Viral Marketing Project

For my Marketing 322 class at Davenport University, I had the opportunity to create a message that can be posted on Social Media with the hopes that it would go viral. I decided to make a short video ad that launches a photo contest for a free trip to Hawaii. Feel free to watch the video here.

I did make this video 'unlisted' on youtube, so no one would accidentally come across it and think it was real. But if it was, I believe it would be something that would definitely go viral. I believe that video has the ability to capture someones attention and convey a message that will be engrained for a longer period of time. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth much more. The video is in similar style of the Pure Michigan ads narrated by Tim Allen. I think they are impactful and portray a positive message about the State.

The video would be posted on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms with the instructions on how to enter the contest. The content can be easily shared with friends and family and the images of Hawaii will motivate anyone to enter. The main idea of a campaign like this would be to attract people to the University's social media platforms and convert them to take interest in what we do. I used Davenport for this project because we all are familiar with it, but this process can be used with any company. Overall, I feel that Video is a powerful tool to convey any message and a call to action embedded in a video takes it one step further.

References:

Video Stock Footage provided by: Sawyer Hartman - https://www.sawyerhartman.com/
Music by: e-soundtrax background music - http://www.esoundtrax.com

Social Media Planning and Generating Leads

I had the opportunity to watch two Stukent webinars regarding the use of Social Media. The first webinar featured Adelyn Biedenbach, who is the Director of Digital Media for the Florida Panthers hockey team. Adelyn talked about Social Media Planning and how important it is to a business. There is so much more to the effective use of social media than just having an account and posting every now and then. A business must be intentional about what content they are sharing out and when they are sharing it out.

Adelyn Biedenbach, Florida Panthers

Having a Social Media account means that your followers have 24/7 access to your business and although it may not be on your mind to post at 3am, customers might be. Knowing when you customers are active and what they are interested in seeing is an important step to building a lasting relationship through social media. It is also important to keep the content relevant. One way to help with this is to develop and utilize a calendar system. Using a calendar, the company can not only schedule posted content, but they can differentiate between media types such as pictures, video or promotions to mix up the content and keep it fresh. When it comes to planning, it is critical to remember that you are posting to appeal to your target group and you must understand what they want to be relevant.

Bree Nakatani, Wishpond

The second webinar featured Bree Nakatani who is the Success Lead for Wishpond. In her webinar, she discussed the process for soliciting leads through social media. There are several ways that companies can utilize social media to connect with new customers and ultimately make conversions. One way of doing that is to run a sweepstakes. In this scenario, the company will offer up a good or service from the company for free of charge, all they have to do is enter the sweepstakes and agree to the terms. The terms of the sweepstakes usually involves the customer authorizing the social media platform to automatically add them as a follower and tweet a message on their behalf. The tweet will be shared with the customer's followers and spread the desired content of the company.

Other ways to use similar tactics involve holding an Instagram hashtag contest where users are presented with a photo from the company and they have to come up with a creative hashtag to describe the picture. And another avenue would be a Facebook photo contest where users can upload their best photos representing the company and ultimately be chose to win a prize. All of these marketing techniques are used to draw people into the social arena of the company and hopefully convert them into sales. Understanding the use of social media tools and techniques like these will set businesses apart from the rest and develop relationships with their client base. After all, grounded relationships are integral to the success of a business.

Using Social Media to Drive Sales

More and more businesses are turning to Social Media to help drive sales and many are finding it a very valuable tool. Some may wonder just how effective social media is when it comes to driving sales. A few businesses believe that social media is so effective, that they no longer need websites any more. A recent article published by the Chicago Tribune talks about the best ways to utilize social media to help bring in customers and keep costs down as well.

One of the main benefits is the cost factor. Most major social media platforms do not charge like some web hosting companies do and in most cases they offer more benefits than a traditional website. Not only does the business have control over the content that is being shared, the platform itself is created in a way that allows for that content to be shared in a more viral way that allows the message to spread faster than a traditional web page. However, the article does explain that if a company is to truly benefit, they should consider having both a social media presence and a website. The article states that, "To secure new sales leads or traffic requires search engine optimization for your particular products or services. Even though your business page on a social media site may show up high in a Google Search, that doesn't necessarily translate to converting those visitors to your social media business page." (Hoagland-Smith, 2018) It is pretty important for a business to have both avenues to really have the best shot at connecting with customers.

