Adding a Picture :)

A simple list for social media strategy

Here is an interesting article. Its titled 7 Multi-Platform Social Media Analytics Tools. Its an informative list of social media tracking and analysis tools.

http://www.razorsocial.com/social-media-analytics-tools/

Response to Erica's Question

          Good question Erica. I can’t believe we are almost through with this class either. I think the “best practices” of high social media performance are outlined on page 149 of Mark W. Schaefer’s Return on Influence. In this section of his book, Schaefer lists and describes influence marketing’s best practices. When determining the “best practices” of high social media performance, first one must interpret whether they have a conversational brand. There would not be much point in creating a social media strategy if one’s brand is not actively discussed on social media. The second point is to “have a strategy.” I think this is the most important theme in this list because social media marketing will provide a very low return on investment if the strategy is not in line with the organization’s goals. Once it has been determined that the organization has a conversational brand and a specific and measurable strategy in harmony with the organizational goals, it is time to unleash the social media marketing plan.  This entails reaching out to relevant and powerful influencers in order to create meaningful and authentic conversations.  It is important to choose relevant influencers because “you have to ensure that the product is pertinent to each individual and her audience (Schaefer, 2012).” It is also important that the influencers are trusted and honest because customers can sense when someone is not being authentic and simply trying to sell them a product. Transparency is also important for legality because bloggers have to reveal when they are receiving compensation of any kind. Finally, it is important to make the promotion shareable. The whole point of the social media strategy is to generate conversation and get as many interested people involved in the product or service being sold (Schaefer, 2012).”

            Once the social media strategy has been implemented it is time to track its performance. I think the best way to measure performance is to analyze people’s responses on social media. This analysis should determine the scope and reach of the social media strategy.  Is the content of your message being shared with others and are they reacting positively? If people are receiving the message, sharing it and reacting positively to its content, then it seems like the social media strategy is performing at a high level. A few people could analyze social content for a small business, but large businesses may turn to an outside source like Klout to analyze its social media performance. Klout would be good company for large corporations (not that it isn’t useful for small companies) because its algorithms can analyze large quantities of social media content across multiple platforms. Finally, an increase in sales would be a strong indicator of high social media performance. After all, the goal of social media marketing is to reach as many customers as possible, get them interested in the product and eventually have them make a purchase.

I will discuss other options for high social media performance and go into further detail about tracking its performance in my subsequent posts.  I also plan to apply it to our digital paper, but I don’t think I can tackle all this information in one blog post. Thanks for reading.

Schaefer, Mark W. (2012) Return on Influence: The Revolutionary Power of Klout, Social

Scoring, and Influence Marketing. San Francisco, CA. McGraw Hill

Week 4 Digital Leadership Experience Questions

      Hi everyone. I'm sorry this is late. I hope you will all have enough time during the week to respond to my questions.
      I recently began working for a start up food company called munchery.com. Munchery's business plan is pretty simple. They have top notch chefs make gourmet food exclusively for delivery. I would recommend taking a  brief look at the company's website just to get a better understanding of what they do.  (https://munchery.com/).
      In Chapter 11 of The New Rules of Marketing and PR, David Scott gives a detailed explanation of how to build a modern marketing campaign. We can't cover an entire marketing or PR strategy in a 500 word blog post, so we will just cover one aspect of this chapter. Scott defines a buyer persona as "a representative of a type of buyer that you have identified as having a specific interest in your organization or product or having a market problem that your product or service solves (Scott,2013)."  Munchery.com is a relatively new company that just received a large investment, so they are currently interested in growing their business. This means they need to reach as many potential customers as possible and do it in a meaningful way. In this weeks discussion, I want you to focus on the buyer personas that munchery.com is interested in and the outlets to reach these potential customers. Consider what Munchery.com is and how they can solve people's problems.

Questions;
 1) What do you think are the buyer persona profiles that munchery.com should be targeting when creating their marketing plan? Please explain how you came to these conclusions.
2.) What outlets do you think are the best means to reach these buyers?  And why?


Scott, David. (2013). The New Rules of Marketing and PR. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley


I hope this is clear and makes sense to everyone. If you have any questions feel free to reach me via this blog or email at everett.gifford1@foxmail.marist.edu. I am looking forward to your responses.

I saw this on the 5 Gum Twitter page that prompts chewers to take a picture of whatever is behind them without looking. I thought that this was an interesting and engaging tactic. Here is the link:

https://twitter.com/5gum/status/510841348430495744

Response to Shana Barnes Week 3 Blog Post

Shana's blog this week was in response to Dana Jackson's questions regarding 5 Gum's marketing campaign. Shana points out that 5 gum offers the possibility of winning a sensory adventure for those that participate in the 5 gum truth or dare challenge. This is a great incentive, however Shana thinks that 5 does not engage their customers enough on social media. Kerpen says in Likeable Social Media "the companies and organizations that stand out are those which use social media to meaningfully engage customers and foster dialogue, instead of those who rely on simply, and repeatedly, talking at consumers (Kerpen, 2011)."  It seems like 5 gum is engaging their customers, but not doing enough to keep a conversation going with the people who have already talked about it on social media.
   I also liked the example Shana gave about her local brewery's contest to name their house brew. It sounds like a fun campaign that people could get involved in. However, Shana said that she was disappointed that the brewery did not continue the conversation on social media. I think that a conversation on social media could have been an outlet to gain even more attention and build a positive relationship with customers who were already interested in their product. Very good post Shana.

In regards to my first post this week; I just saw a 5 gum advertisement on TV. It was a very short commercial and it did have a # phrase on the screen, but I did not have enough time to read it. At least that is some kind of prompt to get people involved on Twitter. Now it seems like they must continue to generate conversation on social media in order to create a "buzz" around their campaign.

Kerpen, Dave. (2011).  Likeable Social Media. San Francisco, CA: McGraw Hill

Response to Erica Jordan's Blog Post

This post is in response to Erica Jordan's week three blog post about 5 Gum's marketing campaign and its difficulties creating a buzz around its new truth or dare marketing campaign. I really liked Erica's suggestion to use Facebook, Instagram and Twitter as platforms to reach 5's target audience. She mentioned using each platform's strength, such as pictures on Instagram and verbal messages on Twitter in order to reach potential customers where they are already active. Erica said that 5 Gum needs to create a buzz around their new campaign. I completely agree with this assessment because if 5 does not create some kind of buzz around their product then they are essentially wasting a pretty decent marketing campaign. If 5 could get customers to go online and share pictures and tweets about the gum then I believe that 5 would draw more attention to their campaign and their product.
   Erica gave Lifelock as an example of a company that had a good marketing idea, but did not implement it correctly. This was a great example because Lifelock had a very interesting idea that showed faith in the company, but turned out to be very detrimental to the company's image.  The fact that hackers were able to hack into the CEO of Lifelock's accounts really did make the company look silly and unreliable. Very good post Erica.