Week 12 - Additional Social Media Outlets

Here are the 4 additional Social Media types that we might be able to use for our Custom Covers business.

Google + - When I read about Google +, the communities and groups, I was excited. I thought this could be a place where we link up with some Custom BBQ contractors and make relationships with them. After searching through the topics, communities and anything else I could find, my general impression is that not many people really use it.  I did find a BBQ recipe community that I did join, mostly to get great recipes that I could post on our site, but I don't really think we will find many people in San Diego there that need custom covers, so I'm not sure how effective that will be.

LinkedIn - I think using LinkedIn will be a good use of time. We could search out corporate facility managers in our area that might have something that needs to be covered, and search out restaurant managers in our area that might need covers for their tables.

YouTube - We may be able to use YouTube to post videos on how to cook dishes on the BBQ, how to clean your BBQ, how to measure for a cover, but there are already videos out there for these things. Also we don't really have great production capabilities, so I'm not sure how the videos would turn out.

LivingSocial - We could come up with some coupon deals for a certain amount off of a new cover.

Since we don't have a storefront, GoogleMaps and Yelp really aren't options for us. I don't think we'd use Groupon because we really can't handle a large number of custom covers at one time, and the profit margin on the covers is already as low as we can get it, so giving Groupon a large cut of that wouldn't work for us.

Week 11 - Marketing on Facebook without spending any money

I do believe that you could use Social Media for marketing without paying for it, though the way you would go about it would be different. It will also take you a significant amount of time to implement this, but in the long run, I believe you would be able to build a more effective base than if you used the social media marketing channels.  Here are some ways that I think you could build your base:

• Search out influential companies and people in your industry.  Follow their pages and get them to follow you by building relationships with them. As they learn who you are and begin to trust your work they can begin to share and endorse the work that you do.  By doing this, you will then be respected by the people and companies who respect them. 
• The biggest influence in social media is building relationships. If you spent time building relationships with the people you do have following you, then eventually you could ask that they recommend your business to the people that they know. When their friends see that they endorse you, they will be more likely to trust you and use your services. Then as you build relationship with them, they could also recommend you to their friends, and the growth in your following will be exponential. 
• In order to build these relationships, you will need to come up with content that will benefit your followers, and you will need to interact with them in order to build those relationships. This will take time and lots of effort and creativity to do.

If you are willing to invest your time in these ways, I think you could definitely do this. But time is money, and if you don't have the time to spend doing this, then you should think about paying to do some advertising.  But even if you do, you will still have to spend time investing in the relationships with those people to keep them around. 

For our business, I think it would be a good use to money to initially target specific groups with advertising to kick start the people who follow us.  Without doing this, I think it would take a long time to build that initial base. Then we could use this plan to build out that base by investing in the relationships. 

Week 11 - Social Media Ad Comments

I commented on the following blogs for the Week 11 assignment.

1. Danielle Kennelley
2. Marilyn King
3. Ben Samsuangco
4. Don Steier
5. Fritz Templin

Week 11 - Online Advertising

This week we're talking about using social media advertising; what it is, what the options are and how to best use it. I have to admit that in spite of the fact that I'm not a person who likes to sell things at all, I found this week very interesting. Mostly, the idea that advertising on social media isn't really about selling, but instead it's about building an audience that eventually might need your services.  Then you build their trust with interesting content and if they do need what you have to offer, they will know where to go.

The creation of ads is also different than I would have thought.  The principles of good ad design include:

• Keeping it simple. Use great pictures and as little text as you can to get your point across. No one will sit there and read an ad for any amount of time. You have about 1 second to capture their attention and make them want more information. 
• Have a clear call to action. Make sure that you have a defined place where they can do something, whether it's purchase a product, get more information, sign up for something or follow what you are doing
• The Ad should look visually similar to the site where you are taking them. You don't want to lure them in with one look and then switch to a totally different look wherever they land. 

