Stephen Duczman

The first thing that I learned from the social media project is that there are a lot of free websites on the web that allow for research on a company’s social media presence.  These sites provide a lot of useful information that can be used to compare one company with another.  Free websites should be regarded as a starting point however, as they may not have all the features necessary to complete a marketing campaign.

Some useful variables to look at when reviewing a company’s social media are sentiment, level of buzz, associated words, and message reach.  There are many tools available for each individual variable and choosing the right one comes down to personal preference and budgetary constraints.  Although a marketer may focus on only a few specific variables in depth, it’s important to have at least a basic understanding of them all.  Completely ignoring one would be foolish.

For our companies, Coca-cola and Pepsi co, the first variable we looked at was the level of buzz.  To do this we used the website How Sociable.  This essentially totals up the amount of times the company name or product has been mentioned on various social media on a given day.  It not only gives a grand total, but also a total of each social media website.  Coca-Cola was the more popular brand overall, but this was a close tally.  Coca-Cola had 2,097 mentions on November 21, 2011 while Pepsi had 1,926.  Something that could be done is to perform this test on multiple days and take an average.

One thing I noticed is that each of the brands appear to perform more strongly on some social media websites than others.  In other words, while Coca-Cola had a higher overall score, it did not perform as well as Pepsi on a number of websites.  There were a select few where Coke outperformed Pepsi by a great amount which gave them the overall advantage.  Analyzing these numbers can provide insight on weaknesses in a company’s social media campaign.  A company will probably want to increase their presence where they fall behind their competitors.

To analyze associated words, we used Twitter StreamGraphs.  This provides a timeline of the most popular words over the period of a day.  When Coke and Coca-Cola were compared, an interesting trend appeared.  Coke generally returned results related to the drinking of Coke and the product itself.  Words like diet, jack, rum, drink, cola, glass and bottle were used.  A few unrelated words were also on the graph due to the dual meanings of the word Coke.  Coca-Cola on the other hand returned words such as Christmas, advert, truck, driver, holiday, train, happy, media, job, manager, and social.  These are all more advertisement, brand building, or even corporate related words.  This is most likely due to its more formal nature as the company’s full corporate name.  Also, people usually think of the red Santa themed Coke cans and commercials when they hear the name Coca-Cola.

To measure sentiment, we used Tweet Feel.  This website measures the number of positive Tweets compared to the negative and gives an overall percentage.  Coca-Cola faired the best, with a 62% positive score, Coke second best with 60% positive, Pepsi third with 59% positive and Pepsi-Cola the worst with 63% negative.  I believe the reason that the name Pepsi-Cola performed so poorly is that it is outdated and no longer used in their marketing.  Coca-Cola performed better than Coke due to its formal nature.  If someone dislikes Coke, they will probably just call it Coke to save time.  They also do not respect it as much, which will cause them to use the least involving name to type out.  Overall, these two companies were very close in their overall performance.

Tweet Feel is useful also in that it validates the numbers provided by How Sociable.  A company with a higher rate of social media buzz may seem to be in a better position than one with a lower score, but if a majority of the Tweets are negative in nature, this could actually be a drawback.

In the end, our group decided that Coca-Cola was the winner in social media presence.  They performed better on most of our tested variables such as sentiment and buzz.  While they did win, it was not by an overwhelming factor.  It is certainly true that both of these companies have their dedicated fans and a relatively high positivity associated with them.

I chose the University Plaza to critique for this assignment.  The form of social media they use is a Facebook page.  Overall, this page is a fairly standard business page and does not seem to have extra features beyond Facebook capabilities.  This keeps it easy to navigate and creates a seamless experience between looking at friend’s pages and this page.

The Plaza is trying to connect with their residents by using social media marketing.  There are many benefits to this and very few drawbacks due to the low or non existent cost of Facebook.  The main thing they are doing on their end is making posts under the user name/business name University Plaza.  These posts are essentially status updates and help to describe what is going on that day or week at the dorm.

