Chris Gorman

For our final assignment we used different social media tools to find what people were saying about the Amazon Kindle Fire and one of its major competitors the Barnes & Noble Nook.  We chose these two brands because they are similar in price, and they are both new products entering the market.  We wanted to find out which one was more popular, and which is better according to average everyday people, and not just professional reviewers.

One of the most helpful sites that we used was socialmention.com.  This site gave a percentage of the likelihood that people were talking about it on other social media sites.  It also showed if they were talking about it repeatedly, and what the ratio was between positive and negative responses.  The Amazon Kindle Fire had a very high ratio of positive responses, and it had a higher likelihood that people were talking about it on other social media sites.  The Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet had similar numbers, but a lower percentage of people talking about it.  The data showed that the Amazon Kindle Fire was more popular than the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet.

Another very helpful site that we used was tweetfeel.com.  This site posted up-to-date tweets from people who were talking about the products.  This site helped us a lot because people would post about how they felt about the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet.  TweetFeel gave us a percentage of the number of positive and negative tweets.  Both products received a 70 percent after we did about 100 tweets for each.  This site helped us a lot because people would post what they liked or didn’t like about each product.  Our key takeaways from this site were that the Barnes & Noble is a better product, but the Amazon Kindle Fire has better features.  The Amazon Kindle Fire received some complaints for having a short battery life, and not being as good as expected in terms of the memory, the speed, and the software technology.

We also used Google Insights to get a better idea of what people were saying about our two products.  Google Insights highlighted the keywords that were being used for the products.  Amazon’s keywords were fire, black, and Amazon.  The keyword “black” was popular at the time that we did the research because it was right after Black Friday.  The Kindle Fire was very successful in sales on Black Friday, and it was gaining a positive reputation.  Barnes & Noble’s keywords were Nook, Kindle, and tablet.  I thought it was interesting that one of their keywords was a competitor’s name.  I think this shows that people are more aware of the Kindle Fire than the Nook Tablet.

A problem that I came across from these social media sites is that people would have conflicting comments.  One person would say that the battery life on the Kindle Fire was too short, and another person would say that the battery life is fine.  The best way to solve this problem was to take what the majority of people were saying.  Overall the Kindle Fire’s battery life is fine, but it is shorter than the Nook Tablet’s battery life.

I learned that there are a variety of social media tools available to us today to find out what people are saying about a certain product.  I like that you can identify keywords for a certain product.  This could help companies identify which keywords people are using to describe their product, and it can give marketers a better idea of how they should market their brand.

Lipton

Lipton is a beverage company that focuses on tea.  Lipton’s slogan on both their Facebook page and their website is “Drink Positive.”  Lipton creates a positive image that emphasizes on a healthy lifestyle.  Lipton doesn’t offer many opportunities to compete where they have more say in the outcome, but users are able to participate in a sweepstakes to win a trip to Kenya and 25,000 dollars for their community.

Lipton has over 145,000 likes on their Facebook page, and over 3,000 people talking about it.  Lipton posts something to encourage interaction about every three or four days.  This allows people to connect with Lipton and write comments about whatever Lipton is posts about.  Most of the time people are writing about how great Lipton’s tea is and their favorite type of tea.  Even though Lipton has over 145,000 likes on Facebook, they have less than 100 people comment or like their posts.  Lipton does not do a good job of keeping their consumers engaged with their Facebook page.

I went to Lipton’s website.  There is a section that describes the different types of tea that Lipton sells.  There is also a brief history about Lipton, and about how tea can be a part of your diet.  Lipton also has a section that allows you to type in ingredients to create a recipe.  This gives the user an opportunity to control what they want in their recipe.  The site gives them a list of suggestions containing the ingredients that the user typed in.  The website allows users to learn more about Lipton’s products, but it does not give them any reason to stay on the website very long or to return to the website often.

Lipton can improve their Facebook page by making it more interactive to help encourage Facebook users to want to go on Lipton’s page.  This could be done by adding the recipe page that is found on their website to their Facebook page.  The recipe search section allows users to create different drinks by typing in ingredients in the search bar.  Allowing users to search different recipes conveniently on their Facebook page will increase the number of people who are talking about Lipton.  Lipton can also create a contest that would allow users to compete in a contest and see who creates the best tasting beverage.  Encouraging users to compete in a contest will increase the number of people talking about Lipton as well.

