My Statistics.

My Blog’s statistics

Thanks to the Statistics tab available on the blogger page, I figured out that my blog had been visited 220 times since I created it. The majority of people come from the United States and the rest is from Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, Algeria and Netherlands, which is very surprising because I though only my classmates would visit my blog. Apparently not J

 Most of the page views (74 %) are seen by the operating system Windows and the second most used one is Macintosh for 21%. As regard pageviews by browsers, the most used is Internet Explorer for 42%, closely followed by Firefox with 31%, then by Safari and Chrome with respectively 12 for each.

My Facebook and Twitter’s statistics

I’ve created my Facebook account four years ago and I have now 533 Facebook friends.  On my Twitter account I have 65 followers and I am following 69 persons.

How measure Social Media's ROI ?

Last week, we broached the Social Media's Return On Investement (ROI).
Every company which invest in Social networks want Return On Investment. But the question is : How firms can measure it ?
I'm going to bring some findings in this new post.

ROI = (gain from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

To measure ROI, businesses can begin easily by checking some points which could be relevant :
- Click Through Rate (CTR)
- Increase of followers
- Eyeballs (how many people are exposed to the website)
- Number of Likes, retweets, mentions

However, there are some tools more efficient.

• Step 1: Determine your Social Media Spend (SMS). This includes hard and soft costs like salary and equipement, including your time.
• Step 2: Determine your Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). It's important to get clear about the true value of customers in order to increase customer retention!
• Step 3: Determine New Customer Value (NCV) by using tracking software like Google analytics.
• Step 4: Add up your impressions from Twitter and Facebook, cumulative YouTube views, website traffic and any other online source to have a view.

Gathered, all these tactics and tools help every firm to measure its own Social Media's Return On Investment.

My Vlog.

This is my first Vlog !


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EyAQxdSEgA

Twitter chat!

On the Halloween day , we didn't have to attend our Social Media class because we decided to organize a Twitter chat instead. I was part of the morning group, with nine or ten others students.

 

The point of this chat was experimenting the social network Twitter having a conversation. For that, we had to answer the questions asked by the profesor and communicate between each others by responding and tweeting. The hashtag we use at the end of every tweet was #smclass2012

 

I liked this chat on Wednesday because it was very interactive and everyone responded quickly to each other. This was an interesting exchange of information. I discover social networks that I didn't know, live QQ, a famous Asian one. We also talked about Linkedin and Viadeo, which are great to get profesional contacts and to find a job or an internship.

However, it was hard and it took time to read all posted tweets because we were around ten or eleven people tweeting at the same time during the chat. I also had to remember to add the class' hashtag every time I tweeted.
But it was a funny and interesting experience!
I often to log in on Twitter, so it was not my first time and I really love this way of microblogging :)

What about Skype ?

I also love Skype and honestly I can't live without it when I am abroad. It's the best way to keep in touch with my family and my friends. I spent time (one or two hours) on Skype every day.

The Science of Social Timing: Social Networks

This new post is about a interesting case study I've realized in class. That's why I will sum up you what I learned by doing it.

 

This case study was relied to an article that you can find on http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-social-timing-1/

This research indicates that "It's important to know when the highest percentage of your audience is eavesdropping on your social network-So that when you share content you will get maximum exposure".

WHAT ABOUT TWITTER ?

The best time?
According to this researh, the best time of day to Tweet is 5pm because at this time, we have more chance to be retweeted. Indeed, 6% of all retweets occur around 5pm.

The "ideal" frequency?
Moreover, the ideal frequency of Tweets per day is between 1 and 4 tweets per hour, which represents between 12 and 48 tweets per day (with a 12 active hours base per day). The ratio CTR which stans for Click Through Rate is very representative of your activity because it represents the number of retweets divided by the number of followers you have.

The best days?
The best days to tweet are Saturday & Sunday because people are free and have more time to surf on Internet and also Wednesday because it's the less busy day of a working week.

 

WHAT ABOUT FACEBOOK ?

The best times?
The best time to share on Facebook is Saturday (because people are free) but also others days of the week at noon and a little after 7pm (because people are either in break or have finish their working day).

The best sharing frequency?
As a general rule, the best sharing frequency is 0.5 posts per day, which represents 1 post every 2 days, to achieve the most like on Facebook.


This research also shows the percentage of population per time zone in the United States. The best take aways are :
- 50% of the US population live in the Eastern Time Zone
- The Eastern Time Zone and the Central one combined represent 80% of the US population


To conclude, West-Coast companies might take this results into consideration and should be active on Twitter and Facbook at the best time of the day for Eastern Time Zone, to reach 48% of the population and also for Central Time Zone to reach 80% of US people. However, they might choose to ignore this advice because they should first sell their products to the West-Coast consumers if they are implanted there.

Twitter

The point of Twitter is following people, organizations, magazines and all kind of actors who can give usefull information by tweeting.

I choose to follow several companies which could help me to build my brand. I will talk about two of them.

The first is Los Angeles Times.

