Week 14 Assignment III Online Marketing Strategy

My proposed business, SoCal Relocation Services, will need to be built from ground up, starting with establishing a content rich and aesthetically appealing website with essential ecommerce functions such as customer registration, payment gateway and online chat for customer services etc.

With this website as the mother ship, I will start acquiring business connections and accumulating customer base by actively promoting my business and driving traffic to my mother ship on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Instead of keeping a separate blog, I will frequently publish  news worthy events and services updates on my website and replicate the same to the above mentioned social media platforms.  My social media marketing effort will be a close reflection of my website content and will be done on Facebook business page via status updates, event calendar and photo upload to broadcast my relocation services. Twitter will feature tweets that serve as headline of the Facebook content updates simultaneously to keep my Twitter followers abreast with my website and Facebook activities. Pinterest will host the collections of visual marketing materials for rental and/or real estate properties.

The foremost advantage of synchronizing the contents of the website with that on the social media platform is time-saving. At the inception of the business, my marketing budget will be close to nil which will mandate that as the owner, I will also be the accounting clerk, the operation manager and  the marketing personnel as well. I will be time pressed when churning out fresh and attractive marketing materials. It would be nearly impossible for me to maintain separate contents across my business website and the social media platforms.

Another advantage of having one update for all is being consistent across the platforms and conveying coherent and concerted messages in all of my online marketing venues. I'd like my online marketing to be straightforward and easy for the customers to follow and to drive the point home through repetitions via different platforms.

Hopefully after several rounds of initial relationship and customer connections building, I will acquire a respectable numbers of customer email addresses through the customer registrations on my website. Armed with the email addresses data, I will be able to start using email campaign through software vendor such as Constant Contact. However, to reduce the possible customers' hostility against unwanted emails, I will limit the mass emails to occasions only significant enough to warrant such unsolicited email campaign, ones such as annual customer appreciation banquet, major real estate seminars and special coupon deals, etc.

My next month contents updates,  to be published on my website and quoted across the three social media platforms I chose, would be as follows:
Week one, "Advice on Getting to the U.S. and Getting ready for the School". It will include tips on purchasing airline tickets, passport and visa applications and custom clearing.

Week two, "How to Maximize Summer Break". It will offer information on summer internship opportunities, summer school and summer travel and leisure.

Week three, "SoCal Housing and Rental Market Update". It will cite report about the latest news on  housing and rental properties in SoCal region.

Week four, "Why Choose Us". It will be a detailed explanation about the services we offer.

Week 14 Assignment II Comments

I have commented on the following blog posts:

1. http://briantbenham.blogspot.com/2013/05/csit-week-14-online-social-strategy.html?showComment=1368151260658#c5945367638745947768

2.http://myrtlecreeknursery.blogspot.com/2013/05/effective-social-media-platforms-for.html?showComment=1368152183320#c2902953499442667916

3. http://anne-ec-dotes.blogspot.com/2013/05/evaluating-social-media.html?showComment=1368159823586

4. http://melaniessocialmediajourney.blogspot.com/2013/05/social-media-reviewed-what-will-work.html?showComment=1368160397198#c7064025622431544264

Week 14 Assignment I

By looking back at what I have blogged and wrote on the various social media platforms so far for this class, I come to realize that I have gained a quite sizable understanding of today's social media marketing environment and along the way have formulated a clear strategy for marketing my proposed business and generated a significant volume of contents developed around such strategy.

Interestingly, my initial aversion against the behemoth Facebook out of concern for intrusion of privacy has changed, during the course of this class, into a neutral attitude of adopting it as a pragmatic solution for marketing my business and services, especially when the business page can be established and maintained seperately from a personal page. The benefits of having a presence on Facebook and actively promoting business on the Facebook page outweigh the concerns and risks in using Facebook. I think due to its dominance in social media and the well developed features and functions it provides, Facebook would be my top choice for ongoing daily online marketing effort which will include updates of graphics, status and events to drive traffic to my business website.

The nimble Twitter would be an ideal candidate as a secondary social marketing tool to supplement the advertising effort on Facebook. The type of marketing I envision on Twitter would be frequent and concise tweets to constantly remind my followers to visit my Facebook page and business website. It is more of a headline news about my business with details to be found on Facebook and business website.

I have a particular fondness for Pinterest, finding it very attractive and pleasing to the eyes of the web surfers with the graphic collection of subject matters. I would imagine using Pinterest Pin board to  showcase the rental and real estate properties for potential customers of mine. A another Pin board featuring the Chinese cuisine and its recipe would serve as an attraction for potential customers.

The online social media, as I learned throughout this course, enable small business owners and entrepreneurs to advertise their products and services in an unprecedented way that level the ground for competition between the big and small business. Through diligent and creative work and effort it is absolutely possible for an enterprising novice to carve a niche in the online business.

Week 13 Assignment - Facebook Analytics

Since my Facebook account with its business page "Socal Relocation Services" was newly created as part of the homework requirements for this class, even after the 'Like' from my fellow classmates as mandated by this week's assignment, it has only 5 Likes which fell way short of the 25 Likes that is required to have access to Facebook Insights.

The changes I noticed under Admin is the New Likes and New Notifications which contained encouraging comments about my business page and posts. I believe if I keep up with the content update on my business page I will eventually achieve the coveted 25 Likes to be able to see the much desired and highly sought after Insights.

Week 13 Assignment Google Analytics

For my hypothetical business, SoCal Relocation Services, I will be very curious about how the live traffic looks like if I ever set up the website and start marketing for it. Google Analytics seems to be a perfect solution to satisfy my curiosity in finding out where the traffic comes from, how the contents of my website engage with the viewers and the pattern or habit of my website viewers, all of which can be found via the reporting of Google Analytics.

Not only can I get a thorough understanding of the live traffic on my website,  I can also monitor the dynamics of the website traffic via Analytics Intelligence, a tool that will alert me about abnormal changes of  the traffic pattern to keep me informed of any significant website deficiency or external events that could cause the abnormality. Further more, I can implement a trial and error methodology by twisting the various key contents, designs, campaigns and business logic to achieve the optimal results reported by the Analytics intelligence.

Another important feature my website can benefit from is the multi-channel conversion tool that provides insight of  what the buying customers did sequentially on my website before the final step of purchases. I would imagine my website utilizing various forms of online marketing, i.e. email, banner ads, news or content update to attract potential buyers of my services and turn them into customers. I would be interested in finding out what path those buying customers take before arriving at the purchase decision, what forms of online marketing work alone or together to drive the customer toward the shopping cart checkout. The multi-channel conversion tool would be the one the solve this puzzle.

And certainly, the Social Activities tool would be one that I will frequently use to gauge the effectiveness of my social media marketing efforts which will be the centerpiece of my online promotion as the result of my focus on advertising for free and the reliance on words of mouth type of marketing strategy. All three of the available tools for Social, the Conversion, Source and Sharing would be the ideal candidates in evaluating my social media marketing efforts.