Sunday, December 4, 2011

Homework 12

http://www.medianewsline.com/news/165/ARTICLE/8609/2011-12-02.html

This article talks about the measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing and also about not just using the typical sites like facebook and twitter, but also using other sites too such as blogs geared towards certain interests. This also brings up a great point that measuring the effectiveness shouldn’t just be instant results but also the long term outcomes that can come from the marketing and what will be the most effective way to do it.

http://mashable.com/2011/11/15/social-media-roi-measure/

This article goes more in depth then the first article and discusses three thoughts on how to approach the subject of measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing. These three thoughts are social media is the vehicle not the destination, listen and apply learnings to every department and performance metrics are media agnostic. This article discusses a great point that it’s not just being on twitter or facebook that’s important but actually posting and keeping up with everything that matters. Effectiveness is also discussed, such as if you notice people are responding more to one topic then another, then post less of the unpopular subject. There is a also a great reference to the fact that measuring social media effectiveness is kind of like measuring the effectiveness of a business card. Many people can have them but it’s whether or not they use them that matters. Just like you can have 5000 friends on facebook but if only 2 friends actually read what you have to say it’s not very effective.

http://www.utalkmarketing.com/pages/Article.aspx?ArticleID=22418&Title=How_brands_can_effectively_measure_social_media_activity_

This article suggests that there are three categories that should be looked at when measuring effectiveness of social media marketing and those include financial, reach and frequency and also affinity analysis. The first category measures the depth of the message and the impression that an individual gets from it. The second is to measure the return on investments similar to the second article. The third is focused on service, relevancy of promotions, and a firms’ ability to communicate clearly. What this breaks down to is whether or not the company is using effective promotions and whether or not people are willing to recommend them to someone else.

From what I’ve learned there are many different approaches to measuring how effective social media marketing is, but from what I can see there is no definite and effective method. Many of these ideas are good indicators on how to gage the success of social media marketing but there isn’t a way to give us specific numbers. After reading these articles I’ve also learned that social media marketing isn’t something you’re going to get instant gratification for, but instead is something that will benefit a company in a long run with better results down the road from efforts made today. As this subject continues to grow I think we’ll only be able to continue learning more and more about it.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Case Study Homework 11

For the second case study I chose the company Comcast. Now I know that when we all think of Comcast the last thing that comes to mind is effective use of social media marketing, but suprising they're ranked as being one of the most effective users of social media marketing and it all started with one mans idea to help improve their customer service. Frank Eliason, currently known as the most famous customer service manager, came up with a brilliant idea to use twitter to help improve customer service. Customers simply tweet about issues they are having and they are answered with a speedy tweet reply. Comcast formerly had a pretty bad wrap when it came to the subject of customer service, but now with the help of one of the biggest social media sites that's all changing. Their goal with social media marketing was the help change the way people view their company and to also help to create a better customer service experience.

About @comcastcares

However Comcast does do a great job utilizing their twitter account, after checking their facebook account I noticed that the last post was made on October 11th...of 2010. Even though their Twitter skills are top notch they still need to put focus on other venues of social media marketing. It also appears that the same things follows suit with their youtube channel which hasn't had any recent posts in over a year.

http://twitter.com/#!/comcastcares

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Comcast/150538791657327

Case Study Homework 10

For the first case study I chose Starbucks. Starbucks similar to Zappos is known for having excellent customer service. They’ve built their company based on the reputation of having great coffee served quickly and with a smile. Some may say it’s over priced, even so they must be doing something right because Starbucks is still continuing to thrive even in a downward spiraling economy. Starbucks uses a lot of different means of social media marketing such as facebook, youtube and twitter.

On the facebook site it even has a count for how many people like, are talking about starbucks and even how many have visited their page this way they can acuratly measure the effectivenesss of the page.

About

Follow Starbucks on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Starbucks Buy Starbucks Co...

26,120,051

like this

300,235

talking about this

3,574,239

were here

Starbucks also has a presence on youtube with its own channel.

Starbucks

Add as Friend | Block User | Send Message

Profile

Name:

Starbucks

Channel Views:

629,489

Total Upload Views:

7,328,393

Joined:

Nov 30, 2005

Latest Activity:

6 months ago

Subscribers:

12,024

Website:

http://www.starbucks.com

About Me:

We were founded in 1971, opening the first store in Seattle's Pike Place Market. Starbucks, named after the first mate in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," is the world's leading retailer, roaster and brand of specialty coffee with millions of customer visits per week at stores in North America, Europe, Middle East, Latin America and the Pacific Rim.

