The use of social media for business: A LEGO case study - Essay Example

 The use of social media for business: A case study Introduction Use of social media platform is a good way of promoting a business. It creates a platform for creating brand awareness, engagement and increasing sales. This essay looks at the use of social media in business where it uses Lego Company as a case study to analysis this situation. It also looks at how such policies used by Lego Company can also be used in other business. Analysis Lego is a beloved brand for the planet since it has remained relevant and popular for almost more than 80 years. This shows that it has quality and strength of imagination that it fosters in every generation. For the company to have remained relevant for this year it is attributed to licensees and partnerships with other organization and loved properties (Brunetti et al, 2014). Lego is a company that deals with children toys. The companies in making themselves relevant, prominent, and important with older generations that use social media find strategies to capture such demographics. In this era, most teens and adults read tweets and check Facebook accounts than previous generations. The company uses this trend to run social channels to reach its fans and audience across the world. Teams using different time zones run Lego’s social strategy. Its content is based on audience recognition where it looks at audience and consumer social needs and builds engagements. The company has created strategies for each social network. The company has experienced great success especially with the LEGO Movie that shows its triumph of content marketing that has revolutionized and dominated the marketing sector. Every media outlet and publisher has produced content around the brand due to much love for the brand. Lego used online strategy to achieve this much positivity in the marketing world. Lego used digital marketing where it promotes the brand through e-commerce sites and mobile apps. Its social account were frequently updated .The company runs social channels where it supervises its feeds and is quick in engaging and remaining up-close and personal to its customers and audience. It has created a consistent and supportive community that is imaginative on the Lego ideas site. Lego had a marketing strategy based on treating adults and children the same way where it has a catch in policy. The company uses a variety of social media sites to interact with its customers, broaden its brand, and create worldwide awareness for its product. Vine and Instagram Video are one of the social outlets that the company is using as a marketing strategy. It posts two videos weekly in the Instagram and vine channels where it is shared across the existing social channel sites. These videos are combined with the companies Lego Mixels displaying its products. Lego has used the social site Instagram channels since 2003 where it creates a budget to facilitate quality production values. The company uses its own animated content where they are uploaded on YouTube and later released on home video. Its content is computer generated animation rather than the chat of stop- motion. The company collaborated with DK books where it was able to drive social growth (Brunetti, et al., 2014). The company to upload videos on a regular basis using various channels also uses YouTube. Every range has its channel and specific content depending whether it is Technical, City or Friends. This content marketing mix has been used to build stars who have received huge views on YouTube like Star Wars (Battersby, 2012). The company has also used a twitter account which builds anticipation for their films that is released in months to come. This account is used for engagement and shares follower’s photographs. Such twitter accounts attract customer service inquiries where customers are able to communicate their ideas. The company has at least ten responses from customer queries and complaints where they are dealt with quickly and calmly (Young, 2013). The company really excels on Twitter where it uses it for content marketing, customer service engagement and broadcasting. The iconic Lego brand reaches everyone especially the youth and right into adulthood. The company has a strong fan base on social media. It has a widely visited Facebook page that has over 4,479,514 likes. It displays its product on the Facebook page. As mentioned on its Twitter page that is managed by the company’s corporate communications department has 62,000 followers and the followers keep increasing (Evans, 2013). These social media platforms are used to answer product questions, and queries, and this helps in facilitating conversations. Their YouTube channel has over 50 million video views up to date. The company seeks to use such media platforms to reach teens and adult fans where its main goal is to work with fans in creative aspects. The platforms have a Lego inside tour,” that offers behind the scene of the companies factory and another platform for “Build a Change” where people use bricks to create change (Evans, 2012). The company also uses Flicker where it uploads over five million pictures where it creates an overall exposure across the Web and creates a window for customers and people to see the excitement (Funk, 2011). The online community has over one million members and gives them an opportunity to curate its creations that are on the web where customers are able to social bookmark. Before a company launches a global website, it is advisable to launch it through stages due to challenging processes. The company has clear governance mapped out where it looks at the business model and creates action to take up when customers upload things that are obscene or irrelevant. The company social media platform was possible due to top management of the company allowing it where it takes money budgets and faith in using search platforms for marketing strategies. For the company to build value on a global brand the company becomes a champion of the fans internally. This means that the company goes out to see the fans, experience, and feel their passion. When establishing a social media policy, every company must have an exit strategy so that its followers are not left hanging. The company has the right team to manage all its conversations that take place in all social media platforms. The Lego Company uses digital marketing very well, and it becomes desirable since it uses a lot of shareable content site that creates a lot of excitement. However with its increased use of social media and love for the brand there have been critics as to the company’s lack of interacting with its audience as other companies do. The company has a great free app for different age groups, and this is a great way to raise awareness of the brand for its future fans and for parents. Its team is great at Public Relations. That creates a fun and shareable visual content (Lugmayr, 2012). The company has created an online crowd-sourcing suite that invites ideas that are very popular that end up being put into production and royalties that are paid to owners of the ideas used by the company. The company also has an e-commerce site that is fun for its customer base that displays its products. It also has great micro sites with great video content. The company also has the site ReBrick where adult Lego fans share user generated content that is relevant to the brand. According to the company its aims is to place consumer relationships first when using social media. Where its seeks to identify social needs of its consumers and be available to respond in satisfying their needs. This company has a huge presence in social