SEO Review

For this assignment we are to use the information & techniques from the lectures and reading, analyze your blog for search engine optimization improvements.

• What data did you look at?
• What techniques did you use?
• What are your findings?
• How would you improve the SEO of your blog?  Use the data & techniques to prove your recommendations..

The first set of data that I reviewed was the traffic received from search results in Google Analytics. The results here were all zeros. At this point my site has not been clicked from any search results (not surprising since the assignments are direct links to posts).

Since those numbers were empty I then did some more looking in the Google Webmaster tools. This showed the rates of crawls and indexing of the site to make sure that was functioning. I also ended up linking the webmaster tools into Analytics to generate additional reports.

Since all of  my data was empty the real challenge would be to get content on my site that is relevant and have keywords that are effective in generating search hits.

Landing Page Improvements

When analyzing the landing page of the purple boots page at Amazon there are a couple items that would be of particular interest.

• First would be to identify those items that are selling the most and putting those as top results.
• Next would be to identify the other items that are purchased by customers that have landed on this page. This can create  a cross selling opportunity by highlighting items such as purses or jackets that were bought at the same time. 
• I would also review the links that were getting from here to see which links were getting the most clicks. This could identify other areas that are being neglected, or that should be defaulted in the search area when creating the landing site.

Root Cause Diagnosis

This is a root cause diagnosis of the Mustang page on Ford.com and identifying issues why visitors are not using the "Request a Local Quote" button. Through analysis I was able to isolate the issues with clicks of the button to the following items:

• Prominence / location of the button on the screen
• By increasing the size of the button it could gain notice
• Moving the button on the screen to an area where it might be seen better
• Promoting the button (letting users know that it exists)
• In advertisement, make sure users know that the button exists
• Social media traffic
• Correlate Facebook/Twitter traffic by referral to identify those that may be clicking the button
• Online Advertisement traffic
• Correlate Ad traffic by referral to identify those that may be clicking the button
• Intra-site traffic
• Identify areas of the Ford.com web site where the traffic comes from that ends up requesting a quote
• Quote click form
• Identify if users are completing the form after they first click it.

Custom Report

As an exercise to evaluate traffic that I have been receiving I created a report in Google Analytics using a comparison of unique visitors and bounce rate. By comparing these values I can see how often I get a user hitting my site and then the percentage of time that they are leaving without reading any of my other entries.

Below you can see that earlier in the semester much of the traffic was only a couple of users and they were only viewing a single page at a time. Later in the semester the bounce rate has fallen some, but there is still a high rate.

Choosing a Vendor

Choosing a Vendor - 10 Questions to ask when interviewing a prospective vendor.

As an exercise I will compare Webtrends with Google.

1. What is the difference between your tool/solution and free tools from Yahoo! and Google?
 The data collection methods differ in that Webtrends can be based on logs vs the Javascript passed tracking in Google. By using log views you can get a truer version of who is connecting to your site. Those clients that cannot run Javascript would not be gathered from Google. The associated infrmation on IP and referral link is also covered by our product that isn't covered in Google.

2. Are you 100 percent ASP, or do you offer a software version? Are you planning a software version? We offer both SaaS as well as local copies of our software. This makes us more flexible and more capable to meet your needs.

3. What data capture mechanisms do you use?
Using a 1st party cookie data is logged across sites. 

4. Can you calculate the total cost of ownership for your tool?
We offer a full tool to calculate the TCO of Webtrends. http://webtrends.com/products/analytics/total-cost-of-ownership-calculator-app/

5. What kind of support do you offer? What do you include for free, and what costs more? Is it free 24/7? There are several different levels of support. We offer a web site knowledge base as well as forums. Normal support by phone is offered during normal business hours. Our premium support offerings has 24/7 phone support.

6. What features in your tool allow me to segment the data? We offer the Webtrends Segments as an additional product. This will offer full segmenting features.

7. What options do I have for exporting data from your system into our company's system? We offer the ability to export data to Excel.

8. What fetures do you provide for me to integrate data from other sources into your tool? We natively integrate directly into SharePoint, SalesForce, and Email systems. We also have integrations into SAP for custom functionality.

9. Can you name two features/tools/acquisitions your company is cooking up to stay ahead of your competition for the next three years? While I am unable to disclose our upcoming features, we do have an open forum where we solicit feature requests. Those items that are highly rated will be more likely to be integrated in the future.