Hometown:

Seattle, WA

Country:

United States

Interests:

Coffee

They also use their twitter page to announce current promotions including the one they have now with their bogo holiday coffee drinks from 2-5. Their twitter pages also tracks the number of tweets and followers.

About @Starbucks

Out of all of their social media marketing campaigns, I think the best one the have is my starbucks idea, it’s a place where customers can come and post ideas about what they think starbucks should do next.

MyStarbucksIdea.com

Share. Vote. Discuss. See.

You know better than anyone else what you want from Starbucks. So tell us. What's your Starbucks Idea? Revolutionary or simple – we want to hear it. Share your ideas, tell us what you think of other people's ideas and join the discussion. We're here, and we're ready to make ideas happen. Let's get started.

Ideas In Action

What are we doing to make your Starbucks experience better? These are some of the things you've asked for.

Share a Holiday Beverage with a Friend 11/17/2011 by Joshua F

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Week 7, Facebook vs Google+

For the three different pages we were to rate on Facebook I chose Ottawa County Humane Society, Cedar Point and Toys R Us.

Ottawa County Humane Society http://www.facebook.com/pages/HUMANE-SOCIETY-OF-OTTAWA-COUNTY/306301180924 I would rank this page as a C. I feel that the Humane Society is a great cause but I feel that they have a lot of potential that they’re missing out on by not fully utilizing their page. They should have different photo albums with the animals currently available for adoption and things that would make knowing what animals are at the shelter easier. I just feel it needs more organization of the page.

Cedar Point http://www.facebook.com/cedarpoint I would rank this page as an A because it keeps the posts up to date and has interactive posts for people to respond to which is something we learned early in the semester. I also posts upcoming events and other interesting things.

Toys r us http://www.facebook.com/toysrus?ref=ts&sk=wall I would also rank this page as an A because it also has interactive posts and also posts about upcoming promotions which is great advertisement.

With this assignment we also had to do some research on the differences between Facebook and Google+, which I found to be interesting because I've heard a lot about Google+ I just never took the time to find out more about it or to take the time to try it. From a business stand point there is a lot of pros and cons to both Facebook and Google+. As far as Facebook it's very easy to use and Facebook is the biggest social networking site available right now. Businesses can use the search box to find other users who have had an interest in the profile related to your business. There are also a lot of cons, such as the fact that you can't actually track who and how many people visit your Facebook page and it also needs to be monitored 24/7 incase something negative or inappropriate is posted to the page. As far as Google+ goes it is still fairly new but it does have its fair share of advantages and disadvantages. It has a very easy to use interface and the "circle" features make it easy to customize your friends list. On the flip side posts do not show up in the order they are posted, for example if someone would comment on a post that is a week old that post now shows at the top of your feed or stream which to a business could be frustrating especially if you're putting up posts about new promotions or upcoming events and then they get lost in the hustle and bustle of people commenting back and forth on older posts. I also don't thing the "hangouts" feature is something that would appeal to a business. Functionality wise it doesn't really seem like a feature you'd want to have when trying to promote a business because there's a lot of things that could go wrong with having access to live group chats. Another draw back I found was that the Google+ app is only available on Androids. After working for AT&T for four years and having a lot of tech savy friends I can tell you that the ratio to people carrying around iphones vs android is going to be hands down iphone any day. As of now with Google+ being in it's beginning stages I would say Facebook would currently be the better choice for businesses to utilize, but this could be changing in the near future depending on what kind of updates Google has in mind.

http://www.google.com/+1/button/

http://www.slashgear.com/slashgear-101-what-is-google-circles-huddle-28161844/

http://mashable.com/2011/06/28/google-plus/

Monday, October 10, 2011

Week 6

After reviewing some of the other students blogs the two that I liked the best were Carol's Week 4 post and Justin's post for 5 keys to effective social media marketing. In Carol's post, http://carolb-smm.blogspot.com/, I thought she found a great example of a company that broke down their strategy for marketing and had a great video that tied along with it. I also liked Justin's post, http://justinsmarketing.tumblr.com/, it was very clean and to the point and also had a link to each example. I think making it simple for the reader is important for blogs because you want to get the information out as quickly as possible before the reader loses interest.

For my two outside blogs I found, http://www.scottmonty.com/ and

http://www.lauraroeder.com/social-media-marketing/. The first blog is written by Scott Monty who is head of the media marketing department for Ford Motor Company. He has what a find a very interesting sense of humor and frequently blogs about different aspects of social media marketing. The second is written by Laura Roeder. I chose her blog because she explains how for a business to succeed with using social media marketing. She gives a lot of pointers and key points on things that work for small businesses such as what sites to use, how to save time and also how to check and see if what you're doing is actually working. So these two blogs are two different ends of the spectrum being that the first one gives a humorous spin on whats going in the social media marketing world while the others is explaining how to use it to your benefit.

