Pandora: Social Media Monitoring 1

ABOUT THE BRAND

Pandora is a currently very famous international company, which designs, manufactures and markets modern jewelry. They are madden from high-quality materials at reasonable prices. The company is well-known for its charm bracelets, designer rings, necklaces and watches.

Pandora's mission is to 

"celebrate women by offering them the opportunity for personal expression through our universe of high-quality and contemporary jewelry at affordable prices".

BRAND'S HISTORY

Pandora started in 1982 as a small jeweler's shop in Copenhagen, Denmark. From the beginning, jewelry were imported from Thailand. The company has been working as a wholesaler for the next several successful years.

In 1987 it began to focus on creating its own one and only jewelry when the first designer had joined the company. In 1989 Pandora started manufacturing its jewelry in Thailand.

An idea of Pandora's charm bracelets, which are extraordinarily popular now everywhere, was first launched in the Danish market. Company's clients embraced this concept very well. So, driven by a constantly increasing demand, Pandora began to expand internationally, covering new markets in the United States, Germany, and Australia.

Currently,

"Pandora's product are sold in more than 90 countries on six continents through approximately 9,500 points of sale, including approximately 1,500 concept stores"

The company employs more than 14,000 people worldwide. In 2014, Pandora's total revenue was approximately $1,82 billion.

Very impressive numbers, isn't it?

COMPANY'S PRESENCE IN SOCIAL MEDIA

Pandora is presented on many social media. Besides its gorgeous websites, it also has well-developed pages with lots of subscribers on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+.
Let's take a look on each of them.

Website                      

             

Pandora has a very well-design, informative, easy to use and just stunning website with lots of sections. It also provide a great navigation and media. All the links to other company's social media pages are presented on the site. It is really pleasure to use it. 

YouTube                    

Pandora's YouTube page has 16,865 subscribers and almost 23,900,000 (!) views to date.

The company publishes on its channel videos dedicated to its new collections, "Pandora around the world" and "Behind the scenes of Pandora" videos, inspirational and fans' videos, and, of course, so popular nowadays "How to..." videos.

Facebook                 

        

The Company's Facebook page was started in 2009. Now it is pretty popular. It has collected 3,861,082 likes to date. 

The page's content includes information about company's current deals and new collections and arrivals, attracted pictures of Pandora's jewelry, customers' photo with brand jewelry. Also the page has a section where Bracelet Designer App is offered. With the app everyone can design his personal bracelet and share the photos with friends. Pandora, in its turns, shares customers' photo on its page. As we can see, communications between the company and its clients are very well developed on Facebook.

Twitter                   

Pandora joined Twitter in 2011. Compared to the Facebook page, Pandora has less popularity on Twitter. Its page has only 67,361 readers to date (for example, Tiffany&Co's Twitter page has almost 1,418 M readers - there is something to strive for). But it should be mentioned that the company posts news and relevant information very frequently: several times a day. Twitter's content is similar to Facebook's.

Instagram                  

 "Follow us for style inspiration and much more" 

says Pandora's Instagram page. 

The page has really stylish and attracted content. An idea of content is the same as on the Facebook and Twitter pages. 
Frequency of posting is very high: every day the company adds several posts dedicated to some events, ideas, latest things, sharing emotions, and etc.

Recently, the Instagram page has reached 1 M followers. It was mentioned by the company with the next post where Pandora thanks its fans for their participation, interest in the brand, and "every single like and comment".

Google+              
                 

Pandora is not very active on Google+. Its page has just 384 subscribers and about 432,000 views, which is obviously not enough for an international company. The content consists of videos related to the brand.

Pinterest               

                    

Pandora's presence on Pinterest is very important for the brand. By searching "Pandora" on the site you come up with many interesting and diverting pins such as sales, previews, advice, news, and so on.
Pandora's Pinterest page has more than 56k subscribers and displays content mostly about its products.

CURRENT PERFORMANCE INDICATORS

Google Trends

It is very interesting to look at what has appeared about the brand on Google Trends. In accordance with it, Pandora has a very rapidly dynamic to grow with certainly positive trend.

