Social Media Markrting!!!!!!!

You all are welcome to my fifth blog post :) :)

This week I'm going to talk about Social Media Marketing; when we talk about SMM the first thing which comes to everyone's mind is making advertisement in FB, Twitter, Google + or Youtube but this topic goes beyond that.Just visit this site to get a good idea http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-social-media-marketing . Not only that but there are lot of videos on SMM in Youtube. I will share some of them.

We know only few Social Media networks, but there are lot like Linkdin, Myspace, Skype, Google +, Live journal, You tube, hu lu, Net Flix, Daily Motion and etc. Social Media allows individuals to interact with one another and build relationship. This is a good way of doing marketing because marketers can directly approach to the  customers and it gives the ability to know their positive and negative response on products or the brands. Main advantage of SMM is it helps to create brand awareness and likability.

There is a framework to develop social media plan.They are;

• First want to get a good idea about current situation. (Listen)
• Then want to do a "Social Media Brand Health Check" to identify vulnerabilities, action points, sentiments and other business insights. (Analyze)
• After that want to set objectives  which we want to achieve within SM timeline. (Set goals)
• Taking necessary actions to achieve goals. ((Engage)
• Finally want to do paid campaigns and timely promotions to amplify SMM. (Amplify) 

You can simply understand above all steps except "Social Media Brand Health Check" so now I'll explain you, the process of doing that health check. Here I have shared my evaluation on the brand I selected which is "Pizza Hut"  and "Dominos" as a competitor.

Key to the "Your Level of Satisfaction"
0 - Totally Dissatisfied
1 - Somewhat Dissatisfied
2 - Neutral
3 - Somewhat Satisfied
4 - Very Satisfied

Overall Pizza hut brand is doing good but they are not much successful in SMM since there overall score is 60.It wants increase in many areas.  
My selected brand has around 10mn fans and competitor brand has around 8mn fans in Face book. You can just check it by Googling. When local fan base of Pizza hut is compared to the total fan base it has very low percentage that is only .34% .Since it is a universal brand Pizza Hut want to do more promotions to attract customers through digital media.

There are 328,278 followers in Twitter for the Pizza Hut and 205,173 followers for Dominos. Pizza Hut leads by just 123,105 followers that means Dominos give good competition to Pizza Hut  Among all followers 83% are good followers of Pizza Hut and Dominos has 71%. In a You tube there are 2,764,143 video views for Pizza Hut and 2,063,909 video views for Dominos.All the times both company have almost same figures.Not only that these two companies are in other SM too like Google +, Linkdin and Myspace.


                                                                            PH                                        Dominos

• Linkedin             - Followers                  15608                                          10584
• Myspace            - Friends                       1703                                               468
• Google               - g +                             4918                                           11274 

People talks about  Pizza Hut more than Dominos (PTA). Klout score measures a brand on line influence and convert to scale from 0 - 100. Pizza Hut brand has 87 score and Dominos has 85 score which means they both are in almost same place. People tweet more about Dominos than Pizza Hut that means Dominos followers are more engaging with internet than Pizza Hut followers. People have bad experience on Pizza Hut  than Dominos and since Pizza Hut has only a little excess market share than Dominos they have to think about their strategies twise because Dominos gives a good competition to Pizza Hut.


Through out this research I came to this conclusion, Pizza Hut is successfull in SMM but they have to  more efforts to compete with Dominos.

How to do a key word research????

Hi my dear readers !!!Hope you all went through my previous posts and really enjoyed them, today also I'm here to share a very important part of a SEM. This blog post is continuation of my previous blog http://dinagloeye.blogspot.com because earlier we talked about Search Engine Marketing ( you can have a better idea from Wikipedia) under that we discussed about Search Engine Optimization and Paid Advertising on Search Engine/ Pay Per Click (PPC). 

Last week we mainly drew our attention to discuss about SEO therefore today I'm going to share my experience on key word research for an industry in Sri Lanka. Here we mainly talk about PPC. To promote our web site among users we want to select effective key words specially it should be relevant to the our target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a key word query matches an advertiser's key word list or when a content site displays relevant content. 

