Week 13 - Analytics

In the advertising and campaign performance category I think I might use advertising reports when I do any ad campaigns and I would plan to use the SEO feature in order to get a better sense of where people are getting to my site from.  I would like to use the mobile ads measurement once I had the mobile integration up and running just to see if anything looked different among mobile users and I could catch any issues with the mobile functionality and correct or capitalize on them.

I would probably not track by campaign at first because I do not foresee running multiple campaigns at once, and I would not initially do cost data import because my campaign expenditure would be small enough to where I probably don’t need to have my spending tracked for me in the system at first.

Annotations seems really nice.  It is annoying to have to just remember why you’ve seen spikes at different times, whether it was because a campaign you did or a news story that you were featured in or an event you held.  Annotating allows you to note the perceived reasons for trends so you don’t forget when reviewing data long after the causes of spikes are done.

I might use custom reports if the company grows and we need to share data in that format.  While it’s just me and my husband I don’t need to be able to create a special report for anyone yet.  Dashboards on the other hand will let me look at my most important things every time I go into analytics quickly and easily.  I’d definitely use a dashboard.

I probably won’t have enough initial traffic to justify real-time data, even when I do campaigns, so I’d probably skip that unless I got really obsessed with what’s going on or really needed to figure out some problem or something.

Audience data reporting could be useful to help me correct any misperceptions I have about who my audience is, or help me attract certain segments that I should be attracting that I’m missing.

Map overlay sounds awesome.  I would definitely want to see that to see where some of my potential markets are.

I would want to filter out my own company and my family as much as possible from the analytics data, so I would want to use the filter app to only look at certain types of traffic.

We don’t need user permissions until the company grows and we have people who we don’t want to mess things up.  J

We don’t have any apps yet, so we’ll wait on application analytics until we do.

Alerts and intelligence events sounds cool.  It would be nice to have running in case anything causes a spike when we are not watching for it.  Then we could do some research to figure out why and possibly prepare for any consequences of the spike.

Site search sounds cool.  We could use that to see what our site visitors wish we had or are happy to discover that we have or what they had trouble noticing on our site.

Site speed analysis seems really useful not only for customer satisfaction but also for SEO.  I’d want to use that.

Week 12 - Coupon

We could do a special on preliminary audits.  My feeling is that initial consultations should be basically free –talking with an engineer or other representative to learn about the possibilities is basically a sales pitch.  But an initial audit where someone comes to your brewery and analyzes a part of your system and highlights some of the strategies you could put into place might be something we could give a discount on.  I wouldn’t do a groupon or a living social since ours is a business-to-business model. It would have to be in a trade magazine or through a google group or on facebook or something.  But it is definitely something to think about.  This is especially true if we can create a process by which we offer value in the initial audit alone but make it clear what the impact would be if the client were to decide to invest in a more significant assessment and potential adjustments.

Week 12 - Additional Tools

Google Maps – It could be cool to make our own map of different breweries around the country or the world that are implementing cool sustainable strategies.  We could use different color pins for different things like blue for water strategies, green for energy, brown for ingredients or something.  We could also show the breweries we have worked on.  We could embed the map on our web site.

LinkedIn – This can be especially useful for the endorsements feature.  When we work with people we can connect with them on LinkedIn and they will have an opportunity to give us relevant endorsements.  Similarly, we can reach out to specific professionals using LinkedIn and they can see the skills we have already been endorsed for an even any recommendations we’ve received.

Meetup – this could be cool to do sustainable brewery tours with people who are interested, kind of build momentum for the idea.

Google + - I haven’t really used Google + much, but I like the idea of joining communities instead of just individual following.  It seems a lot like Facebook in many ways except for that one and for the on-screen hangouts.  It seems like if there was ever a need to interact with a business that was not geographically close, this hangout feature might be something to try.  I’ve used skype for business before, and this seems similar but with more features.

All of these should be related to everything else I do.  Everything should connect to everything else, Meetups should be highlighted on our web site, in our newsletter, blog, facebook and twitter.  Updates to our map should be highlighted in the same way.  The same posts we put on Facebook and Twitter will often be appropriate to also post on LinkedIn.  Google +, since it seems like Facebook, we would use in a similar way and always cross-post everything to the max so that whoever is on one platform is not missed because we only posted to a different platform.  The main considerations would be whether or not content was appropriate to that platform and then the format in which we package the content in order to make it work for that platform. 

