Google Analytic ‘s is a great tool that provides you with specific tools that can help you track statistical information about your site. It provides you with crucial information regarding the number of visits, page views, the time people spend visiting your site, bounce rate (people visit the main page only and do not view other pages). Using Google Analytic’s can help a business expand by helping them recognize that their could be flaws in their site. They can use new methods to increase usability of their site. Knowing who is visiting your site and when they are visiting can allow a marketer to pinpoint their target audience. How the page was found is another thing to take into consideration. It can help a marketer figure out whether or not the techniques in use have been effective at pulling their audience. For my web analytics most of the people were just looking at my main page. This is understandable because all my content is on my main page. I have had only 19 visits. My bounce rate is extremely high and is 73.68%. Therefore if this were real I would need to somehow get visitors to take a look at what else the site has to offer. Individuals spend about an average of 2 min and 30 sec on my page. I have 31.58% new visitors to my site. Visitors typically look at 1.53 pages per visit. My traffic is mainly direct and is 52.63%. The only keyword that was provided was Kris Khron. I was surprised that not many people visited my site. I was also surprised to see that my bounce rate was extremely high. Google Analytics was an fun program to use and I am sure I will end up using it again in the near future.
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As learned in class, there are many individuals migrating to the internet to find information regarding brands, products, and services. Individuals have many different ways of accessing the internet. You can access the internet from your home, school, work, phone, and car. Users have almost unlimited access to the internet. Social Media Sites are webpages that give individuals the opportunity to talk about some of their favorite and hated brands. Companies need to make sure that they give their consumers a place to find relevant information about their products and services. If the company isn’t putting out the information then who is? You do not want your companies name to be jeopardized.
The main challenge of Social Media is where to start, how to effectively manage your time, and getting everything to work together.
The video states “you do not make money with social media”. This is true. It is all about developing a relationship with your customers and getting them to trust you. Establishing credibility is very important for a business. You need to match individuals to your product and make sure your product satisfies their need and surpasses their expectations.
There are four main steps that are crucial to the success of Social Media Marketing. The video lists them as being finding interesting people, giving quality information, capturing information, and staying in touch. Recently we learned about the four C’s of Social Media marketing. That was create, control, connect, and compete. This goes almost exactly along with what the video stated.
The individuals that condensed the material did a very good job of portraying what Social Media actually is basically a summary of the last topic we learned.
Guest Speaker De La Vega was an inspiration. He is the President and CEO for AT&T mobility market systems. He is an NIU alum and a very successful business major. De La Vega gave a lot of great advice for aspiring business majors during his speech. De La Vegas speech was about his personal challenges and experiences. His speech gave advice for overcoming these obstacles(challenges) and how there is still hope. He basically conveyed that the sky is the limit and you can make these obstacles fun and a positive experience. Before attending De La Vega’s speech our instructor told us that his stories are amazing. That you will be shocked to hear about what De La Vega has to say. After hearing his speech I knew exactly what she meant. When De La Vega was a young boy he traveled to America with his family. Unfortunately, he was the only one allowed to pass into America. He had to leave his family behind in order to seek out a better life. The road was long and was difficult. He struggled with school. This caused him slightly alter his career path over the course of his academic career. he still kept pushing towards what he believed in and pushed himself to accomplish his goals. De La Vega also told us that you need to be flexible and prepared for any obstacles you may face. That you need to come up with a strategy and stick to specific set of personal moral guidelines. He made it clear that personal integrity goes a long way and establishing credibility. These two traits lead to success. De La Vegas speech made me think about my core values, beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. It made me think about how all this plays a part and could affect my integrity. He is a very determined individual and I feel the same way about myself. He was a wonderful speaker and I am glad I was able to hear his speech.
Melvin was a great guest speaker. He spoke on Oct. 12, 2011 about ethics. Melvin is a corporate V.P. and internal auditor. He works for Microsoft Corporation. He originally wanted to be a musician or comedian. I could understand comedian since he did make a lot of funny jokes during his speech. He was a very confident figure and a determined individual . He gave us a quick break down on Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft’s mission statement is to help individuals and businesses throughout the world and help them realize what their true potential is. They have 89,000 employees, 150,000 contingents , 640,00 partners, and had 580 billion partner revenue in 2010. Their main competitors are oracle and IBM. They have 110 subsidiaries which means that they have many different customers and norms that they need to take into consideration. Melvin has a wide variety of experience. He has held many different positions. One of the main things that he stressed was his fear of failure. He did not want to let himself down and all those around him. His values were strong when it came to integrity, openness, respect, self-criticism, accountability, taking on big challenges, and being passionate. He said “make sure you love what you do”. Truer words have never been spoken. Your attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavior can be altered if you aren’t enjoying what you are doing. Melvin made a lot of good points. You need to manage other individuals interests effectively, stand up for what you think is right, be able to report bad news effectively, develop team culture, and much more. There is many fine lines in business and one can easily make a small mistake that can alter your company’s reputation, your reputation, or the reputation of others. You need to be a leader and make good decisions. I feel that personal integrity goes a long way not only in the business world but your personal life as well. I am happy I had the opportunity to listen to Melvin Flowers speech.