I just checked if any one search "branded clothes in Sri Lanka"  in Google what would be the result, I did this search as a visitor then it showed about 32,700,000 answers within 17 seconds. I was surprised because I wanted to see ODEL Sri Lanka in that answers, no dought it became the second that means ODEL website is very optimised.

Then I have done Adword research for the "branded clothes in Sri Lanka" in Google Adword because it is most popular website for that purpose. It will easily help to users run a keyword research using Google Adword. We can just check it without any payment.

       

 First we want to visit the website (https://adwords.google.com) then sign in to the Google account and want to select Tools and Analysis. I used "Branded clothes in Sri Lanka" as my phrase and in advanced option & filters I selected Sri Lanka and English as my audience. Following are the relevant key words which I received through this research. 

Among all 800 result I selected only six as my key words.

The result showing that there are low competition for key words of branding cloths in Sri Lanka.. I think it's easy for branded clothing shops to use SEO and PPC. And now advertisers can create advertising campaign for different group. 

I have created simple advertisement for ODEL clothes as follows ;

Demo Ad

I showed you the process of creating PPC ads.There are lots of advantages of PPC ads rather than just online advertisement. They are ;

 

• Expand our reach through the display network that means since Google is largest coverage it will help to reach viewers all over the web.

• Because of key words  it will help to target right user in the right context.

• With the "Placement performance report" we have visibility to find where all our ads appear. As well as we can create it according to our badget.

• Not like other advertisement we just want to pay only for click. 

Hope you get a good idea about PPC ads. Good Luck !!!!

Webinar on Search Engine Optimization

Hi my dear readers, I’m going to share my first-hand experience on a webinar. Actually it was a really interesting session because as a Sri Lankan undergraduate we never had the experience of distant learning. So I would like to thank Mr. Suranga Priyashantha and Mr. Amitha Amarasinghe for giving us the opportunity to engage in a valuable lesson. I think this post might be very fascinating than my previous posts thanks to the live experience.

For today’s business, technology plays a critical role in all the functions. With the arrival of social media, researchers have proved that customers spend more and more time online to absorb new and updated information. Marketers have been motivated on using social media, online and mobile advertising to promote their products and services. 

The topic which we discussed in our lecture was SEM (Search Engine Marketing) that means “marketing in search engines”. Simply the ability of providing company information or product information once the visitor search for terms (key words) relevant to that website. Under that we talked about two topics. They are;

• Search Engaging Optimization (SEO)
• Paid Advertising on Search Engine/ Pay Per Click (PPC)

 The entire lecture was mainly focused on SEO, its uses and the importance. SEO means “the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine’s "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results’. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users”.

I browsed this definition from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization.

PPC means “the process of attracting visitors to the website by purchasing ad space on search engine results pages “according to Mr. Priyantha’s point of view.

Once I think of the word “search” the first thing which comes to my mind is “Google” and it is general to everyone. It is the best way of answering problems in consumers or surfers mind. Now it has become a customers need, and day by day it’s swelling rapidly. As a result of technology development ‘search’ can create problems to customers. That means it makes consumers to buy some products and services without special requirements, (E.g- e-bay). The most important thing of ‘search’ facility would be the ability to create “Zero Movement of Truth” that means without physically monitoring, consumers can gather information just by Googling. 

Finally we talked about Key Success factors and four key process involved in SEO. 

As for conclusion I can say the experience was very interesting plus informative. And hope to be a part of more webinars in the future not only for education but in the corporate world too.

Cheers!!!

Website Usability Checklist of aitkenspence.com

What makes a great website? There are many ways to measure the effectiveness and quality of a website. I selected www.aitkenspence.com to check usability since it is a very popular among corporate sector because it provides much diversified services to the peoples. To analyze the user friendliness of particular website is the main objective of this measurement. This will be done by using four sub topics; Accessibility, Identity, Navigation, and Content. Let’s check these dimensions through http://www.aitkenspence.com/

Accessibility

Ø  Site load-Time is really quick. Just within 3-5 seconds time whole site is loaded. It saves viewers time and avoids visits to other websites while visiting there website.

