CDPR108 - Week 3 Foursquare and QR Codes

I have actually been using QR Codes for advertisements for a few months now. We support several skating competitions and in turn we are given advertising space in the competition programs. During these competitions we also have a small boutique set up most of the time. Therefore, we decided that the best thing for the advertisements would be to promote our website and our online store - therefore the QR Codes are perfect. With the QR Code, we are able to link people directly to our website.

QR Codes are very easy to set up and sometimes we change the codes to send people to our Facebook page, or our Twitter site, or to provide coupons and discounts.

Foursquare on the other hand is something that I never really focused on, and in fact I needed to read these articles to remember what Foursquare is! That being said, the biggest learning experience from this week was the use of Foursquare for coupons and deals. I had no idea that you could do that with Foursquare!

I do have friends that have obviously linked their Foursquare to their Facebook accounts and I have seen them "check-in" to places however, I did not know that by doing that they could receive coupons or discounts to these places. I always thought it was just another annoying app on Facebook that told people where you were and what you were doing!

I think Foursquare could be a valuable addition to your public relations campaign, however I'm still not convinced of its popularity. I don't think it has caught on enough - and with things like Facebook offers, I think those avenues are better and can reach more people than Foursquare.

Promoted Tweets - CDPR108 - week 2

Is there any value to Promoted Tweets?

I have seen promoted tweets on my twitter feed before, however I don't think I have ever clicked on any of the links in these tweets. I know this assignment requires us to do some research on the value of these, including the cost and the reach of promoted tweets and promoted trends, however prior to doing this research I want to say that I don't think they are valuable! I am interested to see if my thoughts on this change with some more research.

Researching.... researching..... researching... researching....

I can safely say that I didn't realize the amount of targeting that you could accomplish through promoted tweets and trend. Promoted tweets can reach users in a search - when they are searching things on twitter, these promoted tweets are targeted to search terms and will appear at the top of the results page. Promoted tweets can reach users/followers by posting near or at the top of their timelines when they login or refresh their homepage. This can target your followers or users who are like your followers. Even more than this, your promoted tweets can be specific to a platform - mobile/desktop.

Promoted trends can be used to "kick-start" conversations on Twitter. business.twitter.com explains: "Successful Promoted Trends give users something new and exciting to discover, participate in, and share." A promoted trend would appear at the top of the Trending list on the side panel of your Twitter homepage. 

As I continued my research, I discovered that a promoted tweet costs $120,000 PER DAY!!! This is up from $30,000/day last year. While the initial figure is staggering, it is important to keep in mind how Twitter works and the number of people that are on Twitter. In one article I read, someone was quoted as saying they paid $4.00 for a customer, who they will now be able to keep marketing to. When you think about it that way, it doesn't seem like so much money. That brings up the concepts of the cost-per-engagement and cost-per-follow. Instead of paying a flat fee for the service, you "pay your bid price when a use clicks on, retweets, replies to or favourites your Promoted Tweet" (http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-a-Promoted-Tweet). Promoted Accounts are offered on a Cost-per-Follow basis, much in the same fashion - you bid a certain amount of money (ex. $4) to have your account promoted at the top of an interest-target Twitter user's "Who to Follow" section (http://www.quora.com/How-much-is-a-Promoted-Tweet). This goes back to the quote I read about paying $4.00 for a customer. You now have a follower on your Twitter account, to whom you can carry on a conversation, explain your business, and market to - and more than once!

When it is laid out this way, as a business owner, I would consider this to be a valuable PR solution. However, your business must have this kind of a budget for your public relations. I currently work for The Figure Skating Boutique, and we are a mid-sized business. We do not have this kind of money to spend on promoted trents or promoted tweets, and to be honest, I'm not sure that this would be valuable for us. The figure skating world is small enough that we are able to reach many of our customers via word of mouth. In turn, we have been able to generate a Twitter following of 200 in just a few months. Most of this is because of the well-known skaters that we know and that we follow on Twitter. Some of these skaters follow us, and  then their followers see that, and they then follow us as well. 

I think for large companies the idea of the promoted tweet or promoted trend is valuable. For a company like Rogers to only pay $4.00 for a customer is incredible! But for small business, or even mid-sized businesses, this idea is just not valuable. The PR budget can be better spent! 

CDPR108 - 1st Post

I have had this blog for a while now but I have never really used it to it's full potential. With Facebook and then Twitter, I never really got into the whole blogging thing. I have started to blog a bit for work - I am the Marketing and Promotions Manager for The Figure Skating Boutique, so perhaps those blogs and the use of this personal blog for school, I will get back into things.

For this first post, I don't have too much input for the course as of yet. I registered a bit late, and actually had some problems submitting the registration online (only to find out it was a problem with RAMSS), so I don't have my books yet and I have yet to do any readings for this course.

I have taken some time to figure out how to get my blogroll going, which you can see that I have on the side, and I have started to read some of the recent blog posts from these users. There is some very useful and insightful information! It makes me think that perhaps there is a lot more that I can learn from blogs, and perhaps these can be used almost like reading a very specific newspaper or magazine.

I am excited to take the time throughout this course to read more about the use of Social Media for Public Relations. I have great knowledge of social media, but I know that there is more that I can be doing with it in terms of promotions, public relations and even marketing.

I have recently switched jobs from a non-profit organization to a medium-sized business. I know that in most of the courses that I have taken so far for the PR Certificate have been geared toward non-profit organizations, so I am interested to see what I can take from this course to apply to my new position.

THAT didn't happen

Well... I clearly didn't get back into a blogging mode.

Months have passed! Now I will be hitting the blog again... but for school! Perhaps this will force me back into the writing and blogging mode again?