Users are also allowed to write responses to these updates or write their own comment on the Plaza’s wall.  This engages users as well as provides valuable information on opinions, perceptions, and problems to the management.  Problems have even been resolved using the Facebook page and by having them made public the user can see the form of resolution.

The Facebook page seems to meet all four of the consumer motivations in some capacity, but the three most effective are create, compete and connect.  While it is ideal to incorporate all four of these, it is only natural that some will have a greater emphasis than others.

For create, users are allowed to post comments and add videos and pictures to the page.  They can get creative with posting pictures of themselves and friends at holiday parties or events.  This is not only fun for users to be able to share their experiences, but also beneficial to the brand when it shows the residence hall in a positive light.  It helps prospective residents envision themselves living there and gives them vital information about what the place looks like.  A picture is worth a thousand words in this case.

The Plaza connects to the page’s users by building an online presence for the dorm.  Instead of just a website with the typical layout and marketing derived features and benefits, an actual personality is created.  For the Plaza, the postings they make feel like they come from a friend more than the writing on the website does.  These posts are conversational but professional.

Finally, competition is a big emphasis on the Facebook page.  This is evidenced through the many contests that are held.  Some are daily events such as free pizza to those who write the top five captions for a picture.  Other times the prize is larger, such as a new flat screen TV for the winner’s of a week long contest.  These are much more involving for the contestant but can provide great pictures and videos.

To measure using metrics, University Plaza should first look at the number of ”likes” they have.  This can show how large their audience is.  This could be compared to the number of residents although this number may not be very useful due to the fact that old residents can stay on the page after they move out.  A better metric would be how many “likes” they gain each year or semester.  If the rate is increasing it may mean that more residents are using the page or that more former residents are interested in it.  Either case is probably a good thing.  Another metric would be to actually compare the names of people on the Facebook page with those that have liked it to the resident directory.  This could show the percentage of residents that use the page as long as this information is available from Facebook.

To improve the page, I would suggest possibly revealing who manages the page.  There could be a section that mentions the names of staff members who work on it if it is indeed done in house.  This increases accountability while still maintaining a level of anonymity.

Privacy is something we all want and expect in our personal lives.  There are times where we are more public and are willing to give up privacy and other times where it is viewed as a given, such as the home.  The article from the Wall Street Journal brings up the relevant issue of online privacy.  This article aims to make people more aware of the ways our privacy and personal information could be compromised due to the use of the internet.  It also talks about some of the ways marketers use the information that’s collected about us.

In a lot of ways, privacy is dead.  Gone are the days of being completely anonymous.  Even back then, the simple fact that people could recognize you and observe your behavior was enough to tailor personal selling in a store environment.  Essentially, this concept has been taken even further by the use of cookies on webpages.  These were originally designed to remember what was put in a customer’s online shopping cart.  This had an immediate benefit to the consumer.  Cookies quickly gained more uses such as keeping tabs on which pages are viewed and how long a website is looked at.  These were clearly beneficial to the marketer, but did not collect sensitive information.

In today’s times, cookies do so much more.  The most controversial deals with advertisement targeting.  This is where banner ads can be served based off of previous websites that have been looked at.  The biggest benefit for marketers and consumers is more relevant ads which save money and are more interesting to the consumer.  The problem with this is that some consumers may not always want advertisements showing up based off of their online history.  This could occur if someone looks up a sensitive health topic.  One reason this does not sit well with consumers is that it either reminds them of their problems, could be irrelevant, or reveal personal details to family and friends that they would rather not share.

Another interesting development in the use of cookies has to do with the flash cookie.  These were originally intended to remember the volume setting for an Abobe Flash video.  One of their current uses is to continuously repopulate cookies when a user deletes their cookies.  This allows the continued collection of data, without the web user having to go back to the website to acquire the cookie.  On my computer, I use anti virus software as well as spyware and adware scanning programs.  These often find and delete tracking cookies.  I’m not sure if these could help delete third party cookies permanently, but they do allow the removal of advertising cookies without having to go and delete every cookie, a process which may delete useful cookies.  These programs are also great for removing unwanted software installed as part of a software download.

