Final Post

I went into this class questioning the depth and criteria that could be associated with social media. Sure I am a millennial that is a little more vintage minded when it comes to using the web. I had very little experience using social media from a social aspect let alone for a business. I realized how wrong I was to think that it is not a necessity to any business looking to grow.

            For any success story now days, it seems to have a common root. There are some businesses or successful people who have the overnight explosion through social media and the ones who put in a lot of time building their status on the web. There is no question that without using the newest social media platforms, it is going to be rough making an impact on the world.

            Learning about how followers and likes are not as far as your reach will go was encouraging to someone on the sideline at the moment for social media for business. I think it’s a great thing that I have not already overexposed myself through social media and have a clean slate to build a business. The last thing I would want is to become a sta business due to lack of engagement and insight in the social media world.

            When it comes to business online, I learned that analytics is crucial. I had no idea the kind of depth analytics go into for your business. I’ve learned this is a great way to see where your business is lacking and where the strong points of your company are. This is going to help you to build the strongest marketing campaign for the company, boost sales, and hopefully fix any weak links you have going on.

            I think facebook is still very crucial to a business with personal relationships with clients. It gives a direct line of communication and helps keep in touch after the work may be done hopefully creating a return customer. When it comes to products or services, I believe the advantage should be using very visual platforms. Instagram, to me seems like the most successful when trying to push a product or service by catching the customers eye making it hard for the potential sale to say no.

AZTEC ANALYTICS

    The first thing that pops out at me is the fact that more things are in the positive than the negative. Specifically, actions on page, page views, reach, recommendations, and videos are at a minimal of 30% increase and at most a 67% increase. On the opposite side, page previews, page likes, post engagements, and page followers are at a minimal of 6% decrease and at most a 22% decrease. I would say the most successful number would be the reach which is 3,714 that equals a 46% increase.

    After looking at the post section, I felt like the reach is great with a minimal of 441 people being reached and a max of 893 people being reached. However, there was one post that had 0 people reached, it has a different icon for type of post that I noticed. Im not exactly sure what that means but it seems to not be as successful as the rest so maybe avoiding that type of post would be best. I also thought it was amazing how many different countries or people in different countries follow or support online activity for the brewery.

Google Analytics

I believe every company could benefit from these tools with google analytics. Specifically, the data collection and management that is provided. Our company could benefit from this tool by understanding our target market even better than before. Just having the capabilities to analyze trends with sales and users's will take the company to the next level. We would love the user access controls because we are a team that need multiple eyes to analyze and a few people uploading our data.

How I would use facebook advertising

To be honest I would save my money to only use ads when the company is doing the biggest events of the year or if we got hired by a huge name that we could reach thousands or hopefully millions in a quick amount of time. We would tailor to event ads for this and after the event we could immediately put out a multi-product ad to follow up attempting to retain a large wave of business after already working the biggest event of our career. On a smaller scale, maybe if our company could do a mobile add to send out to our followers with some new services and events coming in the future boosting contacts and hopefully business.

Advertising Analyzation

After checking out the five businesses I discovered a trend in the advertising for a lot of companies in the audio industry. The main formats of advertising lived in the photo ad, multi-product ad, offer ad, and the event ad. It is usually the visual presentation that would pull me in, along with the call to action. This has to do with the way the industry expands with new products and services. Every company wants to be known for an event that they worked or provided equipment for or client they worked with to obtain a good reputation, this is where the event ad comes in. The most popular is the offer ad when it comes to retail in the audio industry but for an umbrella company like we want to create the multi-product ad will work the best for us. We can create an ad that can show the potential client everything we a capable of doing.

Social Media Tools Cont.

Yelp is the biggest tool that could impact my company. After researching a company that I have actually done some work with, I realize they have a great reputation on yelp, 5 stars actually and it has to increase business considering all the posts are in depth and really say great things about the company. Anyone who wouldn't know the company through word of mouth would be comforted through the yelp reviews. My company will have to setup a yelp account so we can establish a good reputation that can be reflected to the potential clients searching the web for our types of services.

Added Social Media Tools

I believe the company could really benefit from linkedin and yelp more than any other social media tools available. This business is very word of mouth through contacts and clients, obviously linkedin does a great job of creating that for people. Yelp is maybe not completely necessary but at least it will give some representation to the public eye that has never heard of who we are. I feel that our facebook and twitter are enough for us to skip the google plus, our business thrives from experience, repeat customers, and reputation which is something that social media cannot create before it actually happens in real time.

