Questions related to presentation

I am so glad to hear various and impressive discussion from my classmates and I one question from Ning An(Is there any problems in sample selection part?), a combined question from Marianna Breytman and Daniel Ahn(Can you elaborate on how you would improve MOOC consumer engagement through social media? Would be interested in hearing your ideas and specifics! What kind of research studies would you conduct if you wanted to apply this theory to MOOCs?).

Question 1: Engage more users into MOOC through social media ways.

After analyzing the article of “Creative strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement”, I find a similarity between the consumer engagement and user engagement of MOOC system. In essence, MOOC is online educational course products aim to have a broader audience. The aim to spread it to a larger extent of the audience is the same with the goal of the brand to promote products. In this Case, both message strategies, sales promotion, and user-generated content can find a position or counterpart in the promotion of MOOC.

1）Set up social media accounts and engage more users through frequent online social media messages.

User-image appeals and emotional appeals are important elements for users to get consensus with brands. It is the same with MOOCs. People would be easily encouraged by the positive self-image provided by advertisement. Cosmetics persuade woman by potential beautiful appearance, MOOCs may persuade users by potential bright future or just positive hard-working self-image online.  Frequent posts on social networks related to user- image would attract the attention of users. Experiential appeals such as trial courses may also contribute to better engagement.

2）Hold online activities as incentives

Contests and rewards can be viewed as powerful incentives for users. It is possible for MOOCs to develop quiz competitions, contests of different topics that users may apply their knowledge learned by online courses.

3）Set up online community to promote interactions
The lack of interaction and supervision is a large disadvantage of online MOOCs compared with some off-line classes. Online participation and discussion could be a very useful strategy to help users hold on to the courses and study for a longer period time. Also, the MOOC platform can engage a few experts into groups of each course to help them resolve problems they encountered in the studying process.

Question2: Is there any sample selection restriction?

The article “Creative strategies in Social Media Marketing: An Exploratory Study of Branded Social Content and Consumer Engagement” only chose social media content of 28 top brands out of the lists that identified the brands performing the best in social media channels and the list of winners in Forrester’s Groundswell Awards program. The sample selection is restrictive.

Furthermore, the selected media content is from June 2010 to August 2010 naturally exclude important time periods of top brands like changing seasons and fashion week. That means some important online social media activities may be neglected.

Besides, this article only focuses on top brands that already have stable audience off line. The influence of brand itself may exert large influence on social media activities. Paying attention to online activities of brands that are not so famous may be more intentional and necessary.

Question 3: Is it a more efficient way to promote online educational courses like MOOCs as products?

From the thought-provoking questions from classmates, I start to think about the essence of educational courses in digital eras. How should we treat these new form courses? As a commercial product or open source? How can we define the meaning of “Open”?

In reality, education is viewed as an important part of society welfare for a long time. However, in consumerism era, diverse courses that fit in different needs have been developed. For instance, MOOCs provide an opportunity for adults to learn in a flexible way. Meanwhile, online courses dedicated to education for managers of corporation like Execonline have also been developed. Take the functions of these courses into consideration, we may conclude that they have some commercial elements.

In this way, more marketing and business skills could be used in education field and it is a chance to improve both quality and ways of sharing of MOOCs. Enlightened by potential benefits, businessman will focus on instructional videos in a more appealing way, in order to get a higher retention rate of new users. Product team would focus more on content of products. Meanwhile, adds-on service of courses is also highlighted. Differentiated strategies require MOOCs to hire assistants to help students, making up for the lack of supervision for online learning.

To sum up, online educational courses can be viewed as products and it’s appropriate to promote them in a commercial way.