top Stories” News Feed Raking

-Twitter “Top Tweets” in Search

-Twitter “No Replies” setting for brands

-Google’s personalized Search Results

-Itunes “Top [Apps, Books, Songs, Movies etc]

-Netflix “Popular Queue and other personalized queues

 The examples above clearly show the benefits to filtering personalization content for both business and for web publishers as relevant content and ads means more clicks and ultimately more money (Soojian, 2015). For users, relevance means less time spent finding content they will enjoy.

Who really has time for to sift through the 161 million results Google sends back for a search about Miley Cyrus anyway? If the search engine knows you are probably looking for her latest music video or her tour schedule, what’s the harm in showing you those results on the first page?

 According to Eli Pariser board president of Moveon.org , there are dangerous, unintended consequences to filtering. In his book Filter Bubble, Pariser argues that all this filtering and personalization is starting to isolate us. When websites show us only what we like, we get cut off from diverse points of view that can enrich our understand of the world (Catoni, 2011). That might be relatively harmless when you’re searching for Ms. Cyrus’ latest single, but what about when you’re trying to find information about pending legislation in Congress or news about revolution in another country? (Catoni,2011)

 He goes on stating that the trend toward personalization impedes the fulfilment of Internet promise. The promise of Internet is that it can connect people from different backgrounds, with different beliefs and across disparate locations. But with personalization there is a problem because it means you’re less likely than ever to be confronted with information that challenges your views, or get you out of your comfort zone (Catone, 2011). A lot of the personalization that exists today just serves up information “junk food”. It might be delicious, but it doesn’t feed the soul. Pariser argued that his biggest fear is that important but un-sexy problems –from homelessness to the war in Afghanistan fall our of view entirely (Pariser, 2011).

 Watch this vide of Pariser where he explains the problem of filter bubble in vivid detail.

 While most newspaper readers read the internal sections (sports, Home and Garden, etc), at least they had to flip by the front page which let them know if something important was going on that they should know about. However, as seen previously on the example of The Guardian Toggle button people can still select it and if they are fans of the Royal Family they can just follow these type of news and ignore important news. Now is possible to live in a bubble where that stuff doesn’t ever show up and you would never know it’s happening (Catoni, 2011).

 Most personalization on the web is algorithmically driven and we implicitly inform the algorithms based on the choices we have previously made interacting with content and it is now really hard to trick the algorithm(Pariser, 2011). For instance, if you are completely logged out of Google, on a new computer, the company can track 57 signals about you:

• what kind of laptop you are using.
• what your IP address is.
• What font size in your browser is

Already, that gives a lot of important clues about age, income and demographics.

It’s ironic, the promise of personalization is that it gives us our own personal view of the world. But the challenge is that a lot of the time, it’s actually pushing us toward a stereotyped, simplified version of ourselves. “ This person is male, so we will show him more gadget and car news” (Pariser, 2011)

 Pariser suggests that that the solution is to include irrelevant signals to equally rank content that is uncomfortable, challenging and timely into or online experience. Companies that are doing the filtering have a huge responsibility. They must educate their users about how the filtering works, to give them some control, and to build algorithms that have a sense of civic purpose embedded in them.

 How would it be possible to balance the advantages and disadvantages of filter personalization?

 The common thread is that they both have a lot to do with personal data. Personalization couldn’t exist without the massive dossiers of personal data being collected by big companies online these days. And it’s a problem because consumers don’t have much control over that. The current laws around personal data just don’t contemplate a world in which a click on one website changes what you see on an entirely different one (or indeed, websites at all.) (Catoni, 2011)

 Final thoughts:

 There are many benefits that can be taken from personalization content especially to marketers that want to increase sales profit out of recommendations. However, this can have a significant impact on people that are searching for relevant/important information. Information that feeds the soul and not junkie food information as put by Pariser. Today companies responsible for the filtering dictate how we discover and act on information.

It can be argued that personalization content is still at its infancy and perhaps it will develop in the future allowing us to have control of access of information by developing algorithms that have encoded in them a sense of public life, a sense of civic responsibility as stated by Pariser.

