My Comments on MCC Student Social Media Reviews/Blog Posts

MCC Student Blog Links:

Ipina,Jessica -  http://bit.ly/1f5C84q

Mencher,Jennifer - http://bit.ly/1bBQZDN

Ogg,Cynthia -  http://bit.ly/1bVdjdc

Parente,Lenah - http://bit.ly/1fir4Sf

Identifying The Most Relevant Social Media for Our Business Strategies

This week we are finally starting to wrap up our fall semester classes at MCC. It has been a long 15 weeks of school for me. And I am now ready to turn my main focus onto my job search for a marketing internship, and hopefully finding some gainful employment. Not to mention prepare for the coming Christmas Holiday.

We have learned a lot about several different social media engagement platforms in my Social Media for Business class; as well as some of the other types of online analytics and marketing tools for complementing our Business and Marketing Strategies.

Now it is time to review some of those social media platforms that we think are going to be the most effective or sustainable for our business, such as with the Sabrina Keller Foundation; and which ones will be the most useful for integrating over the short and/or the long term to meet our business and social marketing goals.

Facebook is probably one of the best social media platforms for The Sabrina Keller Foundation to use on a weekly basis if not daily.  The foundation director and some of the other SKF board members have already had some experience with using the website. Although we as a group (the board members with Fb authorization), need to be better organized into acting as one voice when we use the page for Marketing or Social Content Management purposes.

Facebook has the potential to be our most effective social marketing tool. Our Facebook Page consists of our largest social fan base, but most of them are not very socially active with our content at this point. The director of the SKF foundation is already fairly comfortable with using Facebook/social media on a personal basis. So I think if we start to use some of the Facebook Insight tools for gaining more knowledge about our followers, we will be able to better see what is working with our content.  Then with the help of our SKF director’s social savviness, we might try a more organized marketing campaign to increase our fans social engagement.  

Personally I think I enjoyed using and learning about the Facebook platform the most during this class, with Pinterest following in a close second.  

Pinterest was not being used by the Sabrina Keller Foundation prior to my arrival earlier this year. So I was the one who actually created the new account, and started making some strategies for gaining followers, by making pin boards that were related to our brand; Having Family Fun while raising funds for Girl Scout College Scholarships and promoting SADS Education.  

Pinterest is probably one of those social websites which we would manage on a less frequent basis than with our Facebook page. All of us are new to most of these visual social media tools and learning how to use them effectively will take some time. Although I am proud to say we have gained ten (10) new followers since I started the Pinterest account last month.

I found Pinterest can fit in well (integrate to help meet our goals) with the Sabrina Keller Foundations key social demographics – women ages 25 to 65 – those who are moms and parents who are active, and concerned with their families welfare. I made several pin boards about SADS Education, Health & Food, Family Fun, and one especially For Kids; filling them with visual content that is related to their themes. I have already attracted several followers with these pins - mostly women but also a couple of men, including one Pinterest follower who seems to be more of a business professional, who provides literature about heart health and educational material for medical professionals.  

Twitter is probably the second most integrative social marketing tool for reaching the Sabrina Keller Foundations goals after using the Facebook Page; as we can pair them (with tweets) while sending out our Facebook posts simultaneously.  Also if we decided to create even the smallest of marketing budgets; Twitter would be a good tool to use to find some new prospects (Fb Followers: Sponsors/Volunteers & Donors) and to drive new traffic to our main website or Facebook page.   

I still have yet to create a LinkedIn Non Profit Page for The Sabrina Keller Foundation. But it is at the top of the priority list for my ongoing projects as SKF’s new volunteer marketing director. I think LinkedIn will make a good nonprofit social media tool for SKF to reach out to San Diego Business people, and to find some event sponsors; as well as maybe seek advisors or volunteers that can help us grow our brand as a new nonprofit foundation.

I think after Pinterest some of the other visual social websites we had covered over the semester would be less adaptive for the Sabrina Keller Foundation’s needs at this time (Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram.).

Although I think maybe after we have mastered using some of the new social marketing strategies we learned this semester with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest; we might want to explore using Instagram or Tumblr on occasions in the future, to highlight our pictures of fund raising events etc.  I would imagine as we became more creative with using Pinterest we might find the other visual sites more attractive to use in the future.

Email blasts, and an occasional newsletter or announcement, through an email program like Constant Contact (or others), is a good way to keep our true followers informed about the organization.   We have currently been using a general Yahoo email account to send them out as a group to our fans and it has (unbeknownst to some) compromised our fans security.  This problem needs to be brought up, and we need to discuss this at a general board meeting to find some low cost but safer alternatives.   