I do think that the government should keep a close eye on this area of marketing in order to keep it from getting out of hand.  There is a delicate balance between collecting the right amount of information and too much.  I think that government regulation is especially important in areas where sensitive information might be collected and used against us in the medical and insurance industry.

If  more regulation is introduced, marketers would be limited in the ways they can use cookies.  They would then have to become more creative in ways to target advertisements and potentially find a new method altogether.  Marketers would also need to be careful to follow the law and make sure they are in compliance with it at all times in order to avoid fines.

1. During the period between October 7th and November 8th, I had a total of twenty seven visits on my blog.  This sounds impressive at first, but it must be kept in mind that many of these could be from the same user.  Sure enough, when absolute unique visitors is looked at, it’s revealed that there have been only nine unique visitors.  I suspect that at least four of these are me logging in from my laptop, the school computer labs, the dorm computer lab, and from home.  The fifth is probably the professor reviewing the homework posts.  The last four could potentially be spam bots as I have experienced comment spam.  It would be nice however, if a student from the class another person viewed the page.  I had 74 pageviews and 2.74 average page views.  These are about right for a website of this size and traffic, but would need to be higher to support advertising.  The time spent on site of three minutes and thirteen seconds is pretty good, but the bounce rate of 48.15% is probably average for a site like this.  It should really be improved.

2. Where Google Analytics gets really interesting is in the reporting of all the other variables and data concerning my blog.  Most of my visitors were from the United States, as I expected.  What was suprising was the visitor from Switzerland.  This was likely an ad bot because of the short average time on site, only eight seconds.  One really cool feature of the map was that Google can usually tell what town each visitor came from if the map is clicked on.

3. My top pages were, going in decreasing order, my home page, the about me section, and my resume.  This seems to make sense as these go from more general to more  detailed.  Many people start looking at a website from the homepage.  The homepage received about seventy five percent of the page views.

4. Seventeen visits, a majority of my traffic, came directly to my site.  Six used search engines and four used referring sites.  This makes sense as the method I used most often  to view my website was the link by email, which would probably be considered direct.

5. The only keyword used from a search engine was a search for an about page of another classmate.  I’m stumpted on how this search could bring a visitor to my page.

6. Overall, I’m not too suprised by the analytics for my website.  The bredth of options available was the most surprising to me.  These should be very useful to me as a future marketer.

1.

Halloween Fortune Cookies

Customizable in orange and black.

Order your fresh baked cookies now.

www.fancyfortunecookies.com

2. My target audience are customers looking to celebrate Halloween with an unorthodox and interesting alternative to candy.  It can be used for parties or the office.  My call to action is “Order your fresh baked cookies now.”  This motivates purchase sufficiently.  My landing page is the home page for Fancy Fortune Cookies.  I would have preferred to use the Halloween cookies page, but it was too many characters.  There is a link to the Halloween section on the home page, so it will require only one click.

3.  Fortune Cookies, Fortune Cookie, Halloween Cookies

4. Fortune Cookies- Medium Competition

5. 246,000 global and 135,000 local searches

6. Online fortune cookie, fortune cookie recipe.  I choose these because they had a lower level of competition and a decent amount of searches performed for them.  It was fairly difficult finding a keyword with a high density on the website that had low competition and a high amount of searches.  These were a good halfway point.

8. Average CPC $0.62, Estimated Ad Position 2.14, Estimated Daily Clicks 128.82 Estimated Daily Cost $80.31.  As I raised the Max CPC to $2.00, the Average CPC rose, roughly doubling and the Ad Position went up closer to number 1.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essentially the formatting and tweaking of a website in order for it to be found by a search engine such as Google.  Google sends bots to crawl the internet and index all of the pages of websites it can find.  By having things like a relevant title for a page, an accurate and interesting description, alt tags for pictures, a site map and XML Sitemap, and good navigational format, a web site has a greater chance of being found by an internet search performed using Google or any other search engine.  SEO is very important to businesses and up and coming websites because it can help them find more customers and users.  Oftentimes the website is already there and it only takes a few easy steps to optimize it for better search engine performance.