 References

 Catone, J. (2011) ‘ Why Web Personalization May Be Damaging Our World View? Available at: http://mashable.com/2011/06/03/filters-eli-pariser/

 Lavie et al. (2010) ‘User attitudes towards news content Personalization. International Journal of Human Computer Studies. Vol 68 issue 8 pages 483-495: Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S1071581909001463

 Henkin, A. ‘How Content Marketing is the Future for Personalised Advertising’ Wall Blog (2012) Available at: http://wallblog.co.uk/2012/12/13/how-content-marketing-is-the-future-for-personalised-advertising/

 Marshall, M (2006). ‘Aggregate Knowledge raises $5M from Kleiner, on a roll’. Available at: http://venturebeat.com/2006/12/10/aggregate-knowledge-raises-5m-from-kleiner-on-a-roll/

 Mummert, H. ‘The Tipping Point for Personalised Website Experiences. (2014) Available at: http://www.monetate.com/blog/the-tipping-point-for-personalized-website-experiences/

 Petty et al (2000) ‘Attitude Functions and Persuasion; an elaboration likelihood approach to matched mismatched messages. GR Maio (Eds)

Soojian, C (2015) ‘Content Personalisation It’s What Consumers Want!’. SocialMedia Today. Available at: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/2015-04-04/content-personalization-its-what-consumers-want

Yates, S (2013). ‘6 Kick-Ass Examples of Marketing Personalization’. Available at: http://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/marketing-personalization-examples

In 2013, FaceBook introduced video adverts in users new feeds, taking a slice of the global TV advertising market. The adverts plays automatically in FaceBook fees, though the sound if off, in an attempt to grab users attention and allow marketers to be more creative with their digital content. FaceBook said “This video format is ideal for marketers who are looking to make a large-scale impact, and for people who will discover more great content in their news feeds”(Kuchler & Hannah, 2013) Carolyn Everson, FaceBook’s vice-president of global marketing solution said that ‘I don’t believe TV is the first screen any more…Mobile is the primary screen’.

Carolyn seemed to be right as the amount of adverts on FaceBook news feed more than tripled in 2014 (Frier, 2015). In addition, FaceBook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckberg said in a November public question-and-answer that in 5 years, most FaceBook will be videos (Frier, 2015).

Marketers have asked to FaceBook how their advertise will lead to sales. Simo is FaceBook director of product in charge of video and he says that FaceBook is at the beginning of understanding what video on FaceBook is about and for this reason Facebook had to create new metrics for marketers to evaluate video-ad campaign including how many people clicked on a link at the end of a video (Frier, 2015).

Nevertheless, we all know that when a video of a brand goes viral there is a big change that the sales will increase.  In fact, extensive commercial instances of viral marketing succeed in real life. For example, Nike Inc. used social networking websites such as Orkut and FaceBook to market products successfully (Long, 2014).

Existing studies on viral marketing assume implicitly that all users in the social network are of interest for a specific product being promoted via viral marketing, which, however, is not true in some cases. For instance, a young student might not be of interest for the company when the product being promoted is a product designed for the old. In these cases, it is a necessity to provide the company an option to specify which users in the social network are of interest in order to influence the truly potential customers effectively(Long, 2014).

A lot of models about how the influence process works have been proposed such as the Independent Cascade Model (IC Model) and the Linear Threshold Mode (LT Mode). However, they fail to consider the common scenario of viral marketing companies. Motivated by this phenomenon, Long (2014) proposes a new paradigm of viral marketing called Interest-Specified Viral Marketing, where the company can specify which users are of interest when promoting a specific product. To this purpose, we assume that each user in the social network is associated with a set of attribute values and the company can specify the users to be of interest by providing a set AI of attribute values. Consequently, all users that contain some attribute values from AI correspond to the users that are of interest. Note that a user is of interest to a company means that the company has interest in this user (the product of the company is designed for the group of users which includes this user), which further implies that this user would probably be interested in the product. Thus, “user interest” and “company interest” co-exists in our Interest-Specified Viral Marketing paradigm, rendering a more effective marketing strategy because it provides the option to focus on only the truly potential customers (Long, 2014).

However marketers should not just consider the “user interest” factor, but also the type of emotion that will affect the viewer when watching the ad. Shawbel (2013) stated that the key of a successful video is to focus on psychology, not technology. A research by Phelps et al (2004) evaluated that messages that spark strong emotion such as humour, fear, sadness or inspiration are most likely to be forwarded.

The video below brought a lot of people to tears during Christmas season and it was viewed by more than 23,1M people.

In addition, Milkman and Berger (2012) identified what certain contents are more likely to go viral than other:

1-when is positive, dwelling on positive issues or topics.

2- it evoked a strong emotional reaction (joy, fear, anger).

3- it was practically useful.

The following ads portrays at least one of the characteristics listed above and may be the reason why they are the most successful videos ever shared on social network.

TNT 

TNT ‘push to add drama stunt in Belgium. This video has over 52.4M views and was so successful that a sequel was made to launch TNT in the Netherlands.

