Week 7 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 Having discussed Facebook and Twitter to this point, we now move on to a more “business-to-business” related platform of LinkedIn. In other words, a company marketing to other companies. The best way to improve your marketing through LinkedIn is to improve your LinkedIn by adding groups for networking and discussions. Chapter 6 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing speaks very highly of improving your presence on LinkedIn as the optimal way to take advantage of marketing through LinkedIn. For many companies, having a business-to-business platform could be useful for trade, collaboration, etc. Furthermore, LinkedIn can be a great place to recruit and post job openings. 

One suggestion from the chapter is to create business cards with your LinkedIn information to build your LinkedIn connections. Another suggestion is to email just about anyone you know with the information to your LinkedIn profile. Not everyone will decide to connect on LinkedIn, but it doesn’t hurt to send it to a large mass and gain several connections. Remember, emailing is free communication. The more connections you can make the more potential jobs or clients you gain.

Similar to the information found in the chapter, on LinkedIn marketing solutions, most of the steps involve bettering your LinkedIn page. The marketing solutions does have a few solutions that build off of the information found in the chapter...

https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/how-to-market-on-linkedin

The other tips speak further on how it is important to grow your followers and how to cater to your followers using visuals. It then speaks of the LinkedIn ad campaign.

Week 7 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 Chapter 6 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords moves on to talking about strategizing your campaign. Luckily, Google has a built in “Help function” with automated suggestions similar to the function for keywords. While there is a phone number to call for help, anyone with phone phobia will be happy to know, Google scans your add campaign to look for potential flaws and ways you can make improvements. Otherwise, there is email support, however, phone calls would likely result in a faster response. As seen in the chapter, even if you are not in urgent need of help it is still a good idea to use the email option. A google team member is likely to send a rather lengthy email with ideas and tips so you can improve your campaign. If you prefer to not do that you should receive notifications from Google’s scan of your campaign with ideas on how to make improvements. Often times you will not receive these notifications right away, so if you are in need of help soon after starting your campaign, I would recommend a call or email.

Now when it comes to strategies, there are several ways to set up your campaign. You can use the suggestions from Google itself, or you can manually setup your campaign paying attention to the suggestions as Google scans your campaign. The chapter gives a tutorial on both, and it really just boils down to your comfort level. 

On the Google support page there are 8 types of campaigns you can create with the Google templates. These include search, display, video, shopping, app, local, and smart campaigns. A search campaign is meant for text ads on search results for people searching on Google. Display campaigns include more visually engaging ads on websites, apps, and Google itself. A Video campaign is the ads you would see before or during a Youtube video. Shopping campaigns allow for product listings for retailers seen after Google searches. App campaigns attempt to boost sales within your app and boost app users. Local campaigns are meant to being local people instore. Smart campaigns are general ads that are the easiest to operate.

Here is an example of the information for a Search campaign shown on the Google support page. 

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2567043?hl=en&ref_topic=10286612&visit_id=637864376985000218-450379390&rd=1

week 6 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 After covering Facebook, we have now moved on to Twitter in chapter 5 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing. The question when it comes to marketing on Twitter, is whether or not your potential customers are Twitter users. Similar to Facebook, people using Twitter tend to have less desire to make purchases compared to those searching on Google. The bright side about Twitter is it helps reach a younger demographic and is a good platform for people to discuss their experience with a product or service from your company. Sometimes, companies even join in on the conversation. A helpful or even humorous comment by a company could easily help their public appeal. Similar to Facebook as well, Twitter allows a company to keep customers up to date with news, deals, sales, and so on. Personally, I love seeing large companies posting humorous Tweets or getting in to feuds with rival companies. To me, it makes the companies seem more personable and relatable.

One way in which Twitter can be used, is by posting a short comment along with a link to a page. Personally, if I were to market my own golf lesson business, Twitter could be very helpful. Let’s say I have a client who improves vastly from working with me. If that client plays in a tournament, I might decide to post a comment about their round and include a link to their scores for others to see. Not only would this give the client a sense of satisfaction for the shoutout, it might show potential clients they could improve as much as this client. Twitter also allows for tagging accounts to directly correlate that person to the post, making Twitter the perfect platform for showing off my clients. Twitter would also be a great place for me to post a link to Youtube videos of my coaching along with a short description of the video.

One down side of Twitter is the inability to pay extra money to boost performance. On Google, you are able to pay extra money to boost your bid and get more exposure. On Twitter, exposure is boosted through increasing your following. The more followers your account has, the more people will see the information you are posting. This is a positive, because the company is not paying money to use Twitter, however it may take longer to see a Twitter page paying off.

