Social Listening Apple

 When you think of the smart phone, the first company that likely comes to mind is Apple. People have always appreciated Apple for its what it makes (iPhones, iPads, ect.) but also the driving force behind what they do (innovation, pushing boundaries). My family has used Apple products for a while, so I decided to see the opinions of the general public matched my own. 

Apple's value proposition seems to center around making a unique experience for their consumer. They do not want to be just another smartphone company that offers some cool features. They want to make something with a unique and different design that is always pushing the limits of current technology. 

I decided to check out Instagram to see what Apple is promoting. Most of Apple's posts recently have been about the iPhone 15, specifically its camera.  There were mixed responses concerning the camera. Bound_Mexico said "Best brand and products ever! Thanks!" This one is pretty similar to how I feel about Apple products. Another user called coldscissors358 said "Apple really getting into the Social Media pace." This makes it sould like Apple has not always been a big player in social media, which surprised me. On the other side, there were people like inadequate_fringe who said "As (an) Apple user, android does better." I found this comment unique because most of the negative comments were from Android users, but this one had more credibility to me because it supposedly came from an Apple user. Overall It did not look like Apple really responded to any of the comments on there posts. They mostly just posted and left people to talk about the posts themselves without any interaction from Apple. (All the screenshots are located at the bottom of the post).

A lot of Apple's posts had #ShotoniPhone or some variation on their posts. It seems like Apple is trying to show that they have a better camera than other smartphones. As I mentioned before, they seem to be having mixed responses. It looks like they are working with some outside people who do photography, and those people are using an iPhone to take the pictures that Apple is using. This seems like a win-win for both parties. Apple gets some interesting photos to post showing of there new camera. On the photographers' side, I would imagine Apple pays these people for this content. Plus, Apple always credits the person who took the pictures, which would get the photographers' name out there and could increase their social media reach. 

I there were a few picture that grabbed my attention as being remarkable. There was one video showing a spider making what looked like a silk ball to protect its eggs. The video showed the silk coming out of the spider and the spider making it into a ball. Another one I noticed was a group of photos and pictures of animals disguised in a rainforest. I thought it was really cool how certain animals are able to change their appearance so much that it is nearly impossible to see them. 

Something that I think Apple could do better would be to engage with the comments on their posts more. There are many large companies that employ people who's job it is to look at social media and engage with the community there. I noticed there were some people in the comments that were mentioning some issues they were having with their Apple products. This could have been a great opportunity to reach out to their customer and offer some tips to try to fix a problem, or prevent the problem from happening in the future.

Another thing that I would change if I was the brand manager would be to diversify the products that I was promoting. It seemed like every post was about the iPhone 15, but there are tons of other Apple products that would benefit from some increased promotion. Products like computers, smartwatches, tablets and more could be much better marketed by Apple. All it would take would be a small investment of time and resources. 

Something I gathered while researching for this post was that Apple is not as active on social media, particularly Instagram, as I would have expected. You would think that a company that makes products tailored for social media would have a bigger presence there. Sure they post pretty regularly, but it seemed to be all focused on the camera of the iPhone 15 and not much else.