Air New Zealand

To celebrate the release of the third film of Hobbit trilogy film, Air New Zealand released the best safety briefing of all time. This ad killed two birds with one stone as they are advertising the film and since the video went viral Air New Zealand was by over 14,1M around the world.

LG Elevator Prank

Promoting how ‘lifelike’ its new IPS monitors, LG pulled this brilliant stunt replacing an elevator floor with monitors to make it look like the floor was falling away. This proves that it is a great idea for a company to combined its product with comedy stunts  since it reached over 23.4M views.

Those above are the most successful viral videos campaigns. However, only few know how to do it right. The videos below show creators not being sensible towards minority groups and also not respecting cultural differences. 

Groupon

During the 2011 Super Bowl, the e-commerce site Groupon aired three advertisements. In most cases, any company airing a memorable ad during Super Bowl Sunday is guaranteed to become the subject of water cooler discussion the following Monday. This is exactly what happened to Groupon, but it wasn’t a good thing.

The company ran ads featuring famous celebrities, among them actor Timothy Hutton. His spot began with him discussing human rights abuses in Tibet, and then raving about the deals Groupon offered on fish curry at Himalayan restaurants. Scores of viewers were offended at what they felt was the trivialization of an important cause, and the backlash to the ads was severe. The company pulled the ad four days later.

Below you can see a comment criticising the ad on YouTube.

Holiday Inn

In the 1990s, the Holiday Inn hotel chain decided to get with the times and undergo a billion dollar renovation. When it was finished, they chose the 1997 Super Bowl as the venue in which to brag about it. They ran a commercial that depicted two classmates at a high school reunion. One tries to place the name of the beautiful woman standing before him and after a few guesses, he figures it out — the vision of beauty before him used to be named Bob.

The voiceover then goes on to reason that since the thousands of dollars that “Bob” had spent had been such a success, wouldn’t the same hold true for a billion-dollar hotel chain renovation? As it turned out, the answer was no. Not only did the campaign fail to renew interest in the chain, it was deemed offensive by LGBT groups, who boycotted the hotel.

Snickers

Mr. T terrorizes a speed walker with effeminate tendencies by shooting Snickers bars at him through a Gatling gun. In the process, he “pities the fool” and criticizes him for his choice of exercise. Not surprisingly, LGBT support groups decried the message Snickers was sending to people about how it’s okay to discriminate against someone based on mannerisms. It can be argued that this marketing effort ceased to be effective when displayed an underlaying message that is so blatantly overpowering that you lose sight of the products.

Lessons Learned:

-Make sure your advert does not portray something that is not.

– If outrageous, make sure to be sensible especially when regards a minority group such as LGBT.

– Consider culture differences.

– Consider the consumer interest when putting the video on social network.

– Audience interaction will help to engage and communicate the message especially if it is a funny prank (LG Elevator) or interestingly dramatic (TNT stunt).

– A campaign which the viewer can relate to or takes on an emotional journey (Penguin ad), is likely to be memorable and shared to others. 

References

Frier, S (2015) ‘FaceBook’s New Year Resolution: More Video Ads in News Feed’. Available at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-07/facebook-s-new-year-resolution-more-video-ads-in-news-feed

Long, C. (2014) Viral Marketing For Dedicated Customers’ Information Systems. Vol 46 page 1-23. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0306437914000751

 Kuchler & Hannah (2013) FaceBook launches autoplay video ads: MEDIA Financial Times London. Available at: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/docview/1478035244?OpenUrlRefId=info:xri/sid:summon

Phelps J,  et al (2004) Viral Marketing or Eletronic word of mouth advertsing: Examine consumer responses and motivation to pass along email. Journal of advertising research 44(4) pp.333.348

 Schawbel, D (2013). Jonah Berger: How to make your marketing Campaign Go Viral. Forbes

Nowadays, it seems that everyone is doing it, tweeting, posting, updating on their status, and more and more companies are climbing on the bandwagon. Corporations are using social media to recruit perspective employees, and college graduates are looking to take advantage of this (Weaver, 2011). In fact it is important to use these to our full advantage. LinkedIn is the main professional network for job seekers, but other platforms can also be used when searching for a new role. There are various ways you can use social media to sell yourself (Red, 2013).

Professional Profile

The first and most important aspect of social media is to be aware than anyone can see your profile, unless you ensure it is private. Even then once you say something, you can’t really take it back so be really wary about what you say. A lot of employers use social media to find out more about applicants and if they see pictures of you falling about drunk or your ‘tweets’ have a lot of swearing in them, they are likely to be put off straight away (Red,2013).

