Working at a Fortune 500 tech company, you may think we have our mobile and desktop layouts figured out for optimal viewing experience. Well, like many, we don’t! This has impacted the number of eyes we get on our blogs, announcements, PR, and more. Our blog is where customers can visit to become more updated with all the latest news and information about our company. So where is the problem, you may ask? Well, the blog is only viewable on a desktop, and it is not mobile-friendly at all. 

Let’s back up; I work as a product marketing manager for a company acquired by a huge entity in the utility industry. As someone new working in the industry, I had a lot to learn and one of those things was that blogs and other releases are a huge focus for us. We use these blogs to push out our messaging, success, and latest announcements to customers on LinkedIn. Traditionally, companies may push our announcements on social channels, via email, or in conferences, but the utility industry is very different. We are only active on LinkedIn and rely on word of mouth from happy customers compared to being able to send out announcements, social blasts, etc. 

Despite the focus on providing blog-based content, my company has been facing the problem that when the blogs are uploaded, they do not appear to be easily readable on mobile devices. We have seen a few issues, including that the text gets overlapped on each other, formats are inconsistent throughout the blog, and the zoom function is not working. Although these issues do not happen on all blogs uploaded, they are happening enough that we have gotten complaints from customers, and the blogs become unreadable, which we will know will push customers to stop reviewing our content since they will assume it does not work/can be viewed. 

An additional note is that our organization has recently faced layoffs, budget constraints, and other roadblocks that have made quality assurance a bit more complicated. Despite these roadblocks, we continue to focus on blog production and making sure we are pushing the best content possible. But after the content is done and shared to a platform that does not allow users to view it properly unless, on a particular device, it almost seems to be a waste of time until this problem is resolved. 

We touched on this in class but also, as a younger individual, I have the experience that proves that more people are now using their phones as a research resource rather than their traditional computers. I even researched this topic further to prove my point to my managers that we need to look into how we can begin to tackle this issue. Given our budget issues, I understand that this may be difficult, but it must be a priority if we hope to give customers a place to reference our success. 

Questions & comments are welcome. I would love to hear how you would go about showing managers and VPs the importance of this topic.

Sources

1. https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/mobile-desktop-internet-usage-statistics 
2. https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/mobile-vs-desktop-reading-elearning

As someone who works in marketing, understanding which platforms are the best to post on is seemingly an easy task. However, it becomes a much more complex task when there are so many different platforms to choose from and understand which has the best outreach for your specific audience. Currently, I work at a large technology corporation that is also invested in various markets, including food & beverage, healthcare, & utilities. I work in the public utility pillar, and with that come many industry veterans who have a vast understanding of the market. While this is great for understanding how products work and our target customers, it challenges our social strategy since social marketing is changing daily. 

As the youngest person in the office and someone with a broad understanding of social media marketing and its benefits, I have been fighting for more social media opportunities. Currently, we are only using LinkedIn as our social media outreach resource. I have been gathering information and putting together a case for why introducing more channels would be beneficial.

So how does this tie into class? Good question; after discussing similar topics in class and completing the Social Media Marketing Foundations LinkedIn learning, I downloaded the overview sheet and used that to discuss the benefits of introducing Instagram and Facebook accounts to increase our customer traffic. 

My company right now has LinkedIn and Twitter that provides VERY little engagement from current and potential customers, which is why I think we need to search across other channels. My argument for introducing Instagram and Facebook came after understanding how that ties in with our current marketing and target audience. Our audience that we are trying to meet and gain buy-in from is utility companies who are searching for a cloud platform to condense services & promote savings. With the target market, many of the decision makers we face are older individuals who may not be on the latest platforms but are on the “easy” to understand ones and search for information on them. 

While many of my colleagues have argued that introducing a Facebook account would not be the best move, I disagree. With the age range of our target audience, Facebook fits perfectly, as well as the obvious fact that nearly everyone, regardless of age, has a Facebook. The same can not be said for Tik Tok, Twitter, & Snapchat. 

Instagram and Facebook provide a low-cost way to offer more engagement among customers since we can post our win stories, blogs, and more on those channels as regular or sponsored posts. The low-cost targeted AD option also raises green flags since we could target those who have looked up utility providers or are listed on their profile as working at a utility. Additionally, given the size of both platforms, I think we would be reaching a much larger audience than we currently are. 

Overall, I believe introducing these two platforms would provide more engagement and insights into our customer base and generate more leads. Given our primary focus right now on generating new pipeline and our low budget, I think introducing these platforms will help us see real results at a low cost.

1. So, what do you think would be the best platform for utility marketing?
2. Would you want to follow your utility provider on socials? Why or why not?

Referenced Resource: Social Media Marketing Foundations: The Pros and Cons of Each Social Network

It is safe to assume that all of us are familiar with Tik-Tok by now. Whether you love or hate the app, it is everywhere. As the app grows, we see it is being used more for marketing purposes and pushing our products to consumers. But before the user can be influenced, we need to take a step back and look at the design of Tik-Tok and if the swipe-up design is innovative or has been seen before.

If you are one of the few unfamiliar with Tik Tok, it is an app available on all smartphones. Users download the app and can make short videos of them doing anything – dancing, cooking, giving advice, or even pranking people. This concept is not new; we saw the rise of short-form videos take off in 2014 with the rise of Vine, an almost identical platform that saw short-term success. Vine’s success and downfall bring into question whether Tik Tok will see the same fate?
I think a significant factor is looking deeper into the user experience of the two and understanding why so many people love Tik Tok.

Tik Toks user experience incorporates aspects of other popular apps such as Instagram, Vine, and Snapchat in a user-friendly and intuitive. Upon opening the app, you will see a plus sign at the bottom of the screen, which most users know means to add or create something. The user can create and edit their short video when the button is clicked. Users can also add filters, a caption, and hashtags to gain traction on their videos, similar to the Instagrams algorithm.
When it comes to the primary function of watching user videos, users can swipe up or down to see new or previous videos. When a video is seen and liked, a user can easily double tap the screen to “like” or heart the video. This process also feeds into the algorithm and will bring up more videos similar to those that the user likes. The concept of swiping and liking posts is not new. We have seen this in some of the most popular apps, such as Instagram, Tinder, and Twitter. However, Tik Tok is different; they have made the user feel they are in an endless scroll where there will never be an end. Compared to other apps such as Instagram, the user generally gets to a point where they had scrolled back far enough to see the first photo they saw when they last logged in.

Additionally, Tik Tok recently changed the explore tab to a friends tab where users can now see what their friends are posting instead of curated videos that Tik Tok believes they will enjoy. Users can use the search bar at the top of the page on the friend’s tab to search for hashtags, other users, or anything else. I think this new tab is not only intuitive but beneficial for those who want to see what their friends are up to. This tab is very similar to Instagram since it only features the people you have decided to follow instead of random people.

With all this in mind, we need to review our initial question: is the design redundant? I believe no. I think that while Tik Tok undoubtedly took significant aspects of other apps, such as the swiping features and double tapping to like, the platform did not steal color schemes, explore page format, or share video functions from similar apps. Furthermore, I believe that every good concept at some point is taken and adapted to become even more successful, and in the case of Tik Tok came in when the market was hot, and users knew what they did and did not want.

What do you think? Did Tok Tok steal their user experience design(s)?