Week 11 Monday post

Everything you do on social media, as a business, will be marketing in some way or another.  When you share an event or post tips, you market yourself as a helpful, in-the-know resource.  When you post photos, you are creating a brand identity that you hope will draw people to your product or service.  Etc.  It seems like the best way to draw people to your other platforms from social media is to provide a hint at content that they want to see more of.  If you post a headline for a blog with an awesome image and people want to read the blog, you don’t have to say, “check out my web site to learn more.”  People know that they just click on the blog and they’ll be taken to a space that you own – your blog home or your web site – where that content lives. 

Another approach is to give them an opportunity to get something they want.  These are the campaigns like “first 100 people to like our page get a free back massage.”  If someone wants your giveaway and doesn’t hate your company, there’s a good chance they’ll like your page or retweet your post or whatever you want them to do.

I don't want to actually post these on Facebook because I don't know the top 5 ways to save water in brewing or how to save $ on your brewery's electrical bill, and I don't want to buy people beers, but here are a few headlines I could post on Facebook and/or twitter to generate interest.   The first two, I would link back to my blog, which automatically gets people into my company's territory.  I could post those on facebook and twitter.  I'd use pictures like the ones inserted below as well.

Top 5 Ways to Save Water in Brewing

Save $ on Your Brewery’s Electrical Bill with this 1 Simple Trick

The first five people to like our Facebook page get a $10 gift card for a beer at Taproom!

Week 11 Commenting on Other Blogs

I posted on the blogs of Devon Pinto, Cindy Rojas, and Brittany Martin.

Week 11 Advertising

You can follow the design acronym that a good ad is well C.R.A.P.H.T.E.D.

C. Make sure the design has a clear driving concept, that it’s obvious what you’re trying to accomplish.  Also incorporate contrasting colors and fonts to emphasize the most important things in the ad. 

R. Make sure there is some consistency between your ad campaign and your product marketing on your social media sites and your web site, otherwise people may wonder if they were taken to the wrong place.

A. Align the content of the ad in a way that makes sense and is not too crowded.

P. Group content and images appropriately in the ad.

H. Make sure that the item that’s most important stands out the most.

T. Use a font that’s easy to read on a computer and make your headline stand out.

E. Make it easy for people to understand how to get more content or purchase your services from the ad.  Don’t stray so far from regular ad format that they are confused.

D. Don’t get too incredibly detailed.  Keep the depth of content appropriate to the format.

Foursquare/Facebook Places – This could be a cool tool if we can develop a physical space that sounds interesting.  Like the “green brewing eco-sustainability lab,” or something like that.  People who came to our office could check in that they are there, which would both spread the word about our company and give them a chance to show their followers that they are thinking about sustainability.

Banner Ads – We could do banner ads on the side of the page on Facebook.  We’d need to target them to a very small and specific group of people since our service is very limited in audience, but it is so specific that targeting might not be that difficult.  That’s especially true if we limited it by location and title.

The format of advertising within a blog post will work for us.  Our blog posts can easily tag a line on somewhere saying something like, “if you want to incorporate eco-friendly ideas into your brewery systems, shoot us an email or visit or sustainability lab.”

I also really like the option to let people promote our posts. That seems like it could work really well for our service and our audience.

Twitter advertising may be useful.  I’d want to try that out and see what kind of impact it has before investing too much in it.  Linked In I might skip at first, just because I don’t feel like those ads are as powerful.  Once I get facebook ads down, I’d look at Linked In ads as something to test out at that point.

I’d want to start out having an ad every month and see what that gets me. My feeling there is that I don’t want to be annoying to people by hounding them, but I also don’t think it would be too expensive so we could afford to do it fairly often.  I think it would also really depend on the capacity.  With blogs newsletters and all the other social media, we’d need to make sure all the work was balanced.  I think more organic posts can be more effective than the ads, so I’d want to focus more there and add in ads rather than prioritize ads.  I’d test out the $10 daily pay per click thing and see how often I actually spent that money to figure out my next move.

I think the ads below would be effective because they are targeted to a very specific audience.  They are vibrant, and they get our message across quickly.  I would want to see what one looks like put together, and then make edits though.  It’s a little hard to picture it without actually going all the way through to posting.

 

 

Week 10 comments

I posted on the blogs of Sonja Kodimer, Matthew Bergmann, and Andrew Beltran.