I have created a Google+ account for my personal use and I have already linked it to this class blog (which can help your page with (SEO) search engine rankings), but I have yet to make a page for the Sabrina Keller Foundation. I think it might be a good idea to create a Google+ account for SKF soon; if not for expanding and increasing our social media presence then definitely for our gaining access to the Google Analytics, which we can use to help better determine our marketing strategies. But maintaining too many social media websites right now might become a bit difficult for many of the SKF volunteers who are working in regular jobs.

Groupon and Living Social are probably the last and way down on our list for SKF to adopt as social media marketing tools; as we are not in the business of making any commerce or seeking any profits to be discounted. Although as I had proposed in an earlier blog about these tools, we might want to approach the management, and try to utilize them for some kind of pre-paid ticketing program to our fund raising events.  

Facebook Insights

For this assignment in my Social Media for Business class we have been asked to review over our latest Insight Results (analytics) for our Facebook Business Pages, and to report on some of the data changes that have occurred over the past week.  

We were also asked to go and “Like” all our fellow Social Media students and follow their Fb pages - so we all would have access to the Facebook Insights panel (there must be at least 30 followers on your Page to have access to Fb Insights).  

I was going to report on my new personal page or actually my “Professional Page,” hoping that enough students would “Like” my page for me to gain access to the data in Insights. I was actually looking forward to it.  My Professional Page is looking rather lonely with only a handful of students and some close friends (for a total of 14) who have liked the page as individuals. 

So not a lot of engagement is going on with my Professional Page posts either; there are a few students who managed to find me and say a few words on my wall and to them I am grateful – Thank you! 

The rest of them (my MCC Social Media Class), I think, -most if not all the students had “Liked” my FB Page as we were instructed. But they did so as their business pages (not with their personal) and I guess somehow Facebook doesn’t think those types of “likes” count as Fb Fans.  

So I am a bit disappointed that I couldn’t see my Insights results for my HTD Enterprises Page.

Nonetheless I am still a page manager for my actual project page The Sabrina Keller Foundation which I have been reporting on in this blog throughout the semester.

The Sabrina Keller Foundation did not see a lot of positive changes with their page statistics over this past week. With currently receiving 167 Likes - there were no organic changes in our number of Fans (0%). Although yesterday I decided to run a short paid advertising campaign and two more likes have been gained within the last 24 hours (but they are not showing up yet in the Insight results).  

Also to my chagrin we did see a marginal decrease in our Post Reach at 26 which is down 3.7% for the week. A bright side is that our Total Reach (people seeing any activity on the page) was up by 3.2% at 32.  Our Total Engagement (six (6) total unique people Engaging with 4 “Post Likes” & 20 “Post Clicks”) with the page was down a whopping 45.5% from the previous week (that would be people who actually clicked on something). 

In conclusion I think we need to work on bringing up Page and Post Engagement numbers by researching our target market’s social interests and then providing them with some better content to increase their engagement with our page and social posts.  

Google Analytics & Search Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how it affects our Social Media (Marketing) are my topics from this week’s Social Media for Business class - as well as how we can monitor our search engine and web-marketing results through the use of Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and other web based analysis tools.  

Search Engine Optimization is the art or science for getting your organization’s webpages (Home Page & Social Content) ranked high if not the highest in Google’s (and others) search results or rankings. These rankings are also referred to as SERPs or “Search Engine Results Pages.”  

I am not going to go into how SEO Optimization works in much detail here with this student blog (beyond linking to some articles), because it is a highly technical and an ongoing process for beginners like me, and probably you; where we will need to take some time to learn the use of the data and analytics, and how we develop our Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies.

The general idea is that Google has developed complex algorithms that help rank online web pages based on “Authority” (web page authority is ranked based on several factors); and the “Relevance” of your webpage(s) content (how well it matches to your potential customers “key words” used in their online search queries).

When you optimize your website/page content to achieve higher organic ranking with Google’s SERPs; your content will need to match your key product or subject categories; and you should use your potential consumer’s popular key (search) words in your website content or text, and webpage titles, or subtitles, etc. This will help Google better identify what your content and webpage is about, and it will rank your webpages accordingly to the relevance of the researcher’s keywords; which will then be shown to those searchers who are located in your local business area. 

One of the several test factors used by Google’s search engine algorithms, to assess your webpage ranking authority, is to determine how much your webpage is getting linked to other authoritative webpages and/or social media content.  The more in bound links your webpages have attracted from other authoritative web places, the more likely you will be able to increase your search rankings on Google’s SERPs. 