Once you have an ad, you have to decide where best to use it. Some choices are:

• Facebook banner ads. You can use facebook to target specifically the people you want to target. The options you choose will depend on the group you are targeting with the ad.  You tell them how much you want to spend per day and they will advertise to the audience you target until the money runs out. You can choose whether the ads show in the newsfeed, or on the right column. The options include:
• Location
• Age
• Gender
• Demographics
• Language
• Relationship status
• Education
• Work
• Financial
• Home
• Ethnic
• Generation
• Parents
• Politics
• Life Events
• Interests
• Behaviors
• Twitter ads - These ads are called Tweet Engagements, and just show up as a Twitter feed in your feed.  Again, the options you choose will depend on the group you are targeting. Here you will bid on the options and whoever bids the highest gets that advertisement.  The idea with the Twitter ads is to catch someone in a conversation about what you provide, and intercept the conversation with a suggestion to use your services. The options include:
• Location
• Gender
• Language
• Device / Platform
• Keywords
• Followers
• Interests
• Tailored Audience
• TV Targets
• Behaviors

After researching the types of ads, I think that for our Custom Covers - San Diego business,  right now we would go with Facebook ads. We are new to social media, so at this point, we'd like to build likes. That will allow us to later on target those people and the people they know to build a relationship based advertising scheme.  We don't have the funds to spend a lot of money on this, so maybe $20 per day is the most we could spend.

I see us having 3 or for groups that will have different ads, each targeted to the specific group.  Here are 3 ads I created. They are similar, but will be targeted to different groups.

The first ad is targeted to a group of homeowners who have invested in their home by adding an outdoor entertainment space.  The interests I would choose for this group are:

• Location - 50 mile radius of Oceanside because all of our work is custom, so we have to be able to get there to measure. 
• Age - 25-65+ - This seems like the age group that would be actively entertaining and maintaining an outdoor space. Most younger people probably don't own homes yet.
• Language - English - We aren't bilingual, so we wouldn't be able to communicate effectively with foreign language speakers. 
• Home Ownership - Homeowners and First Time Buyers. - These are the people that would have an outdoor entertainment space.  Not all homeowners would, but they might be interested in looking at the pictures and then they might know someone, or decide to build something down the line. 
• Generation - Baby  Boomers and Gen X. This category is similar to the age category, but would most likely filter out older people who might not have the energy to entertain. 
• Interests - BBQ, Home Improvement, Home appliances, 
• Behaviors - Entertaining, Purchase Behavior - Home and Garden

The 2nd ad group would be targeted at companies that build custom outdoor spaces. They definitely know people who have these and could be a referral source for the people who would actually buy the covers. Or, they could possibly include the cost of our covers in their overall price structure. 

The interests I would choose for this group are:

• Location - 50 mile radius of Oceanside because all of our work is custom, so we have to be able to get there to measure.
• Age - 25-65+ - This seems like the age group that may own companies that build the outdoor spaces. 
• Gender - All
• Job Titles - Owner, Partner, Manager, Project Coordinator, Project Manager
• Language - English
• Interests - BBQ, Home Improvement,  Outdoor Living, Construction, Management, Retail
• Behaviors - B2B - Industry - Construction

The third group would be targeted at Restaurant Owners with outdoor seating areas. We also make covers for outdoor tables/chairs to protect them from the elements.
The interests I would choose for this group are:

• Location - 50 mile radius of Oceanside because all of our work is custom, so we have to be able to get there to measure.
• Age - 25-65+ - This seems like the age group that may own companies that build the outdoor spaces. 
• Gender - All
• Industry - Food Preparation and Services
• Job Titles - Owner, Manager
• Behaviors - B2B - Industry - Restaurant

I believe these ads would be successful because of the photos that catch your eye and stand out, the simple text that would appeal to each different group, and the call to action button that would get them to like us on Facebook where they can get more information about our company, more information on how to contact us and see pictures of the work we've done.

Thanks for listening!  Whew, that was a lot!

Week 10 - Newsletter Blog Responses

It was interesting to read the Newsletter blogs from the other students. It definitely gave me some more ideas.  The blogs I commented on are:

1. Audra Najera - San Diego Seamless Dry-Wall Taping
2. Taylor Tirona - College Counseling
3. Connor Blackwood - Ultra Gamer
4. Chris Deddo - Bowling Products
5. Tiffany Edwards - Coastal Dreams - Destination by Design
6. Tina Freyberger - Soyology Candles

Week 10 - Business Newsletters

Newsletters can be a great way for a business to communicate with and involve customers in a business. The newsletter can be a way to capture attention and allow a customer to read more about different articles.