Another article goes into more details about the importance of a website. The article states that, "People expect businesses to have their own websites, just as they used to expect businesses to have a real physical business address." (Ward, 2017) The main marketing focus of a business should be to gain conversions; to get people to become your customer. Why would you limit yourself when it comes to marketing avenues. A website is just as important as a social media platform and if you can establish both, the business can be very successful.

References:

Hoagland-Smith, L. (2018). Expert use of social media can bring sales. In The Chicago Tribune. Retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/opinion/ct-ptb-hoaglnad-smith-feb5-st-0206-20180204-story.html

Ward, S. (2017). 6 Reasons Every Small Business Should Have a Website. In The Balance. Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/reasons-small-business-website-2948414

The Future of SEO

It is true that changes to Google’s main algorithm are far and few in between, but many experts believe that there are changes on the horizon when it comes to Google and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A recent article published by Forbes.com, talks about those potential changes and some other trends that can have an impact on how users receive search results and how people optimize their web space.

Textbook, Larson & Draper

One of the trends that is already in existence is highlighted in the textbook titled Digital Marketing Essentials.  The book talks about the Panda update to Google’s Algorithm. It says, “The Panda update was significant not just for the changes it implemented but because it marked a significant shift in Google’s ranking determinants. Rather than trust in the patterns of links across the Internet as reliable signals of a website’s quality, Google began assessing the quality of a webpage based on other factors.” (Larson & Draper, 2017) The Panda update took data from several focus groups on what made a website appealing and included those characteristics in their algorithm. Overall, this led to more high quality websites being ushered to the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

In the Forbes article, the author talks about how there will be possible changes to the way the

Google Home, Virtual Assistant

SERP will operate in the near future. The article states that, “Google has been pushing the development of more personalized search results for the better part of a decade, relying on individual search histories, browser cookies, and other information to give better, more customized SERPs for individuals.” (DeMers, 2017) Google has access to a lot of personal data and they plan to use that data to make the browsing experience more customized to their users. They have already implemented these features in many areas of their tools, but in the future we will see them implemented with many of Google’s other products. For instance, Google Home, the speaker and home virtual assistant will collect information on the user and incorporate those preferences into the browsing experience.

One of the final things the article brings up is that Google and other search engines will focus on hyper-local optimization. As they continue to make the SERP more individualized, one of those components will be to offer more local solutions not only to provide a level of personalization to the user, but also to encourage local community investment and growth. SEO is an ever-evolving tool and one must stay current to utilize the most of its benefits. As technology changes, so will the way we find information. Knowing how to navigate the World Wide Web, will be a useful skill to anyone. 

References:

Larson, S., & Draper, J. (2017). Digital Marketing Essentials. N.p.: Stukent.

DeMers, J. (2017). 7 SEO Trends That Will Dominate 2018. In Forbes.com. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2017/12/26/7-seo-trends-that-will-dominate-2018/2/#

Navigating the World of SEO

Scott Cowley, Stukent Expert

In a Stukent Expert Session Webinar, Scott Cowley goes into detail about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how to best utilize optimization techniques to build a profit. In a world where technology is a one stop shop for information, entertainment and shopping, having a website that is easy to find is extremely beneficial.

One of the first steps in building an optimized website is to learn and understand how people search and what they search for. There are 3 main types of searches; Informational, Navigational and Transactional. Within those 3 types of searches users are quite predictable in how they search. Most users want the search engine to do all the work for them, so when searching they may add descriptive keywords like, “Best” headphones or “Cheapest” headphones to bring up a more relevant webpage. Understanding this, will allow the web-builder to design web pages with keywords that will meet the search criteria of their target group.

According to Mr. Cowley, there are two parts to SEO, On-page SEO and Off-page SEO. On-page SEO is when a search engine such as Google, utilizes keywords on a webpage to determine the relevance of that webpage. Google’s algorithm will crawl the website and find keywords that are related to the search criteria and rank them higher due to relevancy. How to utilize keywords is a very complicated task. It is important to not oversaturate or cannibalize your site with keywords. Using too many keywords and using the same keywords will overcrowd and delegitimize your site. If everything is important, than nothing is important. Using tools like Google Adwords a data archive, can give insights on what people search for so a web builder can tailor the webpage to the search patterns of the consumer.

