2017年4月12日星期三
2017年3月22日星期三
Social Media Monitoring Project Part 2: Tasty videos
They concentrate on social media sites’ special features
and make fully use of them, such as Facebook’s Autoplay function. They are very
good at picking topics. How many meals do you need in a day? At least one meal.
Most people need 3 meals a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. As a result, food
is a theme that cannot be inevitable in dairy life. People would also be
interested in food because of it necessity.
Over 20 days passed, let’s look at the changes of some
important data around Tasty videos.The number of followers on Tasty’s Facebook page has become
83,402,665. There are over I million new followers in contrast to the data
gathered in February.
March
February
On Instagram, the followers of @buzzfeedtasty now are 9
million, which is 0.6 million more than that in February.
In Google Trends, the tendency of BuzzFeed Tasty is quite
similar with that in February. The whole trend of the topic is still upward.
March
February
When we look at the topic BuzzFeed tasty in Social Mention,
we can obtain such snapshots.
The first and second snapshots were gathered on Tuesday,
March 21. The first one was at 3PM and the second was at 7:15PM. The strength enhanced
from 50% at 3PM to 75% at 7:15PM. People are more likely to watch and search Tasty
videos when it is time for dinner. The third snapshot was gathered on
Wednesday, March 22 at 12PM. The strength of the topic is 93%. The reason of
the high strength may be that people are likely to plan their weekend food menu
on Wednesday at lunch because it is the median day of a week and people may be
tired of the routine work.
Strengths:
Tasty videos simplified the complex cooking procedures by
some editing tactics, such as fast-forward the repetitive process, emphasize
the main cooking steps and give brief explanations of ingredients.
First, video makers shoot the foods and ingredients
vertically so that the materials can be displayed more comprehensively and
audience can understand every step better.
Second, they make the clips from first person point of view,
which would attract audience attention and interests to watch. From this given
angle, audience will consider that it is themselves who are cooking. After they
finish a less than a minute video, they may even believe they can cook the dish
immediately (although most of them only know how to cook with eyes not hands!
hhhhhh). 
Third, they use the rule of thirds to keep you focused onthe center and have new ingredients or movement generally come from one of thecorners. They then line up their text with the rule of thirds as well, as shown
in the second image.
Fourth, Tasty makes videos with bright tone and simple words
explanations so that users could understand the videos even without sound. They
optimize one of Facebook’s most interesting features for videos named Autoplay.
The video posted on the Facebook can be played without sound automatically when
users browse the pages. People who is glancing over Facebook would be willing
to watch the Tasty video because of its convenience.
Weaknesses:
1. All the videos are made in the same way, with same tone and
same angle, which may cause fatigue and boredom.
2. Tasty video is short and fast, so people are willing to cost
a few seconds to watch it. However, the disadvantage of it is also obvious.
Such short video would not impress the audience and people would forget it
quickly.
3. Video makers chase fantastic visual effects more than flavors.
Sometimes audiences just see how beautiful and fresh the food looks but don’t
know how actually it tastes.
4. The videos lack some necessary background of specific
dishes. People never know what food is being made beforehand. What they know is
just an abstract video title like One-pot Sausage and Peppers Pasta. Audiences
watch the entire video then may realize it is something they would hate.
Recommendations:
1. People always like to collect recipes not matter whether they use it or not. How many recipes are there in your album? In the Tasty videos, ingredients are showed separately not together. The entire recipes should be presented and let the audiences to snapshot, which could make the videos more impressive. Just like what a Chinese uploader has done. After all, no one wants to watch the videos with a pencil. 
2. BuzzFeed could improve the audiences’ engagement
and cause groundswell by launching some online campaigns. For example, the "Share Your Tasty" could let the audiences share their special family recipes.
People could also share their products after they watch tasty videos. Some of
recipes and products would be selected and presented in the Tasty videos and
people with those selected recipes and products would be rewarded. In this way,
people would be encouraged to interact with BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed could also
collect useful feedbacks and improve the videos.
