The It Gets Better Project: Using the techniques in “Groundswell” to Create an Online Support System

http://www.slideshare.net/Eveaer/final-presentation-12319971

Social Media Monitoring Project Post 2: Digital Photo Academy

After spending almost two months monitoring Digital Photo Academy's online presence, I have a lot of suggestions for improvements on their online content. For a small company that spends very little time on their website and social media, I am fairly satisfied with their currently online presence but I know that things can improve. According to Compete, the number of unique visitors DPA receives is steadily increasing:

 

With almost 10,000 unique visitors in February, when they usually receive 3 - 6,000 unique visitors per month. They also average about 100 new Facebook likes per week, passing the 5,000 mark on March 20th. For more information on DPA's current online statistics, please refer to my last blog post. 

Keeping Bernoff's five objectives of Listening, Talking, Energizing, Supporting and Embracing in mind, I have made several suggestions for updates that I think would vastly improve DPA's online appearance.

A. Get Rid of The Blog:

In Groundswell, Bernoff says that a company should not create a blog if they cannot devote the time to upkeep, as a bad blog is “worse than not having a blog at all (115),” and “pulling the pull will have a negative impact on your customers (123).” Unfortunately, we cannot go back in time and stop the blog from every having been made, but I am confident that by embracing Facebook and Twitter, DPA can accomplish everything that had hoped the blog would without losing customers. Since the blog has not been updated in over a year, it is clearly time to move on.  It needs to be deleted from the website and Facebook page so that DPA students or future students do not click on it and see that it has been neglected.

B. Triple Check Everything that goes on The Website:

-Make sure there are no formatting inconsistencies in the Instructor Bio pages and City pages

-Classes far in the future are listed as "Sold Out" when they are not

C. Update the Website Frequently:

-Assignment section should be updated every month

-Staff Section not current 

D. Make Necessary Changes to Facebook, and Update Frequently

-Add a cover page

-Expand the information listed under "info"

-"Like" every Instructor's Facebook page (if they have them) and make sure every instructor has "liked" DPA

-Add videos from website to Facebook page

-Every schedule update and new city added should be announced on Facebook and Tweeted

-Require every instructor with a Facebook to post and tweet at least one picture from each class

-Button for "Like My Picture Contest" currently leads to a blank page --> Have quarterly contests with actual prizes

-Encourage students to upload pictures to Facebook for instructor feedback

-Tweet and post an "Instructor Tip Of The Week"

-Answer every question posted to Facebook and Twitter in a timely manner

-Occasional office updates to remind people this a small business and not a large corporation

E. Tweet Often

-Other than Tweeting information that is also going on Facebook, they should also respond to every single Tweet that mentions taking a DPA class

Conclusion:

Since Digital Photo Academy is such a small company, it is unsurprising that they are unable to devote a significant period to their online presence or hire an employee who is devoted solely to online upkeep. However, I feel confident that if they devote some time to the changes I suggest, upkeep will be minimal. If one employee were to spend one hour per workday, or at the very least one hour twice a week, Digital Photo Academy’s online presence could easily see a vast improvement. As Bernoff says, “You cannot ignore this trend … you have to move forward (75).”

Digital Photo Academy Monitoring Post 1

Digital Photo Academy is a small company founded in 2006 by my father, 

Richard Rabinowitz. Based out of our apartment in downtown Manhattan, Digital Photo Academy has photography and photo shop classes in 24 cities at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced level. The classes are taught by sixty different photographers who each work 1 to 3 times a month, and the office in New York has two full-time employees (including a recent Clark alum) other than the CEO Richard Rabinowitz, three part-time employees (including a book keeper), and an intern. Since the company is so small and could use a lot of help further developing their online presence, I already had a lot of knowledge about its needs and inner-workings, I thought it would be a good company to focus on for this project. In the past six years, Digital Photo Academy has had about 10,000 students. Currently, most of these students are directed through Digital Photo Academy's partnership with Living Social and Groupon, who offer discounted classes when people buy deals through their websites. 

Since Digital Photo Academy is such a small company, they do not have a very large online presence. On days when Living Social or Groupon deals "dropped," the company always sees an increase in number of sign ups that they receive, but this is not always clear by checking online monitoring sites. They appear to be getting the most attention on Twitter, where people will often tweet when they have bought a deal for an upcoming class. If Twitter users tag Digital Photo Academy in these tweets, they will occationally receive a response such as "welcome to the class!" or "we're excited to have you!" If they see that someone tweets negative comments about learning to use a camera, they might also respond with a suggestion to take another class. 

However, people tweet that they are joining the classes far more frequently than they get responses and there does not appear to be any reason behind why some people get responses and others do not. On Kurrently, the stream speed is always listed as slow, but every time I have checked there are new tweets about taking a Digital Photo Academy class. 

