Social Media Monitoring Project Part 2
Review on Social Media Monitor Project Part 1
In the first part of our mid-term project, we talked about Overwatch's Lunar New Year Campaign. To catch up the hotspot of Lunar New Year, Overwatch updated the game in many aspects like their maps, skins, and rewards. At the same time, they also led discussions on social media (Facebook and Twitter) about the game. To evaluate the campaign, we used Google Trends and Social Mention and got the data as follows.
From the data, we can learn that Overwatch successfully created a trend on social media after they launched the campaign. At the same time, the campaign brought Overwatch both positive and negative feedbacks. But in general, positive ones were over negative ones.
Data Tracking
Google Trends:
After reviewing the part 1, let's have a look at what happened to Overwatch after the campaign ended. As you can see in the following picture, in last month, the trend of Overwatch on web search gradually became smooth after the campaign. Then on February 28th and March 1st, there were two peaks, and the peaks showed up because of the game's updates.
Social Mention:
The data shows that Overwatch's score of strength, sentiment, and reach all goes up and the score of passion goes down after the campaign. It indicates that after the campaign ended, more and more people discussed Overwatch on social media and the content was mainly positive. Based on the timeline, we may say that these positive signs could be the result of Overwatch's Lunar New Year campaign.
Target Audience:
As a game that owns players from various countries, usually, Overwatch's target audience should be game players in the worldwide range. But this time, Overwatch's target audience is more specific. As we have mentioned in part 1, Lunar New Year is only celebrated in Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and Korea. For people who are from western countries, they may not know the festival much as they do not celebrate in their culture. Thus, although the campaign was published to all the game players all over the world, essentially, it was designed to target at the Asian players.
The strategy has both positive side and negative side. The positive one is that Asian countries have a large growing game player base. For Overwatch, it is a great chance to enlarge the market. If Overwatch can keep the Asian players they have now and try to attract more Asian players, they will be able to make more money. However, the strategy also has a negative side. Since the festival is only celebrated in Asian culture, the campaign hardly can resonate with players who are from western countries. Although they can engage in the event, they might not be able to have fun as Asian players did.
Analysis
Strength
1. Overwatch knows the importance of groundswell. As a game company, it is significant to listen to the groundswell as player's game experience is the most import thing.
2. Overwatch knows how to embrace the groundswell. During the campaign of Lunar New Year, we can see that they know how to interact with the followers. For example, they frequently reply followers' comments. And they use a normal cute tone rather than official tone to communicate with the followers.
Weakness
1. Sometimes Overwatch is not good at select topics on social media. In the Lunar New Year Campaign, we can see that some topics they chose on Twitter were very confusing. Many players did not understand the meaning of starting such a discussion topic.
2. Players are from different cultural backgrounds. Again, take the Lunar New Year campaign as an example, Asian players liked it as they know the festival very well. At the same time, players in western countries might suffer the low level of engagement as they are not familiar with the festival.
Opportunities
1. A large base of game players. As we mentioned in part 1, Overwatch has a large number of followers on social media. If they start a campaign with a right topic, there is a great chance for them to get much attention from people on social media.
2. Creative followers. Game players usually are very creative, and they would like to create various works for the characters they love, such as painting, writing articles, and making action figures. If Overwatch can provide a platform for players to show their talented skills that may be helpful to their campaign.
Threats
1. Bugs and game cheating is killing the game. One of the biggest threats Overwatch faces is that they cannot fix the game bugs or punish the cheating players in time.
2. The life period of a game is very short. If Overwatch cannot provide players more interesting functions or new ways of playing, players will soon lose their interests in the game. The player base can quickly shrink in a short time. As a result, Overwatch may be replaced by other games very soon.
Goals and Suggestions
Based on the data and analysis, I think Overwatch is good at campaigns and communicating with the groundswell, but there is still some room for them to improve.
1. The priority goal: try to keep the player base they have now
As we have mentioned above, Overwatch is facing the threat of losing players because of bugs and the appearance of new games. Thus, I think the priority mission for Overwatch should tightly seize the players they have now. Then they can consider how to attract more players.
2. Clarify the target audience
When we start a campaign on social media, the first thing we need to do is to know who are our audiences. Since Overwatch has players from various cultural backgrounds, they may choose to do campaigns separately in different countries or regions.
Also, people play games for various reasons. Some people want to get the instant excitement of winning and beating others; some people enjoy exploring the storyline with game characters; some people simply want to kill time. Overwatch is a game that can provide players instant excitement. Thus, next time when they do a campaign on social media they can try to attract more players who want to get instant excitement through games.
3. Listen to the groundswell and learn from them
In the textbook Groundswell, Li and Bernoff argued that companies should include their fans and followers into the process of developing new products as they will bring companies many great thoughts and ideas. In the case of Overwatch, they can ask the players about what they can do to improve the game experience.
4. Always put players in the first place
We should always remember that social media should serve for the relationship between companies and customers. For a game company, the relationship between players and the company is especially important. Thus, I would suggest that Overwatch should not only take social media as a place where they can do the campaign but also try to listen to the opinions and suggestions from the groundswell.
