About Us:
AT FurniWorld, Our motivation is to sell the best quality furniture for reasonable prices. In addition to our own collection, through the creation of a united community, our users can upload photos and resell their furniture through our website.
But what we are about is more than furniture. We know that in finding and building furniture, our users are finding and building a home. That is why the FurniWorld community consists not only of the purchase and sale of furniture, but also the sharing of ideas, advice and information around home, living and lifestyle.
Outlined Below are the Key Aspects of our social media strategy, which has the aim of enhancing this community, both for the selling of furniture and the sharing of living and lifestyle ideas, by highlighting elements of participation, openness and networking.
Building Blocks in Balance:
As per the work of Kietzmann, J.H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I.P., & Silvestre, (2011) we have reflected on the functional building blocks that will be valued most by our users, in order to achieve a balance between them and make our interaction with social media as effective as possible. The blocks we have identified as important are: sharing, presence, reputation, groups
A 'Social Business':
Social Media is more than just a marketing tool at FurniWorld. For us, it has multiple touch-points including customer service, sales, human resource management and R&D. Through this, we enable our employees and users to have a more open and collaborative relationship with the outside world.
An Online Community:
FurniWorld is virtual community whose members interact with each other online, crossing geographical and political boundaries with the aim of dealing furniture and sharing ideas on how to turn their house into a home. Through various means, including FurniWorld's online forum, online group discussion can occur around these specific topics and interests.
Pictures, Pictures, Pictures!
We focus on pictures. The pictures provided on our website, are not only of the pieces individually, but also pictures of the pieces in different settings. Though that we believe that shoppers will have a better view of our pieces, and how they can use them in their homes which will help in their decision making process.
Aside from pictures, we also preview 360 videos of the furniture sets, which features their initial designs and descriptions. We believe videos are a good way to attract shoppers who prefer viewing products rather then reading about them, in videos we can describe the furniture while showing them.
We Involve the Shoppers:
Every day, we have a poll on our website, in which shoppers would vote A or B, which would each feature a piece of furniture. Every week we have a different theme, in which the furniture in the polls are chosen based upon it. For instance, if the theme is ancient than the furniture will be antique and ancient.
Addtionally, we use microblogging and folksonomy tools such as Twitter (with our own hashtags) to get the words out there about our work, products and projects: hashtags linked to our website include #FurniWorld, #FurniHappy and #MakeAHouseAHome. There are monthly competitions and prizes for social media users, as an incentive to post pictures and spread the word about FurniWorld. Finally, by posting pictures of their furniture on social media and tagging their friends, users can play a role in our work reaching their contact circles.
We are open for feedback and participation through voting, comments and the sharing of information. We value participation highly, including any form of contributions, comments and feedback from every interested person in order to obtain their views and thoughts.
Our Voice Reaches You!
As previously mentioned, FurniWorld is about more than just selling furniture. To promote our other ideas and values, we have also launched a blog that deals with everything 'home and happiness'. FurniWorld's blog is essentially user-run, although edited and monitored by our Social Media Director. Users write short entries or articles on whichever subject they want within the scope of FurniWorld's interests. The blog include a comments section which allows readers to leave comments about what they have been reading.
In line with the ideas above, every Sunday morning, when people are off work and take time to drink their coffee we feature a podcast on our website at 10:00am. The podcast features talks about new trends, gives advice on color coordination, and sometimes we have celebrity speakers that give their review about our furniture!
In signing up to the FurniWorld community, users have the option to be automatically updated when there are new forum discussions/ blog posts/ podcasts/ competitions/ etc. through the use of RSS.