Google Trends

Google Trends: Regional Interest

IceRocket

Ice Rocket.com has shown pretty good indexes of Pandora's performance. 128 posts a day, which mentioned the brand, - sounds very impressive!

IceRocket

Social Mention

Pretty positive numbers have come up on Social Mention too. For example, it has shown a great ratio of positive to negative reviews. 44% of likelihood of discussing the brand in social media is excellent as well.

CONCLUSION

Pandora now is an undoubtedly popular and special brand, which is well-known all over the world. Its history is a great and inspiring example of growth and development. Its executives have found a unique way to perform, which now has become a trend. And it definitely should be mentioned that social media are playing one of the primary roles in company's progress.
Pandora's metrics are pronouncedly positive and promising. But of course, there are always weaknesses to work on and ways to grow further.
One brilliant idea with charm bracelets has brought high popularity to the brand, but the company should look forward and develop its new high-potential ideas and strategy to promote them and the brand in general.

Smart Social Media Management: Learning from Others' Mistakes

We can see a range of successful and working ways of right social media conducting. And we know enough about them. We can find a huge number of common tips in the Internet and a lot of relevant information. But is it enough to have particular theoretical knowledges and follow some tips and instructions to lead your company to great success with social media? I suppose it is not. The reason why is a necessity to know about both possible kinds of outcome from your company's presence in social media. The first one implies great and expected results and contributes to prosperity of a company. The second one is just undesirable. It entails negative reviews,  references, unwanted buzz, and etc. This is due to ill-considered actions by the company's members or accidental mistakes. Here are some more common social media mistakes. 

Anyhow, even if it happened with your company or not, LEARN THAT LESSON.

The matter is wise people learn from their own mistakes and wiser people learn from other people's mistakes. This makes sense, isn't it?

In order to be the second type of people, let's shine a light on several noticeable social media fails for the last few years, which will let us not only learn valuable lessons from them, but also would be kind of amusing too.

Let's get started:

Audi's experience: always make sure you give people what they want

 Audi's campaign called "Paid My Dues" caused, say the least of it, incomprehension and displeasure of Audi's Instagram followers. 

The campaign was dedicated to promoting Audi's new A3 Sedan. All the followers were asked to share their real-life inspiring winnings over adversity. The best ones should have been reinterpreted by a diversity of artists during a 6-hour live event. But it has worked another way. 

That idea just confused Instagram followers, which were expected some great pictures of Audi cars on the Instagram page rather then photos of strange, unrelated artists.

NYPD's experience: don't add fuel to the flames

The New York Police Department's attempt to support its image by asking Twitter users to share their photo with themselves and NYPD officers with hashtag #myNYPD was initially weird. It is no wonder, lots of users posted surely not those photos that were supposed to be posted. 

You can see several posts below as a result of this campaign.

The Academy's of Motion Picture Arts&Sciences experience: Double check. Always. Everything.

Here is a case of an Academy's fail. The picture of Penelope Cruz and Robert De Niro prepping backstage was posted on Instagram on Oscar night. The problem was that the Academy has confused Penelope Cruz with Salma Hayek - Oops!

British Airways' experience: respond as soon as possible

What if I tell you about a customer who payed for promotion of his complaint in social media in order to lots of people know what has happened?

This is the situation that British Airways had. Its client has lost his luggage so he has decided to let everyone to know on Twitter about this fail by paying for promotion of this Tweet, which was seen by more than 76,000 users:

British Airways also failed to respond to the client for 8 hours as the complaint has been posted outside of its service hours, which also did not go unnoticed:

Amy's Bakery's experience: respect your customers

Each restaurant, which appear on Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares needs help for sure. But Amy's Bakery in Scottsdale, Arizona does not think so.

This company demonstrated incredibly low standards set by social media and expressed complete disrespect to its customers.

Here is a few examples of the owners' inexplicable behavior:

American Airlines' experience: automatic responses do not work properly

It is well-known that in order to speed up a customer service process many companies use automatic responses to @mentions on Twitter. But it only works if they make sense.

