SMMP: Staples Inc. 2013 Back to School - Part II

In the first social monitoring blog, I analysed the history, website, talkers, trends, changing and Twitter about Staples back to school. 

For deeper insight, there also should be a reference object. So in this blog, I would like to compare its situation with general "back to school" talks.

Website

On the website of Staples Back to School, we can see that their target audiences are both students and teachers. Students can choose their goods by grades. On the bottom of this website, we can find the social media connections: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and community. 

Who Are The Talkers?

According to the results of addictomatic, there are many people talk about deals and coupons of back to school in groundswell. However, comparing with the general talks of back to school, Staples back to school has no talks on Flickr. On YouTube, the general talks have more original videos than Staples' talks. We can see that most of the Staples back to school video are ads, the can not reflect the feeling of talkers.

How About The Trends?

Every year, the talks of Staples back to school are very popular in the late summers and early falls. 

Comparing with the talks of general back to school, Staples talks of back to school are increasing much faster year by year. It shows that the increasing of the talks of this topic is not a general phenomenon, the talks of Staples beyond the other similar topics.

But there is one thing which the general talks has but Staples talks does not have: in each winter, there was a small peak in the general talks. We can see the next two pictures and know more about it.

Staples Back to School 2005-2013

General Back to School 2005-2013

In the trends in 2013, we can see the small peak clearly. This peak appeared on January. In that time period, the winter holiday was going to end and the spring semester was coming, so people started to talk back to school. Staples did not have this small peak, because it had not the real senses of back to school topics in winter.

Staples Back to School 2013

 General Back to School 2013

I also checked IceRocket, which is also an outstanding tool for trend analysis. IceRocket shows the trends that people talk "Staples back to school" in recent months, the overview result is consistent with the result of google trends.

In addition, when I am comparing it with the general "back to school", I find an interesting law: People would like to write blog on weekdays more than in weekends. In another word, when people are unable to do something in freely, writing blog becomes an available way to publish their thinking. I guess that people would like to know and to share the shopping information in weekdays, then go to shop in weekends. This guess might help Staples to know more about customer behaviors, and to plan better contact points with customers.

Staples Back to School

General Back to School

What Are Changing in Groundswell?

For Staples back to school itself, we can see the left two pictures. They show that after the time period of back to school, the activeness of the talks become lower, but the sentiment become better and better.

When we are comparing the Staples talks with the general talks, we can see that since the time period of back to school is already over, there are less and less people talk about them on groundswell, the passions of them are decreasing consistently. 

          Staples 10-31-2013             Staples 11-5-2013              Staples 11-13-2013

     

                                     General 11-5-2013                     General 11-13-2013

What are They Talking About?

I separate the 2013 back to school period into three stages: raising stage (June 9th - July 28th), peak stage (July 28th - Aug 24th) and decreasing stage (Aug 24th - Sept 28th). 

I will monitor the talks by Trendistic in each stage, and to know the thinking of talkers in the time period of back to school by this way.

The following analysis comes from my last monitoring project:

In the raising stage, there are many Twitter users were talking about "to buy Staples gift card on Groupon", and the "Staples Back to School Saving Pass for 15% off". Obviously, Staples are attracting customers for this period of sales in this stage. I believe these promotions made customers feel exciting, and they would like to share the promotions with others.

In the peak stage, the talks of gift card and saving pass were disappeared, and Deals of Staples became popular topic in Twitter. In this stage, people started to consider shopping in Staples, and the cheap price become the topics which they were cared about. 

In the decreasing stage, people realized the Period of Back to School is almost done in Staples. In the late of decreasing stage, people started to pay more attentions on the other deals, which has no related with back to school. In the same time, the new deals were becoming the new topics in Twitter.

For the talks of general back to school on Twitter, the natures of topic are abundant, and there are huge number talks about it. People talk about their experiences, feelings and some deals. For the deals, the talks are not limited to the back to school products which Staples is selling. People are talking the other products about back to school too, like a new pair of shoes.

Conclusions and Recommendations

C 1: Staples Back to School are popular in this period in every year, but the relevance between back to school and the following time period is low in groundswell.
R 1: Staples should bring the following new deals forward more, give the customers enough time to keep talking "Back to School" and "New Deals" in the same time period.

C 2: Now, Staples sales many different kinds of products about back to school, like notebook, pencil and school bag. In this period, the major target audiences are student parents or students themselves. But Staples' public image - office supplies, it makes a small gap between the young people and its brand.
R 2: Before the time period of back to school is coming, Staples should keep to mention "back to school" in sometimes, do not let people forget this topic in the whole following year. Let the young people know, they are always the customers of Staples, but not only in the late summer.