For our business, a quarterly newsletter would be a good time schedule. We'd target each season; winter, spring, summer and fall.  A standard set of sections could be used:

• Client success stories - This section would highlight jobs that had been completed within the past season.  Pictures and client testimonials could be included to give clients ideas about how they could use our covers to protect their items from the sun, the rain, the wind, etc. 
• Recipes - This section would highlight recipes that could be made for that season.  For example, recipes to brine and roast a turkey on the grill for fall, or summer  BBQ recipes using garden vegetables for summer, how to roast a lamb leg for Easter in the spring or how to roast a rib roast for Christmas on the grill for winter. 
• Seasonal maintenance - This section would describe the maintenance that should occur on your  BBQ in the different seasons
• Rub recipes - This section could detail various rubs for meats.
• Events - A listing of BBQ related events coming in the next season
• Coupons - This section could contain a coupon for a percentage off for new customers.

We could add a sign-up on Facebook and our website to gather email addresses. We could also encourage the recipients to share the newsletter with their friends. 

Week 9 - Ways to organize a blog with categories

How you organize your blog posts will depend on what your reason for having the blog is. Additionally, there are most likely more than one way to organize your blogs.

What comes to mind first is organization by date or file type, organizing photos separately from text or video, but I think what would be more useful would be to come up with different type of blog posts.  Some examples might be:

• Personal Thoughts - This could be an area where we would detail what current trends we like in outdoor living spaces. It could include our thoughts about spring and how BBQ outings bring people together. 
• Educational / Expertise - This could include videos and instructional tutorials on everything from how to build a custom BBQ to how to measure one for a cover.
• Creative Ideas - This category could include BBQ recipes, photos of BBQ items, how to incorporate BBQ into your personal family meals and entertaining in ways you may not have thought of
• Events - This category could review or announce events that would be of interest to people who BBQ

Within each category, you could organize by date. The use of categories, might prompt you to have thoughts about what new topics you could write about.

The other blogs I commented on are:

• Connor Blackwood
• Audra Najera
• Patricia Tirona
• Taylor Tirona

Week 9 - Personality in blogs

When should personality shine through on a blog? I believe that it depends on the type of blog, whether it's a personal blog or a corporate blog and the situation or intent of the blog.

For personal blogs, it would usually be good to let your personality out, but there may be situations where you wouldn't want to. For example, if you are trying to establish yourself as an expert in a corporate discipline, then being cutesy with your personality may make people not take you seriously.

For business blogs, the culture of the company will most likely dictate whether or not your personality should come through.  Companies like Chipotle and Chick-Fil-A have made personality part of their culture, so if you were writing a blog about those companies then you would want to show your personality.  However if you are representing a company like IBM or Chase Bank, then you would want to represent that company in a professional manner that shows the personality of the company, not of yourself.

Week 8 - Twitter

The assignment this week was to use the Twitter advanced search to find people who may be interested in your business. I went on a quest to find people who need a BBQ cover.  Our business is a local one, so I wanted to use the Places feature to search for people in San Diego County.  The problem that I found is that it only searches a 15 mile radius of a city.   I wasn't able to figure out how to change that range, so I had to put in different cities in San Diego to cover the county.  This was a pain.  I hope there's a way that I haven't found to be able to change the radius. The search terms I used are:

• BBQ Cover
• Custom BBQ
• BBQ Island
• BBQ
• Custom Cover

I found some hits when I forgot to put in the place, but in San Diego I didn't find any relevant hits.  I think this is a search that I will need to continue to monitor.  It's a pretty specific group of people that we are searching for. So the strategy will be to continue to monitor this.

I set up 2 lists:

• Custom BBQ Cover
• Custom Corporate Covers

This will allow me to find, track and segregate individual people who are looking for custom covers and corporations that need covers. We can develop different strategies for each.   The one thing I noticed is that a list does not allow you to send a tweet to only people in the list, so I'm not so sure how helpful this will be other than keeping a list for us to tweet directly to. 

For corporate clients, tweets during working hours to facilities managers would be a good strategy. For individual clients, tweets during the early morning or evening hours would be better because that's when people have time to check their social media.