Refresh

Hey guys, it's been quite awhile! I started this blog as part of a semester long assignment in an Integrated Merchandising Channels class, which was basically about how different social media platforms play an important role in marketing of any business. We learned a lot and I found it really interesting getting to know all the different aspects that companies utilize social media to connect to their customer, but now i've finished school and I wanted a place to share my experiences and keep a record of what's happening in my life so here I am.

Final Reflection

Well peeps finals are officially next week and the semester is coming to an end so this is my final blog post for the class!! This is more of a reflection on the class itself than on a chapter, so I hope you enjoy reading my opinion of what we've done throughout the semester.

For this class the textbook definitely helped supply us with the basic knowledge we needed to do well, having a good foundation of information broken down into segments was also a good approach to explaining the different parts of social media marketing.

It was more interesting to see real life examples of how social media is becoming a major component of marketing in a wide variety of companies. Having to do the small assignments such as, the infographic, was an important tool to have learned so that we can use this to present information to consumers in a fun way. I also really liked learning about layer, the augmented reality app, with the expansion of technology in the business world and our everyday lives, I see the importance for students to be aware of up and coming technologies. Even though our degree is business based, having classes that foster our creativity is an important part of being a merchandising student. If more classes could integrate technology into the curriculum to compliment the coursework it would give merchandising students another advantage over their competition in the job market.

The design process helped us understand how to problem solve by breaking down what the problem was, researching for information, coming up with ideas for solutions, narrowing down those ideas, and finally testing them. This process is the basis for how we were going to begin to formulate a definition of what needed to be addressed for the social media marketing plan project. Before we could really start working on the steps in the plan itself we needed to know how to effectively look at what we were being presented to work on. So I think spending class time learning this process was very helpful to how we would be approaching each step in developing our final project plan for the department.

Of course I was partial to the brainstorming part of the design process because I really like bouncing ideas off others and building more expansive ideas from what was original mentioned. It helps to have a small class size of students that are open to all possibilities; and I also founding it very encouraging to have the teachers make comments/suggestions to guide and shift the conversation into a particular direction. The part I’m not too fond of is research because I need an extremely detailed explanation of what to look for; otherwise I end up feeling overwhelmed and wasting time on areas that are not helpful to the progress of the project.

I was most surprised by how much terminology has already been developed on all the different aspects of social media marketing. There were some terms that I knew already but didn’t know had an official name, and there were others that were really helpful to understanding the psychology behind what goes into any social media marketing plan. Learning about all the different social media terms, zones, target audiences, types of users, and technologies was very important to prepare us for the professional aspects that will likely be a part of many of our jobs. I really think that teaching this information is an important experience for students to have, so that if we have the opportunity to get a job that handles social media we are able to understand the method behind managing a companies’ social media presence.

In learning about social media you begin to understand that this online extension of a company is responsible for connecting the company with their customers, making a more personal connection and experience for the customer so that they feel like they can easily interact with the brand. Its also helpful to the brand to have the customer openly communicate their honest opinion to help the company improve customer service and relations in a way that they haven’t previously been able to do.

If I had a do over for the class I would keep the blog posts, small assignments about augmented reality, infographics, and website tools such as Jing and Diigo, the design process workshop, and the social media marketing plan. I would eliminate the chapter quizzes because I feel like the blog posts help with retention of information of each chapter and more time could be spent in class on discussing the parts of the chapter that we will be using in the final project.

Thanks for visiting my blog, I've enjoyed all the comments, and want to wish everyone good luck on their finals!!

Social Media Research

Hello again, this week we are covering Chapter 9 Social Media for Consumer Insights, which basically is about how marketers can use social media research methods to compile data from online information.

The strength in this chapter is how much vocabulary is given to help explain the different types of social media research that marketers use to compile research information from social media sites. For example the chapter focuses on both qualitative and quantitative research in the form of observational and ethnographic research, monitoring and tracking, and sentiment and content analysis. The weakness is in how little the process for actually doing research on social media sites is covered, the book does a good job of breaking down they types of research and how they are each preformed separately, but not on how companies perform the service of collecting the information for research.

Five terms I’ve never heard:

Netnography- is a research methodology that takes information from public spaces online and uses that research to study a group without being intrusive.

Scraping- is an automated monitoring process that searches the web for conversations that relate to the criteria that has been designated to be the target and stores this information on a database.

Opinion Mining- is another term used to describe sentiment analysis, which is basically the collection of opinions from online users about a brand.

Echo Effect- is also known as online-echo, is a term used to describe a sampling error in the research process that can occur where users share other users post sometimes across many social media platforms causing it to be hard to give an accurate sampling of information.

Nonresponse Bias- is the potential for social media research to be inaccurate by not capturing some information from the target population that have significantly different information from the users who’s information was collected, causing the research to be biased.

