Hi everyone ! As the flower blossom and squirels rolling out on the glass, it is spring time; and it mean our classses are wrapping up once in for all in 1 week time.

As for this last post, I would still discuss of the impact of e-Marketing, specifically evaluate on the use of Social Media.

First, I have been following our classmate’s Daniela  blog – “Discover Facebook Fan Page” on the methods of professionally using Social Media as B2C marketing. The best tips are :

What not to do on Facebook

 (click here for FULL presentation)

• Important lesson learnt : it is easy to set up the social media site, but it is more difficult to create a “engagement”. It is necessary to keep customers interested in your sites so that you will have a true engagement !
• My thoughts: Maintaining facebook is like maintaining a relationship. You always have to be up to date, sometimes playful, sometimes serious, pay details to detains; it is a two way communication,  input and efforts from both parties to make it happen. Do you agree with me ? Let me know what you think of. 

From STUDY: The Richest Companies Get The Least Media Attention

• Apple is the brand with the most publicity and media attention aevery time it releases a new iPad or iPhone. Apple was the lone company to buck the trend, ranking second in the cash department, with 14 percent of 2011’s total revenue, and first in media attention, with 32 percent.
  HOWEVER,  the 10 wealthiest public companies, HighBeam Research discovered that many of the businesses that generate the most revenue receive the least amount of media attention E.g. General Electric, JP Morgan in terms of publicity.

• On the opposite end, Google ranked second in terms of media exposure, at 24 percent, even though it was near the bottom of the revenue list with just 5 percent of the Top 10’s revenue.  In addition, Microsoft garnered 16 percent of the media spotlight while accounting for just 9 percent of the revenue.

In conclusion; I’ve presented the methods for you to market well in terms of utilizing Social Media Marketing; however, social media does NOT necessary means social media marketing must be the “it” for you or the “must take” path. For a company to have successful marketing, you must understand the YOUR business

1. STRATEGY : Mission, Long term, Environment (flexibility to changes)
2. 3Es : Engage (clicks), Enable (convert), Evaluate (report).

Remember the functionality of Online Marketing – Brand Awareness or Value Exchange.

So, Remember SMART and SEO.

[Smart – Specific, Measurable, Accesible, Reliable, Time Based.  SEO – choose the right keyword, optimised keyword, condense keyword]

Above concludes the key tips for my E-MARKETING blog.

Jing Hui, Cheah 🙂

March 27th, 2012.

I was on Google and their Google Doodle captivated my eyes, so I had a click on it.

It lead me to Google search page: (http://www.google.ca/#q=Mies+van+der+Rohe+architecture&ct=Mies_Van_der_Rohe-2012-hp&oi=ddle&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=f9e1f396f262242a&biw=890&bih=695)

So it is to celebrate the German – American architecture Ludwig Mies van der Rohe whom started with sharp, angular, glasses design of many city, downtown buildings. It was his 126th birthday. 

I clicked on Images to look for more of the design:

3D car show? Connection with Ludwig-mies-van-der-rohe?

and then, I randomly selected an image and I was brought to this website: http://3d-car-shows.com/2012/ludwig-mies-van-der-rohe/.

How did I ended up on this car show page? When my intention was to look at the architecture’s images

Well, what I realised from what I’ve learned in class was Page Index and Keyword Search Engine Optimization. This 3D car page is an great example in demonstrating how they were able to make themselves IDENTIFIED-ABLE, SEARCH-ABLE, VIEW-ABLE for Google search engine spider (Crawler).

1. Include keyword “ludwig-mies-vanpder-rohe” and “2012” in the Title Tag

2. Repeat “ludwig-mies-vanpder-rohe”

3. Positioning website itself by including “Google Doodle” and “ludwig-mies-vanpder-rohe”

4. Create Meta Tag with keyword searchable for crawler

5. Links, links, links !! 

So, after all, the SEO table Ivan requested us to work on is very applicable. The true value behind more a popular, visibility, searchable, and accessible of the website lies within the Search Engine Optimization. With the right KEYWORD, TIME (Google’s platform), LOCATION and PUBLICITY (External links), SEO will definitely help with increasing website’s popularity.

This is like the moment of epiphany ! * !! I hope you all will try out, do a random search and see what page you end up in. But most importantly, learn from the other website about how a website can be more searchable with the specific SEO!!

Its Angry Bird. Space !

Angry Bird is a strategy puzzle game first developed by Apple iOS. The most famous and 2011’s Most Trendy Bird. In 2012, it is coming back with Angry Bird Space!  It is the largest mobile app success the world has seen so far.

In relation to Angry Bird, I have never played the game before, but I know it through Facebook. I presume the success comes from the social media, people sharing among Facebook especially.

