Promotional Campaign Final Report

1. Audience:

The BGSU students and the BG and surrounding communities are the targeted audience in the South Side 6 Facebook fan page. This page serves to introduce and recruit potential customers and fans of the variety of Lebanese and Greek food South Side 6 has to offer. Also, this fan page keeps current customers “digitally connected” to their favorite store.


2. Goals of the campaign:

• Provide a complete set of brief necessary information (store hours, menu, address, phone number, etc…)
• Keep fans informed of the daily specials.
• Establish a presence for the store on social media.
• Promote the store, by the means web 2.0 marketing technologies, as a destination for authentic eaters.

3. Initial Design technologies:

• Facebook Fan Page
• Twitter – Under my name given that I am the representative of the store.
• Blog – The place where I posted weekly update reports from Facebook along with answering questions for the course.

4. Success Measurement:

• The success of the competition I launched in which I encouraged customers to post comments about what they think is the best on the menu.
• Number of Fans and their increase weekly
• Number of comments
• Number of visits (provided weekly by Facebook)
• Comparison of weekly reports (provided by Facebook)
  

In my opinion, the campaign was a very good success story that will need continuous attention given what we have read about the fast pace social media marketing process. This campaign would have been successful in a work environment if it was given the proper amount of attention and man hour resources.

Lessons learned from this campaign that would be helpful for next class:

• Social media is a very powerful marketing portal that could promote your business significantly.
• Social media does not fix a business that is failing.
• Social media for businesses need continuous attention and a constant changing fresh content.

Improvement on the Facebook Fan page

Statistically speaking, this week is better than last week regarding activity on my promotional campaign Facebook fan page. Below is the weekly report from Facebook, numbers show improvement.

Hi Bashir,
Here is this week's summary for the Facebook Page: South Side6
+20 Fans this week (86 total Fans)
9 Wall Posts,Comments, and Likes this week (7 last week)
153 visits to your page this week(125 visits last week)

Progress on the Facebook Fans Page

This week report is very encouraging. I have been out in other Facebook pages recruiting fans. Overall, I am happy with the results.

Hi Bashir,
Here is this week's summary for the Facebook Page:
South Side 6+22 Fans this week (66 total Fans)
7 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week (10 last week)
125 visits to your page this week(261 visits last week)

More Fans for your Facebook page

I went to the Bowling Green City and Bowling Green Dowtown pages on Facebook and posted a link to my Facebook page. By the end of the day, my page fans number went up by 10.

Although it is hard to be 100% sure that those new 10 fans are from the two pages mentioned above, I am willing to bet that at least half of them were.

This Blog!!

It is remarkable how this blogging website served in communicating information and ideas back and forth between the participants of this class. I think the functionality here is pretty obvious and what the blog can do for you as far as communication is clearly outstanding.

Editing the overall look and feel of the blog is easy, quick and efficient. Also, the fact that it connects every post you make to the RSS of the people who are following you is an example of the powerful outreach blogs could potentially grant users and businesses.

I like blogging…blogging is fun. I wish more and more classes could be delivered using a similar approach.

BGSU Wiki

Can anyone help me out?

I joined http://mckpractice.bgsu.wikispaces.net/Marketing-IT+Wiki+Home+Page and created a page for this class but, I cannot write anything in there!

page name: MBA6800

RSS

Google reader offer tremendous amount of options. Personally, I like two features the most:

1. The fact that I went to each one of my fellow classmates’ blogs and followed his/her blog makes all of their posts show up in my RSS. I do not need to visit every blog; I can just click on a person’s name in the left side menu under subscriptions and see all of their posts.

2. RSS is connected to my Gmail. Based on the nature of the emails I receive, I have list of recommended items in the left menu in RSS. Although I don’t see myself checking all of them, I tried couple of the recommended site or blogs and they were really of interest.

Overall, my experience was great. I see an educational purpose in RSS if utilized properly.

Self Explanatory

StumbleUpon

To me, this website is almost like Delicios.com on steroids. The basic idea is identical (pages of interest) but, StumbleUpon extends the Stumbler's options and functionality to perform that basic idea.

For instance, StumbleUpon has more options available as far as searching for topics of interest along with video features. Also, StumbleUpon grant the users a browser menu to increase their capabilities. Other than that, the sharing with and inviting others (friends) follows the same concept as Delicious.

Personally, Delicios is simpler and I prefer to use it instead of StumbleUpon.

DIGG

I dug into few of the articles and links available on digg.com and I actually find the website to be quite interesting. A lot of voting and sharing going on to assure that users receive the most popular stories according to their domain of interest. Although many of the topics are missing subtopics (science should have more than just environment, space and general science), I think the website has a lot to offer.

I do not see myself using this everyday due to the fact that it could be a bit time consuming to dig around especially given the huge amount of resources available. However, I will definitely check it out every now and then.

