Case Studies | Media Culpa

Zlatan Ibrahimovic is not on Facebook, but his fans are

Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo uses both Facebook and Twitter to connect with fans. His official fan page on Facebook just reached 20 million “likes”, which is an amazing number. His Twitter account has close to 1.8 million followers.

The Swedish footballer who is closest to Ronaldo’s star status is AC Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, but as I have blogged before, he is not active on Twitter. Apparently he and/or his agent don’t bother too much about protecting the “Ibra” brand online. By the looks of it, he is not in control of the domain name zlatanibrahimovic.com and he has left Twitter open to a range of imposters. So what about Facebook? Well, for starters, he has not grabbed the vanity URL www.facebook.com/zlatanibrahimovic. It belongs to one Aymen Ak. An official page is nowhere to be found.

As is often the case, fans take matters into their own hands and create “fan” pages. The largest one currently has 725,000 fans and a community page has more than 100,000.

I don’t know if Ibrahimovic is just not interested in talking to his fans, is satisfied with his current “level of stardom” or if he has the wrong advisors. Either way, I am convinced that he could strengthen his brand even further if he would start to engage just a little with his millions of fans through social media. Better to start now, than after the career has ended.

Social media for property developers

Now and then I’m asked if there is a line of business that shouldn’t use social media, or if there is a type of business that doesn’t belong on Facebook. While I’m sure that you can find reasons for not engaging in these channels, I always fail to come up with an example of an industry that shouldn’t participate in social media. I would argue that most businesses can reach at least some of their stakeholders, be it customers, employees, rectruiting candidates or partners, via social networks, blogs or other social tools. Why do I bring this up? Well, because I find it so interesting when I stumble upon a social media case story from an industry that isn’t your usual suspect of IT or consumer products.

Social media for property developers in Turkey
The property development company Signature International is building Horizon Sky, a community of apartments, penthouses and villas in the bay of Gulluk, near Bodrum, Turkey. In a project of this size, customers and potential customers of course have a great need for information and a lot of questions will arise along the way. In this case, a Facebook group that initially was started by one of the buyers has become as a key source for information and discussions.

“Set up by an entrepreneurial buyer back in 2008, the FaceBook Group has now become a surprisingly important part of our business. With almost 340 members, each at a different stage in the Horizon Sky buying process, there’s always an ‘expert’ online to handle queries and as a developer we’re delighted to observe the debate,” says Daniel Dias at Signature International.

The group includes almost 500 photos, several videos and close to 50 different discussion topics.

“The most fascinating lesson that we have learned is what really concerns our clients. Whilst we assumed that delays in the construction timeline or minor contractual changes would cause the greatest debate, we were wrong. Most postings relate to communication. Providing everyone is in the loop, regularly informed and aware of latest on-site progress, the Group tends to be happy. So we have to make this a priority for Signature International,” Dias continues.

While this is by no means rocket science, it’s a good example of how almost any business can use simple tools like Facebook groups to engage with customers, and to connect customers to each other.

Don’t mess with Sweden on Twitter

Now and then we read stories about businesses that use Twitter in ways that are creative, but not considered to be according to Twitter etiquette. Perhaps you remember when Habitat UK spammed several Twitter hashtags like #iPhone or #Mousavi, a tag associated with the Iran election, with tweets promoting their furniture? It created an uproar among Twitter users and gave the company lots of negative publicity.

Update: After a conversation with @dohop and checking the ID numbers of each tweet, I see that the tweet from @swedense came seconds before the first tweet from @dohop, giving this story a slightly different meaning. In other words, the tweet from @swedense was not directed to @dohop at all, but to several other comments on Twitter. Sorry that I hadn’t discovered that before.

Sweden on Twitter
Today I found another interesting example (hat tip to Johan Hedberg) from a website called Dohop.com, a “flight search engine”. It tried to generate business out of a very sensitive topic, namely the Swedish election. On Sunday last week, Sweden for the first time elected an anti-immigrant party into the Swedish parliament. The Sweden Democrats got 20 seats in the parliament, sending shock waves through the entire Swedish society, and the election results are not even final yet. So obviously this is not a topic that Swedes would take lightly, but it did not stop @dohop from publishing the following tweet.

However, Sweden.se, the official web presence of the Swedish Institute, would not take that kind of tweeting about our beloved country. So it sent out this rather upset tweet.

Which got picked up by @dohop, who apologized.

I don’t know if there is a moral to this story, but if you are trying to be funny on Twitter on someone else’s expense, be prepared that they might be listening and talk back. Way to go, Sweden.se!

Swedish customers can book Lufthansa tickets on Facebook

I blogged a week ago about how Delta Air Lines lets customers book airline tickets on the Delta Facebook page. EasyJet also has this application on its page on Facebook. Now Lufthansa has also introduced the same functionality to its page and it is available for customers in Sweden, USA, Germany, India, Spain, Great Britain, Greece, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Further markets will be added by the end of the year.

Lufthansa also cooperates with the location-based site Foursquare in Germany and users who check in at three different locations via Foursquare can get a 20 euro voucher for their next Lufthansa flight booking.

Users who select a certain country, get local news (see below from Sweden).

Book airline tickets with Delta on Facebook

Many businesses worry that there is a weak connection between their engagement in social media and actual sales. But there are examples of companies that use social media to drive sales:

Pizza Hut generated $1 million in sales via an iPhone application
Sony and Dell have generated millions via Twitter channels
Dunkin’ Donuts are tracking sales from its Twitter account
Uniqlo in the UK are giving discounts based on the number of times an item has been tweeted
Below is also a case study from Jimmy Choo on how to drive sales:

Social media case study: Jimmy Choo

View more presentations from FreshNetworks.

The latest example I have found (via a tweet by Sally Falkow) is Delta Air Lines that lets customers book airline tickets on the Delta Facebook page. According to an article on CNN, the ‘Ticket Window’ service has been up and running for about one month.

“Our customers are spending more time online and are looking for new ways to connect with us. We’re now delivering technology where our customers are – from our own website to our Facebook page to Internet news sites and beyond,” said Bob Kupbens, Delta’s vice president – eCommerce in a press release. “We already know Facebook is the most used website by inflight WiFi users on more than 2,000 Delta flights every day, giving us the natural launching point for a new online Ticket Window.”

Delta plans to expand its Ticket Window to other sites, including online banner ads to allow full booking capabilities within the airline’s advertisements.