Continuous Observation
In the initial two weeks of monitoring Magebus, I found out that campaigns and events had great effect on people's attention to a brand or a company. The question is, however, how can change these temporary attention into a long term interest and relationship. Finding out the answer to this question is my goal of my next two weeks observation.In last two weeks, I contiued monitoring the social media use of Megabus, including FaceBook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube, by using the social media monitoring resoures online, such as social mention, icerocket, google insights, edc. Nothing changed, low passion, low reach ,low strength until the assulting of Hurricane Sandy, the people's attention of Megabus extremly increased. However, the attention went away with the leaving of the hurricane.
Oct.16th Oct.29th Nov.6th
Clearly, Hurricane Sandy was a big chance to Megabus to talk to its customers when many trips had been canceled in east coast. Here is a question: how can keep the passion of customers?
Let's go back to look at Megabus's Facebook.
Undeniable, Megabus took some actions to talk with its customers Facebook about cancellation of trips and updated very quickly during Oct.28th to Nov.2th, setting the links to its official webpage which let people check the cancellation information. However, the same problems coming again. It was just an announcement, without any respond to people's feedback, no matter complaints or appreciation.
I made a statistic, Megabus uploaded 23 posts informing people to check cancellations during Oct.28th to Nov.2th until all the routines were recovered to operate. And there were 103 comments, 233 likes and 6shares about those posts. The majortiy of people said "thanks" for their annoucement, while very rare people argued about cancellations. No feedbacks and no conversation. In my opinion, big event is chance to a company to draw people's attention. Also, it is a good opportunity to communicate with your customers, helping them solve their peoblems or fix your problems. Nevertheless, Megabus missed it, which casued the extremely decrease of people's attention after the hurricane.
Next, we take a look at Twitter of Megabus. Last time, I said Megabus has two Twitter accounts, @Megabus and @Megabushelp. The former one is used for post events and topics online, while the latter one is to help customers who meet problems and answer their questions.
Oct.24th
Nov.8th
We can see that the followers' number of Megabushelp is very small, only 1,574 people until today, and increasing speed is so slow that only added 83 people in half a month, which means that the reach of @Megabushelp is very low. The same situation occurs to @Megabus. There are only more 373 people following @Megabus in entire one month.
Oct.9th
Nov.8th
Obviously, there is something wrong with Megabus's Twitter acounts. Seldom people participate in it. From my points of view, it is unnecessay to open an independent help account, which makes followers of Megabus seperately and makes people's attention seperately.What' more, Megabus's Tumblr, which associate with Twitter, seems much more useless than other social media Megabus use.
Conclusion
Monitoring can help us understand the impact and effect of social media to a brand, a company, or a campaign in their development process. During the nearly two month observation and monitoring of Megabus, by tracking its performance on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTuBe, I find some problems which brings the results that people are losing their interest of talking about Megabus. There are the following problems. First, Megabus is so inactively engaged in participating the conversation with people online. Megabus almost never response to people's comments and feedbacks about its events, which causes the declining number of people talking about it. Second, it is likely that Twitter has not been utilized well so that people have no enough attention on it. Third, some useless or inappropriate social media tools, such as Tumblr, inhibits and prevents Megabus from approaching its customers well.
Recommendation
In order to solve the problems in Megabus's utility of social media I mentioned below, I consider some recommendations described in following paragraphs.
First, I believe that it will be better to Megabus if it takes part in the conversation with people on Facebook and Twitter more frequently, actively and energetically, talking about people's feelings, discussing their suggestions, sharing their experiences. Megabus should make good use of feedbacks from people and customers no matter positive or negative, to find their problems, try to fix it and let people know, rather than just listen to people' s voice without any reaction. If this situation keeps going for a longer time, there will be less and less people talking about Megabus so that those shortages and problems of Megabus cannot be fully exposed and services provided by Megaus will not be improved which causes its decrease of customers.
Second, I highly recommend that Megabus combine its two Twitter accounts, @Megabus and @Megabushelp, into an integral one, which can catch people's focus on all the information provided by Megabus., including news, campaigns, discussion, and problem solving. As we can see from the website, the number of @Megabushelp's follower is very small so that impact of communicating with people is limited. Meanwhile, the small group of people are separated from the people who follow @Megabus, which means that people who just want to get help will miss the information and campaign posted on @Megabus, also the @Megabus followers will have no idea about how Megabus helping people solve their problems. It's totally necessary to let people know Megabus are fixing problems and improving their services.
Third, it comes to Tumblr. In my opinion, it is a wise decision to cancel Megabus's expenses on its Tumblr account, for the reason that rare people are noticing it, and which will waste a lot of time, energy and money with no that meaningful result by running the account. Tumblr has the same function as Facebook, posting blogs and photos, while apparently, Tumblr's impact is much weaker than Facebook. Therefore, there is no need to sustain a Tumblr account due to its uselessness to energize people. Instead, Megabus should put much more attention to flourish and active its Facebook and Twitter accounts which are much popular in groundswell than Tumblr.
Fourth, self-made videos from customers are beneficial resources for Megabus to improve its reputation and impact. As we all know, people are used to highly trust what other people say rather than believe in the words or advertisement from the company or brand. In the two-months monitoring process, there were only 6 videos produced by Megabus before and no anything new. It probably is a wise choice to review those self-made videos from customers uploaded onto YouTuBe, choose something interesting and post them on Facebook, or link them on Twitter. In this way, Megabus not only can enrich its content on Facebook, but also can attract people's attention without spending a lot of money on producing videos by its own.
Finally, Megabus should improve the transparency of its tickets' prices by telling people when and which route's ticket just cost one dollar,which is Megabus famous for. It is clearly that a large number of Megabus's target audiences is college students who want to save money when they travel. Megabus had better to upload a board with information about price of tickets more frequently on Facebook or Twitter, and help them achieve their goals. Maybe some people will have a question here, like is it harmful to the company making money. I think the answer is no. On the other side, the action I recommend will help Megabus increase its credit and humility. Undoubtedly, everyday seats and buses are limited so that the number of people who get cheapest tickets is limited. All the people know this. However, if Megabus show the price list on Facebook, it will definitely help people make decisions and solidify the trust between Megabus and its customers. What's more, Megabus can do much better than just announce its customers. Megabus can contact with its customers who visit Megabus's website and search for a trip, sending email to the person when the ticket's price drop or increase. This is what Hotwire does, which is very useful to build a trustworthy relationship with customers.
