Harris drives past the logos some the worlds biggest brand names
Part A: Social Media Audit
Content Shared
Tesla regularly updates its Google+ account with quick blurbs that are relevant to its following Tesla shares content by linking to magazine articles about Tesla, as well as other social media accounts including corporate blogging, voting opportunities, company updates, company events, promotions and reviews. Tesla does not reply to, or answer customer questions, or directly communicate with its followers. Tesla interacts with its followers by offering contests like the Caption Contest, in which followers could create captions for their latest campaign pictures of Tesla Model S. Tesla also myth-busts by removing preconceived notions and creates a storyline for Tesla by sharing, little-by-little, its history. On Google+, Tesla also ensures their posts are topical by attaching hashtags i.e. #Movember and #Halloween and also ensure it is eye-catching by including large scale, high resolution pictures.
Example:
Tesla updates its twitter feed with almost the same content posted on Google+. In contrast to Google+, Tesla is more engaged on Twitter. Tesla re-tweets a lot of its content and encourages its followers to share stories. It also shares news and information, company updates such as how many supercharger stations have been built, recent stats pertaining to the brand, new product developments, and links to blog posts that explain its benefits, features, and high performance capabilities. Usually these company updates are under their #WattsUp hash tag.
Example:
Facebook is also a place where Tesla is a little more engaged. On Facebook, Tesla updates its followers by posting customer reviews and reports that show customer satisfaction, providing links to articles that reinforce Tesla’s main difference and benefits, and asking questions by creating voting polls. It also replies to comments regularly by sending thank-you messages, or just kindly acknowledging its followers. Also on Facebook, Tesla uploads a lot of stories that its followers shared with them and exciting company updates. A lot of its content is attached to large, colourful pictures and they have started Wallpaper Wednesday, which gives its followers a chance to wallpaper new Tesla photographs.
On Instagram, Tesla mainly uploads photos with short captions that most of the time includes links to sites where the viewer can dive deeper. Tesla’s Instagram posts usually contain more than one hashtag and include large, colourful high quality images.
It seems that Tesla does not have a schedule and posts randomly or whenever it really has good content to share. Tesla updates regularly and rarely goes longer than 5 days without content. Sometimes, updates occur twice a day, other times updates occur every 2 days, or every 4 days.
Tesla does not follow anyone on this platform, but do @ mention business partners and photographers who have collaborated with Tesla, or will be collaborating. There also seems to be no schedule for Instagram; photos are uploaded regularly, sometimes even 3 uploads a day, and other times uploads can be separated by 3 or 4 days. Since the account was started in September, Tesla has uploaded 38 images to its account.
Personality and Consistency
Methodology
We used Netvibes as our monitoring tool in order to hear what people were saying about Tesla motors. This involved both members checking our dashboard at least once daily, scanning the titles for anything that appeared interesting. When we came across something that caught our attention we would go read the entire blog post, media story, or status update to see if it truly was something that was noteworthy and relevant for this section of the assignment. At the end of the two week period we went over our combined list and narrowed it down to the ten that we deemed to be the most interesting or most relevant to the assignment.
Interesting Nuggets of Information
1. A man recently drove solo from Mexico to Canada in a Tesla Model S with no fuel, totally electric.
3. Tesla now has a market valuation of $20 Billion
“When you accelerate it, it was the same sort of feeling I got when I test-drove a Mustang Boss back when I was probably 23 years old,” House Speaker Thomas Tillis, 53, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, told the Raleigh News & Observer.
So ended the anti-Tesla legislation. Tillis’s chamber never voted on it.”
“NHTSA's probe came after two cars in the United States and one in Mexico caught fire. The two U.S. fires started after the driver ran over debris in the road, damaging the battery pack that runs along the base of the Model S.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-asks-tesla-additional-information-model-fires-015333769--finance.html
8. Tesla’s trademark dispute with a Chinese squatter is one of the last remaining obstacles to entry into the Chinese market.
“Tesla is the latest major trademark case in China to make headlines over the last 2 years, reflecting the recent build-up by many famous brands in the fast growing market. Media first reported on the case in August, saying a Chinese businessman had registered the company’s name locally in both English and Chinese in 2006. (previous post) The man also registered the Chinese Internet domain of tesla.com.cn, which carries a logo almost identical to the US Tesla’s and claims to be selling its own electric car.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/12/tesla-motors-inc-tsla-model-s-used-in-salesforce-ad/
10. George Clooney and Elon Musk exchange barbs.
1. Understand the environment
To improve the impact of Tesla’s messages on social media, it is recommended that Tesla fully understand the platform environment. Each platform has its benefits and has users seeking a very specific type of entertainment. Tesla should not share one message across all platforms, instead Tesla should share the same message but with a change appropriate to the platform. For example, Tesla is planning on posting a message on Google+. Tesla wants this post to stimulate interest for the new Tesla Model S vehicle. Because on Google+ images are the main focus, it is suggested that images and text not be equal in amount. Tesla should focus more on larger, sleek images with better contrast and sharpness and focus less on adding words. Perhaps a shortened link to the landing webpage would suffice the followers’ interest. Should Tesla want to transfer this message to Twitter, the company should change the message to suit the interests of its followers on Twitter. In this case, the message would be changed to incorporate more text than images. Perhaps an image URL would suffice the followers’ interest in this case.
Twice Daily in the Morning and Afternoon
Check Twitter via a program like HootSuite. Respond when necessary. Follow the @replies that make sense.
Weekly or on Weekends
Build Twitter Lists to better organize ongoing discussions and special interest groups. Set up saved searches in Hootsuite to find out if people are talking about you or your company.
Add new content to Facebook like videos or photos.
Think of ways to repurpose this content and energy to reach a larger audience with the social networking gospel.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: Join one hot trend conversation on Twitter, if appropriate, and add new content to Facebook (new items you are selling, photos, discounts and other promotions).
Tuesdays and Thursdays: Respond to blog comments.