C 3: Comparing with the general talks, there are no talks about Staples back to school on Flickr. It also means that the images of this topic (except the ads) is not popular in groundswell.

R 3: Staple should encourage customers to upload their photos about this topic onto Flickr. For example, Staples can add "back to school uploading competition with prize" into camera apps, let more app users get passion to do it.

C 4: On YouTube, there are many staples back to school advertising videos, but less customer original videos about this topic.

R 4: Staples should organize some activities about back to school, which can make customers have special interesting on them. Once they can make some fun videos, they would upload them and share with others.

C 5: Comparing with the general talks, Staples does not have talks of back to school in winter.

R 5: Staples should pay attention on the winter back to school. It can be a part of Staples marketing strategy, and can also be a good topic in groundswell.

What Can We Do in The Testing Stage of Social Maturity?

The reading of this week focus on the groundswell transforms. In Chapter 11, it shows the way to transform a company with groundswell. This chapter use the transformation of Dell as an example, and list five macro steps of this process: start small, educate the executives, get the right people to run the strategy, get the agency and technology partners in sync, plan for the next step and for the long term. Chapter 12 talks about the importance of internal groundswell, it uses the Blue Shirt Nation of Best Buy to illustrate the meaning of internal groundswell, and emphasizes the company should concern more about culture and rebels in the transforming process. Chapter 13 explain the social maturity specifically, it talks the common challenges companies face, and the five stages of social maturity. The last chapter looks ahead the ubiquitous groundswell, it is a good end of this book.

An Overview - What Is Social Maturity: 

I would like to talk more about the testing stage of social maturity. First of all, what is social maturity? How to understand social maturity with organizational behaviors?

I think social maturity means the whole process of the groundswell transforming in an organization, and it also means a specific level of the groundswell transforming for an organization. Social maturity include five stages: dormant, testing, coordinating, scaling and optimizing, empowering. The earlier an organization adopts groundswell transforming, the higher level stage it would attain now. So we can divide the organizations into five levels: laggards, late majority, early majority, early adopters and innovators.

Today, we can see the power of groundswell in the market, and the innovators and early adopters would get more benefits from it. However, these organizations would take risks before social media became popular in several years ago. So that early insightful plan is always important for social maturity of an organization, and this plan should be existed in the early stage of social maturity - testing stage:

It's never too late to launch a groundswell transforming! Start to work on the right elements of testing stage, by the right way, and then you will enjoy the benefits of groundswell in the future!

Base on the table of "elements of the stages of social maturity" on page 259 in Groundswell, I would like to analyse the testing stage on 6 perspectives.

Start Groundswell Transforming From Current Experience

In the testing stage, experience is typically in customer applications or employee applications limited to collaboration. These applications are the basic communication tools which can provide the functions for advertising, branding, promotion or internal communication. In most cases, the applications allow people post or comment message on the index of organization. There are 81% of organizations would like to use the applications to listening, and 73% of them would like to use applications to talking. For example, this is the Facebook page of Best Buy, it can be the early application for external communication.

Figure Out How to Use The Resources

Resources are mostly individuals using applications part-time to help do their current jobs in this stage. The using of social media is non-united in this stage, it includes the non-united kinds of application, non-united using objective, and the non-united time to use. After a period of time, the using of application would be coordinated. Recent years, there is a new social media which name is "Wechat" is popular in China, it allow people interact by both text and voice message, for free. In some Chinese organizations (include roommates), people would like to use it to communicate with each other, and to build talking groups to share information in sometime. 

The Nature of Processes 

In this stage, processes are strictly task-oriented. Actually, social media is just a tool for PR and marketing in this stage, but not an indispensable part of organizational communication. If we can feel the benefits of social media in tasks, we should try to promote and integrate it into the general operating, then it would be more stable in our organization.

Talk About Measurement

In the testing stage, measurement is limited to "collecting" activities. For now, measurement is in the basic level, we are "looking at the performance", but we do not implement statistic research about the social media. For example, we are interesting in these information now: the number of likes, viewers, sharing and comments. The right way of measurement helps organization social maturity grows up healthily, it is necessary to hire professionals for measurement jobs, and start to build systemic methods of measurement.

Commitment: We Need The Support form Management!

Support from management is limited, and there is no long-term plan or philosophy in testing stage. The support form management is important, because it provide political power to build completed new social system in an organization. Once we find the opportunity to launch a groundswell transforming in our organization, the allowance of management should come together with the building plan.