Here is an example of two fast food restaurants in a feud against each other on Twitter, which I find rather comical. I believe this use of Twitter is actually helpful to business as the companies seem more personable and humorous. 

https://bettermarketing.pub/fast-food-twitter-has-gone-full-insane-and-i-love-it-4ab972d562ac

week 6 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 We have touched on using keywords somewhat to this point, however, chapter 5 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords goes further in depth with keywords. Luckily for any new user, Google has plenty of suggestions to help with your keywords search. Google analyzes your campaign and suggests keywords you haven’t tried prior. The great thing is, most people have searched on Google before, so they have some experience with keywords on Google. Whenever you make a search, you enter in some sort of keywords to allow Google to do the work and find what you are looking for. To find a more specific search, all you need is to add more words in to your search. The nature of our use of Google growing up could help us understand what sorts of keywords we would search. This may have even resulted in you clicking on a Google ad and experiencing what Google ads are all about.

The sad part is, just because you insert certain keywords for your ad, you will not always show up before other web pages. This is because companies have the ability to bid on key words, meaning they will show up higher on the page, or on a lower number page than you. The chapter suggests to search another book named “Introduction to Social Media Marketing” and think of what keywords might lead you to it. When I did this, the first 4 Google ads to pop up were from Cornell, Coursera, Business-tiktok, and Chegg.

Obviously, None of these were the desired search I was looking. Once I added a key word of the author's name, however, the first few purchase ads were for the book I intended.

This is different than the results from the chapter, showing us that different companies are constantly bidding on key words making it harder for you to be shown on Google. Because of this, it is important to have specifics in your keywords. More specific keywords will better lead the searcher to the product. Even though it is good to have general keywords, more than likely, those words have been bid on by a large company. Keep in mind, when creating your keywords to be both specific and general.

Week 5 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 Chapter 4 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords takes place once the ad campaign has been created and is in progress. The most efficient way to monitor your campaign is to have a set number of days or weeks between checking your campaign results. If you build a consistent time in your schedule, it should be easy to take full advantage of Google Ads. Progress reports can be fully customized to the time period you would like, so it would make sense for your time frame to be the same as the days between each time you check the campaign. That being said, it is also nice to have the option to view other weeks, months or years to see how the ads are trending. Say one day I receive 10 calls about golf lessons, I could go back to a specific time to see if there is any correlation between new clients and the ad campaign. 

The chapter moves on to explain what all the data means. The click through rate for example can be used to see how effective the ad actually is for the people seeing the ad. It is great if people are looking at your ad, it is even better if they are actually interacting with your ad. A low click through rate might indicate your ad needs to be displayed in a different area or using different key words. The best way to boost your click through rate would be to optimize your keywords for searches that might actually be interested in your business. This is easy to do in google ads, as you are able to view how key words rank based off their clicks and click through rate. Keep in mind, the highest click through rate key word will not always be the key word generating the most clicks. Clicks might be good enough to get your business name out there and some people might search your website rather than click on the ad. Not all keywords will work as well as planned and it might be worth removing less successful keywords to find other possibilities. 

Google's support page even has ideas for how to boost your CTR or click through rate.....

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167130?hl=en

Week 5 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 Well, if you last week’s blog you might have learned that Facebook is still a thing. If Facebook is of no interest to you, it should be. Maybe your and everyone else’s parents will see your ads on their Facebook wall one day. If you hadn’t guessed yet, Chapter 4 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing focuses on Facebooks Ads. While Facebook Ads can be used for any ad you might want, many people choose to advertise their Facebook Pages through Facebook Ads. Makes sense, right? The reason this is a good idea would be to grow your social media presence especially as a small business this is important. The chapter, however, mentions a trend towards Facebook Ads taking clicks to external company websites more similar to the ads seen on other social media platforms. Thus, you have the ability for both social media marketing and traditional marketing. 

For my particular business, having both options are very useful. In this day in age, golf teachers are all trying to build their social media presence. The ability to display quick tips or short videos could interest potential clients. Social media is also becoming a place to name drop your successful clients through videos or tagging the client with their scores and so on. This just helps build your credibility and can set you apart from your competitors. A golf coach is an interesting profession in the fact that the only way to set you apart from the competition besides your rates, is your ability to make someone better at golf, thus a social media presence through something like Facebook is extremely important. The more likes you get on posts; the more people will know about your work and reach out to you. For a different company, such as a restaurant, it might make sense to use your Facebook ad in the traditional marketing form. Most people clicking on a restaurant ad would likely want to look at the menu or reservation times which would be found on the website.