Week 10: Email Marketing

I would imagine sending a newsletter out about once a month.  It depends on how frequent we can keep up the blogs.  To stay more relevant with industry news I would prefer to send emails out twice a month, but I don’t know if that’s feasible given the initially small size of the company.

I like the idea of the welcome email.  I would plan on creating a standard welcome email that goes to new subscribers.  I haven’t actually received many of these, but I think it’s a nice touch.

A portion of every blog I post would have the potential to be included as content in my email newsletters.   A picture and a headline at least would be nice to include with a little bit of content to hook them into the full blog.  I like seeing this in a newsletter because it makes me feel like I can catch up on anything I’ve missed if I want to.  If someone has taken the initiative to sign up for our emails, I want to give them that same sense that I will honor that by catching them up on what they’ve missed as much as is reasonable.

It might also be good to have a section of relevant news in green brewery engineering, which I don’t really generate the content for but I pull in a few important headlines for each newsletter.   This gives our customers a central hub from which to find the most relevant news to their interest in green brewing.  This provides users with a specific filter for news from a lot of different sources sifted for nuggets that are useful in the context of green brewing engineering.  It also lets them off the hook for following lots of different news sources, which can be time-consuming and overwhelming.

I could imagine that our company might develop tools or materials for implementing greening practices that don’t require engineering.  Those kinds of resources would be good to highlight in the newsletter somehow.  That gives our subscribers some things they can use for free to meet their overall goals and then we can be the company that fills in the gaps when the work is not so easy without expertise.

A schedule of upcoming events could be good if there are enough that are relevant.  It might also work to just bring in advertisements for relevant events, like widgets for upcoming conferences and such.  That way subscribers know that they will be clued into the most important events in this field and won’t miss a major opportunity.

Blog Categories

On my blog I might use the following categories to start off with, and then I would probably refine this list as I developed more and more content:

-Green Breweries and Beers
-Planning to Green a Brewery
-Heating, air conditioning, and plumbing
-Brewing, bottling, and canning
-Distribution
-Ingredients
-Events
-Odds and Ends

Organizing in this way will help me remember to touch on a variety of issues that are likely to be of interest to our target audience.  Each issue relates to green brewing in a different way.  Some of the issues are specifically relevant to certain individuals within a brewing operation and will help us focus energies toward all the different players who are important in the grand scheme of green brewing.  Hopefully we can attract readers from different parts of a brewing company and gain advocates for green brewing practices across company leadership.  By gaining more informed advocates for green brewing, we increase the likelihood that a company will ultimately decide to invest in green brewing engineering.

I posted comments on Sonja Begonia’s blog, Craig Stevens’ blog, and Devon Pinto’s blog.

Week 9: How personal can I be on my business blog?

For Green Brew Engineering, I think I can be very personal in the blog.  This is due to the fact that it is a small company based largely on expertise.  We are selling a specialized service provided by a person who has particular knowledge about that service.  Hosting a blog under the name of the head of the company – the expert – seems very appropriate and will be a way to demonstrate that knowledge and expertise.  I also think it can be appropriate to have guest blogs from other people in the company on relevant issues in which they are experts, and to host guest blogs by experts in related topics.  For instance, while Chris might be the brewery systems engineering expert, we may have guest bloggers talk about environmentally friendly distribution practices, or sustainable hops farming, etc.  These guests would also typically have an individual attached rather than just a company.

It makes sense to add personality to a post when there is a person or there are multiple people in the company who you want users to be acquainted with or who users might be interested in.  These don’t even necessarily have to be real people – you could create blogging personas as well, like a cartoon for a kids blog or a puppy for a pets blog.  For me, things have gotten tricky in previous jobs when certain people within a company have an established blog voice and some content comes along which doesn’t fit well into their established voice or they don’t want to have to review everything going out or they only want their personality applied to a certain level of content.  In those cases instead of posting material from someone like “Jake the intern,” and “Sarah the communications director,” they’d put it out just under the name of the company.  It has the quality of a news release when it comes from a company rather than an engaging or particularly social quality.  Sometimes that’s ok.  Working for the government, there can also be sensitivities or even policies regarding who says what that can make things difficult. 

I have noticed though that on facebook in particular, often the blogs will be posted with just a photo and a headline, and you don’t know who wrote it until you check out the actual blog post.  That fact highlights that you don’t necessarily need to force your blogger’s personality into every social media piece you put out there, but a blog seems like a particularly relevant avenue to showcase that personality since the form is a little more robust than other social media avenues.