The Last Thing, Consider The Culture

In the testing stage, social makes little impact on most employees' day-to-day business. This is the most difficult one to launch groundswell transforming, because the organizational culture is the common value of the members of organization, it is hard to be changed. Groundswell gives us a good advice: let the creative and critical employee to launch groundswell transforming in the organization, but not the senior employees. When the members of the organization can feel the benefits or groundswell, they are ready to over the testing stage of social maturity. 

SMMP: Staples Inc. 2013 Back to School - Part I

Staples Inc. is one of the largest office supply chain store in 22 countries. I like the products of Staples a lot, because its products are high quality. We can buy its products online, or in more than 2,000 retail stores in the world.

Staples have been done a good job on public praise, we can get abundant information about Staples form the groundswell. Especially in the period of back to school, Staples becomes much more popular than usual, and that is what I would like to concentrate in.







The History of Staples Inc.

In 1985, the founder of Staples - Thomas Stemberg got the original idea of this company. Thomas needed a unit of printer, but his local dealer was closed because that day was Independence day. He felt that the reliance of small business is unstable, that was why Thomas Stemberg would like to start his business on office supplies superstore.

In 1986, Staples opened its first store in Brighton, Massachusetts; In 1996, Staples had 500 stores; The 1,000th store opened in 1999; In 2007, Staples opened its 2,000th store.

The slogan of Staples is "That Was Easy". Today, it is so easy to find a Staples retail store around your location, and to buy the products from Staples is also easy! 



Website

On the website of Staples Back to School, we can see that their target audiences are both students and teachers. Students can choose their goods by grades. On the bottom of this website, we can find the social media connections: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and community. 

Where are The Talkers?

In this part, I choose to use Addictomatic. The following picture shows the results of searching "staples back to school". These results show that there is no people talk about it on Twitter and Flickr. Most of the talking are the promotion information about staples in Addictomatic, especially a lot of YouTube ads.

How About The Trends?

Google Trends is used to show the trends of specific talks. When we are searching "Staples Back to School", we can see the following trends: 

Since 2005-2013, more and more people talk about "Staples Back to School", the peaks appear on the late summers and the early falls. The ratios comparison in 2004 and 2013 are 33: 100. That is mean in the back to school period in every year, Staples are doing better and better in groundswell.

2005-2013

This picture shows the micro trend of Staples Back to School in a year. In 2013, the talks started on June 9th. After July 7th, the talks grew very fast, until these talks reached the beginning of the peak on July 28th. Since Aug 24th, the trends became down, and most of the talks stopped on Sept 28th. This trend means the activeness of the talks of Staples Back to School, it shows the talks are popular in public in this period.

2013

I also checked IceRocket, which is also an outstanding tool for trend analysis. IceRocket shows the trends that people talk "Staples back to school" in recent months, the overview result is consistent with the result of google trends.

What Are Changing in Groundswell?

In social mention, we can see on the two pictures below. After the time period of back to school, the passion and reach became lower and lower, these two values can match the Google Trends of Staples Back to School in 2013. 
Although the activeness of the talks becomes lower, but the sentiment become better and better. The negative talks decreased very fast. 

      

                        10-31-2013                                         11-5-2013

What are They Talking About?

Base on the searching results of Google Trends, I would like to separate the 2013 back to school period into three stages: raising stage (June 9th - July 28th), peak stage (July 28th - Aug 24th) and decreasing stage (Aug 24th - Sept 28th). 

I will monitor the talks by Trendistic in each stage, and to know the thinking of talkers in the time period of back to school by this way.


In the raising stage, there are many Twitter users were talking about "to buy Staples gift card on Groupon", and the "Staples Back to School Saving Pass for 15% off". Obviously, Staples are attracting customers for this period of sales in this stage. I believe these promotions made customers feel exciting, and they would like to share the promotions with others.

In the peak stage, the talks of gift card and saving pass were disappeared, and Deals of Staples became popular topic in Twitter. In this stage, people started to consider shopping in Staples, and the cheap price become the topics which they were cared about. 

In the decreasing stage, people realized the Period of Back to School is almost done in Staples. In the late of decreasing stage, people started to pay more attentions on the other deals, which has no related with back to school. In the same time, the new deals were becoming the new topics in Twitter.

Conclusions and Recommendations

C 1: Staples Back to School are popular in this period in every year, but the relevance between back to school and the following time period is low in groundswell.
R 1: Staples should bring the following new deals forward more, give the customers enough time to keep talking "Back to School" and "New Deals" in the same time period.