10. Why did the last two clients you lost cancel their contracts? Who are they using now? May we call one of these former clients? This is not able to be answered.

Guidelines for Measuring Relationships in PR

Good company to audience relations

One company that has a great relationship with its audience is Southwest Airlines. They have prided themselves on focusing on the customer while maintaining low prices.

In the airline business Southwest has targeted the low fare business but maintained a large national fleet. To maintain the relationship that they have Southwest heavily markets the low fares, including free baggage. This is marketed such that the audience feels that Southwest is doing them a favor because they are "friends". By getting and maintaining a friendly association a person is generally more forgiving of any issues that may occur and they have a better attitude about flying.

Those that advertise a low fare but add on additional fees bring on a level of distrust from the customer. The customer is then more apt to complain of little issues and less agreeable when things don't go as planned.

By maintaining these relations Southwest has happier customers and ultimately happier employees. For many of the employees that have to deal with customers (flight attendants, gate personnel, ticket agents) they would gladly work with those in a better mood than those that are angry about every little thing.

A goal of the company would be to maintain the highest customer satisfaction rating in the industry. The outcome of the relationship would be in increased ticket sales and greater market share in the industry.

Content Analysis - GM

Analyzing GM's Marketing

The overall perception of GM has went up in the last two years. According to the New York Times in 2009 the company was at a low of 59% of Americans having a negative view of the company. As of last summer this sentiment had turned around to 42 % approving and only 32 % disapproving. This turn around is just the first step in recovery and the changing of image.

The recent decision to discontinue Facebook ads has created a bunch of press coverage and some are chastising GM for not utilizing the tool correctly. As an example Jan Rezab wrote an open letter to GM that was posted on the Forbes web site. In the letter he is critical of GM not seemingly taking the Facebook presence seriously and not dedicating a resource to answer questions. He also points out that they were posting updates at times when most of their audience was not actively on Facebook or in a position to look at the pages.

What is a bit misleading is that GM was specifically withdrawing the Facebook ads and not their Facebook pages. The delivery of the ads may be not creating the traffic that they would like and it appears that they are just refocusing their efforts elsewhere. This is exactly what we are covering in class where have to review the data and take action on the results. This alone tells me that they are not satisfied that their message is getting out to the target audience and that they are going to try a different approach.



http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/auto-bailout-is-looking-better-to-the-public/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/05/16/an-open-letter-to-gm-why-you-shouldnt-abandon-facebook/

Sodexo Case Study

Sodexo and Social Media

After reviewing the social presence of Sodexo it is easy to see why they have been so successful in their recruiting endeavors. Each of their sites is relatable to the younger generation that they are targeting. The content is more robust than just simple job postings and engages the prospects. This additional content and eye appealing format brings in repeat visitors as well as keeps the users eyes on the pages longer. 

In order to show the effectiveness of each of the social sites they can make unique links/forms for each that could be tracked individually allowing them to see where the prospect is coming from. They can also do comparisons to traditional methods to get a baseline. 

ROI - Measurement

According to Measure What Matters there are 7 steps to perfect measurement. I will correlate these steps with how GM could use these steps and how they would measure ROI.

Step 1 - Define your goals an objectives: Why are you launching this plan or pursuing this strategy? What is the "R" in the ROI that you are seeking to measure?
For GM the goals that would be targeted by this campaign would be to become thought of as the leader in the alternate energy transportation within 2 years. The return would be to surpass Toyota and Nissan in the marketplace in both reputation and market share.

Step 2 - Define your Environment, your audiences, and your role in influencing them.
The defined environment would be most social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. The target audiences would be those that have shown interest in prior GM products and are actively looking for a new car. By targeting this group you are trying to maintain your loyal base customers and by using social media you can reach associated people as well that would be influenced by the purchaser.

Step 3 - Define your investment: What will it cost? What is the "I" in ROI?
This is a bit unknown in actual dollars since I am not actually a part of GM. It is however suggested that 5-7% of the budget should go to measuring the program.

Step 4 - Determine your benchmarks
There should be a benchmark created compared to the current market share of the competitors as well as the opinion rating of each. These can be compared to later data for evaluating growth.

