Apple Social Media - Needs help from "new blood"!

December 7, 2016

Because Apple's Twitter account is as chatty as a ... fish, maybe Apple should hire some teenagers to show it the ropes?

2016 was the year Apple joined the rest of the world on social networks.

Earlier this year, Apple started participating in social networks by creating a Twitter account to promote the iPhone 7 - or so it thinks. Apple has also been quietly (exaggeratedly we might say) maintaining a Facebook page for months.

Apple has been maintaining music-related accounts on social networks for years, but its decision to join these networks as a company is a new one.

The two accounts above therefore show ZERO activity. Nothing. Nekra. If you visit Apple's official Twitter account you will see that they have not a single comment. Its Facebook page is also "naked" completely.

Instead, Apple uses the accounts to buy ads for its latest products such as the iPhone 7, MacBook Pro and Apple Watch. These types of posts are considered "dark social," meaning Apple is taking advantage of the advertising tools to promote posts that are not visible on the main accounts.

This kind of approach resulted in the promoted tweets that revealed the iPhone 7 just before its official unveiling. Here's an ad we saw last week:

This kind of approach, while reasonable, seems to show a complete ignorance of the power of social media and how it works. The issue here is authenticity.

It's not that Apple doesn't have something to share on social networks.

Shortly before the iPhone 7 launch, some people thought that Apple was going to present the whole event live on Twitter. Unfortunately, it didn't and all it succeeded in doing was spoiling the (whatever) surprise (what) was left to be shown about its new products.

There's a lot that Apple can share on social networks, beyond simply advertising its products. As more and more people use its products, it would be a wonderful opportunity for the company to communicate and bond with its customers.

They may all buy a new Apple device every 2-3 years, but they live with it - and by extension Apple - every day.

Here's an example: There was a big spamming problem on Apple's calendar recently. Chinese spammers discovered that if they sent invitations via iCloud to non-existent events, they could bypass the anti-spam filters and thus could send ads for their products to users.

If you look on Apple's website, it doesn't even mention the problem. But the company actually apologized for the problem and said they were preparing a fix - but all on an Apple fan site!

But there are millions of customers of the company who don't sit around looking through the various blogs and forums like maniacs. And so they probably didn't hear about Apple's apology, nor that a fix is in the works.
Wouldn't this be a great opportunity for Facebook-Twitter updates?

Similarly, Apple has a Twitter account to support users' problems. However, the said account remained "deafeningly" silent regarding the aforementioned event.

And so was the problem of iPhones suddenly turning off due to a bug, or the "touchscreen disease" that had recently appeared on the iPhone 6. Any reports were only buried on Apple's official website.

There's certainly a reason Apple doesn't do well with social networks. It's not their style! Big companies rarely bother with them. The various "trolls" and people generally hostile to them could spoil their communication efforts, as they recently did with Apple's profile picture.

And yet, social networks with an audience of millions can end up in strange situations. Look what happened to Mark Zuckerberg's page.

But when users contact well-known writers after they write articles about Apple and the problems with its products, one of their most common complaints is that they wish Apple would communicate with them via social media, instead of getting the news here and there.

Apple already has the platform to stay in touch with its customers. It just needs to start "telling" and sharing its news.

It's a lie. Someone needs to tell Tim Cook and his close associates that dressing like a teenager doesn't necessarily make you a teenager. In fact, it sometimes looks like a fish out of water.

So maybe hire some real young people who actually know the dynamics of social media and how to use it properly?

from Elichord