Now, take a leap to discuss the Social Media influence. I was just reading some tech news and discovered this :

• Twitter Index
• Google+ Trends
• Facebook learning
• Pinterest

As mentioned : you can do trend analysis easily on these social media. Off one trend springs business opportunities, and making this trend into reality.

Angry Bird Theme Park in China (http://www.cnngo.com/shanghai/play/chinese-gamers-playing-real-life-%E2%80%98angry-birds%E2%80%99-733133)

Angry Bird Theme Park in Europe (http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2012/03/22/angry-birds-activity-park-to-open-in-europe/)

In conclusion, for a door opening business, social media is your best analytical tools for you to discover the most current trend  with facebook studies, twitter trends, google+ trends, pinterest).

The first thing that crosses my mind when I saw this picture was : wow, e-marketing campaign in one picture.Lets have a guess they are advertising for?

It is actually a mobile food cart truck in Manila, Phillippines by way of the Guactruck, a modern mobile eatery full of sustainable initiatives. The truck itself is a used delivery truck that has been outfitted locally with LED and energy-saving lighting.

The design for the packaging is a creative solution to the wastefulness that most containers are today with it’s single cardboard, origami-inspired design. It’s made of biodegradable paperboard that is easy to recycle. Customers are encouraged to bring their used packaging back and will receive a free meal once they’ve returned 10. The packaging will then be sent for recycling. All of the cutlery used is made from cornstarch and biodegrades within 90 days.

A great innovative idea. As I know there’s alot of upcoming food cart around in Vancouver downtown such as Re’UP well known for their pull-pork burger, and Summer Richmond Night market carts, mobile food cart is sitting on a raising trend.

Social media is key as to increase exposure and for branding. Thus, these small mobile business are heavy reliance on instantaneous social media as they must make themselves easily communicable and minutes to minutes updated location, using Twitter(or RSS) and Facebook.

However, due to food business is high competition in nature. Presuming that their competitors restaurants also have website, reservation features, plus indoor seating areas, the small on-the-go food cart business are faced with tremendous challenges to attain customers. They are sustainable in short run, but perhaps with more aggressive marketing strategy, they will eventually turn our dining habit “on-the-go”.

BTW, give yourself a chance when u r nearby Vancouver Downtown Robson Square-Art Gallery with Re’Up Pulled pork https://twitter.com/#!/reupbbq  !!

Part of sub-projects is to sign up for Twitter. I was excited joining Twitter as I can get offers and promotions updates instantly, but it is not as effective as I thought so far. Reasons are: some posts are like spam, I lose track of what i m reading or what I want to read. All the tweets I follow are offering almost the similar news updates (except restaurants).

While I was reading the article on Business Insider McDonald global strategies on how McDonalds plan to take over the world. It begs the questions in my mind on how Twitter should take over the world. 

 “McDonald is a powerful brand and sheer size are two big, dependable advantages that if can always lean on. But just being McDonald’s isn’t enough — it’s doing a lot, domestically and globally, to stay ahead.” 

Here are ten strategies that are keeping McDonald’s barreling forward:

1. Focus heavily on emerging market (africa, middle east, china)
2. McCafe, the brand extension
3. Offering wider variety of food to attract more segments i.e. oatmeal breakfast instead of high calorie breakfast, salad instead of fries.
4. Delivery food to customers in places that demand it.
5. Making store more attractive – they are on the edge of trying out “Less is More” concept design, and offer free-wifi.
6. Increase on snack items menu (dessert, wraps, cheaper ala carte)
7. Shortening menu cycle – seasonal food menus i.e St.Patricks mint shakes, or McRibs, Caramel McFlurry
8. Importing successful niche products global. Fancy having McDeluxe Sandwich, or Chicken Nuggets with Curry sauce dips. This is potentially risky and ROI can be low, yet they are adapting with the smaller-one-global-world trend which could lead to success.
9. Making a dollar menu by adapting to consumer marketing habits in the low economic environment.
10. Direct competing with their competitor (Starbucks vs. McCoffee, Dairy Queen vs. McFlurry) .

The differences between Twitter and McDonalds lies in their product, as Twitter is an online service for a community and McD is offering tangible products. Twitter has gained strong foundation by having thousands of Followers all around the world.Twitter is currently in the position which McD would like to achieve, while McD is leading in branding which Twitter should aim to achieve. It needs to make itself attractive. It needs to CONVERT netizens into “buying” Twitter. How?

I recommend Twitter to adopting strategies in reversal of McD’s successful branding strategies. Twitter should be “all over the corner”, “recongnised by everyone” like McDonalds. Thus, Twitter should really deploy on marketing on Branding with more beneficiary features to attract and convert netizens.

Further readings on How Twitter Can Make Money can be read @Mary’s blog:  https://blogs.ubc.ca/myzhangg/2012/02/28/how-to-earn-money-on-twitter/