Lipton can measure the success of these new strategies by reviewing the number of likes on their Facebook page, and the number of people who are talking about Lipton.  Also, Lipton can measure the success by measuring the number of people visiting their site and seeing the average duration period on their site; the higher the duration period, the better.  This means that people are interested in what Lipton has to say, which could set Lipton apart from other tea beverage companies.

Right now anyone can find out what I enjoy doing, what I like to eat, who my relatives are, and where I live.  You can find my interests without even talking to me.  The fact is, privacy is dead, and I’m fine with that.  If someone who I’ve never met knows what movies I like to watch, I’m going to find it a little creepy, but I’m not going to care about it.

From a consumer standpoint, knowing that people are looking through to see what I am interested in sounds creepy at first.  When I think about it a little more, I realize that I really have nothing to hide.  I don’t need protection to hide what I am interested in from other people.  If someone wants to know, then they can find out.

From a marketing standpoint, I want to know as much information as I can possibly get on a person.  This will help me market my products more efficiently.  It helps consumers see more advertisements that they will be actually interested in.  I think the benefits that come from gathering more information about a person outweigh the negatives.

I understand that there are some cases where people get mad about seeing the same advertisement that reminds them of something they would rather not think about.  From the Wall Street Journal article “The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets” there was an example of a 17-year old girl who wanted to lose some weight.  She is subconscious about her weight, and the constant ads about weight-loss plans make her think about the problem that she would rather not think about.  There will be cases like this, but I think for the most part, targeting ads will benefit both the marketer and the consumer.

I don’t think the government needs to step in to and develop laws that would limit the amount of information someone can get.  If this happens, it will become harder for marketers to target their products to consumers.   There is a limit though to what the public should be allowed to know about a person without that person telling anyone.  I believe that people should have a right to privacy for personal things like health issues and mental problems.  This is where the line needs to be drawn.  Marketers should not have the right to know about serious medical issues.  If someone needs to find more information, that person can find it themselves; they don’t need an advertisement to help them out.  The government should step in if sites don’t respect these rules.  According to the article, “The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets” Healthline Networks Inc., an ad company does not let advertisers track users over sensitive such as AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases.

I don’t see the harm in a stranger knowing where I like to eat, or what movies I like to watch.  I would rather that they do know this information.  I would rather receive ads about sports equipment that I may be interested in, than a tampon ad that have absolutely no interest in.

I knew before going on Google Analytics that my site has not been viewed by many or that often.  I have 84 total visits with about 17 percent of those visits being new people.  I know that I visit my site the most.  My bounce rate is about 49 percent which is almost in the middle.  I thought that my bounce rate would be higher, but I guess that is a pretty high bounce rate anyways.  I have 266 page views which make my pages per visit to be at 3.17.  So basically if someone comes onto my site they usually look at three different pages and then leave.  What I was surprised about is that my average time on site is about 10 minutes.  I don’t think I even spend that much time on my site at one time.  Although I do remember a friend of mine in Dr. Labrecque’s other class saying that my site was used as an example for a lesson.  This could help explain why my average time on site is so high.

I got excited when I saw that someone from Malaysia and Israel has viewed my site.  Then I realized that they were just spam bots.  I figured that out because the average time on the site for them was zero.

My top page was my homepage with an overwhelming 142 views.  My page with my about me information was in second with 40 views.  My resume page got 16 views.  It makes sense for my homepage to have the most views since that’s where I display my new blog posts which is the majority of what I do on my website.

Most of my traffic is coming direct at about 79 percent.  Second was laurenlabreque.com (referral) at about 13 percent.  I have used that site before in order to reach my website.  Sometimes I forget my website name when I am at Barsema Hall so I just go through that website to get to mine.  Third was through facebook.com (referral).  I was kind of surprised by this because I haven’t gotten to my site through facebook.com.  I think I might’ve written a status update about it once and I guess five of my friends checked it out.