I really enjoyed our Social Media Plan project. I was able to better understand how Social Media is used in business. We chose the brand Pizza Hut and Dominoes pizza as its competitor. Both have been in business for almost the same amount of time. Pizza Hut has only been around two years longer. We used Social Mention, Twitter Stream Graphs, Same Point Social Media, and How Sociable, and Tweet Feel. With all of these tools combined we were able to figure out what brand consumers liked best. One of the most surprising findings was found under Social Mention. Pizza hut had triple the amount of mentions compared to Dominoes. One of the items listed said Pizza Hut is “Americas favorite pizza”. I disagree with that statement. I haven’t been to Pizza Hut in years. I had a terrible experience there multiple times and decided I would never go back. For Dominoes Social Mention it was noted that they ranked high in delivery. That their delivery process is fast and unique. I will agree with that statement. I have ordered Dominoes a few times and they exceeded my expectations. They often tell you it will take 30 minutes for your delivery to arrive and sometimes it is as fast as 15 minutes. Visibility score for both Dominoes and Pizza Hut were almost the same. Dominoes was superior when it came to Stumble Upon. I know that Stumble Upon is a website that generates other webpages. The fact that Stumble Upon pokes and makes fun of companies this score can be either good or bad. Twitter Stream Graphs were not very interesting for Dominoes pizza. Dominoes had a lot of words that slightly pertained to the company itself. Orders was on the list and typically associated with the easy process with the use of an ipad. Interestingly enough KFC was listed. KFC has branched out to a few businesses like taco bell. Because Pizza Hut and KFC work together both are recognized where making a purchase. The last thing we used was Tweet Feel. Both Pizza Hut and Dominoes were almost similar in the percentage of positive vs. negative comments. Comments aimed at Pizza Hut were more hostile than that of Dominoes. Consumers were saying that they hated Pizza Hut and it makes them sick. Where as Dominoes was a decent substitute pizza. I really enjoyed this assignment and learned a lot. I am better able to analyze a company by using social media tools. Using these tools are helpful when making a decision about a brand you are unaware of.
I decided to check out Oreo’s Facebook fan page. I am absolutely addicted to Oreo’s and thus, my the main reason why I chose them. I thought it was cool how Oreo was asking the consumer fun and involving questions. The first question I noticed made me laugh. “What do you do when you accidentally drop your Oreo cookie in the milk?” I mean the answer to the question can only go so many ways but it gives fans something to talk about. Oreo seems to be concentrating on getting individuals involved. Getting other Oreo fans connected to one other so they can share in the wonderful experience. I noticed that there is an exceedingly high amount of individuals who like Oreo’s. They currently have 23.5 million likes on their Facebook page. They are also getting fans involved by having them take a picture with their favorite cookie. They could be selected as a fan of the week. I think this is pretty neat and makes the individual feel special. They have an Oreo commercial section that allows individuals to comment and watch. Oreo can find out whether or not there commercial is good and have individuals voice their opinion on it. I clicked on a video that had two sides debating whether Oreo Cakesters was good to dunk in milk or not. You can vote for a side on facebook which offers fun competition between Oreo fans. They also have something cool called the dsrl team (oreo eating) and you can upload pictures to create your own special Oreo team. I thought it was also interesting how they have social media presence in Australia, Puerto Rico, Malaysia, Czech and Slovak. You can check out what your friends are doing if they are a fan too! I really enjoyed the love it or hate it section. Oreo can get a good idea of what consumers think about new product lines they come out with. All you have to do is click and if you’d like to comment you can too. I feel that Oreo has done a great job of addressing the 4 C’s of social media. I would like to see something like recipes for Oreo creations. It actually surprised me that they didn’t have that. I know that there are many individuals who enjoy Oreo but it also didn’t seem like they commented much. It seemed that it was mostly between the users. Many metrics can be used to measure the overall success of Oreo’s fan page. They can measure the number of visitors, how many posts are being made, how may people are participating in their contests, how many people are watching their videos, and many other types of measurements. One problem I found was that Oreo really couldn’t personalize their page too much because they have similar colors to Facebook. It all just sort of blended together. The problem is what they can do is very limited. Something cool that they can do is make all there O’s an Oreo. I feel this would make you want to eat Oreo’s even more and whenever you see an O you’ll think about them.