Here is an example of my golf coach's Facebook page. For him, it would make more sense to have Facebook ads which take the click to his Facebook page. The reason for this being, you immediately can see videos of his coaching which he has posted on the page. This is some information I can pass along to him and maybe help with his business.

Week 4 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 Chapter 3 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing is all about Facebook Pages. If you’re like me, Facebook is just a website your parents like to use. In reality, Facebook is very useful for businesses. “Most social media marketers consider a presence on Facebook a must-have” (Kelsey, 2017, pg.33). Essentially, the best part of Facebook is that once someone likes your page, your content will continue to pop up in their feed. In my own Google searching in the past, I have noticed for some small businesses, even if they do not have a professional high-quality website, you can almost always find a Facebook page. These pages are often made for causes and non-profit organizations as well. 

The downfall to Facebook Pages, similar to Google, is the fact that they want to make money and they will add plenty of other advertisement around your free Facebook page. Social media in general has heavily increased the amount of paid advertising the users will have to go through in their scrolling. That being said there are plenty of positives to using a Facebook page. One of which is the ability to see how many people have looked at your post. While only a portion of people might actually like the post, as long as people are seeing the post, it helps with company exposure. To gain exposure there is also the option to pay for boosting a post. While having a page is free, if you want your page to flourish it will cost money just like everything these days. The rest of Chapter 3 goes through a step-by-step process of building a Facebook page, which if you plan on doing so you should buy this book. I instead thought I would do a little looking in to some company Facebook pages.

I decided to look at a few small companies from small towns in central Illinois where I grew up. While each had a real website, the second page to pop up was their Facebook page. One example in the picture below is a small restaurant in the tiny town of Monticello, IL. Having a Facebook page allows the company to show where they are located, post photos of their food, and then make posts with news. In the picture you can see they were not offering delivery one day so they posted the news to their Facebook page. Updating a Facebook page is much easier than constantly updating your website anytime there is news. The restaurant also lists certain specials in their post section. In general, a Facebook page is helpful to a customer to find contact information and operating hours for a business which might take more searching on the real website.

Week 4 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 Chapter 3 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords covers the launching of your campaign. It is important when choosing your headline and brief description that will pop up on Google, you need to stand out. It might be wise to include whatever it is that sets your business apart from competitors in the description for more clicks. If your product or service is cheaper than the competition you might want to list that your company can be used on a budget or your company is low cost. 

 

When I search for flights out of the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, there are immediately Ads for several companies who try to find the cheapest flights possible. The first Ad is from Priceline.com which is a very popular service. The second headline here is unique compared to the others, as it has an option for last minute flights. Anyone booking a last-minute flight will probably check here before the other listed companies. The next company listed is named justfly.com which is much less heard of. In their description they list their “impressive chap flights on 500+ airlines” and mention their “deeply discounted” options. Someone who would fly on any airline might like this advertisement as they might believe they could find a steal on a less popular airline. The third ad for cheapflights.com focuses instead on their reliability with customers in the description. Each company finds something unique to try and set themselves apart from the competition as you should in your ads. You are given a headline 1, headline 2, and description with a total of 140 characters, so it is important to make them
count. 

One interesting point brought up in the chapter is that when choosing keywords, it is important to “keep in mind that live humans aren’t the only ones doing this” (Kelsey, 2017, p.45). Google gives a quality score based on relevance of your website to the keywords customers are entering. The more relevant your ad is, the closer to the top of the page it will be and the more likely you are to earn clicks. This makes it important to not throw in a bunch of random keywords to somehow appeal to someone looking for something not even related to your product. Back to my google search for flights out of Sky Harbor airport, I was immediately given results for companies that offer the cheapest flights. Many people that are not looking for a deal would most likely go straight to the website of their preferred airline and search flights that way. If I had to guess, a company like Priceline most likely has keywords related to any sort of searching for flights, popular airport names, and cheap flights. Since I looked up flights out of Sky Harbor, I would assume these were both keywords for Priceline

The nice thing is based off your website Google will suggest some keywords, which would be wise to use as they might be high in relevance and quality score. As mentioned in the chapter however, you should also create your own keywords to appeal to people the generated keywords might miss. A very helpful part of Google ads is the ability to see how each individual keyword performs. Not only that, you can see where a key word would end up and what you would need to bid in order to move pages.