media in multiple languages. Lego talks the enabling concept seriously. This concept means recognizing how decentralized teams have to organize their work to meet consumer demand globally and reflect global brands in thinking about the customers and how staff and executives should engage with customers. The company invests heavily on its educational strategy where it has helped over 200 employees have a social media driver’s license through workshops that have exams where they create actual Facebook posts for the brands audience and customers. Social media is interwoven in the company’s sales, product development, and marketing. All people in the company understand that the Lego relationship is built on the commitment to its customers. This use of social media has brought about growth in the company in the last 10 years and has created an avenue where business leaders in various sectors have recognized responsiveness to consumers through digital innovation (Lovett, 2011) The company encourages promotion of consumers to create family moments using Lego bricks via social media. Where it seeks to posts as many pictures of real settings and put them on their website. Social media is a key component for the company as it increases sales and improves its market efficiency by building brand affinity and dealing with damage control. In increasing its sales, the company recognizes customer social needs and individual desire to build together in the real world communities. The company in producing its own content and connecting directly with customers improves its marketing strategy. Consumers have the tendency of developing affinity with characters that are first introduced via social media where the toys get instant recognition when released in the market. Use of social media bridges the gap between hard core fans and the mainstream audience. The company has created a website where ideas are amplified through social media channels. Its social media strategy is always active where it takes a 24/7 commitment in participating in conversations about the company’s products and deal with customer service complaints. The purpose of social media is to create such connections with its customers. (Young, 2013) The company builds its online marketing strategy in consideration to children rights. Since more children nowadays are using the internet due to the extension of the physical world, the company uses its social online policies with regard to children rights. It subscribes to UNICEF principle on business principles were using marketing and advertising products and ideas are based on respect for child rights. (Weber, 2007) Every month the Lego YouTube channel receives 1 billion viewers on a daily basis. The LEGO.com website has over 25 million visits and almost 5 million of them are children across the world (Wollan & Smith, 2010). The company experiences benefits in communicating with children where they are able to effectively use their marketing responsibly. The company has policy evaluations that ensure resources are put in place to address any issue that may arise. Lego Company uses social media platforms to increase sales, improve marketing efficiency, brand affinity, and damage control. The company uses the internet to source ideas for new products where it allows its fans to upload suggestions for new kits and products. The company uses the social platform for damage control. Lesson Learnt Using the strategies formulated by Lego that have improved their sales over the years and improved their brand quality there is lesson one can use to build their business. Checking cost of ignorance is important. There are passionate social media followers who issue negative reasons therefore marketers must consider that the cost of ignorance as compared to indication. The Lego Company aims at empowering its front liners in reacting positively in their business where they make sure they are attentive and helpful. It is good to measure and track. When starting a small business, it is important to implement processes in understanding effectiveness of actions (Booz, Allen & Hamilton, 1995). The Lego Company uses certain strategies in measuring ROI, where it looks at direct sales, ability to build brands, efficient monitoring, and ability to deal with damage control. For business, it is good to focus on the business objectives of marketing especially when using social networks. Having a heart where social is a human experience and requires a passionate voice especially in marketing and keeping social media management as community management. Lego empowers front line personnel where they spend budgets without complicated approvals (Lovett, 2011). For marketers to sell products and create long-term loyalty, retailers must have a good brand advertisement and excellent customer service with on-going support. Identifying and addressing customer’s complaints and issues are important in a business. Lego addresses customer’s dissatisfaction especially on social media. Every business should have a Facebook account, Twitter, and Google+ page. These platforms serve as a great outlet in communicating with customers and provide affordable advertising options for acquiring new customers. The case study for Lego company helps in identifying the customer is crucial to any business. Every business should identify the target customer and target different customers on social media. Clearly defining the objectives that a business wants to achieve is crucial. Some of these objectives would be identifying whether the business has new customers and customer retention. In doing these, knowing current sales is crucial when using social media. For every business using social media, it is good to know what they are posting especially after identifying the target customer identifying the media that is most supported and fits the business. However, it is good to use different forms of social media to deliver the same message, and this should be done efficiently and effectively. It is not advisable to post similar content across all social media sites. The business should understand the benefits of each platform where after analysing the best platform, and then one can post the most appropriate content. Running a business is time-consuming and requires dedication, and therefore it is hard to cover every aspect of social media, therefore, it is better to pick activities that are beneficial for the business and master such skills. Asking help from social sites experts can improve the quality of product awareness that social media can provide for a business. Conclusion The Lego Company has used the social media platform to promote its brand in the world; it has successfully gained increased sales and created a famous brand. The company to interact with its fans and deal with any complaints from such platforms uses the social platform. This tactics used by Lego Company can be used in other business where every business should have at least one social site for advertisement of their products, and this will increase their sales and product awareness.. References Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Top of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Battersby, Gregory J. 2012. Licensing Update 2012. Kluwer Law Intl. Booz, Allen & Hamilton. 1995. Strategy & business. New York, N.Y., Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Brunetti, G., Feld, T., Heuser, L., Schnitter, J., & Webel, C. 2014. Future business software: current trends in business software development. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=710473. Evans, D. 2012. Social media marketing: an hour a day. 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