2017年3月14日星期二
Motivate your men
Is it cool that someday your CEO answers a trivial question
you asked on the social media site like “Do you like a pizza with pineapple as
a topping”? Will you feel more encouraged if executive from C- level comments
your blog and praises for your constructive thoughts? The answers are probably
YES! As the author illustrated in the chapter, CEOs of those well- known
enterprise are always willing to interact with their employees and get
groundswell among people. 
Three strategies for nurturing internal groundswell are
concluded in the chapter. First, employees should be listened by the
management. Only when their thoughts could be taken into consideration will the
employees participate in groundswell. Second, easing employees’ participation
by making engagement more easy and accessible rather than coerce them to take
part in. Third, finding and encouraging rebels and preparing to fail. 
Besides
the three points stated in the chapter, some other premises should be guaranteed
in order to cause effective internal groundswell. The privacy of employees who
make comments and write own thoughts about the corporation should be protected.
In other words, employees won’t be fired or oppressed because of their
comments, which, in most circumstances, are negative and unsatisfied. In many
stories, it is negative comment from employee that makes the company improve
and develop. However, no one wants to express their dissatisfactions at the
risk of being fired unless he decides not working there any longer. The
internal social media sites should allow people to express their ideas anonymously
and the company’s culture should also convey the idea of tolerance. 
As the old Chinese saying goes, rewards allure men to brave
danger. When the rewards are generous enough, one may dare to kill a lion! As
to internal groundswell, employees are more willing to express their ideas when
there are possibilities to get rewards. The rewards can be something other than
money, promotion, praise, even taking their suggestions into consideration
could be rewards. As Best Buy employee Ashley, she got the promotion to
supervisor because she participated in internal groundswell on Blue Shirt
Nation actively and became one of the site’s most-read contributors. Her
experiences can encourage more and more employees to open their mouths and
minds and to say something about the company in order to improve the company. 2017年3月1日星期三
Social Media Monitoring Project Part 1: Tasty Videos
Do
you love delicious foods? Are you willing to try different foods from different
countries and areas? Can you devote your time, money, and energy to searching
for yummy foods, for example, driving 2 hours just for a 5-star spaghetti? If
all the answers are YES, then do you like cook? Are you good at cuisine? If no,
then we are the same kind of foodies, which I would call “amateur foodies”. As
an amateur foodie, I bet you must have watched some videos like the following
one:
In the Tasty videos, deft, creative hands play the leading roles.
Tasty videos simplified the complex cooking procedures by some editing tactics,
such as fast-forward the repetitive process, emphasize the main cooking steps
and give brief explanations of ingredients and dosages. Two special features of
Tasty videos make them more impressive. First, video producers shoot the foods
and ingredients vertically so that the materials can be displayed more
comprehensively and audience can understand every step better. Second, they make
the clips from first person point of view, which would attract audience
attention and interests to watch. From this given angle, audience will consider
that it is themselves who are cooking. After they finish a less than a minute
video, they may even believe they can cook the dish immediately (although most
of them only know how to cook with eyes not hands! hhhhhh). 
The
producer of Tasty videos is BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed is an American internet mediacompany based in New York City. The firm describes itself as a “social news and
entertainment company” with a focus on digital media and digital technology in
order to provide “the most shareable breaking news, original reporting,
entertainment, and video.” BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 as a viral lab,
focusing on tracking viral content, by Jonah Peretti and other co-founders. Tasty
is a cooking channel BuzzFeed created for Facebook, concentrating on comfort
food. It had over eighty million followers as of January 2017 on Facebook. As
BuzzFeed’s slogan said, “The media company for the social age”, they have made
a very good use of social media. 
BuzzFeed
knows how to take advantage of Facebook’s special features. They optimize one
of Facebook’s most interesting features for videos named autoplay. The video
posted on the Facebook can be played without sound automatically when users
browse the pages. Tasty makes videos with bright tone and simple words
explanations so that users could understand the videos even without sound.