On Social Mention, the strength never went above 1%. However, for such a small company I think that 8 - 13% reach is not too bad - though there is obviously room for improvement. In terms of sentiment, the "negative comments" that Social Mention are actually a link to a YouTube video that has the word "angry" in it. This is the same problem I ran into when checking Same Point, which marked most of the reviews as negative because they used the word "shoot," which is of course common when talking about photography. 

The Facebook page in particular needs a lot of work. When you click on the Twitter icon, it does not automatically bring you to their Twitter page, but they still include a link to their blog which has not been updated in months. Since Facebook switched their page to Timeline, they really have not made any necessary adjustments, such as adding a cover page. 

In the past month, they have gained 500 "likes", and similar to Twitter, on days when Groupon and Living Social deals drop more people are "talking" about them on Facebook. I have a lot of suggestions to make in my final report, but I'm excited to have this opportunity to help out my family.

Employee Happiness = Company Benefits

I was not expecting the conclusion of Groundswell to be about energizing employees, but the examples used in chapters 11 and 12 made it seem as though companies have nothing to lose if they are able to properly motivate their employees. I think this makes a lot of sense, if an employee was very unhappy with their work environment, they could easily go online an anonymously complain about the company they work for with posing as an unhappy customer. Best Buy is such a big company that one would imagine dealing with low level employees would barely matter to them - especially in this economy, if someone was clearly angry at work or bad at their job, they could be easily replaced.  I never would have guessed that a company like Best Buy would have such happy employees, but if their voices are really heard through Blue Shirt Nation (which by the way, I just googled as is a discontinued site), then I understand how they are able to have at least a few employees who are as enthusiastic as Ashely. Even if only twelve out of 1,000 submitted ideas are put into action, like in the Intel example (225), being able to put their ideas out into the open must make employees feel as though they can have the opportunity to make a difference at the company they work for, regardless if they are one in thousands of employees. 

Intel and Best Buy are not the only big companies that ask lower level employees for new ideas. I'm sure many of you have seen this new Domino's commercial:

 

Domino's has clearly been making an effort to revamp their image for years. They have admitted fault in things like their cheesy bread's former quality and pizza toppings,  and now they are introducing a new product that they claim was invented by one of their store managers rather than in a "test kitchen" like the rest of their products. In my opinion, a commercial like this not only entices new customers because of a new product, but also because they would be supporting the person who invented the product, a person whose face they have seen. Domino's is a huge company, usually companies that size are pretty much faceless to the public. The commercial shows that just because Domino's is a big company, they listen to the "little people," their lower level employees. Even though I do not like Domino's pizza (though I must admit I have not been there in a very long time), this commercial makes me like them a little more. When other Domino's employees see this commercial, I would think it would make them feel a bit of company pride. Though they do not say how the employee featured in this commercial was able to get his idea into production, when Domino's employees see a fellow employee on TV, it tells them that if they have a good idea they might be able to get it into production.

Dan Savage: Energizing The Groundswell

Dan Savage is not exactly a household name, but I think it would be fair to say a lot of Americans know at least something about him. To some people, he is the man who redefined Santorum; to others, he is a sex columnist; and to others still, he is the man who co-founded and publicized the It Gets Better Project. To me, he is all three. I hate Rick Santorum, so it makes me laugh to hear people talk about his "Google Problem;" I listen to Dan's podcast and read his blog every week; and I was so excited to see how far the It Gets Better Project has come. A lot of people call or write to Dan telling him that he has made them realize its okay to be LGBTQ, but after yet another gay teen committed suicide due to bullying, Dan and his partner, Terry felt like they had to do more to encourage teens who were feeling conflicted or suffered from bullying because they were different. So they produced the first It Gets Better video and posted it to YouTube:

According to Dan, the It Gets Better Project is really Terry's (his husband's) brainchild. But the thing is, Terry does not have the 138,00 Facebook Fans that Dan has, he does not have hundreds of people calling and writing him every week. When Dan says jump, his fans say how high? In Dan and Terry's video, they talk about a lot of things: how they met, how they came out, how horrible high school was, and how worth it was to stick out the bullying. The purpose of the videos are to show LGBTQ teens (and everyone who suffers from bullying) that they are not alone. It has been a year and a half since the project first began, and there are now around 220,000 It Gets Better videos on YouTube. It is impressive enough that so many people have made these videos, but I find it amazing that even people like President Obama have made one:

Now, there is even an It Gets Better Book, and every day people are still uploading new videos. According to Bernoff, "the groundswell [is] a spontaneous movement of people using online tools to connect, tak[ing] charge of their own experience, and get[ing] what they need - information, support, ideas, products and bargaining power - from each other (x)." Hundreds of thousands of people care enough to make these videos, and even more are watching them and becoming more hopeful about their own situations.

