Experiments are something that should not stay in the science class room. Here are two examples of the random experiments regarding Facebook that I have done in my class.1. Behavioral Targeting
After a class discussion about behavioral targeting I challenged my students to go their Facebook page and change their personal information and see if they noticed a difference in the ads appearing on their home page. The students did find this to be true and were amazed at how quickly ads can change when you change your personal information on a social networking site.
2. Is Facebook Too Cliche?
I hear students and marketers talk about how they will use social media sites to promote their product / store / etc… Sure it is a great low cost concept that could generate a large return but is it becoming too cliché? With this in mind, I asked one class of 32 students to go home and change their status to say something along the lines about how they were excited to get a free lanyard in room 126 tomorrow. I informed the class that this would give us a good idea how effective Facebook is in regards to creating buzz about a product.
We found that of the total students only 9 went home and changed their status. The next morning by 7 AM I had one student stop by and ask for a free lanyard. Through out the day I had two others stop by. Once it was time for class to start I asked the students if they had heard other students talking about it. The nine students who changed their status update said it generated seven wall posts, six text messages, and five people stopping them in school to see if they were still available.
We then did a rough estimate and calculated it reached approximately 2500 other Facebook members. Once this was calculated the students quickly pointed out that this in not a true number since some people don’t look at their page every day, they could not go to our school, etc… I was very excited to see the students grasp this concept.
I then asked the students what it would have done if we had posted this message for say 5-days in advance of giving out the lanyards. How many actual people would that have touched? I will save that for the next experiment.
I thought this was a great way to show how buzz marketing can work and it proved how it can be effective for a business (more so chain companies) because it doesn’t matter where you live you can still go to a store or restaurant.
This is just some of the fun random experiments that I often times pull out of mid air and do in my marketing classes. I realize the sample size is too small to give this any validity but it was fun and the students seem to like doing this.
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Great point, is facebook becoming too "cool." I think back to the video from PBS, Merchants of Cool. This video is a great video on getting into the teenagers minds. If you haven't, check it out, it is on the PBS Frontline website.
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to the Cool video that should work http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p70&continuous=1
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to the page on the PBS Frontline website. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/
The week before spring break can be a week that students dread. I opened it up to my students in my advanced level class to develop an experiment because I am interested if other students care what you are doing. As of right now, I have students that will be changing their relationship status, sending out chain texts, status updates, changing their birthday. This is all done to see how many students actually read it and care to comment.
ReplyDeleteInteresting enough, it is April Fools day on Wednesday.