Blog

Analytic Post Mortem and Creative Ideation for the Future

 

Assignment/Synopsis

This is our last week’s assignment for the Multi-media Communications class I’m currently enrolled. We’ve studied Integrated Marketing Communications, what it means and how it is executed by brands big and small. This final post is going to take us through a post mortem analytic review for a company labeled XYZ. Please note; this blog post is for academic purposes only.

 XYZ is a heating and cooling company (HVAC) located in Western Massachusetts. This recently launched small business provides installations, maintenance, and repair to their customers. Currently XYZ utilizes the following platforms for advertising; website, Twitter, Yelp, Google+, Facebook and direct mail. The stats we will be examining below are from Facebook.

To date XYZ has 489 likes on their fan page.  This means we have lots of room to grow the XYZ’s audience and followers.Screen Shot 2015-11-16 at 8.08.04 PM.png

Key Findings

Analytics like Research can be interpreted in a variety of ways. A lot of times Research can mean one thing to one person and something totally different to another. The same goes for how the research is translated and spun. With this in mind, here are some of my key findings for XYZ.

  • XYZ’s fans are online in the highest concentration at 12pm, 3pm and 6-8:30pm.
  • XYZ’s fans demographics are split with women taking 57% of the pie and men 43%.
  • Women are the dominant fan mix in every age range except 25-34.
  • The majority of XYZ’s likers are from Massachusetts or Connecticut.
  • For those that have commented, liked or shared XYZ’s posts in the last 28 days, the men demographic take the lead with a 65% engagement over 35% women.
Screen Shot 2015-11-16 at 8.07.01 PM.pngScreen Shot 2015-11-16 at 8.07.12 PM.png

Campaign Improvements

Yelp is a great way to earn the trust of new customers.  If you have great reviews, people are more likely to try your company over one that doesn’t have good things being said about their service.  First off, XYZ could enhance and increase their reviewers on Yelp. (see Future Campaigns for additional details) Secondly, Twitter could be leveraged as a weather service update provider for Massachusetts area, service messages, or any cute type of heating/cooling related promotional tout that comes to XYZ’s mind.  Leveraging SEO and tags within posts will improve overall awareness of the XYZ brand and their services.

Social Amplification

The definition of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) according to Wikipedia is the application of consistent brand messaging across both traditional and non-traditional marketing channels and using different promotional methods to reinforce each other. XZY has a presence on their own website, Twitter, Yelp and Google+ pages. Having multiple social channels, promotions can easily be shared among the different channels to cross promote the overall brand promise of XYZ, but also any and all promotions that they may have to offer. What is great about sharing on other social media channels is that it is free to share to your current followers, and you have the opportunity to purchase or boost any content that you wish.

Future Campaigns / Promotional Ideation

HVAC is a seasonal business, and their marketing should be strategic and targeted.  As we learned a few weeks ago, email marketing is not dead.  Email marketing is very much alive, and XYZ should work on growing their audience’s data base in order to keep constant communication with their clients.  Yelp and Google+ are two social channels that can be leveraged heavily to promote the brand and really provide a deep social footprint for the company.

  1. Email Marketing – Build Database
    • As customers start using XYZ’s services, they should start creating and building their email database.  By doing this they will be able to send out reminders to their customers since their business is seasonally driven.  Email marketing helps push consumers to make the call or purchase sooner especially if they have been thinking about a certain product or service.
  2. Yelp – Increase Reviews
    • Sometimes you have to give a little in order to build your brand and company.  XYZ should invest in a Yelp promotion that would give consumers $100 credit towards heating and cooling repairs or maintenance after they have left a review. This would build reviews on their site, and promote repeat customers. Win, Win!
  3. Google+ – Locate XYZ
    • Building out the company’s social footprint is beneficial to the brand.  It makes it easier for consumers to find information about the company easier than if information is only in one place.

Social Media Calendar for Disney’s Epcot

Assignment:

Plan hypothetical posts for Disney’s Epcot social media pages for the month of December 2015.

Please note that this blog post is to be used as an educational resource only. The social media calendar of posts is an assignment for the University of Florida’s Multimedia Communications course.

Goals:

  • Build brand awareness for Epcot events and attractions.
  • Increase engagement with Facebook and Twitter audience, and cultivate two-way conversations with consumers.

***Epcot does not have their own social handle, therefore, all Epcot related posts are released from the main Walt Disney World Page. The posts will be branded Epcot and tout events and attractions that are found at Epcot.