Reppler recently conducted a survey of 300 professionals who are involved in the hiring process at their company to understand the use of social network for screening job applicants.

 Be Bold

 The beauty of social media is that you can chat to other people and share comments so if you are currently on the job market, let others know with a comment or a tweet. You never know who on your Facebook or LinkedIn account may have an opening which is just perfect for you, so don’t be afraid to get yourself out there. The job market is tough enough so you need to be quite bold when looking for a new role, you can guarantee that other job seekers will be, so don’t be left behind!(Red, 2013) Weaver 2011 argues that if there is someone in your profession you would like to emulate, follow him or her on Twitter and also follow the same people they are following. Join the same blogs and discussion (re-tweet). Find out what those in your profession are talking about and offer intelligent input. This can get your access to useful information such as upcoming events or who is hiring talent. Social networking sites are now commonly used on a daily basis by HR Managers recruitment agencies and job sites to advertise job openings ( Belfasf Telegraph, 2013).

In 2009 CarrerBuilder.com and Loyola University New Orleans Alum, reported that 45% of more than 2600 hiring managers said they use social network sites to search for background information on potential candidates (Weaver, 2011). Reaffirming how important is to be engage on your profession on social network.

Grow your Network

This is particularly relevant for LinkedIn as it is designed for professional networking. If you want to get yourself known and give yourself the best chance of finding a new role, you need to grow your network. Connect with as many people as possible, particularly those who are within the same industry you are looking to work.

Digital First Impression

The same ideas [first impression] that applies with your online image on your Linkedin page will also apply to your FaceBook page. Make sure that everthing you so supports those characteristics about yourself that you want to present. That is essentially what your online image is (Weaver, 2011). Students should post 80% professional stuff, and 20% personal stuff, because hiring professionals not only use social media to recruit, but when they get a resume from other sources they will Google the applicants name looking for their profile. So give them something positive to find, sell your talents and accomplishments and use social media to get your message out to those who are hiring and recruiting (Reppler, 2013). How you present yourself online is a snapshot of your decision-making ability and your integrity (Millard, 2008)

Corinne Mills who is MD of Personal Career Management suggests that when using LinkedIn you should:

1. Your profile should look professional and your photo should look presentable and business like
2. Make sure that your profile is up-to-date with your latest work experience and you have a well-written summary that touches on your experience, interests and where you’d like to go in your career
3. Use your profile as a tool to help make yourself stand out by using relevant terminology and keywords. Your profile should sell you as the perfect candidate to potential employers
4. Add any work material that you feel will help you stand out from other candidates. You can add presentations, white papers, blogs and even video to your profile
5. We are always commenting, adding photos, giving our opinions and sharing our activities – so we need to remember that these are open to the world and prospective employers. If you want a job it’s time to remove all those inappropriate pictures and keep negative comments to yourself.
6. Make sure you list your interests that are relevant to your industry and the types of jobs you are applying for. Your profile is the perfect opportunity to sell yourself to prospective employers so this should look professional and be tailored around your CV.
7. It’s important to build online relationships with relevant people that have the same interests and ambitions as you; they will remember you if something of interest to them were posted by you.

Check your privacy settings. You can select which parts of your profile you would like visitors to have access to.

Mills goes on stating that the actions applied on LinkedIn should also be applied on Facebook, especially you should ensure you are connecting with the right groups and organisations as this shows on your profile and keep discussions healthy. Share blogs articles, presentations and any other relevant material you have written with your network.

FaceBook as a Job Seach Tool

 While we might connect with someone on LinkedIn, Google + or Twitter that we don’t really know very well (or at all) we are much less likely to do so on FaceBook. The quality on of the connections on FaceBook lends itself to fertile ground for immediate and meaningful networking (Careers Solvers, 2013).

Below are tips to get the most out of your FaceBook platform:

 Fill all information for work and education

 The more complete the About section is, the greater the likelihood that decision makers will be able to find you.

Use Graph Search to find out people who may be able to help you with your search

 Search profile of users based on keywords. For example, if you are a financial services professional and want to target such as JPMorgan Chase in New York City type:

 People who work at JPMorgan Chase in New York New York into the search base and see the results. You may be able to source people who work there who you have a mutual connection with or just message them directly introducing yourself. Results will vary depending on how much information that person has completed on their page and what level of privacy they have set.

 Troll company pages to learn more about companies you are targeting and engage with potential decision makers

 Most companies have well developed FaceBook presence and many even have separate pages for people interested in working for them. Reviewing these pages can give you a window into a company’s culture and what makes it a great place to work. Job posting, open houses and internships may be posted there as well.