Following this famous newspapers on Twitter permit me to be informed of each actuality and thing going on within the whole California. This State use to be in a fever of excitement and well known as the heart of technologies, innovations, where a brand  is created like every single day. Consequently, I think LA Times' tweets could help me learn a lot and be aware of any recent news. This type of information could guid me to create my brand and to avoid mistakes.

The second company is Vogue Magazine.
I'm interested in fashion and it's one of the fields in which I would like to create a brand. I choose to follow the official Twitter acount of Vogue in order to keep up with Fashion news and trends. Tweets of Vogue could let me know about new products and new brands, which means existing competitors, but also about about designers interviews very usefull to read.

However, I'm following other important companies as well: CNN Breaking News, ABC News, The Economist, Apple News...








 

Virtual communities

Hi everyone !

 

The first virtual community I choose to join is Woman&Home.com.  This is a group where women can share information, advices and talk about their experiences about Hair and Beauty, Fashion, Recipes, Health and diet, Travels....

I made a post in the forum of Travels and things to do, in a section talking about "Alternative ways of traveling". Someone talked about the exchange of homes as a new way of traveling. I join the conversation asking her to explain me this new concept that I don't kow well. She answered me and said that this is what happened in the famous movie "The Holidays", in which Cameron Diaz wants to travel and exchange her home in USA against the one of an english woman.

I asked for the advantages of this new way of traveling and the woman answered me the main advantage is the low cost. I thought it was an amazing alternative way to discovering new countries.

 

The second virtual community I joined is Ultrastyle.com which is a fashion forum.

I made a post on the Advertising campaign's section and joined a conversation based on the famous clothes brand Top Shop which hired Kate Moss as model for one of its advertising campaign.

We discussed about the image the brand wanted to show hiring this well known model and we shared our customers' experiences as regard Top Shop' s clothes.

 

I really enjoyed my experience, because I learned and discovered things like the concept of exchanging homes to travel.

 

I recommend to all of you to try this experience by joining a virtual community one day ! :)

 

 

Nowadays, one of the success' keys is to market yourself !

Why is it important to market yourself ?

We can say that marketing yourself is the art of selling yourself as a product.

I think it's important because this is the first step to acquire credibility ! No matter which field you work in, this type of marketing is primordial to convince employers if you are looking for a job, consumers if you are selling something or investors if you need money for your project, that they can trust in you. The goal is to gain credibility nearby the person who makes the decision.

Market yourself is also important because the perception that people will have about you is decisive. That's why you need to be convincing in order they give you what you want. 

Consequently, if you succeed in marketing yourself, success will come for sure.

How can you build your brand online ?

Building a brand online can seem easy, but it's not. 

First of all, I need to think about a sound e-branding strategy in order to build a strong brand and company image. To begin, I'll create a website for my company because i'm considering it to be essential.

Moreover, I'll take advantage of the Internet advent which lead to Social networks' development and use them to promote my new brand.

Indeed, social networks represents an additional space for communication. Let's see my ideas.

• Facebook Fan Page (photos, videos, messages...)
• Twitter Page (several posts refering to my company's website)
• Answer to every question or comment posted

These pages are a new and good way to spread my company's name nearby potential consumers and to carry every type of information about my brand. It's also a huge opportunity to create links between the brand and its futur consumers and for my website to be more visited.

• Google alerts to be informed of every thing about my company and brand.

The goal of these actions is to develop my brand's reputation and to create a valuable relation between the brand and its public.

Discussion Question

This second post is based on two questions about Social Media and Social Networks.

You will find my answers below.

 

What do you think is Social Media ? 

In my opinion, Social Media is the body of activities that integrate technologies, like social networks, which allow people to communicate, to interact together and to create exchanges of information online by exchanging words, pictures, videos, music...etc. 

Why are Social Networks important in the marketing mix ?

Marketing mix is composed of four aspects called four P, which are Product - Price - Promotion - Place. Social networks are particularly related to one of them :  Promotion.

Indeed, the current trend is to use the Internet to promote a new product, a new service or business. So marketers use social networks a lot to do that because the exchange of information is quicker and reaching consumers is easier due to the fact they spent much time on these social networks.

Consequently, these types of platforms are one of the best way to disclose a product, that's why it is so important.

WELCOME !

Welcome to the amazing blog Social Media Marketing in California !

I'm a French student at UCR and Social Media Marketing is one of my courses` selection for the Fall 2012.

I`m taking this course because nowadays Social Media is a huge part of everyone`s life and I`m interested in going deep through all the aspects of this online univers related to Marketing.

Thanks to this class, I hope to fell comfortable with all kind of social media by exploring advantages and limitations of each one. As a business student who is immersed in Marketing, I need to improve my skills in Social Media in order to use it as best as posible.

All the things that I learn in this class will help me in the future to know how to choose the best social media to communicate about a product or a brand for example. Moreover, it will help me to be more efficient as well.  

I plan to enjoy this class !

Have a nice reading :)