This week, food-production giant Nestlé lost a legal battle in Brazilian court over its use of genetically modified organism (read: genetically modified food) ingredients. The Swiss brand fought to keep the fact that many of its ingredients are GMOs off the labels, but the court mandated that it label anything with more than 1% GMO ingredients sold within Brazil as such.
The lawsuit came as a result of public outcry regarding the safety of GMOs. Many studies have been published linking consumption of GMOs to serious health repercussions. While Nestlé’s studies show different results, the brand spent a lot of time, money and effort in Brazil fighting to keep from being required to mention on labels that its products contain GMOs.
The Brazilian lawsuit sparked further dialogue about the safety of GMO food and the transparency of companies that sell it. Facebook and Twitter have erupted in conversation about Nestlé and GMOs, including countless negative mentions of the brand. (read more…)
3M doesn’t look at social media as a new thing. For 100 years, the company has been working with customers to collaborate and create products. Social only offers the company more tools with which to do it.
But that doesn’t mean 3M isn’t aggressively exploring ways to use these tools to integrate the customer voice even more into the business. At SocialMedia.org’s BlogWell conference, 3M’s Greg Gerik explained how the company is doing it and some of the fantastic results it is seeing.
A few of his key take-aways:
- Online customer panels are accurate. Gerik and his team have found that their “virtual” customer panels — where customers share feedback on product features and design — accurately indicate product success or failure. Feedback trends offered by these panels match larger, broader, real-world customer opinions. It doesn’t mean 3M has eliminated other customer-feedback-gathering techniques; it only means the company has another reliable tool to use.
SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Social Media — tracks feedback from leading marketers about social media practices and issues.
This week we asked, Do you expect that data derived from social networks will influence your business decisions in the next year?The results:
- Yes: 61.03%
- No: 38.97%
Maybe it’s the interpretation of “data” that created such a high percentage of “No”? Or possibly the word “derived” caused it? Otherwise, these poll results might be the most surprising I’ve have seen to date as the poll analyst for SmartBrief on Social Media.
Let me offer a simple scenario that should convince naysayers that they are missing out on the most important use of social media: interpretation of data and results into actionable change for a business.
Assume you are a San Francisco casual-wear chain with a long history and strong brand loyalty. You decide to change your logo from a “classic, American design to modern, sexy, cool.” Internally, you agree on the logo and unveil it on your website. (read more…)
I’ve been using Twitter for more than three years, and I’ve tweeted tens of thousands of times from dozens of accounts. If that makes me an expert, than I guess I am. I prefer to think of myself as someone who enjoys Twitter and likes helping others discover its value.
I often meet people who don’t understand the value of Twitter. They have trouble adjusting to the 140-character format and seem mystified by hashtags and abbreviations.
Or, they’re using Twitter and tired of the noise and bots, the self-promotion people send out in an endless loop.
The good news is that many avatars represent real people. Many tweets are sent in real time, and not via automation. Being real and human is an important way to differentiate yourself on Twitter.
Here’s how to stand out from the crowd on Twitter.
Focus on others. When you focus more on giving to and promoting others than you do on promoting yourself, you can stand out. (read more…)
Whether you’re trying to grab attention to your newspaper, e-mail or blog post, one constant has remained: Content is king. You can write the greatest headline in the world, but if the rest of the content doesn’t deliver, captivate readers or mesh with the target demographic, you’ll quickly lose interest. The secret to creating and maintaining buzz for your content is to write content your audience wants to read. That sounds simple, but knowing your audience — and what it wants — is anything but easy.
First, you need to identify your audience. There are several methods to identify your audience, such as determining keywords that are bringing users to your website, creating user personae and more. Once you’ve identified your audience, you should create content that speaks to each user persona. Do not stray from this concept, because you will lose readers or followers. Readers are finicky at the beginning of any article or post. (read more…)
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