Calendar of Posts for December:

Screen Shot 2015-11-05 at 12.01.31 AM

CC = Character Count

  • A — CC 99: Visit Holidays Around the World at Epcot – an International Yuletide Extravaganza #CelebrateAtEpcot
  • B — CC 98: Catch .@ActuallyNPH November 30th – December 3 as the guest narrator for Candlelight Processional!
  • C — CC 100: This winter, soak up the sights and sounds of Holidays Around the World at Epcot! #DisneyHolidays
  • D — CC 85: Don’t miss @ActuallyNPH tonight as he narrates the Candlelight Processional at #Epcot
  • E — CC 140: Celebrate a world of cheer commemorating the international spirit of the season #DisneyHolidays #AroundTheWorld #CelebrateAtEpcot
  • F — CC 106: There are so many countries to explore for the Holidays Around the World at #Epcot. #CelebrateAtEpcot
  • G — CC 122: Ring in the season at Epcot’s World Showcase, watch holiday traditions come alive from around the globe. #CelebrateAtEpcot
  • H — CC 208: Norway is one of the all-stars of the Epcot “snack crawl” – The snacks in Norway’s Kringla Bakeri Og Kafe are so good that you might just want to double up! For a full list of snackable treats, click here!
  • I — CC 130: This month, hear the stirring story of Christmas as told by celebrity narrators accompanied by a 50-piece orchestra and mass choir
  • J — CC 93: Visit #Epcot this season…enjoy Hanukkah traditions and experience the spirit of Kwanzaa!
  • K — CC 73: Tell us your favorite holiday moment with your family! #MagicalMoments
  • L — CC 127: Enjoy seasonal food and experience time-honored traditions spring to life for the holiday heritage throughout World Showcase.
  • M — CC 69: Discover your taste buds in Japan at #AroundTheWorld celebration!
  • N — CC 126: .@AmericaFerrera joins the cast of celebrity narrators for Candlelight Processional. Come see America December 15 to 17, 2015!
  • O — CC 89: Come see .@AmericaFerrera tonight as she hosts the Candlelight Processional at #Epcot!
  • P — CC 112: Tonight is the last chance to join us in the Candlelight Processional celebration with host .@AmericaFerrera!
  • Q — CC 116: Build your own traditions this season! Go #AroundTheWorld with your family at #Epcot and create #MagicalMoments!
  • R — CC 163: ¡Feliz Navidad! Join mariachis and dancers in the country of Mexico as they bring color and excitement to the music, dances and traditions of a holiday fiesta!
  • S — CC 79: Check out this seasonal recipe to try at home from Holidays #AroundTheWorld
  • T — CC 167: Make #MagicalMoments with your family this holiday season! Book your candlelight dinner today, and guarantee your seat for Epcot’s annual Candlelight Processional!
  • U — CC 64: Share your Christmas wishes with Santa and Mrs. Claus at #Epcot!
  • V — CC 126: When in Germany, listen closely as Helga tells the story of the first Christmas tree and the tale of her first Nutcracker.
  • W — CC 129: In France, discover the magic of Père Noël and the joy of the season through a Christmas letter from a child. #AroundTheWorld
  • X — CC 121: Mickey and Minnie are waiting to greet you at #Epcot this holiday season! Bring the whole family for #MagicalMoments!
  • Y — CC 106: Amy Grant is the celebrity narrator for our Candlelight Processional December 29 – 30, Don’t miss out!
  • Z — CC 87: Last chance to see .@AmyGrant tonight! Head on over and #CelebrateAtEpcot #HappyNewYear

Images to go along with posts that are applicable.  Some images to be used for both FB and Twitter.

holidays-around-the-world-00-full 6339819925_1aa9d74991_z DHS-Osborne-Lights_3 epcot-christmas Holidays-Around-the-World-at-Epcot_Full_17595 0432476072_16230001_8col Amy-Grant-Narrator 2014-12-03-18.51.21-e1436288916427

Stacie Scott is A-W-E-S-O-M-E and She Likes Being Part of a Team

Dear Hiring Manager,

Thank you for taking the time to read a little bit about me, my experience, and why I would be a great fit on the Warner Bros. Pictures Worldwide Marketing team.

My name is Stacie Scott, and I’m a creative marketer with 13+ years of advertising experience. I have an expertise in art direction, brand development, strategic problem solving and construction of integrated marketing promotions. I am an extraordinary, brand and legal rule-following, imaginative marketing executive who is identified as one of the most awesome people in the industry. My enthusiasm to create knockout promotions, uncanny ability to organize, and knack for fostering great relationships has provided me with a portfolio of success stories.