Here is a funny American Airlines' case when its automatic response to a customer's complaint was not the most appropriate.

From these examples we can see that even large businesses can fail on social media. And as a rule, the bigger a company, the bigger a fail and its spreading. There is a range of things and features that should be learned by companies in order to conduct their presence in social media properly.

The fact that even big and famous brands still amaze us how they fail on social media in spectacular fashion says about lack of professionalism and necessary knowledges of people who manage companies' social media. It can lead them at least to poor results. That is why one of the best way to prevent such outcomes companies should monitor their performances and learn from their own or from other companies' mistakes, that is obviously much smarter. 

How to bring people together around your brand?

Maybe you have never noticed it but there is one common thing, which brings together all the existing brands. Their fans with their dedication to a brand. 

Don't you think it is a really huge power?

Of course, it is. And in order to be successful you need to constantly communicate with them and do it very professionally. 

Let's take a look at one interesting way of such communication. Let's talk about a brand community.

Albert M. Muniz and Jr. Thomas C. O'Guinn defined a brand community as

“a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand.”

in their article "Brand community" for the Journal of Consumer Research in 2001.

By means of a brand community people have a great opportunity to come together in relation to a brand. They can share their ideas, help each other, discuss everything they want, and so on. That is very supportive and useful system for both sides: a company and its clients.

"Clearly, the groundswell is a fantastic support system. Enable people to connect with each other, and they will, making life easier for both themselves and you."

said Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by Social Technologies.

And it is undoubtedly truth.

A brand community is a great way to:

• increase customers' loyalty to a brand;
• be aware about what your audience like and dislike about your brand and everything that concerns with it;
• get some really wonderful new ideas for product or company development from "the first hands";
• show company's clients the importance of their ideas and opinions for a company.

But certainly everything is not so easy as it seems to be at the first sight. There might be some obstacles, which companies should pay enough attention to.

Probably the biggest challenge for companies is that building brand communities requires significant investment in time and development of a community strategy. Everything must be designed in advance. That is very important point.

The article "Getting Brand Communities Right" by Susan Fournier and Lara Lee in the Harvard Business Review said that it’s not so easy to start your brand community.

 There are Myths vs Realities about Brand Communities:

• Myth 1: A brand community is a marketing strategy
• The reality: A brand community is a business strategy
• Myth 2: A brand community exists to serve the business
• The reality: A brand community exists to serve the people in it
• Myth 3: Build the brand, and the community will follow
• The reality: Engineer the community, and the brand will be strong
• Myth 4: Brand communities should be love-fests for faithful brand advocates
• The reality: Smart companies embrace the conflicts that make communities thrive
• Myth 5: Opinion leaders build strong communities
• The reality: Communities are strongest when everyone plays a role
• Myth 6: Online social networks are the key to a community strategy
• The reality: Online networks are just one tool, not a community strategy

It would be more interesting to consider some successful examples of brand communities and see who is making it really properly.

1. PlayStation Community / Sony

The PlayStation Community has done an excellent job at developing an online space for PlayStation fans. It includes different sections such as games, interests, a support section, feedbacks, and advocacy.

The community is also tied to Playstation's YouTube and Twitter page links, so gamers are able to experience that content.

2. Beauty Talks / Sephora

Sephora has created a very interesting and useful online community mostly for women. It allows them to exchange tips between them and discuss related topics. It also includes advice from Sephora experts, celebrity tips, video tutorials, and so on.

3. Harley Owners Group / Harley-Davidson

The Harley Owners Group is really special community. Brand's enthusiasts share not only their loyalty to the Harley Davidson brand within the community. It represents their own culture and even their lifestyle. Thus it can be said that it is more than just a community. 
And it works really great!

Why should brands build a strong brand community?

In today's world, people strive to be connected. That is why every company should find a way to do more with what it already has. 

Supporting the groundswell constantly is very significant part of each business. It should be understood by everyone that it is not so easy. Many companies are just waiting the customer loyalty, brand awareness, marketing efficiency from their communities, but only few understand what it takes to achieve such benefits.