I searched Tesla Motors on socialmention.com and I do agree with the results that came up, the strength in social media mentions is 31%, sentiment ratio is 6:1 meaning the ratio of positive mentions to negative, passion is 41%, the possibility that a user will repeatedly mention the brand, and reach is 24%, is the range of influence the users have about this brand. The number of users that were used to collect the data seems a little small, but that seems to be one of the few things I wasn’t satisfied with.

 Thanks for visiting my blog, and I hope everyone has a good weekend!

Social Commerce

Hey everyone, this week we are covering Chapter 8, this chapter focuses on social commerce, which is an extension of e-commerce where products are purchase online through social media or a social media application. It also covers how reviews can influence consumers, and how the reviewer uses descriptive explanations as to why they rated a product a certain way. The chapter also covers the different psychological reasons that influence customers to make certain purchases, such as, social proof, authority, affinity, scarcity, consistency, and reciprocity.

The strengths for the chapter are that it covered how social media has changed the way people shop, how customer reviews are really an important part of an online shoppers experience and how retailers can use this information to improve customer service, and all the psychological influences that motivate consumers to purchase products. The weakness of the chapter would be in how little they covered how social commerce benefits marketers, there is a short breakdown of the benefits, but I would have liked those topics to be elaborated on more. 

I have not shopped through social media ads, usually they pop up as a banner of something I have already been looking at on another app, so I don’t feel the need to click on the ad to look at the product. I see some ads on Facebook to buy custom t-shirts, but that’s not really my thing unless it’s for an organization I’m in or a run that I’ve participated in that goes to charity.

I do prefer to shop online, most of the places that I like to buy things don’t have a physical location in my area so buying online is my only option. I actually base some of my buying decisions on things I find on blogs that I’ve found through Pinterest or YouTube that I really like and I could get good use out of. I also really enjoy physically going shopping because I’m a very visual and sensory person so I like seeing the clothes I’m looking for and feeling the texture of the fabric. Before I even go to a store though I like to look online and narrow down the things that I can get the most utility out of, I find that there are so many options and trends that if I can narrow down what I really want to buy it alleviates any stress or anxiety I get from wondering aimlessly through stores without any direction.

Reviews from actual everyday people influences me way more than an expert, because customers use the product, they have applicable experience to give a review based on what they think and observed from actively using the product. 

I think pick lists is a fun aspect of social shopping, it gives the customer the opportunity to share their wishlist with others that they may not be able to buy for themselves or could be used to help others buy gifts for that person for their birthday or Christmas. Popularity filters would be more of a utility application, because it shows consumers what other people are buying or what other customers have added to their favorites to purchase later or repurchase. Ultimately I think that social shoppers find utility to be more important, because having so many options available and not being able to physically see the products, they want to spend their time finding items that they will get good use out of and won’t be a waste of their time by having to go through the process of returning it.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Social Entertainment

Hey everyone so this week we are covering Chapter 7 Social Entertainment, where we discuss how online games can be another important part of social media marketing planning. So we were asked to select an online game to cover in our post for this week, and see what opportunities we observed could be used by companies to increase or influence brand promotion and loyalty.

I chose to play a strategy game because that’s the type of gaming I enjoy, so I played Kingdom Rush! When I first opened the game on my computer I wasn’t quite sure how I was supposed to play this game since all the strategy games I’ve played in the past primarily have been on my iPod touch, iPad, or Play Station. In the first level it wasn’t too hard to beat my enemies, since the player is just getting used to how the game works I think it’s helpful not to be overloaded by too much information. I’m not sure if it was my computer, which is nine years old, (woohoo Mac4life!), but I did not encounter any advertisements on my screen while playing. I know it’s pretty typical of online games to have at least an ad at the beginning of the game or on a banner somewhere on the screen, but I did not see any, so I can’t really comment on how I viewed the ads or how it changed my perspective after playing the game for awhile. I did notice the game becoming increasingly harder on each level, which caused me to want to continue to play even after being defeated by the enemy on one level. I don’t have much time to play online games other than an occasional game of solitaire, Bejeweled, or Mahjong because of school/homework and work so I don’t think playing these strategy games at the moment would be fun, but I could see their appeal once I have more free time.

 I chose the ARG, Genesis of Cr0n, which is a dark play ARG like The Lost Ring. The game has you set up a login online to be come an agent, the point of the game is to learn information that the Ministry of Provenance is trying to hide and manipulate from the public; you can go to the GameCity8 Open Arcade to register as well. Once you are there they send you on missions to uncover the truth with other Cr0n agents, give you a tour of Cr0n underground headquarters, you then travel around the city of Nottingham, England finding clues and information to overthrow the Ministry of Provenance. It’s not required that you participate in the physical activities of the game since not everyone lives in England, but online users are asked to help by continuing on to the Apocalypse of MoP to keep the game going. This game is focused on the use of technology, theater, gaming, spies, and conspiracy, so some major companies that might sponsor this game could be any major Hollywood production company, Apple, Google, Infectious Media (internet advertising), or the Ambassador Theater Group. I think anyone of these companies could benefit from sponsoring this ARG, especially any technology based company that has the ability to help fund an intricate game like this, and it would also allow gamers the opportunity to use the companies products to enhance the game activities.     