The art or science of SEO Optimization takes a lot of practice as well as patience; and the use of content experimentation with your social media marketing will be constantly needed. You will need to always do regular analysis of your consumer’s actions and of all your webpage activities; to measure the conversions (those who become customers), and to see how your other social media factors (goals/measures) or results are showing any progress, or are resulting in any (ROI) Return On Investment.  

Google Analytics is a free web analysis service, which measures many technical factors online, regarding data such as advertising clicks, and webpage visitors, or potential consumer’s activities; including your customer’s engagement or activities on your business pages and other social places.

 

There are many data points offered for analysis by Google Analytics (GA) to a web based business or online organization; - way too many and some way too technical to cover for this student bloggers expertise in SEO at this time. 

However my assignment today was to research some of the Google Analytics (GA) tools and its features for Business webpage analysis; as well as determine how some of them might be useful for my organization The Sabrina Keller Foundation (SKF).  

First off Google Analytics (GA) offers a customizable “Dashboard” feature which I like – where you can arrange your data points and graphs or other metrics as you feel fit, to do your own webpage and content analysis. 

One of the GA features that I feel would be useful to SKF would be the reporting tool found under the Advertising & Campaigns Performance Metric; called (SEO) Search Engine Optimization. This SEO tool- or report - will give you statistics on what are the most popular or not so popular search queries (paid or organic) your page viewers or users have used to search for your website(s) or your competitors content.

The SEO metrics will also give you the number of impressions (views), as well as (the mouse) clicks on to your website URL’s - which are seen by viewers in the Google Search Ranking Pages (SERPS). The report also gives you the average position of your page rankings (the URL)- or how it was ranked/listed in the results page; and also there is a metric telling which landing page the visitor had ended up clicking to on your websites or other social webpages.

This would be a good tool for the SKF Foundation to use to see what search terms our organic visitors are using before they find our webpage and social pages. We could use this information to better identify what our page visitors were looking for; and then make our homepage or social content even more relevant to their search queries.

In fact I have a just got a personal epiphany about this concept even without having SKF registered for the GA service at this point. As one of our social page visitors last month had made a comment that she found our Facebook Page through her search query under “college scholarships.” I could take this theory and use the GA SEO optimization report to confirm if other visitors have found our pages through a Google search using the key words “college scholarships.”  If this turned out to be a trend then I would conclude that we should make content more often that tells our visitors more about our scholarships, the recipients, and what is being offered to Girl Scout participants each year. 

Another feature-tool or report on Google Analytics which the Sabrina Keller Foundation might want to use is the Audience Data and Reporting Metrics- which is essentially a demographics report that identifies your website audiences. Data such as their ages (breakdowns) and gender, as well as an overview of your web traffics interests (with consumer “categories” or “affinities”) are highlighted. There are many other variables to be analyzed that can be broken down and formatted or reported by dates, and segmentation, etc. as you feel may be needed for your Social Marketing and SEO analysis. 

The Sabrina Keller Foundation can use the demographics information to identify our most common visitors and design content specifically for them. Or even try to figure out ways to attract other demographics we may find we would like to pursue, such as developing more business interest and sponsorship in our projects for the community. 

Geography, behavior (engagement with websites), and user technology (what are the viewer’s using to view your content), are also organized into custom data sets for analysis on GA.

There are many other types of other Google Analytics Tools (data) available to a Business or organization which can assist with improving your SEO and online marketing strategies, such as a social reporting metric, data on traffic sources, and special tools for following your consumers use of their mobile applications to name just a few of the many tools/metrics that are available.

I invite you to look at the Google Analytics resources pages for more information on how it can help your business.

Coupon Marketing: Using Social Media Coupons and Offering Discount Deals

The second assignment for this week’s Social Media for Business class was to develop an Online (social media) discount or Coupon Marketing Campaign; such as with the websites Groupon.com or at Living Social. Both of these companies will provide merchants and other service organizations marketing opportunities, which can drive traffic to their business through electronic coupons and web discounts or other kinds of special offers. 

The Sabrina Keller Foundation does not sell any kind of products or provide any kind of services to be discounted or that are for gaining any profits. We do not have any advertising budget for which we could afford discount marketing either. So developing a coupon marketing campaign really doesn’t seem to apply here. 

The Groupon website does not have any kind of pre made campaigns for nonprofits. Nor does Living Social seem to have any nonprofit services either. But both seem to have very accessible phone operations for customer questions and offering other customer services. 