Being Humble will Get Results

In my opinion, the best advice Bernoff gave in chapters 9 and 10 of Groundswell, was advising his readers to "muster up the humility to listen and tap into the skill to take what you've heard and make improvements (194)." I would imagine that some people have a very difficult time reading negative reviews of their products or services without getting upset or seeing it as a personal attack. If the business is smaller, it might be easier to make changes suggested by the groundswell, but on the other hand, people working for larger businesses might have an easier time reading the negative reviews in the first place. This is because they would be further separated from the product itself, and therefore even if they are a part of the company that produces the product or service, they are more of an outsider than a small business owner who might be too close to be able to process negative reviews and make changes to their product. As made evident by the Credit Mutuel example, there will always be people who have something rude or unhelpful to say, but it is worth subjecting yourself to the unhelpful comments to get to the genuine suggestions. For example, I am a Facebook fan of the local grocery store, Living Earth, which caries a lot of local and organic produce, as well as vegan and vegetarian options. A lot of people (in my opinion, inexplicably) seem personally affronted when someone says that they are vegan or vegetarian, and the other day one of these people decided to post a lovely picture expressing his opinion of vegan food on the Living Earth Facebook page: 

The man who runs the Facebook page takes it very seriously and updates all the time, but I think he responded very well. Instead of removing the picture or responding angrily, he made a joke. This might not be the right approach for every company, but I personally thought it worked well for Living Earth. Everyone in charge of social media for a company has to evaluate how to appropriately respond to negative comments, reactions cannot be the same for every type of company.

 

Overall, it is important to remember that your company is meant to produce something for a customer. Regardless of the size of your customer base, if you make the groundswell feel like you care about them, they will care about you a lot more. Earlier tonight, I saw a Google Chrome commercial that really features their customer base:

The slogan for their new campaign line is "Make It Happen." The description says "No matter who you are, the web can help you do anything. This year, use the web to make it happen and take life head on. Rock and roll!" No where in the description does it say anything along the lines of use Google Chrome, and the commercial features their actual customers. Its entirely about the customer, and though a lot of companies are realizing they must make ad campaigns like this, but this is the best example I have seen.

I Didn't Even Watch the Grammys, but They Made Me Angry

I did not even watch The Grammys last night, but I was completely blown away but some of the things that people said about the winners and performers online. First of all, I love Bon Iver, and was excited to see him recognized by winning two awards. I was a bit confused when he was even nominated for Best New Artist last night, considering he released his first album four years ago, but his work is beautiful so I think he deserves a win none the less. Over the summer, I was lucky enough to see him perform at an outdoor show in Mountain Park, and shed a few tears as I listened to him perform:

I know his music isn't for everyone, but I was absolutely blown away by some of the awful things that people had to say about him after his acceptance speech. 

 

In my opinion, he seemed a bit awkward, but humble. Who cares if you haven't heard of him? I haven't heard of everyone who has been nominated for a Grammy either, but that does not mean I'm going to storm over to my computer and tweet that I hope that person has been raped. You read that right. Raped. Somebody tweeted that this man deserves to be raped because they personally believe he should not have won a Grammy. Thankfully, I do not actually know the person who wrote it, but instead read this lovely comment via the tumblir now devoted to the things people tweeted in outrage when Bon Iver won over Nicki Minaj (who one tweeter commented deserves to win because of her nail polish), the Band Perry, J. Cole, and Skrillex. Personally, I would not have cared if people were just angry that someone they had never heard of won a Grammy, but the fact that some members of the public think that wishing rape on a man they do not even know is an acceptable thing to do is beyond upsetting. As far as I can tell, there were also plenty of people confused about who Paul McCartney is, but luckily no one seemed to be wishing him bodily harm. 

Bon Iver haters dont seem to be the only music fans confused about what rape and domestic abuse are actually like. A couple of days ago, HelloGiggles published an article called "I'm not Okay with Chris Brown Performing at the Grammys and I'm Not Sure Why You Are." I read it and agreed with everything the author said. In my opinion, Chris Brown should be banned from ever releasing another album, let alone performing at the Grammys. I know he was young, but after  I saw the picture of what he did to Rhianna, I truly do not understand how the incident has been pretty much forgotten. This has nothing to do with how I feel about Rhianna music (negative), or Chris Brown's music (more negative), but I think that people need to realize how serious domestic abuse is. People, especially teens, look up to people like Chris Brown, and when he gets away with things like this they think it is acceptable. So all of that being said, I saw something extremely disheartening (to say the least) when I logged on to Facebook this afternoon and saw that someone had posted a Buzzfeed article that was literally entirely made of people tweeting things like this:

How horrible. After reading all of these collections of tweets from last night, I feel as though I have seriously lost faith, not only in humanity, but in the groundswell. It feels like every day, there is a new article about cyber bullying, and how to stop it etc. Maybe being able to hide behind your computer has given people too much confidence to say things that they should not even be thinking, let alone saying to cyberspace. I like taking advantage of the groundswell when it comes to things like consumer reviews, but today I feel like I've read somethings that I cannot un-read. To quote Joan from Mad Men, "It takes a brave person to say something anonymously." Things are rarely anonymous in cyberspace, but it may as well be if you are writing to thousands of strangers.