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Week #3B - Business Media

Name: Hero Forge
URL: https://www.heroforge.com/
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Used Well/Hardly Used: Used fairly well
Last Post:

  • Facebook: Sept. 9th, 2019
  • Twitter: Sept. 9th, 2019
  • Instagram: Sept. 9th, 2019
Analysis: Hero Forge uses their social media platform well - advertising new and upcoming products with teaser images, and marketing their existing ones with pictures and uploads of their finished states. They appear to use all three for the same thing - posts on Facebook match ones made on Twitter, and all of the images in both are also uploaded to Instagram. This provides a clean, symmetrical flow of information, no matter what platform you want to use to figure it all out with.

Name: Wizards of the Coast (Magic: the Gathering)
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, YouTube, Instagram
Used Well/Hardly Used: Used well, frequently uploaded
Last Post:
  • Facebook: Sept. 9th, 2019
  • Twitter: Sept. 9th, 2019
  • Twitch: Sept. 9th, 2019 (Hosting other creators almost all the time)
  • YouTube: Sept. 4th, 2019
  • Instagram: Sept. 9th, 2019
Analysis: Wizards (and by proxy, the Magic brand) is aggressive and always pushing their social media. This is aided by the fact that as a business, they're constantly putting out new products and new cards, and their social media presence is bolstered by content creators that help do a lot of the advertising for them. Wizards uses all of their platforms to upload similar content - Facebook posts, tweets, Instagram posts and YouTube all hold their videos, for example, and their Twitch account uses hosted streams and content creators to push more Magic information all the time.

Name: Capcom USA
Social Media: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch
Used Well/Hardly Used: Used very well
Last Post:
  • Facebook: Sept. 7th, 2019
  • YouTube: Sept. 4th, 2019
  • Twitter: Sept. 7th, 2019
  • Instagram: Sept. 7th, 2019
  • Twitch: Sept. 6th, 2019
Analysis: Capcom is a massive gaming company, with many teams that are each in charge of a particular product. As such, most of their social media presence is reposting and supporting information coming out of each team. This information comes in waves, and the important bits are retweeted or reposted by the main Capcom USA account, leaving customers and fans to navigate to each team's accounts to get more information. This also happens as each team makes a new product to get people hyped about - it helps push the information forward in such a way that it's easily understandable without overwhelming people new to the franchises.

Name: Square-Enix (Final Fantasy XIV)
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Twitch
Used Well/Hardly Used: Used sparingly
Last Post:
  • Facebook: Sept. 6th, 2019
  • Twitter: Sept. 6th, 2019 (Retweet on Sept. 9th, 2019)
  • YouTube: Aug. 30th, 2019
  • Instagram: Sept. 6th, 2019
  • Twitch: Sept. 1st, 2019
Analysis: The Final Fantasy XIV team uses their social media presence only when new information is available, or when they're at an event. As such, there can be long periods of time where nothing 'new' is being posted or updated - maybe no more than a month between things, though at this time of year, it's clear there's a lot of events where they're present. Their social media isn't aimed so much at getting new players in, as it is on information franchised players and updated them when there's something noteworthy going on. Out of the companies so far, the XIV team uses theirs the least.

Name: Kohl's
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube
Used Well/Hardly Used: Used fairly well
Last Post:
  • Facebook: Sept. 6th, 2019
  • Twitter: Sept. 9th, 2019
  • Pinterest: Sept. 9th, 2019
  • Instagram: Sept. 9th, 2019
  • YouTube: Sept. 6th, 2019
Analysis: As a major retailer, the Kohl's social media presence is pushed heavily towards new events and sales. As new brands are brought into the stores, they update each of their media outlets in turn. Much like the other companies here, they provide the same information across their Facebook and Twitter, while Instagram and Pinterest provide images and boards to show off the new clothing lines coming in. YouTube is primarily used for fashion tips and advertisements to draw people in, or show people what they can do with the clothing on offer.

Conclusion: Overall, social media is key to building a strong connection with your customers. Providing information in multiple ways across multiple platforms is the best way to make sure that your message is given to as many people as possible - not everyone that uses Facebook uses Twitter or Instagram, for example. Platforms like YouTube can be used as archives for anything done using video, especially in the case of Twitch streams - you do the live broadcast on Twitch, but then upload the video to YouTube later for anyone who missed it.

Social media needs to be used in conjunction with itself. By weaving connections between platforms, you can draw in a wider net of people than using just a single one - all of which will generate more revenue and visits to your sites. This is crucial to running a successful business! All of these companies do that in one way or another, though it's clear that some of them use it more for outreach than for advertising. This distinction needs to be made early on - do you want to use social media more as a way to get in touch with your consumer base, or do you want to use it to draw in new consumers? Both? Neither? These sorts of things are what need to be decided when you start to delve into social media.

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