 Follow groups based on functional roles

 FaceBook has pages with resources for many professionals. Key in your functional area of expertise and peruse the conversations going on there. Request to become a member of the group to comment and be part of the conversation.

Review groups for leading professional associations within your industry

 Professional association are a great networking resource and supplementing live meeting with virtual engagement can be a great way to boost your network.

 Those above are great examples of tools that can help to market yourself. However, is important to bear in mind what you post or comment on FaceBook or Twitter when you are looking for a job and also when you already have one.

The 21^st century human is learning that every action leaves an indelible digital trail. In the years ahead, many of us will be challenged by what we are making public in various social forums today. The fact that 1 in 5 applicants disqualify themselves from an interview because of content in the social media sphere is an indicator of the digital reality we live in. Many have also found themselves kicked out of their jobs later on for what they have posted on social media.

 Nissenbaum (2015) suggests that business should not use social media with respect to their employees and potential employees. He goes on saying that you (business owner) if you like a candidate for a job and then find few flaws in this candidate, you are likely to overlook these flaws. See the flaws and he idea of hiring this person dies immediately.

 It should be common knowledge that what we post and how we respond affects our reputation. Many employers will admit to screening online profiles as part of an application process(and even after you have been hired). What companies are particularly looking for is activity that would impact their reputation or yours (assuming you weren’t truthful on that resume). Most people do a good job keeping private details private, there is plenty of examples below showing what happens when you don’t (Nissenbaum, 2015).

Rogers (2013) stated that is also better to not put party pictures with drinks. You are better off showing yourself at a job fairs or association meetings and do not post any political posts or rants. If you do so it will isolate you from potential employers.

 Nurse sacked after posting pictures of herself wearing incontinence pads at work.

A doctor complained on FaceBook about chronically late patient, hundreds of angry comments emerged.

While checking out your FaceBook profile may not seem discriminatory in the employment process, what you have posted, especially on Instagram- where all images are public can be used to discriminate. Those posts and images reveal far more than just our gender. They can help better pinpoint several things which can then enter into a first impression and a hiring decision even before seeing our qualifications (Mills,2012).

 Lessons Learned:

Social media can have a significant impact on employment decision. It can either boost your image positively and help you to get the job you want  such as post:

– what is related to your profession or give useful insights to it on a discussion page online

– post pictures that relates to your career or profession such as a picture of you on a congress or job fair.

-like the firms and companies that you are interested to work at and follow them.

However there is a down side of using you FaceBook personal account:

 If your are not careful about what you post online such as:

-your comments about your political views

-pictures of you partying and drinking etc,

This can damage your image, hence damaging your chances to get the job or even losing your current job.

 Whether you like it or not, hirers are using social networks to screen job applicants. This means it is important to carefully manage your image on these types of sites such as using private settings. Hirers are looking at the social networking profiles of candidates very early in the process. This means that job seekers need to have their online act in order before they begin looking for a job.

 References

 Careers Solvers Finding the Path that is Right for You. FaceBook as a Job Seach Tool (2013) Available at: http://www.careersolvers.com/blog/2014/10/02/how-to-use-facebook-as-a-job-search-tool/

 Mills, C. ‘How to Successfully Use Social Media In Your Job Search’. Graduate Career Tips (2012)

 Millard, E. ‘FaceBook, LinkedIn: Meet Human Resources’ Baselinemage.(2008) Available at: http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=75b66594-dc5f-48e0-a6c0-a7ca44840679%40sessionmgr4005&hid=4112

 Nissenbaum, R. ‘The Social Media Employment Entanglement’, Social Media Today (2015)

 Rogers, K. ‘ 3 Things Hiring Managers Don’t Want to See on Your FaceBook Page’ Fox Business Power to Prosper (2013)

 Reppler. ‘ How Employers Use Social Media to Screen Applicants. The Undercover recruiter (2013).

 Reynolds, E. ‘How FaceBook Could Cost Your Job!’ MailOnline 16^th March (2012)

 Red, C. ‘ Use Your Social Media Profile to Sell Yourself’. Social-Hire (2013) Available at: http://www.social-hire.com/career–interview-advice/3727/use-your-social-media-profile-to-sell-yourself

 ‘Top Tips For Job Success: How to…sell yourself’ Belfast Telegraph Nov 5 (2013). Available at: http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/docview/1448349887?pq-origsite=summon&http://ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/login?url=accountid=9727

 Weaver, D. ‘Marketing Yourself and Managing Your Social Media Image. Multimedia Journalist (2011) available at:   https://dcweaver.wordpress.com/multimedia-packages/marketing-yourself-and-managing-your-social-media-image/