Social Media Monitoring project part 2

In the second part of Social Media Monitoring, I will focus on using social media tools and the tools that come with The Valve Corporation to analysis the Valve itself. In this blog, we will use SWOT analysis, combined with textbooks to make some suggestions for The Valve Corporation products. If you are not sure what is The Valve Corporation please click here to navigate to the part one of this project.

Steam Statistics and @Steam_Spy
After an in-depth investigation of Valve's Steam in a while, I found that it has a lot of statistical features that might help the project. Steam has four statistical features, they are

• STEAM & GAME STATS, which can display concurrent Steam users (most recent 48 hours) and top games by current player count.
• STEAM DOWNLOAD STATS, which can show Steam global traffic map (most recent 7 days) and Steam download bandwidth used (most recent 48 hours).
• STEAM SUPPORT STATS, which can show Help Requests and Backlog (most recent 90 days) and recent help request activity.
• Steam hardware & software survey: September 2019, which demonstrate the hardware usage of the participants, it can be referenced by the hardware company.

A few years ago, Steam did not have so many statistical features, and a user on Twitter called @Steam_Spy has been providing statistical analysis to the public. In recent years, as Steam's functionality has gradually improved, the importance of @Steam_Spy has gradually declined, but it is undeniable that he is a very important source of information.

Statistic Provided by @Steam_Spy

S.W.O.T. analysis

Strength

The strength of steam is that it has been running for years, with a mature and constantly improving rating and review mechanism,  a large number of users, a mature global node network, an unimaginable number of games on sale, and a building under construction. social media.

a large number of users

 a large number of users

 A mature global node network

A mature global node network

Weaknesses
The weakness of the Valve is that it has no consoles similar to Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft. The other game companies have their own unique game consoles, such as Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox. But Steam's HTC VIVE and Steam Machine are not as successful as the other game consoles described above.

HTC VIVE V.S. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox

Steam Machine V.S. Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox

Opportunities

Steam as a digital distribution company it is too inclined to sell games. There are still many digital products in the world other than games. If Valve tries to launch more kinds of merchandise on Steam, such as music and movies, it may have a big development, become a comprehensive sales platform. But on the other hand, Valve might compete with companies like Netflix. Movies, TV shows and music are indeed a huge market, but it also represents a huge influence. The picture below shows people comparing Netflix with steam. We can see that Netflix is much higher than steam. After all, people who watch movies don't necessarily play games at the same time, but those who play games will definitely watch movies or TV shows.

Netflix V.S. Steam (in Social trends)

Steam's rating and review features also make this platform a film review or music tasting platform. The valve can open up this area to encourage ordinary people to create their own work and make a profit. Let the author decide their work should be charged or not.

It has always been important to evaluate the value of an employee within the game industry as a result of the need for the employee to present their work. If you open a block in the Steam community for job seekers, it will attract more game companies to use and rely on the Steam platform. Job seekers can place their work directly on the platform for sale and use the platform's data to prove their excellence and creativity.

Threats 
The main threat facing by Valve today is other competitors. At present, the main competitor is Epic Games. Epic's main products are Fort Night, Unreal Engine, and Epic Game Store. Unreal Engine is a famous game development tool, and Fortnite is a very popular video game. December 4, 2018, Epic Games announced its own game sales platform. To attract other independent developers and vendors to the platform and against the 30% fee of every game sold on Steam, Epic offered a 12% fee of every game sold, and if the game is developed by Unreal Engine, an additional 5% deduction will be available. Expansion utilizing acquisition of exclusive distribution rights. 
In addition, Epic expands by uses its acquisition of exclusive distribution rights: Epic will pay publishers/developers a large amount of money to buy exclusive distribution rights, making the game available only in Epic stores, or buying A few months of pre-release, let the game available on the Epic store for a few months earlier than other platforms.

Epic Games(Left) and Steam games(right)

Epic has higher strength and passion in the last month. This means that more people are discussing Epic than Steam and are willing to discuss it repeatedly. The remaining sentiment and reach are not as high as steam, but we need to know that Steam has been on the market for several years, and the Epic store is released on December 4, 2018, which makes Epic a threat.

Recommendations
I think Valve's Steam has done a great job on the groundswell. It has its own rating and review system, its own statistical system, and a social media system that will soon have its own users. I came into contact with Steam because my friends are using it. From here, I can see that the word of mouth strategy has been used successfully. Even though Steam has many advantages, I have found three areas where improvements can be made.

First, Steam should strengthen its connection with followers on social media. According to my observations, Steam's Twitter and Facebook accounts are more like a 'daily deals post machine.' It will only post information about promotions. It doesn't comment on social hotspots to attract attention like the Epic Games' CEO did. Perhaps this is because Steam is just a trading platform, and developers from all countries and races around the world may publish their work on it. If the hot comments are hot, it may cause dissatisfaction from customers, but it will increase the chances of competitors. My advice is to have their CEO or founder create a separate personal account to interact with followers.