Courtesy: Marketing Comando

However, Google does not use relevancy alone to rank pages. Their algorithm also uses Off-page SEO, which ranks pages based on popularity. The popularity of a website can be determined by the number and quality of links that direct you to a particular web page. It is important to know that Google ranks web pages and not full web sites, so certain pages can have higher rankings than others.  Many businesses will use Social Media as a platform to put out content and generate traffic to a website in order to boost popularity. There are many techniques that can be used to generate traffic and if that technique is used in conjunction with keyword optimization it will yield the best search result placement.

Overall, SEO can be a powerful tool to market and communicate. What is important to know is that digital marketing is more than just having a web presence, but knowing how to use all of the tools and resources available to intentionally drive a message or conversion.

The Art of the Apology

Recently, more and more cases of Sexual Misconduct have been popping up all over the news. Many beloved celebrities and well known individuals have been accused of Sexual Harassment or Assault. First and foremost, these horrific acts cause so much pain and stress for those who have been victimized and at the same time it severely damages the reputation of the accused as well. One person who has recently been accused is world famous chef, Mario Batali. After the allegations, Batali was fired from the daytime TV show, The Chew, which he has co-hosted since 2011.

Mario Batali

The obvious next step for the accused is to do whatever they can to restore their image and try to rebuild the trust back in their followers. A PR Specialist can be very effective in planning out the right course of action remedy the issue and move forward. Sometimes the best course of action is to admit your mistakes, show compassion for those that were affected and show how you are going to do things differently moving forward. Batali almost got that right, but the last line of his apology letter made everything worse.

According to CNN, Batali used an online newsletter to acknowledge "many mistakes" and apologize for disappointing "my friends, my family, my fans and my team." But what has people talking is the conclusion of the message, which read: "ps. in case you're searching for a holiday-inspired breakfast, these Pizza Dough Cinnamon Rolls are a fan favorite." The postscript included a picture of the referenced sweet treats, along with a link to the recipe. This last line proved to be extremely insensitive and made it seem like he wasn't taking the allegations seriously.

An effective PR Specialist should know that this was not the best way to handle this apology. One of the key traits of an apology is sincerity, but all it took was one line to show that Batali was not so sincere in his attempt to empathize with others. Hopefully, Batali can understand that he must lean on someone with good PR experience to help guide him through this issue and restore his image with the public.

Bullying is not OK!

A recent article published by the Huffington Post talks about a young boy from Knoxville, Tennessee named Keaton Jones who is a victim of bullying at his school. His Mother shared an emotional video of him crying and discussing how the kids in his school were bullying him. The video which has now gone viral has captured the attention of many people including several celebrities and organizations who have come to the defense of Keaton and are advocating change. Other business have also responded offering trips and once-in-a-liftime opportunities for Keaton and his family.

The response and call for support is an example of how companies are using real life events like this to not only influence change in the world, but highlight the values of the company and build relationships with the community. An organization is more than just an entity existing for the benefit of themselves. The most reputable organizations are those who know when to take a stance on an issue and promote good around the world. One article published by Fast Company, states that organizations have an, "opportunity to join issue conversations on equal footing to more traditional advocacy voices. And, increasingly, brands aim to nurture customer relationships that are lifelong, built not just on product features but also on shared cultural values." (Mintz, 2016) Issues like this are an opportunity for a company to show who they really are. 

This particular case relates back to the Public Relations technique of Community Relations. Bullying is a serious issue in our schools today. It is going to take some brave people and organizations to step up and help advocate for protections and support for those who are affected by bullying. A company should have the moral ambition to be more than an organization, but a beacon of hope and support for the community it exists in. Keaton's story is a touching reminder that we are a human and we should support each other and build one another up, and Public Relations can be the vehicle for that change. 

Citation:
Mintz, R. (2016). Companies, Don’t Be Afraid To Take A Stand: It Can Be Good For Your Brand. In Fast Company. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3061109/companies-dont-be-afraid-to-take-a-stand-it-can-be-good-for-your-brand