I am really excited and ready to join the epic quest your team encounters with every theatrical release the department supports.  With the Lego Movie being a huge success, and the Batman Lego Movie currently in production, I wanted to showcase my creativity by incorporating my resume in to a version of The Lego Movie DVD.

WB_LEGO_leavebehind_PRINT copy

Some of the strengths and attributes that would make me a valuable asset to your team include:

“The Special” – Relationships

I have the aptness for fostering great relationships and a successful track record creating client promotions. In fact, I take great pride in my ability to lead from concept to completion and keep my clients happy.

“Social is AWESOME” – Digital and Social Wherewithal

With my expertise in digital and social media, my current leadership team has identified me as the social media guru for my department. Social amplification is top of mind with all our clients, and I’ve recently been tasked with training our entire sales and marketing department.

“Master Builder” – Creative Ideation and Promotion Development

For every campaign I manage and bring to market, I oversee the development of the promotion starting with the idea, the creative execution, spearhead metric laced conversations, host post-mortem meetings, and define best practices for future marketing strategies. Also, I love building decks, client sponsorship mocks, and sell sheets.

In summary, I believe I have the ability and experience you desire.

WB_LEGO_leavebehind_PRINTback

The opportunity to join the marketing team is a-w-e-s-o-m-e and it would be c-o-o-l to be part of the team!!!

Below, I’ve highlighted a few marketing elements from various integrated promotions I’ve managed so you can have a first-hand look at the type of content I produce and manage.

Also, you can find me on Pinterest to learn more about me!

Thank you for again for your time and consideration.  I’m looking forward to hearing next steps.

Sincerely,

Stacie Scott

My Three Favorite Blog Sites

This week’s lesson in my Multi-media Communications class was to learn about different types of blogs and then target three of my favorite blogs to discuss in this post.

There are five different types of blogs, which are:

  • News
  • Professional/Semi-professional
  • Recreational
  • Aggregator/Link sharing
  • Group

Successful blogs are those that have posts that are published often because new content drives traffic, and their articles have a lengthy word count (around 1,500). Most bloggers have multiple social sites linked to their blog, however, the top 25 bloggers all have one social channel in common and that is Twitter!

Below, find 3 of the top blogs I check frequently.

  1. BarkPostcategorizing this blog as Professional

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 4.54.40 PM
“The BarkPost helps dogs share their stories with the world, using the power of the hoomans.” It is a place where you can get your fix for funny, cute, or heartwarming doggie pictures and stories.

  • FACT: Dogs do pawesome stuff.
  • FACT: But there was never a place where all this pawsomeness was shared with the world before BarkPost.

BarkPost touts being the first site that gathers all doggie related content, stories and photos and shares them with the world. If you love dogs and stories about dogs, there is an article out there for you on BarkPost.  Also, I love how organized BarkPost is with their content.  They have the blog articles categorized and make finding specific content very easy.

BarkPost takes doggie lingo to the extreme with changing every regular word to a ‘puptacular’ version of a word such as autumn was recently changed to ‘pawtumn’ in a BarkPost email on the first day of fall. I feel that their creativity in how they position their blog articles and unique doggie language makes them stand out from other pet oriented companies.

Bark and Co has a family of brands that include the following: BarkPost, BarkBox, BarkShop and BarkLive. I think the most well-known of the family of brands is BarkBox, a monthly subscription service. Pawrents can have treats, toys and other goodies sent to their pet monthly. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest all drive to the blog site. Instagram isn’t a driver, but is used as a visually appealing brand presence on the social channel.  Social sharing chicklets are located at the top of the blog site making it very easy to stay connected. Facebook advertising and word of mouth are two of the main BarkBox marketing methods, which led me to discover BarkPost when researching whether or not I wanted to try BarkBox for my dog.

From this week’s lecture, BarkPost seems to do most if not all the things that were outlined in having a successful blog. BarkPost posts entertaining content and they post often. Their social footprint drives people to view the full articles.

BarkPost has extensive advertising opportunities that are outlined on their site and seen in the images below. At the top of their page they a sponsored by call out that they label ‘spawnsored by’ and they have a ‘pawtners’ section as well.

Screen Shot 2015-09-25 at 12.41.17 PM Screen Shot 2015-09-25 at 12.40.48 PM Screen Shot 2015-09-25 at 12.40.14 PM
  1. Oh My Disney – categorizing this blog as Professional
Screen Shot 2015-09-26 at 8.41.18 PM

Disney Interactive launched 4 blog sites in February 2013, and they are; Oh My Disney, Disney Insider, Disney Playlist, and Disney Style.  They all link and pull content from each other, however, I find Oh My Disney more relatable and entertaining than the other Disney blog sites.  Oh My Disney is known for all the Disney inspired Quizes and Disney inspired custom video content. Think Buzzfeed, but for Disney fanatics.

