Nintendo's Social Media Efforts for Wii U

Nintendo recently announced their next generation gaming console to compete with Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox360. However, how are their efforts in marketing their new Wii U gaming console? It turned out not only is Nintendo’s new product on Nintendo’s website, but Nintendo is utilizing social media to promote the product in hopes to connect with existing fans and potential customers.

One of the social media outlets is the creation of a Facebook account just on the product itself at http://www.facebook.com/WiiU. Through this method, it helps emphasize and shines a brighter light at its products and focuses on product awareness of the new gaming console and its associated games. Through this outlet, Nintendo can announce any news and updates specific to the products the customer should be interested in, including information from product price to technical specifications and cool features it offers. The site contains weblinks to game developer interviews, media interviews, and E3, which are very popular and interesting for gaming consumers. The site attempts to draw the potential consumers’ attention by frequent updates as the launch day draws near. In addition, the company also utilizes the site to announce new games and promote to pre-order available games that can be used on the Wii U. The facebook website has 651,275 likes and 26,977 comments as of 10/22/2012. The number is continuously growing.

Obviously, the company’s objective is to promote its new products. Also the company can get closer to the future consumers and communicate with them, so the consumers can learn the products better and that could lead to better sales. In my opinion, it is very smart move to utilize social media website for its marketing purposes. The rapid growing number of “Likes” and the long thread on each post shows that the site met the company’s goals. The social media is very powerful marketing tool for the company. Since the products have not been launched yet, success of the weblog can be measured from the number of likes and the people talking about the blog as shown below. After all, the more people are aware of the product, the more likely the product will could be sold.