Student Comments

I posted comments on Deanna H, Abdul S, and Tiffany D's blogs.

Newsletter Ideas

I think my business would fall into the twice a year category for a newsletter, however I feel it would really help by showing potential clients what we have accomplished in the past 6 months. This would hopefully motivated some of them to book us for future services.

Our content list:

Story about our biggest live production in the past 6 months, possibly include an interview/testimonial from the client about our company.

List all the albums that were published in the past 6 months from our studio production, in the order of most sales to least

Story of our wildcard or artist we are developing and thinking is going to be in the spotlight very soon. This would be a win/win for both our company and up and coming artist we are developing.

My Blogging Categories

Our company will absolutely have to have categories. We are what I would label as an umbrella company. We are one company that provides a few different services. Our categories will include Artist Development, Live Engineering, Studio Engineering and Professional Audio Systems Providers/Installation. This will help our business grow by showing the depth of our companies diverse involvement in the industry. It will also help direct a consumer to the exact department we offer and clarify who we are, making it easier to communicate to the consumer. With the easy communication highway, hopefully this will attract more business. I enjoyed reading and commenting on Nicolas D, Savannah B, and Michelle B's blogs.

Blog Personality

I feel human interest should be at the forefront of a companies blog. How personal these interests get is what should be determined before hand. However, every company should connect with the consumer emotionally to create a return customer. This is always achieved by either the consumer getting personal with the company or the company taking the step to engage with their customers. I believe for my company idea, I can be as personal and unique as I want because our company will deal with artists who are already usually not apart of the social norm. That will be a huge connection that our company with strive to create with all of our clients and being different. I could see how some companies may need to be a little reserved with the personality because maybe they attract a very diverse market where some people may be turned off by a personal interest or preference with a companies owner, team member, etc.

Twitter Search and Connects

  I used the names of the companies I wanted to follow, audio companies are usually pretty unique names so it wasn't that hard to find. There was a couple exceptions, I was looking for a company called "Midas" which is a lot of companies names so I had to add audio at the end to find the right page. I created two lists, one called "Live Production" and "Studio Production". I put all the companies that make gear for live music under the "Live Production" list and I'm sure you could guess, the companies who make studio gear under the "Studio Production" list. This will help me segregate the different connections I make and keep in mind what they could do for my company. Its  hard for me to say a specific time, I would say between noon and 6:00pm would probably be the best and most effective tweet time for my company.

Visual Improvement

    I chose companies related to the audio field. It was tricky because our company idea is very progressive and no one really does what I am looking to do. The reason for this is my initial idea makes us a few different aspects of the audio industry under one company. Typically, there are dedicated companies to these aspects. Some of these companies do a great job of using the visual world to promote growth and customer satisfaction.
    The Midas audio company does a great job of using visual social media to improve their customer connections. They have 40,000 followers on instagram and 8,000 subscribers on youtube. They utilize youtube for helping customers by posting tutorial video on how to use their gear and post new videos weekly. Instagram is just a visual of all the super professional shows and artist they work with, it is mostly pictures of their products that are posted everyday.

Visual Pleasure

    I have the opinion that my business has such a wide array of aspects that there would be no need to have multiple visual social media platforms. However, a facebook business page is an absolute must for the contacts/connections of the company. I also feel that the company can post audio, pictures, and video through facebook so I don't see how our company would gain anything from other platforms that do the same thing.

   
   Our companies line of work is dependent on our services performed in a face to face matter. Our facebook will be where past and present clients can contact us if all other communication fails and we set up a way to book us through the page. The visual stimulation will derive from posting what we are doing through pictures and comments mostly on our feed.

Week 8: Facebook Strategy

I made three upcoming posts that displayed a few different characteristics of our company. The first post is geared to show our loyalty to past and current clients. I shared the Rolling Stone article about Marilyn Manson being injured at his last show and having to cancel the rest of his tour. I also made a comment while sharing the link wishing him a great recovery. The second post is a album that was released a few months ago that our company was hired to record and mix the band. This will show a little bit of our studio production side. The third post is a picture of our company working a show at Red Rock Amphitheater providing live production for the bands. All of these posts will be good for our company to show our market how we have our hands in many different aspects of the professional audio industry.