The top keywords were restaurant, time, post, comment, posted, customer, and work.  Interestingly most of these are part of the framework of WordPress.  This doesn’t surprise me too much since they do appear for every post.  I was expecting something more interesting to be in the top keyword spots, but this is somewhat of a general blog.  Although it focuses on marketing and internet related topics, it’s not as targeted or content specific as other blogs can be where there is a very narrow focus.

I attended the keynote speech by Ralph de la Vega on Wednesday night.  He is the CEO of AT&T Mobility and has written the book Obstacles Welcome: How to Turn Adversity into Advantage in Business and in Life He is a NIU MBA alum and accepted the Beta Gamma Sigma Business Achievement Award.  The speech started out with an introduction from the dean of the College of Business as well as a representative from Beta Gamma Sigma.  Also, the auditorium was packed by six o’clock and every seat was taken up.  De la Vega began speaking shortly thereafter. 

This was definitely an engaging, informative, inspirational, and useful speech that kept me interested the entire time.  From the beginning, everyone was engaged and there was not any talking or side conversation from the audience.  Everyone showed the upmost respect and gave the proper applause.  The added bonus of an Ipad raffle and a free sandwich and cookie at the end were a nice touch and appreciated.   

The speech was organized on the basis of the four most difficult moments of the speaker’s life.  The first dealt with growing up in Cuba in the late 1950s.  He had a pretty good life until the revolution took place and the country was ruled under communism.  To provide a better future for their children, his parents were ready to give up everything they owned to the government and move to the United States, but the government said that only he was allowed to leave.  They decided to go through with it and de la Vega had to move in with an unfamiliar family and learn English.  Although a very difficult situation, he is glad he persevered and became a better person for it.  While he was a teenager, a guidance counselor told him he wasn’t fit to be an engineer which was his life’s goal.  Instead, they recommended that he become a mechanic.  Initially ready to go along with it, his grandma later convinced him to reconsider.  He was definitely destined for something else and has shown he was up to the task. 

The second major moment in the speaker’s life came when he was in charge of telecommunications in southern Florida.  He was very scared of a hurricane hitting Miami and wiping out all of his company’s equipment.  To prevent this, he planned ahead and made connections with the power company’s employees.  Unfortunately, when disaster did strike, the power company was too busy and ignored his calls for service.  This is where he thought on his feet and called up a power company employee’s home phone number and talked to their wife.  By doing this, he convinced her of the urgency and she called her husband and got the power restored to the telephone switching equipment.

The third story involved his work in South America.  There were government uprisings and economic meltdowns in the countries he was in charge of.  Instead of looking at this situation as a problem, he thought of it as a major opportunity.  He thought out of the box and made this region profitable for the first time.

The last life changing experience came when de la Vega had to deal with the fact that almost everyone in the United States has a cell phone.  To overcome this, he has lead his company to diversify by adding wireless internet capabilities to many everyday objects, such as prescription bottles, GPS units, the ipad, and even beer kegs.  Almost anything can benefit from the use of the internet.  The trick is being creative and innovative.  Using this strategy, his company has continued to make money and will likely be in good shape for years to come.  Another task for his company to work on will be to conserve network bandwidth, as smart phones consume almost twenty four times as much bandwidth as a regular cell phone.  Consolidating bandwidth and using it more efficiently is one of the major benefits that could come from an AT&T merger with T-Mobile.      

 I found this presentation pertinent to my life in multiple ways.  First, I as well as almost everyone have overcome or faced a difficult situation.  I can attest to the fact that these have made me a better person.  The other thing that’s important is the connection to internet marketing and the stressing of the importance of education.  Education can help someone pursue their dreams.  It’s amazing to think how Ralph de la Vega’s life may have been different if he had stayed in Cuba.  The speech shows the power of the internet currently and states that there is plenty of room for expansion.  Sometimes, all it takes is a little creativity and perseverance to become a success.