For my three examples of actual business blogs I chose Facebook, Toysrus and Google. For the Facebook blog, http://blog.facebook.com/, I would give it a grade of an A. This blog had a lot of information on what was going on with new Facebook changes and its constantly updated with posts from different Facebook employees with each post being short and to the point. My second blog was for Toysrus, http://blogs.toysrus.com/, I would also rate them with an A as well. On this blog there are posts which contain the lastest deals to the newest toys and as a parent this makes for a very convenient place to find out what's what on the toy front. They also post import safety recall information on here as well. For the final choice I chose the Google blog, http://googleblog.blogspot.com/, and for this blog I'm going to have to give them a D. I found the posts to be incredibly boring and long. Most of the aren't under three paragraphs and when it comes to blogging I want something that's short and sweet, not long and boring. Also the topics that are being blogged about aren't related to anything I'd be interested in reading about.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Week 4...Creating a Marketing Plan

http://www.slideshare.net/lauracapes/building-blocks-for-marketing-success

The slide show that I found on slideshare on the link above agreed with some of the information provided in our week 4 course materials. This slide show breaks down the importance of having a marketing plan and the steps to complete it similar to some of the examples in "Creating a Social Marketing Plan" slide show in our materials. I agree with a lot of the ideas and points from both of these, it seems to me that you have to have a clear and set plan that way you can achieve your marketing goal, which would disagree with the other example about not needing a marketing plan. For something as important as setting up marketing goals and developing your target audience and going after new customers as well as retaining old ones should require some kind of a plan and not a "go with the flow" type of attitude.

Two suggestions for the Marketing Plan Project Format would be to have a brand strategy and also find a way to measure loyalty. While doing research and going over the material for this weeks assignments I discovered that one important thing you need in your marketing plan is to have a brand strategy. What this basically means to understand who you and to clarify your purpose and you can do that by coming up with a clear vision statement. Many of the leading companies now have a vision statement, I worked for AT&T for four years and our company statement was connecting people with their world, everywhere they live and work and do it better than anyone else. With this vision statement AT&T promised to lead the way in smart phone technology and many other aspects of the wireless industry. Another example is Burger King and their "BK have it your way" slogan. A simple vision statement can set the tone for the whole company so I think it is import to have this be in the format for our project. Also being able to measure loyalty is important, not just the loyalty of customers but also loyalty of employees. Unhappy employees lead to an unproductive workplace. So to have a well oiled machine its important to make sure everything is running smoothly within. I believe this too would be a good addition into our format.

Since we're crowdsourcing our ideas this week about the project, I believe it's a good idea to ask the class for our feedback because after all we are the ones who are going to be doing the project. However I think that using a different business besides the LCCC Business Division would be a better idea. I think something a little more random would be a better fit for this project. Such as a creating a business plan for a lawn and garden business or a pet grooming business. I think something like this would give us a greater opportunity to get creative with the project.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Marshal Mcluhan takes a look into the future...

I learned a lot of interesting things this week about a man that I knew nothing about. Marshal McLuhan was very advanced for his time and even predicted what would happen with our Social Media today and how we would communicate with one another. This relates a lot to different things that we have learned so far this year. We are constantly talking about facebook and other Social Media sites that have changed our lives, but we never really break it down into figuring out how it actually changes our lives like the way McLuhan does with his tetrad theory. With the tetrad theory we need to actually take a look into enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal that comes into play with our everyday social networking sites such as facebook or twitter. What does it actually do for us? What is it replacing? All these questions are things we never really take a look at. It's funny now after reading more into McLuhan's revolations that I realize how much of this I've already seen in the short time I've been alive. I remember when we used to use ICQ and AOL instant messenger as forms of communications and now those are things of the past. Kids now a days have probably never even heard of AOL let alone AOL instant messenger. It's funny how right on que McLuhan was because the introduction of AOL instant messenger into my life took me from using my home phone (which is almost obselete) to communicate to instead coming home and immediately jumping on my computer to instant message my friends that I just left school with not even 30 minutes priar. It's funny to me how I never took any notice to this cycle that McLuhan predicted long before the technology ever existed. For me AOL replaced phone calls, then myspace replaced AOL, then facebook replaced myspace. All of these have slowly replaced and altered the way we communicate to other people. His theory easily applies to Social Media Marketing as well. We used to rely on news papers for advertising and now they're becoming a thing of the past. People read more online news papers then actually picking up a good old paper hot of the press and taking the time to read it. It seems that pop ups or ads on websites are the new form of news paper advertising. People don't sit around and take time to read the morning paper anymore, instead we get automatic updates to the email on or iphones or ipads, which someday not to far away will be replaced by something more advanced. It seems to me like its a never ending cycle.

