Social Media and Business

We are living in the era of social media. Now many companies are using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook as a means to communicate with customers. This report will outline the social media use of two companies: Slate Digital LLC (@SlateProAudio) and The Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks). I purposely chose one smaller, lesser known and one bigger, more recognizable company to compare and contrast.

I believe that every business can benefit, in some way or another, from a social media presence. From product support to advertising, each company has its own reasons to use these tools.. The Milwaukee Bucks use their social media reach to keep the team’s fans updated with news, interviews, and events. They focus on giving the audience a behind-the-scenes view of the organization. There are a lot of changes currently going on with the team, and the Bucks are taking full advantage of medial tools to build excitement among the fans. They constantly update and post videos of the new players, information about the coming new arena, as well as promoting ticket sales and specials.

Slate Digital also has a very strong social media presence. Slate is a small company that primarily develops and sells virtual instruments and virtual effects to be used in music production and audio recording. The target audience they are trying to reach are the music producers and audio engineers that use such products. Their primary use of social media is to advertise current and upcoming products. Slate Digital seems to release new products quite often, and they effectively use Twitter and Facebook to keep customers up to date.

Although both the Milwaukee Bucks and Slate Digital use social media to reach out and communicate with their customers, they definitely each take a different approach to doing so. On both Facebook and Twitter, the Milwaukee Bucks have a very corporate feel.They generally don’t do a lot in terms of interaction with replies and comments. In my opinion this isn't necessarily a negative. I found that the fans generally  tend to interact a lot with each other on the posts and commenting. Also the large-company feel is likely a good way to be viewed by fans, who want to believe their team is a big deal.

In contrast, Slate Digital takes a much more personal approach. Upon viewing the Twitter account, I quickly noticed that the profile picture is of the company’s owner with his name (Steven Slate). Also, many of the posts on both platforms are written in a more personal, conversational manner. Another thing that stood out on their Facebook page was that the company directly replies to just about every comment on the posts. Even considering that they are a smaller company reaching out to a smaller customer base, I still found this to be very impressive. All in all, both companies make great use of social media tools to further their brand.