Only thought out and carefully planned strategy, preparedness to correct or even change it all the time can bring to a company expected results and benefits. And what also should be emphasized is that "strategy" includes not only supporting part. It also must contain listening, talking, energizing and embracing as well. Each part is very important for achieving really great results.

Some More Ways To Attract People To Your Website

Nowadays, most of companies have very professionally designed, beautiful looking, full of useful information sites. Most likely they have invested very significant amounts of money to develop their sites. Obviously, the main purpose of creating a site is not just to have it. It supposed to provide connections between a company and its existing and potential clients.

But how to make people aware of it? How to attract traffic to your website?

Fortunately, everyone can easily find a range of different answers to such questions. All you need to do is just put this question in, for example, Google search window, and dozens of diverse articles will come up immediately on a screen with different answers how it can be accomplished and, moreover, for free.

But most of them just repeat each other. That is why instead of listing of such popular tips, I have decided to analyze the real case that actually has happened with me.

As you maybe have noticed, almost all companies, no matter what kind of product they produce, always specify all their contacts on a product's packing include a company's website and links to their social network pages.

Have you ever visited one after seeing it, let's say, on the box of candies?

Personally I had never done it before yesterday.

What has happened yesterday?

As usual, I had a breakfast and read nutrition facts of Mom's Best Cereals that I've been eaten.

Then a title "Of course you care, and so do we..." at the back of cereals' box attracted my attention.

A text under the title described a company's policy in concern with the environment.
"What your family eats matters to you, but so does the impact your family has on Mother Earth..." says an excerpt from the text.

I have not only read the whole information on the box, I also have visited the company's website, Facebook page, and Twitter page in order to learn more about how the company concerns about the environment and what else it offers to its clients.

This is a little example how a company can catch client's interest by means of concentrating on a social significant issue.

This way of presenting of a company not only attracts an attention, but also increases company's reputation, and evokes people's desire to be involved in such activity.

I also have analyzed which techniques the company uses to attract visitors to its website.

1. Qualitative building and equipment of the website.

Mom's Best Cereals's has very nice looking and functional website, which is very easy to use and full of necessary and helpful content such as a tool for finding nearest stores. It also provides links to company's social media pages and a company's blog with news and media.

Mom's Best Cereals's Website

Mom's Best Cereals's Blog

"Find a near store" option on the website

2. Providing a relevant and useful content on a Facebook and Twitter pages.

Mom's Best Cereals's Facebook and Twitter pages contain information about the company, including diverse media, a link to its website, and many other ways to contact with the company, which is very important because it demonstrates how the company is interested in opinions of customers and how important it is for it.

The company also provides some relevant conversations with clients, as well as responds to their questions and feed-backs.

Mom's Best Cereals's Facebook page
has almost 19.000 followers and let its followers
to download company desktop wallpapers

Mom's Best Cereals's Twitter page

3. Attracting clients' interest by means of packaging.

Links to the company's website and
 social network pages

As I have mentioned, my attention was attracted by certain information on a product's box where all company's contacts and links were specified.
And it really works! Now I know it exactly.

Company's packaging

4. Submitting of the website to major web directories.

Using website directories is a very effective method for building links back to your website. It provides a lot more exposure on the Internet. 

A list of the best website directories you can see here.

As we can see, the company has been making a lot of effort to attract the attention of customers to its product. But there are some suggestions that would help it to develop further.


Let's look at some opportunities and suggestions for the company that supposed to make the company's promotion activity more effective:

• post more frequently on social media pages;
• propagate the website with video marketing (for example, conduct a video interview with an expert within an industry, make a viral video);
• start an Instagram page;
• conduct competitions with prizes on social media pages;
• place a bar code on the package that would lead clients to the website.

There are so many creative ways to attract more clients' attention to your product and brand. As we can see from the example, an idea and design of packaging can provide many additional benefits to promote your company.

Proper emphasizing of features of your product and advantages of using it by means of the tools that were discussed above can help company to increase an interest to a brand and even reach new potential clients.