McDonald’s Website

1. It takes seven clicks to get to the job description for an IT position at
McDonalds.  This includes multiple clicks on drop down forms to make a search selection such as IT and a state selection such as Illinois.  I had to see a total of four pages which includes the career home page, the corporate career search page, the search results page, and the job description page for the chosen position.  Overall, this was fairly easy as it did not seem to require unnecessary clicks or page views.

2. It was not too difficult to get to the job benefits on the McDonalds Website.  They were located on the navigation panel on the left.  The benefits navigation includes a general overview tab, as well as subcategories of health and protection, pay and rewards, investing in your future, and balance work and life.  Although redundant, the overview page is similar to a textbook outline of what’s to come.  One problem I found concerning looking up benefits on the website is that if you click on the link labeled benefits program under corporate staff benefits, it takes you to the health and protection page instead of the general overview page.  Also, it’s important to note that benefits for restaurant crew vary from the full time corporate employees.  McDonalds does a pretty good job of delineating the two so prospects are not confused.

3. Although functional, the website is not all that engaging.  If the careers tab is selected off of the McDonalds main website instead of the blackboard link, they have a set of four pages set up, including working here, training and education, benefits, and our people.  These pages are much more engaging with varying image sizes and clickable photos that move when hovered over with the cursor.  They can be a little wordy, but are richer looking and laid out better than the careers section at aboutmcdonalds.com.

4. Navigation is pretty clear as there is a navigation bar to the left with additional options that pop out to the side.  I never got lost.  It is odd that there is a McDonalds.com and an aboutMcDonalds.com.  On various portions of the site, including the careers page, there are photos and colored text that look like links but are not.  There are four pictures on the main career page, but they are all of equal size.  There is generally too much white space.  Also, there is a lack of interactive multimedia devices to increase user engagement.  Something as simple as a video, slideshow, or even a questionnaire or poll could help improve the page and make it more exciting.  Overall it’s easy to use.

5. McDonalds should refine the layout of their main pages to include only pertinent information.  This will prevent visitors from being overwhelmed.  Also, they could employ the background images/color of some of their other webpages to set the mood and make the career website more engaging.  McDonalds should also explore the use of multimedia videos andslideshows.

Kraft’s Website

1. It took a total of six clicks to access the job description.  This is similar to McDonalds, but they save a click by having the country selection as a page of links instead of a drop down form.  I saw a total of six pages to get to my destination.

2. Kraft’s website has a similar, if somewhat improved usability to McDonald’s website since McDonalds website had no major organization problems.  Where Kraft really excels is their persuasion and engagement.  Their website employed
the use of slideshows of changing images and the use of multiple bright colors
from their logo.  The layout was also more interesting and intuitive and makes you want to read through.  Also, Kraft seems to have used the above the fold technique quite well.  They also use a tailored navigation bar on the left side of the screen.  It changes depending on the topic being viewed.

1. The design of my ad goes for a fairly clean and simplistic approach.  It tries not to be too crowded, but makes effective use of the ad space and refrains from too much white space.  The picture is of ample size and draws the prospect in while the text is easy to read and off to the side.  It’s doesn’t blend in with the image which is good as this can sometimes cause difficulties.  The first statement describes the picture well while the second, ” Take Home a Dog Today” or “Adopt a Dog Today” act as comanding call to actions.

2. A/B testing takes an ad and creates a second where only one thing is changed in order to test the results of the change.  They are run simultaneously for a predetermined time and the results are recorded.  For my ad, I changed the wording of the copy.  I changed ”Take Home” to “Adopt”  to see if this more clearly communicates the fact that the Anti Cruelty Society is an adoption agency and not a pet shop.

3. I chose the adoption page for the Anti Cruelty Society.  They didn’t have a page just for dogs, so users will have to scroll down the page slightly.  This page accurately serves the purpose of the ad.

5.  To test the effectivness of these ads I would measure both the number of clicks and the number of times the ad has been displayed.  These, in conjunction with the CPM can help determine if the expenditure is warranted.  If I could use technology to determine the number of people who clicked on the ads and actually adopted a dog, I would have an even greater idea of the ad’s effectivness.  This would require the use of cookies and possibly self reporting on the part of the adopters to be feasible.