Michelle's Class Blog :)

My personal social media use has changed dramatically this semester.  Prior to this class, I would not have even attempted to establish an account on Twitter or Instagram.  I stayed in my "safe zone" of Facebook.  I have gained a better perspective of evolving technology and the need to keep abreast of what media channels are popular, but functional for business use.  It did not cross my mind before that "Facebook is for moms".  Too funny!  Claudia mentions, "Younger users are searching for the newest platform, hence the spike in use of Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, SnapChat & more. Images with quick, short bursts of info attached."  We will be mindful of this.     As discussed in Week 16, Facebook will be our primary platform, and expanding out with other social media as it fits within the parameters of our marketing strategy. Social media use has propelled our business forward.  Our brand awareness has benefited from our ac...

I commented on the following classmates' blogs: Austin Poynter Latasha Cross Michele Cortes Cristina Ayala Matthew Dangyou

Social media is an outreach tool for customers or potential clients.   Fily Willy Auto Care has been able to establish Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts through this class. The social media that I personally enjoy using the most is Instagram.  It is a quick way to gain impressions with photography and as the old adage goes, "a picture is worth a thousand words." I have never used Instagram prior to this class, so being able to establish an account and put it into practice has been a fun exercise.  It will be enjoyable to continue on with Instagram with captivating posts and to be captivated in return by others. Future Strategic Planning : Fily Willy Auto Care remains in the planning stages for our marketing.   We are creating discrete (and hopefully) attainable goals that will be verified by metrics (Facebook Insights, Google Analytics, etc.) . The social media platform that will be focused on for Fily Willy Auto Care is Facebook.  This pl...

Facebook Insights for Fily Willy Auto Care While reviewing the Insights for our business page, I observed an overall downward trend of all our statistics.  This is not surprising, however, as our  posts have been less frequent and our content less personalized and more generic greetings to those that follow us. 1. We had an increase in followers in the past 7 days, likely due to the CSIT 155 assignment for peers to like our page.  We are encouraged to see that our demographics are close to 50% male and 50% female.  An interesting facet is that most of the followers are from Mexico rather than Oceanside and the north coastal San Diego area.  This is curious and will be noted to focus on the local community with our content and future advertisements. 2.  Posts: The number of our viewers  online beginning at 6AM PDT, steady throughout the day and tapering off at 9PM PDT.  The days of the week graph indicate that the viewership hover...

Google Analytics is a powerful and useful tool to track information about a website.  It is a means to gain insight about all current and potential customers, understand your web traffic and the great thing is that it is a free tool! The features that Fily Willy Auto Care will use in the future are:  1. Social Media Performance :  Google Analytics collects data for reports to see social media referrals and how the visitors interact with the website.  One can determine which social media is referring by setting up advanced segments based on keyword source, e.g. Twitter, Facebook .  This metric would be checked regularly to so that we can evaluate where resources should be focused for improvement, enhancements and terminate (or deactivate account for) under-performing social media accounts. 2. Custom Campaigns : This Google Analytics feature is useful to measure the efficacy of campaigns.  For example, we intend to run a summer A/C special for vehicl...

Below are four sample advertisements Fily Willy Auto Care would use through its business social media accounts. The specific markets that our ads will be targeting is all genders in English and Spanish languages in the Oceanside, Carlsbad and Vista areas within a 25 mile radius of each.  There isn't a specific market niche per se as each vehicle needs a repair and Fily Willy Auto Care offers automative car for import and domestic vehicles.   Our business is bilingual, so we will post both in Spanish and English. The call to action button will be to call the shop to schedule an appointment or to answer inquires about services.  Presently, there isn't any FOMO (fear of missing out) promotions as of yet.  That will be future dated as the summer approaches, e.g., A/C specials.  Also, using numbers that the target audience will respond to, e.g., "$29.95 oil change special" could attract potential clients as an expectation is set with cost.  Facebook/Ins...

Online advertising is an effective way to increase brand awareness, reach new customers and promote sales.  "Likeable Social Media" explains social network advertising, specifically Facebook Ads very well.  The three types of Ads Facebook offers are: 1) Driving traffic and leads - drive website traffic to specific landing pages 2) Post likes and engagements - Post boosts to increase page content views since it is "become more difficult to get your business pages's content viewed organically." 3) App installation ads - "App installation ads allow for users to download applications directly from Facebook on mobile phones."                                                                                                    ...

Similar Businesses to Fily Willy Auto Care using Online Advertising It was difficult to find Facebook advertisements searching for businesses I thought would be utilizing this tool.  I was able to find ads in the Facebook Ad Library.  I entered the search term auto care and found some great examples. 1.  Craftsman Auto Care: Facebook Advertisement A local auto shop offering a women's car clinic. I find this advertisement very effective as it puts the brand out there, but offered education to the community.  It reached its target market in VA, however, there isn't enough publicly available data to determine if the advertising costs had a high ROI.   It was a week long advertisement with <1K impressions and  ≤  $100 spent.  They had a call to action button Buy Tickets and the graphics were attention getting. 2.  Kelly's Automotive Service: Facebook Advertisement Another local auto shop that is sponsoring awarenes...