Well thanks for reading! I hope you all are enjoying your weekend and I hope to have you back next week!!

Design Thinking

Hey guys, week before last we attended a workshop at the Think Center, I got my posts mixed up so I'm doing the post this week instead. The purpose of the workshop was to help us improve our skills in the Design Thinking process!!

The workshop with Ms. Sayger helped me to gain a better understanding of the Design Thinking process (define, research, brainstorm, prototype, choose, learn), and it helped to have her input on how we would come to our conclusions in each step. By giving us the appropriate questions to ask ourselves and each other for each step, we were able to concentrate our ideas and extend off those main ideas. I also liked that she came around to each group, listened to our ideas, and then asked more tailored questions to help guide the conversation into a particular direction.

My favorite step in the Design Thinking process would have to be brainstorming, because I love using creativity to help spark an idea that inspires someone else’s thought process, which could possible lead to even better ideas. Being able to sit in a group of people who all feel comfortable sharing their ideas is way better than just one person, and having other people to brainstorm with brings an array of experiences together that influence each person differently.

I would have to say the step I struggle with the most is research; I find it hard to focus on where to start when doing research. Research is usually so broad in the beginning that focusing in on the proper keywords can be somewhat challenging. It’s also not always the most exciting part of the process for me, so that’s part of why it is not my favorite step, but certainly I have researched topics before and become completely engrossed in researched it, particularly history. So if I was given more direction in this area it might help me have a better understanding of this step, and allow me to attack other research topics more easily.

I think just being able to confidently go through each step of the Design Thinking process could help improve how I approach marketing plans in general. It’s so important to have an effective social media marketing plan in any company, that being able to find a plan that retains current consumers and attracts new customers could make a huge impact in the success of a company.

Using this process is going to be the most effective way for our class to address the issues we are being presented and how to come up with solutions in our final project. By using the define step we can determine what things need to be addressed to reach our goal, research can give us insight into what has already been done or is currently in place so that we can come up with an effective prototype. After choosing a plan to implement, maybe this will pave the way for change and improvements, and hopefully others can learn from our ideas.   

Social Publishing

Hi everyone! This week we are covering Chapter 6 Social Publishing, specifically search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO), which both are a part of social publishing strategy to increase search engine rankings (located preferably at the top of the results) and increasing share-ability by users. We were asked to analyze these aspects on a website of our choosing, so i chose Nordstrom.

The website uses highlighted items and different colored fronts to draw attention to certain perks that they offer, there is also a banner for a special limited time department called Pop-in shop, a link to see what a particular employee recommends buying, and a link to their blog and other social media websites. The only problem I see is that the banner promoting interactive aspects of the website and links to published content on other social media sites is at the very bottom of the page. I think the idea behind this is that for those using the traditional website, who want to get more connected to the content the website is sharing, the publisher thinks that the user will go looking for that information near the bottom of the website. The opposite is true for users of the iPhone/iPad app who may be more technologically savvy; the publisher has pictures that link to the blog, Instagram, the pop-in shop, and the new favorites of the Director of Creative Projects at the top. The problem I have with the tradition site having all this interactive information and links to their social media sites at the bottom is that I think they are selling themselves short. Their audience is pretty technologically driven so even if the user is on the traditional website, these links should be near the top increasing the possibility of increasing the search engine optimization and social media optimization.

I think some good tags for the website would be department store because it is one, personal stylist and free shipping because those are two of the first things I noticed right below the name, at the top of the page.

When running the search for these keywords I found that department store was effective as it was on the first page of the search, but it was not in the top three listings. I think it wasn’t listed in the top three because there isn’t a physical location close to where I live, a lot of the results on the search are based on proximity to where I live, and the further down I went the more broad the results were. As for the personal stylist search, it was the top listing on the page, so that is also an effective keyword. I typed in free shipping into the search engine and the website was on the first page as well as the top listings, I think since it is a highlighted item that not all department stores offer it increases the chances of having the website listed at the top of the page.

If I had to compare the organic results between all the searches I would have to say it would be a close tie between free shipping and personal stylist, because the free shipping results had no sponsored links above it at all, and the personal stylist results had just one sponsored link above it. If I had to compare the sponsored links, the department store search results would win, because a direct link to the website is listed as the sixth ad link on the right side of the page.