Online privacy is extremely important. Individuals with hostile intentions can wreak havoc and damage your identity. Without the use of online privacy methods consumers are more susceptible to phishing, pfarming, spoofing, and spyware and adware. As discussed in class there is the Digital Millennium Act which offers protection against copyright infringement. I found the case Jammie Thomas quite interesting. Being tried for a total of 1.5 million dollars for sharing 24 song is a lot of money. It is these acts the protect products from fraudulent acts since the penalties are so stiff. I believe that not only consumers need protection but business as well. Government involvement is necessary when it comes to online privacy. They must establish strong laws that prohibit such malicious behaviors online. The problem is when is privacy laws too restricting? Markets need specific information about consumers so they can target specific individuals for their brands. With a large amount of restrictions it will make it far more difficult to effectively target and reduce profits. The Wall Street Journal also discussed a few interesting topics regarding online privacy. The first line of the article really grabs your attention. Consumer information is being sold off for a tenth of a cent. I feel this is really inexpensive for very sensitive information and should be increased in price. This in turn would refrain individuals from conducting fraudulent activity because the price would be much higher. Marketers use this information to pin point the right consumers and I feel that such information way more valuable. I can understand why it is good for marketing purposes but at the same time in can be used incorrectly. This walks a fine line on being an ethical dilemma. Many of the companies that are using the information are selling it to their strategic business partners and advertisers. This way consumers won’t be faced with ads that are terrible and unrelated. The problem is what if the information gets sold off to a company that is unrelated to the consumer. Then consumers will be spammed with ads they do not want. making them angry. Marketers could end up losing business if the consumer finds out that their information was sold off to a company they dislike. Not to mention if the information ends up falling into the wrong hand it can be used in many fraudulent ways. I feel that a consumers information should be sold only if the consumer agrees to it. Companies should ask what products a consumer would be interested in then make an assessment. I would rather my personal information stay private period. In today’s society we have many ways to get information. I know the internet is a huge media channel but it is quite scary to think that you are being spied on.
Personalize your favorite original cookies!
Let’s create the coolest cookies ever; together!
http://www.fancyfortunecookies.com
My target demographic would be older individuals around 45+ because these individuals grew up with the traditional fortune cookie. My call to action tries to bring out emotions in the consumer. Happiness and excitement that they get to create something cool with the company. Makes them feel like they are part of the process and that they are important. The landing page links directly to the traditional cookie menu. Nobody want to waste their time searching for items unnecessarily. The key phrase I used for Google adwords was Traditional. It came up with a decent amount of results. Competition was fairly low and had mostly low monthly searches. A few had over 100,000 monthly and local searches. After reviewing the results the two competitor key words that seemed good were traditional home and traditional family. The average cps was a 1.06 and .98 for both competitors. Seems that there is pretty much no competition for traditional fortune cookies or it is extremely low. I ended up getting back some strange results. Clicks are in the millions surprisingly.
SEO or search engine optimization, is the process of using many different factors to draw attention to your website. These factors include changing a heading, improving your content, adding meta tags, making your url relevant to search results, and much more! All these factors could help improve your sites rankings and are only minor adjustments.
After using the tool Google Rankings I was not too surprised at my results. The top word I have used is market. Which is obviously relevant to the class… DUH! I am glad that I do not use words such as like or thing in my blog, referring back to the example in class. Google rankings is a great tool to find out what is relevant on your site and allows entices you to make improvements in your content.
Finding a relevant job:
McDonald’s
Fairly easy and only took two clicks. I did have to manually type in Information Technology into a search criteria, but overall navigation of the site is fairly simple.
Walgreens
More in depth asked for a lot of information. Took me about eight clicks, and had to type information into three boxes.
Finding the information:
McDonald’s
Gave me a nice list of what they had to offer. With the description of each field, where it was located, and the experience needed. It was only one click away.
Walgreens
I found it a little annoying that they paired three career fields into one link. The problem with this is I had to narrow down what career I actually wanted. All I want is IT information, and they ask you for your postal code. This is kind of a problem because I don’t know every postal code of every Walgreens location. I would like to see a list so I can pick and choose where I would like to work.
Compelling?:
McDonald’s
Did not really grab my attention at any point, Way too bland, has almost no visuals, and I do not feel involved.
Walgreens
Almost as bad as McDonald’s but had very nice banners that grasped my initial attention and solidified the main concept of the link I followed.
Critique:
McDonald’s
Navigation of the site is extremely simple. The layout of McDonald’s site was fairly clean and organized, but there was just too much empty white space. Extremely plain, and only used white and red as a main color scheme. The color clashes making the site give me a headache. Red just makes me feel like I am being rushed, as if there is a sense of urgency. Really did not feel engaging at all. Had mostly factual information and no visual aids, videos, ect. I would say that the site is fairly easy to use overall, but has no life to it.
Walgreens
Navigation is moderate. There are too many sub links after clicking on a main link. The layout is slightly more jumbled then McDonald’s, but still fairly organized. Has too much white space in the background just like McDonald’s and uses the same color scheme. Red is just a terrible color to use in my opinion. I realize that both company’s logo’s use red, but your webpage doesn’t need to follow the exact same scheme. Had some engaging content, compared to McDonald’s which had none. There was a video I found and more visual aids then McDonald’s. Walgreens site was moderate in complication. I found it a bit harder to find what I wanted quickly.
Overall McDonald’s and Walgreens need a site facelift. They both chose terrible color schemes. I feel that a color other than white in the background would be much better. I would suggest a darker color like a grey or black. This makes any text on the page stand out and easy to read. They also both need more visuals and more interactive items. If I had to choose which one to work for it would have been McDonald’s solely based on the fact that navigation was so simple. Walgreens really angered me when look for a career field.