Project Research: Other Online Tools for Fily Willy Auto Care 1) Yelp:   Yelp is a helpful tool for online users to research and find local services in their area.  As mentioned in the lecture, it is a way to gain insight on how customers view services and connect with them as well.   Fily Willy Auto Care is in the process of establishing and claiming its account on the site. My question is, Does it look bad to have only a few reviews?   The approach is that reviews should be organic and unsolicited. " Positive reviews should happen organically because customers love your store! Yelp does not recommend that you ask customers to write reviews or bribe customers with discounts – huge no-no. However, you can still attract customers to your Yelp page by putting a link to your page on your website, on your email signature, social media, and by encouraging people to check-in to your store. The key is to spread awareness and engagement." ( Kim, 2015 ) Th...

It is important for Fily Willy Auto Care to expand its online presence.  Social media is, as we all have learned, a great way to advertise our brand, get noticed, connect with customers and to network with other businesses. The lecture provides a great buffet of additional online tools that can be used for our business and allows us to be selective for our specific industry niche.  Specifically, we intend to incorporate the following into our marketing business framework: Rating Site: Yelp! :  Yelp! is a huge repository for all things business.  It is my first choice when wanting to see the most reviews on a business as reviews can be scattered in various medium.  Yelp! is a quick way for a visitor to get a glimpse of our business profile and create visibility for our brand.  Our current thought is to drive our clients to our future Yelp! account to review and comment on our customer service and workmanship.  This tool will help grow the clientele...

For week 11's assignment, I commented on the following classmate blog posts: 1.   Matthew D. 2.   Kendra M. 3.  Austin P.

As mentioned in the lecture, "email marketing is one of the most important tools to work in your marketing mix." Fily Willy Auto Care is currently constructing its marketing business plan, which will include newsletters at a later date.   A rough plan includes having a newsletter released quarterly in conjunction with a blog post that is embedded with the yet to be built business website.  The newsletter will be a list of headlines with preview text that will be directed tobunique landing webpages on our website.  The newsletters will be formatted so that not too information would be presented in one message and overwhelm or more likely, discourage the recipients from reading more or deleting the email newsletter message all together.  I have an issue of too much email and I wouldn't want to be inundated with weekly newsletter from my auto care provider.  Quarterly newsletters would target the average time an oil change, for example, would be needed for ...

Blogs can be a busy place.  Blog architecture and organization are important for navigation as c ategories can help visitors find specific information. The categories I would use for my class blog are: Fily Willy Auto Care : In retrospect, I should have added this label to all my posts.  As a representative of the business, I would want to add this label as it is referenced in almost all my posts. Social Media Platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) : When naming the various social media platforms, I would also add this label with the relevant social medium so that visitors can follow or like all our online presence. Blog Comments: Since this is a class blog and many assignment posts require comments on fellow classmates', this would be a helpful category. In the future, Fily Willy Auto Care's blog will have the following categories so that visitors/customers can easily filter information they are looking for: Preventative Maintenance Tips - promoti...

Blogging is an important tool to reach customers.  It can offer expert advice, a place to connect (forum), a place to park business related information and a way for the people to find you on the vast Internet through SEO (Ref: Blog4Business18.pdf). Adding human interest and a personal touch to a blog is important to give the attention to the customers or future clientele.  Keeping a blog up to date with fresh posts, responding to comments and inquiries enhances the business reputation with responsive customer service.  When I don't receive a response when making an inquiry, I develop a negative perception of the business.  The human touch and connecting with customers should be a priority.  " Your brand is heavily judged in the digital age by its online interactions, so the more you connect, the better. " A Fily Willy Auto Care example to using a personal touch would be adding customer testimonials and reviews to the blog.  The benefit of sharing our b...

Searches in Twitter Search: "Oceanside Auto Care" I used these terms to search for competitors. Interestingly enough, the twitter feeds that were populated did not show much related to auto services in the beginning, however, scrolling further down the list I did find tweets from similar businesses to Fily Willy that were from 2015 and 2017.   This assignment has been beneficial for our marketing.  I realized that we can take advantage of this key word search so that our business can be found. So, I just added a tweet with the above mentioned search terms and as of today, we are listed first!  It will also need to be investigated the use of Spanish in the key word search as Fily Willy Auto Care is a bilingual business. Search: "Oceanside Towing"  Searching "Oceanside Towing", the listings were for marine towing, not land towing.  I had to adjust the key terms to be more broad, so the terms were changed to "north county towing".  Ag...