C 2: Most of the blogs and videos are created by Staple. Customers would like to share the good deals with others, but have low passion to create the original talks about Staples.
R 2: Staples should try to encourage customers talk more about their thinking about Staples. For example, Staples can organize its interesting activities, and the participants would mention Staples more in their social medias.

C 3: Now, Staples sales many different kinds of products about back to school, like notebook, pencil and school bag. In this period, the major target audiences are student parents or students themselves. But Staples' public image - office supplies, it makes a small gap between the young people and its brand.
R 3: Before the time period of back to school is coming, Staples should keep to mention "back to school" in sometimes, don not let people forget this topic in the whole following year. Let the young people know, they are always the customers of Staples, but not only in the late summer.

YouTube and Public Focus

As the most famous video social media, YouTube carries thousands of videos to people in the world. People can upload, view, share and comment videos on YouTube. Every unique style video has potential to be popular on YouTube: people like it, so it gets a lot of views.

YouTube = Online Video?

When people would like to watch some videos, YouTube is their first choice. The statistics of YouTube show that "100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute ". That is mean the rate of new video uploading is 6,000 times faster than your watching ability - if you can watch YouTube 24 hours per day continuously.

We also use the "YouTube views" to define the popularity level of a video: The most popular YouTube video in history "Gangnam Style" by artist Psy (1,793,150,452 views on 10-15-2013), if you wiki it, you can see this description: "On December 21, 2012, "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube video to reach a billion views. As of September 21, 2013, the music video has been viewed over 1.787 billion times on YouTube, and it is the site's most watched video after surpassing Justin Bieber's single "Baby"."

You see, although YouTube and Online Video are the different concepts, but we think that YouTube represents Online Video. 

And that is why when you are writing a new blog on this Blogger website, if you click "Insert a video", you can only use YouTube links directly but not the links from other video websites. Try it! :)

How Does YouTube Lead Public Focus?

The nature of YouTube is a video social media. The slogan YouTube is "Broadcast Yourself", every one can upload video to it, and share other's video. 

For a video on YouTube, there are several elements would contribute to leading public focus. To understand the elements, you can watch this video "Proof Your Senses Are Lying To You": 

This video illustrates three psychological effects in our lives. People who are interesting in this field would focus on this topic, and share this one. In the end of this video, you can see "Subscribe" graphic link, if you click it, you will jump into the index of its publisher "BuzzFeedVideo". When this play is over, you will see several recommended videos, these videos include the relevant content with this one.

Then, if you open the video page, you can see the following elements: 

Under the title of this video, we can see how many people have subscribed the publisher of it; We can evaluate this video by like or unlike button; We can also see how many people have viewed this video, and how many people like or unlike it. This group of elements shows the objective rating of this video, the huge number of viewer increases its appearance frequency on YouTube, and makes more people want to watch it.

The following elements are About, Share, Add to, Statistics and Report. In the Share area, we can share this video onto different social medias, embed it into html page, or email it to others. This group of elements allow us to work on this video by our own ways, it is a flexible way to expand the effect of this video in public.

If you look down this page, you will find the comments of this video. People are sharing their feeling in this area. View the comments of others would make us understand more about this video, and lead to more thinking around this topic. We can also write down our comments. This is the most flexible part of YouTube, because we can share our subjective opinions with others in here.

On the right side of this video, there are recommended videos. People can find the relevant topics in this area; In another word, if we are watching the other videos, this video would appear in this area too.

All of these elements contribute to lead public focus. The public focus would make more and more people pay attention on this video (or topic), and it would derive different performances in society. It is a great opportunity for PR industry and marketing.



How Can We Use This Opportunity on PR and Marketing?

First of all, we can analyze the participants of YouTube by their watching histories: Young people are more likely to watch pop MV; university students and scholars would watch more social, political, and tech videos; female would like to watch more emotional content than male... Base on these analysis, we can segment the participants into different target PR/marketing audience groups.
  


Once we know the segmentation, we can start to send information to target audiences:  the Ads on the video, E-mail Ads, relevant video recommendations and so on. 

Not only we can increase PR and marketing on YouTube participants, the participants themselves could also help to achieve our goals. When people are designing the video, they can start to implant advertising or branding elements into the video, it always works because these elements will be spread with the video sharing behaviors. If the video is sparkling but hard to be understood, or it has a rich philosophical topic, so more people would like to comment on this video, and more people would search the meaning of this video in these comments. Because the interactive of the participants, the relevant PR and Marketing elements will also be considered again and again.