Think about ourselves and you will find how lazy sometimes the netizens could
be! In a lot of circumstances, when it requires me to click and open a new page
in order to watch a video, I am very likely to give it up, especially when the
video has nothing to do with me, just for fun. I bet you would do the same thing,
GIVE UP. BuzzFeed knows how to attract users and accumulate traffic and they
are very clever to make such short and lucid videos that users even needn’t
click the video and can understand it thoroughly. It is user-friendly.
Then, do
the Tasty videos perform well on social media sites? The answer would be “Of
course!”. The Tasty page on Facebook has 82,197,776 followers and has been
liked by 82,291,383 users. On Jan 14, 2016, a 45-second clip to make acheese-stuffed pizza pretzel was made. Within 24 hours, that video had 37million views, 650,000 likes and 750,000 shares. On Feb 28, 2017, the same video
has collected 110 million views, 1.02 million likes, 2,100,953 shares and
164,729 comments. After a year, the views in 2017 become treble of views in
2016. 
Let’s
monitor some recent data. We choose three high traffic social media sites to
monitor the data and its changes: Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
Up to Feb
25 (Sat), 2017, 8.4 million Instagram users have followed Tasty IG page. The
video “Steak Fajita Quesadillas” posted on Instagram has 1,811,276 views on Feb
25, as well as 2,122 comments. 82,124,837 Facebook users have followed their FB
page. On Facebook, the video named “Cabernet-Braised Short Ribs” has been
viewed for 8.73 million times, liked for 100,000 times with 9589 commentss. The
video “7 Japanese Desserts from Tasty” on YouTube has accumulated 406,083
views. Another video “French Toast Roll-Ups 4 Ways” has collected 40,576 views.
On Feb 26
(Sun), 2017, 8.4 million Instagram users, roughly as much as the day before,
have followed Tasty IG page. The same video, “Steak Fajita Quesadillas” has
collected 2,126,078 views, 314,804 views more than that on Feb 25. The comments
on IG has increased to 2,242 on Feb 26. On Facebook, the number of Tasty page
followers has become 82,189,170. The video “Cabernet-Braised Short Ribs” has
been viewed for 9.01 million times, 280,000 times more than that on Feb 25. The
video “7 Japanese Desserts from Tasty” on YouTube has collected 472,437 views
and the other video “French Toast Roll-Ups 4 Ways” has collected amazing
250,027 views, more than 6 times as much as that on Feb 25! 
When we
use Google Trends to describe the development of BuzzFeed Tasty videos, we can
get such several charts and graphs.In the first
graph, Search Interest in BuzzFeed Tasty, Last 5 Years, we can observe peaks
and the latest peaks was from Jan 8, 2017 to Jan 14, 2017, which reached at
100. The whole trend of the topic “BuzzFeed Tasty” is upward.
The topic “BuzzFeed
Tasty” is most discussed in North America followed by the UK. In New York, the
topic is discussed most heatedly. Then LA, Toronto, Chicago and London follow. As to relative topics, the search volume of “BuzzFeed”
is soaring. The search volume of key words like “tasty buzzfeed recipes”, “tasty
recipes” and “buzzfeed recipes” are also soaring.
Tasty
videos also have caused groundswell. Every video posted on social media sites
no matter on Facebook, Instagram or YouTube, can always have thousands of
comments. On Instagram, people always mention friends with the videos. Some of
them just want to share the video with others and a big number of people want
to try the recipe with friends. One Facebook and YouTube, people are more
interactive. They are more willing to express their thoughts and ideas about
the videos, like or hate and reasons.
BuzzFeed,
as a media company, has done a good job, especially on launching the Tasty
project. For one thing, they concentrate
on social media sites special features and make fully use of these features, producing
content which are best for these sites and attracting so many traffic. For
another thing, they also choose a very good topic--- foods. You may love dogs
more than cats. Your friends may disagree with you and think cats are much
better. However, everyone has the same desire for delicious foods. Food is a
big topic in our daily life and dining is one of the major activities we must
have every day. Using food and recipes as a concentration is clever and
attractive. BuzzFeed successfully chose a simple and low-cost way, producing
videos, to attract attention by social media.
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