Ø  Adequate text to background contrast is highly available because the contrasting combination of text colors is very attractive. The background is purely white and the headings and other content appear in color blue. Not only that their images are very natural and colorful.  

Ø  Font size/spacing is easy to read where topics are highlighted in big font size and different font color but the small fonts are little bit small and it’s eye straining for the viewers. Once viewers click on a link it takes them to the relevant detail document. Line spacing is adequate in that page.

Ø  Flash & add‐ons are used sparingly as it does not disturb the viewers from advertisements and etc. But the top banner keeps on changing according to the theme.  

Ø  ALT tags for Images  are not found in Aitken Spence website.

Ø  Site has custom not‐found/404 page: This site does not contain custom not found page. It just gives directions to viewers where they want to go.

Identity

Ø  Company logo is prominently placed: There is no specific logo to the company they just use their name as a company logo with a different font style and with light blue color. It is at the left top corner of their website.

Ø  Tagline makes company’s purpose clear: There is no tagline to the company it can be seen as a little drawback of the company. As a reputed company in Sri Lanka it’s better to have tagline since they are very much diversified.

Ø  Home‐page is digestible in 5 seconds: By just looking at the website it gives some ideas to the viewers because there are colorful images and relevant tabs grab the viewer’s attention. We just want to spend less than 5 seconds time to go through the website main page.
  

Ø  Clear path to company information facility is available at the left top corner of the page it directs viewers to the company profile. There also different five subheadings which provide company information separately. It makes easy to viewers to find information separately according to their requirement. Not only that they also share some corporate videos in their page that is plus point of their website.  

Ø  Clear path to contact information is also available and giving the viewer contact details to keep in touch and provide services for their needed. The beauty of that page is that they provide the customers online form to fill if any one who wish to apply for positions at Aitken Spence they requested to forward their CVs to vacancies@aitkenspence.lk.They just think about corporate responsibly through their website.    

Navigation

Ø  Main navigation is easily identifiable as the above image shows aitkenspence.com has clear navigations at the top of the page and middle which is easy to find and read.

Ø  Navigation labels are clear & concise as they are in block capital letters with a blue background.

Ø  Number of buttons/links is reasonable as they have different shapes of buttons since they are providing diversify service. Each of those paths takes viewers to the relevant place and provides more information.

Ø  Company logo is linked to home‐page as when we click logo it’s automatically take us to the home page.

Ø  Links are consistent & easy to identify as they show every links are some kind of similar and they are very easy to identify.

Ø  Site search is easy to access as I mention above there is no search button in this website.

Content 

Ø  Major headings are clear & descriptive as I said before the important tabs (Home, About us, Sustainability and etc..) are very clearly viewers easily can find what they want to find. Headings are placed in different color background the purpose of clutch their attention.

Ø   Critical content is above the “fold” : Since they are working in different sectors they unable to present  critical content above the fold. Home page just shows only paths and most important information only.

Ø  Styles and colors are consistent as the different font sizes, colors and shapes use throughout the website. Most of the time they use color blue with a white background that is very eye catching and also use different light colors.

Ø  Emphasis (bold, etc.) is used sparingly as everything is not in bold but most of headings are in color blue. The important titles are in bold, but the descriptions are in normal text.

Ø  Ads & pop‐ups are not found

Ø  Main copy is concise & explanatory: The main page of the site consist of all the required information for the viewer.

Ø  URLs are meaningful & user‐friendly: The URLs given, direct the viewer to the other websites mentioned without any problems. For eg. Adaaran, Heritance and Aitken Spence Hotels sites

Ø  HTML page titles are explanatory: A clear HTML is given to all the pages loaded. For eg. The services page. http://www.aitkenspence.com/services/services_sector_asia_sri_lanka.asp