Week 7: Business Pages

Liked Pages:
JBL ELECTRONICS
MIDAS ELECTRONICS
SOLID STATE LOGIC
AUDIO ENGINEERING SOCIETY
API
SOUND ON SOUND
STUDIO WEST

I chose most of these companies because of their reputation and consistency in the professional audio community. As a smaller company trying to rise to the top, I need to be recognized by companies/magazines/societies/studios such as these listed above. By connecting with these companies through facebook, I think our posts could one day catch the eye of these companies. This would be huge for a smaller company like mine to get that kind of attention to help growth and reputation.

Week 6: Posting Metrics

I learned that post reach and engagement are to different spectrums and in some situations; one may be better than the other for your business. Post reach is the amount of people that your post was viewable on a newsfeed. Post engagement is how many people saw the post and then went to your page and it measures clicks, comments, likes and shares. It is important to know the difference because maybe you have a less personable business selling a product that you need as many people to see for more quick sales in which post reach would be more for you. On the opposite side, maybe your business is a client-based organization that thrives from building a relationship and engaging the client hints why post engagement would be better for this situation. In the grand scheme of things, I think both are crucial to any company. Yeah, they do tend to different needs but the way I see it without post reach, how would you have post engagement. Isn’t the saying in promoting or sales “For every 9 people that say no, you get one yes”?

Week 5 Post 2: My Target Market

My target market seems to be a little complicated. In the audio/music industry or any artistic field, development can mean taking someone who has no money for you up front and getting paid in the back end. Thankfully, I want my business to offer these services but the forefront of the company is to work with developed artists initially.
Through my studies, it seems that all ethnicities average professional touring musician can have an average of 23-45. Our company should appeal to these highest payed musicians through our dedication to achieve the greatest audio results for their music whether in studio or live. We will want to work with musicians who are as passionate as we are, in turn everyone having the same value of working as a team to achieve this.
The income will be solely based on the success of the musician prior to teaming up with us and what happens after working with us, this is where everything becomes a little complicated. Lastly, I feel education has a grey line as some professional musicians are classically trained and some have never taken a music class in their life, hence our company has to flex to both sides for maximum business opportunities.

Week 5 Post 1: Target Market

http://www.chilis.com/EN/Pages/home.aspx

http://www.tericafe.com

I chose to compare the two restaurant websites for chilis and tericafe. Right away I can see some fundamental differences in both companies when it came to each restaurant's target market, however there are many areas they have in common as well. Chilis is obviously and older and much larger operation than tericafe. Chilis is building on a global scale why tericafe only has to locations. I feel they share a common interest that probably all restaurants do trying to have the most broad range of age and ethnicity targeting. Chilis does talk about how they value creating an environment that friends and family can get together and enjoy the company over food and drinks. Tericafe only mentions they want to bring a unique blend of Japanese dishes in a Hawaiian style environment. Both restaurants finally both share the demographic of income, Tericafe clearly states they want to bring quality with fast service at reasonable prices. Chilis just bombards you immediately when entering the site with all their promotional offers such as their dinner for two for $22. 

Week 4 Part 2: Website Analysis

https://www.craigslist.org/about/sites

I chose craigslist because it is probably the most frequent site I visit for shopping and business. I feel they have done a great job with making this a user friendly site. The navigation is what I like the most. Every word is a link to posts and a great side toolbar that makes it easy to change location. I also have an account that is extremely easy to make posting for yourself. Not sure I come back because the website is made so well, its mostly for shopping and business. I think for the websites functionality I don't see where it could be improved.

https://www.youtube.com/

I chose youtube because it is the most popular site I go to for entertainment and to gain knowledge/troubleshoot problems. I feel youtube is one of the most responsive sites out there. I really enjoy having my account that has my history for easy recall and bases suggestions from my history. I keep coming back for the accessibility to the millions of video outlets. This website is updated so frequently and is probably one of the most popular internet tools on the planet, its hard for me to have a suggestion for improvement.

I enjoyed commenting on Karen, Jennifer, and Felipe's blogs!!!