I have zero keywords.  No one has ever searched for my website or anything so I have zero keywords.  It’s kind of disappointing to not have at least one.  It’s understandable though since I haven’t even used a keyword to look for my own website.  My goal is to get at least 5 keywords that were searched to find my website.

Web analytics is for other websites so that they can see where most of there people who are visiting their website are from.  With this information, companies can optimize their website to accommodate those who are visiting it the most.  Companies can do special deals in certain locations where there is a high percentage of people viewing their site.  Also knowing which browser they are using helps because if there is ever a technical problem because of one of the browsers, a company can prioritize the problem by seeing where most of their traffic is coming from, and then go from there.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important if you want your website to be highly ranked on search engines.  SEO is a technique used to attract people from search engines to Web sites.  It’s a part of search engine marketing, which also includes paid placement.  The goal of SEO is to find the most relevant information for people when they conduct a search.

On page SEO looks at everything on every website including, page titles, page descriptions, content, headings, and URLs.  Off page SEO ranks each site by how many sites are linked to other sites.  The more links on a site the better the site looks.  This is a concept called “link juice.”  SEO is considered an organic search because companies can’t buy anything to influence their rank.

My top three one word keywords were “Ralph,” “customer,” and “look.”  I was surprised to see that I used “Ralph” so many times, especially because I only used that word in one of my blog posts.  I can see why I used “customer” and “look” so much because they were used in multiple blog posts.

The most used two word phrases I used were “2011 admin,” “admin blogs,” and “guest speaker.”  I guess the admin phrases would go with what I have typed for my site.  Not necessarily what I wrote in my blogs.  I’m surprised that “guest speaker” wasn’t number one.  I’ve written four blogs about guest speakers.  I guess third is still pretty high though.

My three word phrases were “2011 admin blogs,” “october 2011 admin,” “assignment september 2011.”  It looks like I don’t have any three word phrases that I use often enough to crack the top three of most used.  These aren’t really phrases that I would use in a blog post.  “Speech felt lecture” was used twice and was the top one that I remember using.  I remember for Chris Krohn’s blog post, I talked about how his speech felt like a lecture.  When you only take the keywords from that sentence, it doesn’t make sense.

At first, both McDonald’s and Walgreens were similar in how to narrow down what I was looking for.  McDonald’s showed three options.  It had corporate opportunities, restaurant opportunities, and internships.  After I clicked on corporate opportunities, I had to click and scroll through the different categories to find what exactly I wanted.  Then I selected the state and searched.  It took me five clicks to find what I was looking for.  Overall it was pretty easy to find what I was looking for.  Walgreens though, has an even better setup.  Right away they had different categories to help find where I needed to go.  Once I clicked on operations, they gave me a general description of what a person in the operations field at Walgreens does on a given day.  At the bottom I was able to select whether I wanted to apply online, or learn more about the benefits.  What I really like about this job search that McDonald’s didn’t have was that I could search within a certain number of miles away from the zip code that I live in.  I liked this because they showed job openings that were closest to where I live first.  It took me four clicks to find what I was looking for with Walgreens.

Neither website really got me excited or made me want to apply for a job right now.  There were no pictures or anything that stuck out to help with my search experience.  It was very formal and completely different from McDonald’s image.  Walgreens was similar in that sense.  The difference was that they showed my job openings which got me more excited since I felt like I had a better chance to get a job with them.

McDonald’s used red to highlight the important parts of each page.  It was either red or black for the text colors.  Walgreens used red, black, and blue was used to highlight the job titles.  Having a third color isn’t a big deal, but it was one of those little things that stuck out to me.  The spacing on McDonald’s site was good.  I liked that the job titles were organized in a box and easy to find.  Walgreens was a little harder because I had to scroll down to find more job titles.  It didn’t seem as organized.  Overall though Walgreens was easier to use, because they showed my job titles and they had a sort by option, which makes it easier to help me find exactly what I wanted.

Neither company had a site that persuaded me to want to work there.  It felt like they just gave me the information and allowed me to do what I want.  Walgreens was a little more engaging by having a sort by option, and by having more job titles to choose from.  They also had tabs at the top that allowed me to do an advanced search which allowed me to get more specific with what I was looking for.  McDonalds was not engaging at all, there was nothing there that made me want to work for McDonalds.