In the first part of our mid-term project, we talked about Overwatch's Lunar New Year Campaign. To catch up the hotspot of Lunar New Year, Overwatch updated the game in many aspects like their maps, skins, and rewards. At the same time, they also led discussions on social media (Facebook and Twitter) about the game. To evaluate the campaign, we used Google Trends and Social Mention and got the data as follows.
From the data, we can learn that Overwatch successfully created a trend on social media after they launched the campaign. At the same time, the campaign brought Overwatch both positive and negative feedbacks. But in general, positive ones were over negative ones.
Data Tracking
Google Trends:
After reviewing the part 1, let's have a look at what happened to Overwatch after the campaign ended. As you can see in the following picture, in last month, the trend of Overwatch on web search gradually became smooth after the campaign. Then on February 28th and March 1st, there were two peaks, and the peaks showed up because of the game's updates.
Social Mention:
The data shows that Overwatch's score of strength, sentiment, and reach all goes up and the score of passion goes down after the campaign. It indicates that after the campaign ended, more and more people discussed Overwatch on social media and the content was mainly positive. Based on the timeline, we may say that these positive signs could be the result of Overwatch's Lunar New Year campaign.
Target Audience:
As a game that owns players from various countries, usually, Overwatch's target audience should be game players in the worldwide range. But this time, Overwatch's target audience is more specific. As we have mentioned in part 1, Lunar New Year is only celebrated in Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and Korea. For people who are from western countries, they may not know the festival much as they do not celebrate in their culture. Thus, although the campaign was published to all the game players all over the world, essentially, it was designed to target at the Asian players.
The strategy has both positive side and negative side. The positive one is that Asian countries have a large growing game player base. For Overwatch, it is a great chance to enlarge the market. If Overwatch can keep the Asian players they have now and try to attract more Asian players, they will be able to make more money. However, the strategy also has a negative side. Since the festival is only celebrated in Asian culture, the campaign hardly can resonate with players who are from western countries. Although they can engage in the event, they might not be able to have fun as Asian players did.
Analysis
Strength
1. Overwatch knows the importance of groundswell. As a game company, it is significant to listen to the groundswell as player's game experience is the most import thing.
2. Overwatch knows how to embrace the groundswell. During the campaign of Lunar New Year, we can see that they know how to interact with the followers. For example, they frequently reply followers' comments. And they use a normal cute tone rather than official tone to communicate with the followers.
Weakness
1. Sometimes Overwatch is not good at select topics on social media. In the Lunar New Year Campaign, we can see that some topics they chose on Twitter were very confusing. Many players did not understand the meaning of starting such a discussion topic.
2. Players are from different cultural backgrounds. Again, take the Lunar New Year campaign as an example, Asian players liked it as they know the festival very well. At the same time, players in western countries might suffer the low level of engagement as they are not familiar with the festival.
Opportunities
1. A large base of game players. As we mentioned in part 1, Overwatch has a large number of followers on social media. If they start a campaign with a right topic, there is a great chance for them to get much attention from people on social media.
2. Creative followers. Game players usually are very creative, and they would like to create various works for the characters they love, such as painting, writing articles, and making action figures. If Overwatch can provide a platform for players to show their talented skills that may be helpful to their campaign.
Threats
1. Bugs and game cheating is killing the game. One of the biggest threats Overwatch faces is that they cannot fix the game bugs or punish the cheating players in time.
2. The life period of a game is very short. If Overwatch cannot provide players more interesting functions or new ways of playing, players will soon lose their interests in the game. The player base can quickly shrink in a short time. As a result, Overwatch may be replaced by other games very soon.
Goals and Suggestions
Based on the data and analysis, I think Overwatch is good at campaigns and communicating with the groundswell, but there is still some room for them to improve.
1. The priority goal: try to keep the player base they have now
As we have mentioned above, Overwatch is facing the threat of losing players because of bugs and the appearance of new games. Thus, I think the priority mission for Overwatch should tightly seize the players they have now. Then they can consider how to attract more players.
2. Clarify the target audience
When we start a campaign on social media, the first thing we need to do is to know who are our audiences. Since Overwatch has players from various cultural backgrounds, they may choose to do campaigns separately in different countries or regions.
Also, people play games for various reasons. Some people want to get the instant excitement of winning and beating others; some people enjoy exploring the storyline with game characters; some people simply want to kill time. Overwatch is a game that can provide players instant excitement. Thus, next time when they do a campaign on social media they can try to attract more players who want to get instant excitement through games.
3. Listen to the groundswell and learn from them
In the textbook Groundswell, Li and Bernoff argued that companies should include their fans and followers into the process of developing new products as they will bring companies many great thoughts and ideas. In the case of Overwatch, they can ask the players about what they can do to improve the game experience.
4. Always put players in the first place
We should always remember that social media should serve for the relationship between companies and customers. For a game company, the relationship between players and the company is especially important. Thus, I would suggest that Overwatch should not only take social media as a place where they can do the campaign but also try to listen to the opinions and suggestions from the groundswell.
I really like your topic Overwatch's Lunar New Year Campaign. I think you deep much work for this one such as the research, the chart and the context, all the things great for me.
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