Week 4 Part 1: Website Analysis

https://www.riversideartcenter.org/

The first thing that stands out to me when visiting this site is the visibility of the navigation bar. The transparency is fine but the menu words don't have enough contrast and kill the clarity. I also see a hierarchy problem with their sections of information. The second section is an orange background with their facebook feed. I feel the third section would be more appropriate for the second section because it goes into more depth of what the art center does and compliments the first section better than a facebook feed.

http://gatesnfences.com/

The first thing that seems wrong with this page is the cluster of information that is very hard to not get lost in. I also see a lot of controversial font colors that have a harsh effect on some typography. The colors should be more fluent with each other and maybe some resizing would be for the best. Overall, I think the biggest issue is the proximity of sections and too much information in each section.

 https://www.apple.com/

I think this website is pretty flawless myself. I feel they are very conservative with color selection, in turn making the contrast easy and very easy on the eye. The proximity and navigation create excellent clarity for the visitor. Also, having a search box for your website feels like an absolute must for the impatient people not wanting to search through the websites different pages.

https://www.toyota.com/

Once again, I feel that this site is pretty flawless. Great color selection for the backgrounds and awesome contrast with font and menu colors. The pages proximity and typography create ultra clarity. Like any easy page to navigate, this website includes a search box.


Aesthetics, design, and branding collectively create a great experience online for any business. No consumer wants to get frustrated by having trouble navigating a companies website. I feel that the more user friendly a site can be, the better chance of someone purchases the product is. These aspects also keep people returning to the site and company because of the easy communication/navigation factor.

Week 3 Part 2: The Business Analysis

I chose 5 different motorcycle companies.

DUCATI

http://www.ducati.com/index.do

NONE!!!

This company website has no links to their social media, however they have things that are sharable to facebook, twitter, or email to a friend.

This absolutely blows my mind that they don't have these outlets available on their website. After further research I found some pages for dealerships of these motorcycles that were not kept up to date.

KAWASAKI

https://www.kawasaki.com/

Facebook 9/12, Twitter 9/12, Instagram 9/12, Youtube 9/5, Tumblr 9/6

This company does a good job of staying up to date with posting things and is the only motorcycle company with a tumblr.

BMW

http://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/us/en/index.html

Facebook 9/12, Twitter 9/10, Youtube 4/12, Instagram 9/11

This company does well with keeping up with the acception of their youtube channel. It has been five months since their last upload.

HONDA

http://powersports.honda.com/

Twitter 9/12, Facebook 9/12, Instagram 9/12, Youtube 9/11

This company keeps up everyday with its personal media, however they post the same posts on all sites with the exception of youtube.

KTM

http://www.ktm.com/us/

Facebook 9/12, Youtube 9/7, Twitter 9/10, Instagram 9/12

This company does a good job of keeping up and does the same as the competition by posting the same content on multiple sites.

            After analyzing these five-motorcycle companies online presence it made me realize how much of an impact social media has on popularity of a business. I was extremely shocked to see one of the companies did not have any visible links to their social media. It really made me wonder how they can compete with the competition.

            I noticed a popular trend with a lot of companies is to post the same content on multiple sites. This seems logical to me, as it is a simple way to always have something to say everyday. However, you would think they would have one person dedicated to each site that could mix it up for each site. This seems like maybe an improvement that would bring more people in.

            Lastly, I noticed that even though it is about making statements or comments, all the social media for these companies rely on visual pleasure. Pictures and videos of the companies’ new products are posted and commented on. Seems like the best way to lure the consumer in by showing what the product is capable of.

PS. I enjoyed reading and commenting on Karen, Felipe, and Krongtongs’ blogs!

Week 3 Part 1: Aspects of communication via social media

I'm sure we have all had difficulty communicating with a business, especially in the online world. I think social media absolutely makes it easier to solve problems because at the end of the day social media just creates more outlets for communication. Yes, I have had positive experiences contacting a business through social media about mistakes in transactions or troubleshooting a product. I think it is important for any business to be calm, collected and find a way to solve the problem with consumers. Positive comments should be treated with thankfulness to the consumer from the company in my opinion.

            All my negative experiences had a lot in common. Usually it was due to a breakdown in the communication between me and the company or consumer. A little detail was skipped in the initial setup of the deal or product. It is always hard to negotiate after money gets involved and people are not happy with the end result.

            All the positive experiences also had a lot in common. There were no surprises to the consumer or company with the end result. If there was a small issue, the company had no hesitation making it right for the consumer. I believe that is the most important thing about business, always be willing to flex to make things right.