Delicious

This is something that I will probably use daily. Although the basic functionality of the site could be performed in a browser, I think http://delicious.com/bashirBGSU makes it more organized. Having an online library of personal bookmarks is very handy for those who spend a lot of time browsing the internet. Only three steps to create a new bookmark, two clicks to save a link that you might like and the ability to tag your links makes http://delicious.com interesting and practical.

Promotional Campaign

1. Audience:
Mainly I am targeting the BGSU students given that they represent the blood stream for any local business. Also, those from the local community who have Facebook accounts are included in the audience. South Side 6 brings convenience and ethnic food to the audience along with excellent and friendly customer service. South Side 6 is the right store for every party, event and any social occasion one can think of due to the variety of products and services available in one place.

2. Goal of the Campaign:
· To provide more advertisement for the store and give it presence on Facebook.
· To extend the marketing efforts beyond the BG news and other local news papers to web 2.0 environments.
· To make up for the fact that the store website is not up to date.

3. Initial Design:
· http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Bowling-Green-OH/South-Side-6/124645974234403
· Linked to Twitter under my name given the fact I got permission from the owner to run the campaign http://twitter.com/bashirhandous

4. Success Measurement Process:
· Number of Fans
· Number of comments
· Number of visits (provided weekly by Facebook)
· Comparison of weekly reports (provided by Facebook)

Facebook is AWESOME

Below is what Facebook sent me for the first week regarding the page I created for the local business: South Side 6. This is very simple and convenient. It helps you reflect on how successful your advertising efforts are.


Hi Bashir, here is this week's summary for the Facebook Page: South Side 6
+44 Fans this week (44 total Fans)
10 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week (0 last week)
261 visits to your page this week(0 visits last week)

Google Wave

Google Wave is such a complex suite of applications yet, easy to use. In my opinion this solves the dilemma businesses are struggling with on whether to introduce Facebook or Twitter for collaboration because Google Wave has a chatting feature in it. Also, I think it could serve as an ideal environment for teamwork, information sharing and real time communication among associates in a particular business. Best of it all, it is free.

Google Docs

In my opinion, this is one of the most productive tools in the suite of applications Google has to offer. If I was a business owner, I would definitely exploit Google Docs for collaboration with others. Think of it this way, there is no need to buy a Microsoft Office license for every employee you have. All what you need is an internet connection, a Google account and you are ready to create presentations for clients, spreadsheets for your budget and word documents to write letters.
What is even better is that with one click, you can share a specific document with anyone you want. Also, the privacy features are very easy to use, just decide whether the person who is receiving the document can only view it or edit it. Overall, Google Docs is a very productive, cost effective and easy to use tool. As a business, that is all what you need!

YouTube

I listen to YouTube all the time but never have I thought about creating an account. Now I have one that I am going to use all the time. In the past, I used to search for one video, watch it and then pick the next one to watch from the right hand menu. If I ever randomly stumble upon one that I like, I need to look for it the next time which could take few minutes. Now, and with one click, I can add it to my favorites and watch it later with no need to search. Also, if I ever end up having too many videos saved in my favorites, I get to create a playlist which sort videos by a specific artist or genre.
As for a business, I think YouTube would be a very effective advertising method. Although, it will require more work on the part of the business compared to a Facebook page or Twitter, the payoff could be way more since customer like visuals rather than texts.

LinkedIn

I have been using LinkedIn for only a short period of time. One of my colleagues introduced me to the site and I am still exploring it. I like what I see so far. I like to call it a professional Facebook where there is no creepy aspect involved. In other words, you are friends with people in the professional world from whom you can seek advice, recommendation and networking.
In my opinion, this is a create tool for businesses. It provides an excellent technique for job seekers and college students to network with professionals. Also it is an outstanding tool for businesses to shop for job candidates given the fact that users profiles serve as mini-resume. Overall, great tool with virtually no privacy issues unlike other social media sites.

Twitter

I have never used Twitter before until now. Honestly, and without exaggeration, I already feel like I was missing out big time on what it has to offer. I started off by following the Harvard business review and the Economist. I absolutely love how I get a tweet with the title of an article and a link to it. There is no time to waste! If the title interests you, just click on the link and start reading. I am very happy with my experience, I think it is relatively more productive and educational compared to Facebook and I will keep using it.

Facebook

I will start off with the most popular social media website out there (voted by me and I guess everyone else). Personally, I admit to spend too much time on Facebook every day. However, it can be very useful sometimes.
I stay in touch with my family and friends wherever they are. Although this could be done through regular email but, the combination of photos, videos and chat features that Facebook provide in one platform makes the experience better.
Moreover, Facebook keeps me updated on organizations that am interested in like BGSU College of business, NASA, FIFA, etc…
Last but not least, Facebook provides an enormous amount of features for businesses. It is a free marketing tool that almost has the widest outreach among all of the advertisement options available to businesses. I also believe that small businesses can make use of Facebook more than large corporations.