Second, develop Steam's own social media platform. So far, Steam's social platform has come in the form of a company, and ordinary users can only follow these companies instead of core producers. So I think add a feature that can make producers stand out and interact with buyers and fans. In Chapter 6, the author mentions that one of the techniques for talking with the groundswell is to create a community. The feature I proposed can create a small community based on company and producer. In this community, only the content related to the producer or company will be discussed. Companies and producers can easily get feedback, thoughts, and ideas from the customers.

Third, establish a mutual help mechanism in the steam community(Chapter 8. helping the groundswell support itself). Sometimes, when a user solves a problem, if he finds that other users have the same problem as him, the user will have a good chance of helping other users. They are solving problems in this way much faster than the customer service department.

Example of how the groundswell support itself

Social Media Monitoring project part 1--Valve Corporation

The Valve Corporation

The Valve Corporation '(stylized as VALVᴱ) is an American video game developer, publisher, and digital distribution company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington. It is the developer of the software distribution platform Steam and the Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Left 4 Dead, and Dota series.' 

The company was founded in 1996 by former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell (left)and Mike Harrington(right). They first released their first game half-life in 1998, and Mike Harrington left the company after commercial success. In 2003, Valve released Steam as a platform for the sale of digital computer games. In 2011, Steam sold digital games that accounted for half of all digital games. In 2015, after continuous growth, Valve entered the game hardware market and established its own software system - SteamOS.


The Social Media and The Valve
The Valve Corporation is a very unusual company because we can consider itself as a social media platform. On Steam's Community Activity page, we can see that it has the ability to send images/screenshots/videos and leave a comment on them; live streaming with anyone have the account; workshops to gather and realize ideas; news that developers and retailer can use; guides that can be inserted with text, images, and videos; customer ratings and reviews. All the features above can be found on Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, Blog and etc. Although the Steam platform has numerous social media features, Valve Corporation still uses several social media platform accounts to extend its influence.


Facebook Community Page
Follower: 4.80 million  
Steam's Facebook page publishes promotional information like its Twitter homepage. But I opened the comments in the latest games and found that the main topic of people is to evaluate the game and seek customer support.





Twitter
Follower: 5.19 million 

Steam's Twitter homepage publishes promotional information like its Facebook page. But I opened the comments in the latest games and found that the main topic of people is to discuss where there are cheaper prices, funny photoshopped pictures of founder Gabe Newell, and the technical problems encountered. Technical questions are often answered by enthusiasts.




Youtube
Subscriber: 1.25 million 
Steam's Youtube homepage does not publish promotional information every day like Facebook and Twitter. Its function is to publish promotional videos of important events, new products of its own company, and new virtual reality hardware.


Linkedin
Follower: 0.15 million 
Steam's Linkedin homepage is designed to attract talent. It writes 'We make games, Steam, and hardware in the most visible position. Join US,' on Linkedin. we can see 935 employees' data and a chart. From the chart, we can know that there are 434 employees living in the United States and 26 people who studied at the University of Washington.

Steam Community
Follower: 0.20 million
As Steam's own social media platform, it can be said that 90% of the followers here are game players and game developers. The audience categories here are very simple, they have been purchased something on this platform, or have been cooperated with the platform. On this homepage, steam is still promoting its 44 products, including 31 games, 3 hardware, and 10 additional/supplement products.




The Valve Corporation and other similar companies
In recent years, many game development companies have also begun to build their own game sales platform to avoid Steam's excessive sales/promotional share. Up to 30% of sales/promotional share brings a huge user base, a mature trading mechanism, and convenient evaluation/feedback capabilities. Today, Steam is still the largest digital game seller.

Google Trends

From Google Trends we can see that Steam has been the most frequently mentioned on all platforms in the past 12 months. Each bump in the chart generally represents a big promotion, such as the obvious prominence of Ubisoft and Steam, which is a big discount and a routine summer promotion. 

Valve Corporation Sort by last hour(left) and last month(right)

After I searched The Valve Corporation using SocialMention, I got the following results. Strength is the likelihood that the brand is being discussed in social media. The sentiment is the ration of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. Passion is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about the brand will do so repeatedly. The reach is a measure of the range of influence. From the result, we can see that the Valve Corporation has a low likelihood that being discussed, a high positive mention, a high repeat talking rate, and a low influence range.

Conclusion
I think that Facebook has more mature users, while Twitter users are younger. I think we can differentiate marketing for this. Facebook can tend to promote art-like games, while Twitter promotes discounted, fast-paced games. Valve Corporation's own social media needs more features, such as allowing key positions such as major producers or creative directors to share their ideas directly with buyers, rather than talking to the entire company. Valve Corporation's word-of-mouth monolithic positive. In terms of tone, I think that Valve Corporation is a multi-commodity company, and my tone of neutrality is largely influenced by Steam. Because steam is a product to collaborate with publishers and company/studio/individual developers in various countries, the neutral tone fits this need very well.