The purpose of the blog site is to create compelling content and have a deep reach with moms. With great reach and impressions, it provides greater sponsorship and advertising opportunities for third parties.

Because the blog site is owned by Disney, the content if of high value and in my opinion speaks to Disney super fans. Disney is great at telling stories. Through the content they produce, they are able to engage fans and play on emotional experiences they’ve had with Disney brands since childhood.

Here is an example of the custom content Oh My Disney releases, click on the image and you can watch the most adorable little pups dress up as their favorite Disney characters!

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 10.50.46 AM

The menu bar titles are clever and the icons are trendy, keeping it relevant and hip for moms! Let’s be real, this blog is all Disney inspired content, if you love Disney, the articles and quizzes are quite entertaining.

If you google Oh My Disney, every social channel for Oh My Disney comes up, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and YouTube. Paid media on Google and SEO is working to the fullest for the Oh My Disney blog site.  The main Disney page on Pinterest also has a dedicated pin board called Disney Quizzes that drives to Oh My Disney’s site.

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 10.05.25 AM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 9.59.30 AM

Advertising, yes there is! The Oh My Disney blog site has a 728×90 and 300×250 banner display ad opportunity. Additionally, articles themselves can be sponsored by advertisers with logo integration and organic brand messaging.

Screen Shot 2015-09-26 at 9.00.23 PM
  1. Good, INC. – categorizing this blog as Group and News
Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 10.57.32 AM

“Good pursues the mission to convene, connect, and empower all of us who give a damn. GOOD is a place to share creative solutions for living well and doing good. GOOD Worldwide chronicles and champions the emerging identity of the global citizen and creative change maker.”

There are two parts to the Good Inc site, the group blog sharing side which Good labels as Community and then the other part is Magazine. The Magazine part of the Good leans more towards the news sharing type blog sites. Just like with BarkPost, there are different categories and sub-sections to the company that lends itself to generate revenue.

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 10.58.20 AM

I think their purpose of doing good makes Good, Inc. unique because usually that isn’t the end goal for most people let alone companies. Believing there is good in everyone and everything gives us hope in the world we live in. Does anyone listen to KISS FM in the morning with Ryan Seacrest? He has a call-in promo for listeners when he asks them to call in and tell him something good. Hearing what’s good in other people’s lives has the opportunity to make people generally feel good and genuinely happy. I think it is great to hear good things versus negative ones, which Good, Inc does a great job at leveraging the power of social and advertising to make a difference, and bring people together to do good together!

I interviewed for a position with Good a few years ago, and I can tell you their social footprint has flourished. Good stays true to their mission statement in empowering and bringing people together to give a damn and feature good doer bloggers. They also make it very easy to share on their site.

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 10.59.40 AM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 11.01.41 AM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 11.01.22 AM

Because I have been following Good on Twitter for years, I’ve never had to google and search any content about Good until I started researching Good, Inc for this blog post. With the word good being so common, many different things come up in a google search that are not related to Good, Inc. I believe Good could improve on their SEO especially with their social footprint. It almost feels like they are trying to manage more platforms than they have bandwidth to upkeep. Unlike Disney, the google search produced links to all the Oh My Disney social platforms whereas Good falls short. Now, Good uses social to drive to their articles and posts, but they are not driving people to their social sites from google.

(Note: After writing about their SEO and search, I went to take a screenshot to drive home my point, and now Twitter is showing up in the list.  I honestly believe it is because I’ve been on Good’s Twitter page at least 10 times today! Either way, only one of their social channels appears in the search unlike the other two blogs mentioned in this post.)

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 4.36.07 PM

You can find Good on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest and Flickr.  What’s interesting is that on their main site they only link to the main 4 social channels; Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram and do not link out to YouTube, Pinterest or Flickr despite their presence there.

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 4.02.56 PM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 4.07.04 PM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 4.05.12 PM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 11.06.41 AM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 11.08.10 AM

On the magazine side of Good’s site, I did see that ads were integrated into the article list. Good also utilized a 728×90 leaderboard and 300×250 banner media on their homepage.

Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 10.41.39 AM Screen Shot 2015-09-27 at 10.36.06 AM

In closing, I hope that everyone can enjoy some of the content produced by these sites just as much as I do!  I consider all three of these sites, the BarkPost, Oh My Disney and Good successful.  They all are posting engaging content, posting often, posting articles with more than just a sentence, and all engage social media to drive to their sites.