Step 5 - Define your key performance indicators: What are the metrics you will report with?
The metrics that will be defined would be the growth of the market share as well as the overall growth of market. Also would be the approval ranking of the company in the segment compared to competitors.

Step 6 - Select the right measurement tool and vendors and collect data
The specific tool used for evaluation would depend on the exact medium and the data needed by management. This is inconclusive since I am not a part of the company.

Step 7 - Turn data into action: Analyze data, draw actionable conclusions, and make recommendations.
This step would be evaluated at a periodic time frame that would allow for comparisons of the growth and effectiveness of the campaign.

Social Media Trends

In the past year there have been several major developments in social media. First was the introduction of Google+ this was a direct competitor to Facebook. The other major change is the IPO of Facebook.

The release of Google+ has not been much of a success so far, but it will be a key service for Google to leverage for data mining and for their mobile services. This service is still in it's infancy and the marketing possibilities are still at a minimum.

The Facebook offering may have more important consequences. By going public Facebook has to be more transparent with their revenue stream and thus the marketing effectiveness will be questioned.

As stated in a previous post GM has identified the ineffectiveness of Facebook advertising and as  result pulled their marketing. Other companies are also questioning the effectiveness and the accuracy of the statistics provided for the number of viewers/clicks that the adds are receiving.  This trend will continue and is already effecting the stock prices for Facebook.

PR Measurement Guidelines

• What are their current PR activities?
  Shortly after the chapter 11 bankruptcy GM blanketed the social media sites, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs. This was all to engage the consumer and answer questions on the restructuring and to alleviate uncertainty.

http://www.prsa.org/SearchResults/view/8548/105/What_drives_GM_s_social_media_strategy

• What are the possible outputs, outtakes & outcomes?
  By addressing the issues head on and keeping a positive spin on the media they can make consumers more comfortable with the company and more willing to purchase from them.

• What might their PR objectives and business objectives be?
  When the initial PR push was enacted there was damage control being done. Currently the PR goals are still to continue dispel any myths about the bankruptcy and the bailout, but also to try to gain back market share that was lost. They have recently also embarked on a television marketing campaign to show how they have been repaying the federal loans.

• How might they measure each?
  The monitoring of negative comments vs. positive ones can give a metric that could show if the perceived issues are being addressed. The total traffic can be monitored to see how much market penetration they are making.

• Do they seem to be accomplishing their objectives?
  I think that the view of GM has been positive over the last year or so.

Understanding Business Objectives & Audience - Blog Post Assignment

Understanding Business Objectives & Audience

In this assignment I will be re-using the company of GM from the first assignment.

Question 1: What are your Objectives? Increase sales of Electric/Hybrid vehicles.

Question 2: Who are your Program's Target Audience(s)? Individuals with higher income that are looking for new cars.

Question 3: What is Important to Your Audiences? Fuel efficiency, Styling, Reliability, Status

Question 4: What Motivates Them to Buy Your Products? Wanting a fuel efficient car, buying an American vehicle.

Question 5: What are your Key Messages? The hip and progressiveness of GM and how favorable GM is compared to other car companies.

Question 6: Who Influences Your Audience(s)? Major influencers are peers, traditional media, and websites

Question 7: How Do you Distribute Your Product or Service? The main channel would be through new car dealers.

Question 8: What Are You Going to Do with the Information You Get from Your Research? Assist marketing to determine which parts of social media are effective in reaching those looking at electric/hybrid models.

Question 9: What Other Departments or Areas Will Be Affected?  PR / Communications would be able to use the data to possibly use the same channels to bring additional messages to the market.

Question 10: What Other Measurement Programs Are Currently Underway? Unknown

You Make The Case : Blog Assignment 1

You Make The Case : Blog Assignment

In the first Make The Case I will be a web analyst for General Motors. The presented issue is that I need to convince my boss that we need a measurement strategy.

In an attempt to persuade them to invest in a measurement strategy I will point out the failed attempt that they had with utilizing social media. Recently GM decided to remove their presence on Facebook due to lack of perceived returns. With a  measurement strategy they would be able to measure the impact the both joining Facebook would have as well as what the loss would be in removing it.

Another argument would be that they need to identify other electronic avenues and monitor what impact they have. By measuring this, they can link the impact that they are having on targeted markets to those that are actually purchasing the cars. They can also then identify the loyalty and brand interest in those markets.