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Posts Tagged ‘Promotion’

I decided that there are two promotion activities that I wanted to do in order to increase traffic to my blog. The two things I decided to do are: developing QR codes to direct mobile traffic to my blog and submitting blog links on StumbleUpon and Digg.

QR Codes:
a) For this activity all I would need to do is go to a site that generates QR codes, such as Kaywa.   The site allows you to make QR codes for URLs, so I would just make one that contained the URL for my blog. After getting the QR code, I would paste the QR code into a document and make a flyer to post around campus. People with barcode scanners on their smartphones would be able to scan the QR code and upon scanning, would be directed to my site.

b) The reason for doing this would be to generate traffic from mobile devices. Additionally, it is a marketing technique that many companies use nowadays as well.

c) I hope it will generate interest in my site and will increase traffic to it from people that scan it.

d) I will measure how successful it is by examining how much mobile traffic I get on my Google Analytics page.

StumbleUpon:
a) For this activity, I would submit an article from my blog to StumbleUpon. After submitting, people using the site could find a link to my blog article.

b) My rationale for doing this is to diversify where traffic to my site is coming from.

c) I hope that people from different areas of the country and world will come to my site if they find it on StumbleUpon. As it stands, most of the traffic to my site comes from the Philadelphia area. Hopefully with this technique, more people in different areas can find my site.

d) I will measure how successful this is by examining my Google Analytics. Google Analytics tell you where your site is being referred from. With that said, Analytics will show my how many people are coming from StumbleUpon.

The first brand that I examined was Google. I visited Google’s website and found the ‘Press Center‘ section. On the left-hand side of the ‘Press Center’ page, they contain links to directories for the Facebook and Twitter accounts for Google and its products. They clearly have a presence on both sites, with accounts made for Google in general as well as accounts for their specific products, such as Google Chrome. From my research, the purpose for this is to have accounts where the specific product teams can interact with users.

The second company that I chose to examine was Yards Brewing Company. I chose to examine Yards because it is a much smaller company located in Philadelphia. I visited their website and noticed that they had icons at the bottom-right side of their website that linked to their Facebook and Twitter pages. The social media pages didn’t have as much ‘likes’ or followers, but they were still updated pretty frequently. For a local brewery, they had good social media presence.

My impressions:

Both of the companies are doing a great job of promoting themselves through social media. They are completely different companies in terms of size and reach, but they are doing well at promoting themselves to their audiences. They both update pretty frequently and they are clearly doing much to engage the fans of their products. In regards to what they are trying to achieve with social media promotion, I believe they are just trying to inform fans of new developments and products, while also informing fans of upcoming events related to the company. In short, they are looking to engage their fans with their brands on a consistent basis.

If I was in charge of a company’s social media initiative, I would measure success by how involved our fans are with the social media page. I wouldn’t measure success by the number of page ‘likes’ or followers, but rather by the number of people that ‘like’, comment, or re-tweet specific news posts. To me, that means that the company is doing a good job because it keeps the fans engaged beyond the initial ‘like’ or follow. Additionally, it proves that the audience has chosen to follow the specific pages because they want to kept up to date with the developments of the company.