http://www.newinfluencer.com/mediapedia/marshall-mcluhan/

http://www.marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/prophecies/1968-the-future-of-the-future-is-the-present.php

http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innis-mcluhan/030003-2030-e.html

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Social Media Marketing...the do's and don'ts

Is Social Media Marketing really effective? The clear answer to this question is yes! Even simply based on the responses from the interviews Mike did for this weeks assignment it seems pretty hands down when it comes to everyone's feelings about the effectiveness of using sites like facebook, twitter, and google+. It seems like a clear consensus that most of the class feels the same way and in a lot of the blogs I read many other classmates also shared experiences on how social media marketing is in their lives and how it impacts them. To me it seemed as though there were several reoccurring themes that seemed to pop up while reading the interviews as well as my research online...these include target your audience, make that personal connection, manage your time wisely, don't waste your time on sites that aren't going to do anything for you and measure your results to gage what's really working for you.

Do Do Do Do Do's...

*Find your target audience and stick with them. If you target people who you know will enjoy your product then spend time keeping the customers you already have.

*Practice proper time management. If you pick a few specific sites to reach your client base then you'll be able to dedicate the proper amount of time to those instead of trying to put yourself out there on every social media and marketing sites and keep up with them. In Mike's interviews Sally Whitwell said, "It does take a constant time commitment to make it effective." In another interview David Gutowski had a very similar view on the subject, "Social media can be a time sink, especially Twitter and Facebook. Focus is important, or you can get lost in the details."

*Keep the people involved! It's very important to have personal interaction that way your customers can feel like they're looked as an individual and not a number. Coming up with ways to let fans rate things like new songs for artist or new flavors for coffee houses helps keep your customers feeling like their opinions really do matter.

*Keep track of your results. Sites like google+ let you keep track of site hits and these things are an important way to find out if what you're doing is actually working.

Dont's...

*Don't waste your time with Myspace, that ship has long sailed. Staying up to date on sites like facebook and twitter can be a full time job, so don't waste time on sites that aren't going to get you anywhere such as Myspace. David Gutowski even said, "I have given up on MySpace. I generate almost no traffic from the site, and even at the height of its popularity the user interface didn't engender traffic or interaction." It's very important to utilize the sites that are going to get the most traffic.

http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1733635/ways-make-your-social-media-marketing-work-harder

http://everythingpublicrelations.com/how-to-create-an-effective-social-media-marketing-plan

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/the-anatomy-of-a-social-media-policy/

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/02/19/what-makes-a-marketing-campaign-on-social-networks-successful/

Monday, August 29, 2011

Social Media Marketing...what is it and who's using it?

Social Media Marketing is in our lives everyday and most of us don't even realize it. How many times a day do you use your phone or computer to check your facebook or twitter? For me its multiple times...an hour! Social Media Marking has taken over our lives one tweet and status update at a time. What we don't realize is how important Social Media Marketing is for companies especially because it's the easiest, not to mention free, form of advertising out there! Many companies are looking to facebook, twitter and also youtube to keep customers informed and to get the attention of potential customers. I couldn't even begin to tell you the number of times that I've noticed some organization or product that my friends "liked" on facebook. With that kind of easy access to millions of people companies would be crazy not to take advantage of Social Media Marketing. For a lot of local businesses sites like facebook are their main form of advertising and it's becoming the "word of mouth" of the social networking world that we live in. Based on some of the information I've found such as the feed back from a whole foods market I think the use of Social Media Marketing is very effective. I found this article, http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2011/07/25/how-whole-foods-markets-uses-social-media-to-keep-its-marketing-fresh/, it discusses how this company uses websites such as twitter and how it benefits by keeping its customers and potential customers educated on their products by having most of its tweets be centered around customers questions. It opens up a line of communication to people who actually consume their goods, which is important in the current competitive market place of today's economy. Using social networking sites has its ups and downs with the potential to have negative feedback, but I feel that even the negative feedback can be used to the companies benefit if they take criticism constructively and are able to build and grow from it. Here's some links that I've found relating to the topic of Social Media Marketing and also some short youtube to clips to help better understand this phenomenon.

http://thesocialcustomer.com/compukol/40463/social-media-marketing-defined

http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/05/who-uses-social-media-an-infograph.html