If the SFK foundation could afford their services, my thinking might be to contact them (personally) to develop a reverse coupon marketing campaign – in other words perhaps we could have an electronic voucher for an SKF event; where the consumer prints out a voucher/ticket and makes a pledge (if you will) to come to our fund raising events and participate. We could even make them into pre-sale tickets for certain real time events; where Groupon or Living Social could collect the proceeds for us up front and directly from the fund raising consumer online.  

Let's Discover Some Of The Other Popular Social Media Tools

Today we are briefly looking at some of the other (perhaps lesser known but often rapidly growing in popularity) social media tools available online in my Social Media for Business Class.  There are many social sites competing for users - if not hundreds – and the top fifteen have recently been highlighted in some of the following online articles linked here – (eBiz- MBA)  April 2013 / (Biz Journals)  December2012.  

As you can see in these two articles linked above - Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are the top contenders consecutively with the most unique daily social media visitors year to year. The changing ranking of Pinterest, Google +, Tumblr and Deviant Art are some good examples of how the rapid changes and growth in popularity of these other social media sites, can change the social marketing environments quickly in a very short time. Business needs to stay on top of the changing environments and always follow their customer’s social movements closely.  

For this week’s assignment I am supposed to choose four of these other social media tools, beyond what I have discussed so far over this past semester (please see my previous blogs), and analyze how they might be integrated into my business or organizations growing social marketing efforts.  

Google+  might be another good social media tool for building a social following for your business, or in my case to attract people interested in helping nonprofit organizations like the Sabrina Keller Foundation. It would be similar to using Facebook for gaining “social followers;” – but with the Google+ “circles feature” – it allows you to separate your family (colleagues) from your friends (customers) – and your business profiles from your personal ones. 

You can also join in social “communities” which are based on topics or trends, and you can make comments related to your industry or business - Just like with Facebook posts.  With these communities you can do user research into business trends and see how people are reacting to your brands, products or services. They also offer a visual chat feature called “Hangouts” which allows up to ten users to participate in video internet communications for meetings.  

While I might be able to find some value for SKF to use Google+ in the long run - I think we (the board) will have enough new social media tools to learn and master, before we decide to reach out to people socially on some of these other ones. 

Although one Social media tool I think we might add sooner than later is called LinkedIn. After researching into using LinkedIn for a nonprofit organization as a social media tool; I found some interesting articles and news about some new LinkedIn features, designed specifically for nonprofits, called “Board Member Connect.” 

These new tools are designed to help nonprofits reach out into the business community, particularly to those leaders of nonprofit committees and other executive boards. They (LinkedIn) want to be able to help find “executive talent” that can really help the nonprofit communities thrive.  

I think the Sabrina Keller Foundation would be wise to create a business page and take advantage of the many LinkedIn research tools available to locate key business people, as well as participate with the many LinkedIn Business Communities online related to nonprofits and fundraising. The SKF foundation can reach out to local San Diego or national Businesses through online social networking, and eventually solicit them for product/service donations or for event volunteers, etc.  

Another social media tool that might be of value in the future is called Meet Up – Meetup is a social website where people/groups can be formed to hold regular meetings in real time on topics that are of interest to them.  For example if I wanted to create a Sabrina Keller Foundation Meetup – Group. I could use it to attract members (volunteers/donors etc.) who will then regularly respond (hopefully) to our calls to action to attend, volunteer, or host a fundraising event and/or related family activities. 

  

Flikr- a photo sharing social website - could also be used by the SKF Foundation to host our member videos and pictorial documentation of our fundraising events and other organizational activities. 

Another social media website which I might want to recommend to the SKF board is called “Cafe Mom” – a social community designed specifically for woman – or actually “moms.” It is a rapidly growing network of social (commerce) websites - that also cater to Latino woman, as well as produce webpages that covers popular culture and politics.  It has group and post features which can be used much like Facebook timelines or Google’s - Circles/Communities. So you can create and join groups to make social conversations related to your business and industries. This social community of moms would be an excellent community for the Sabrina Keller Foundation to engage due to our target audience being mostly woman (parents) or moms between the ages of 25 – 65 years of age.

My Comments on MCC Student Advertising Blogs

Dee's Social Media Journey

http://deesocialmediajourney.blogspot.com/2013/11/advertising-on-social-media-sites.html?showComment=1385263863190#c4449525779824415228

CSIT 155 Social Media for Business

http://jessicaipina.blogspot.com/2013/11/advertising-for-free.html?showComment=1385261826400#c3805190580598527031

Kyle Donnelly Blog

http://kyledonnellyy.blogspot.com/2013/11/online-advertising-marketing-on-social.html?showComment=1385265834309#c742558290532927781