What I Learned and How I Intend On Using It

This class really has been great and the knowledge we have been given has been golden. I can't say enough about what I have learned and how much I appreciate it all. I think it was a really big difference for myself as opposed to a lot of other students that are in this class. I wish that they could have experienced what I did and to be able to see the impact it has made on our company from what I have learned in this class is just amazing. I have been able to see in a very short time the immediate effects that Social Media Marketing has on a business of 50 + employees. My excitement for Online Marketing has boiled over and now includes all of our upper management. They are all beginning to send job photos and videos, or ideas for future Facebook and Twitter posts. It has been so much fun and I am sorry to see it end, but I am really excited for our company's future in Social Media Marketing and my future with it in school. We have a great plan with what we are wanting to do and this class made it all totally possible.

There were a bunch of really great assignments during this class, but Facebook has been a great fit for Cockrell Electric, Inc., and now has 342 "Likes" after just over two months. We have taken advantage of the Scheduled Posts option in the Activity Log on Facebook and we think we have come up with a pretty good idea of the best time to post and what types of posts we get our most engagement in on our page. We will continue with our current scheduled posts types and times on Facebook. We have electrical "tips", "jokes", or "trivia" scheduled every other day (mostly in the morning at 8:40am or 8:50am) with job photos always posting on Fridays (sometimes at 9am or sometimes at 11am), with the job postinsgs usually boosted over the weekend. The target market for the boosted post is chosen as being in the Coachella Valley area and within all surrounding towns. It is targeted to the 30 to 65 age demographic, English speaking. Sometimes we will rearrange posts depending on a special occasion, like the end or beginning of a job. Once a month there is an employee photo and bio that will go out. All other posts will be posted "now" by either myself or the owner. These are posts that we find on Cockrell Electrics Facebook newsfeed page or just random stuff we want to post (always electrical though). We also use Facebook to post help wanted ads and pay to Boost these ads. We have filled one of two positions that we posted for through Facebook and are very happy with our new employee. This Facebook plan is working well for us and will continue through the next year. We believe that Facebook will keep our customers current with what is happening at Cockrell Electric and provide an outlet for us to get information out and receive input from our customers. Facebook will also bring customers to our newly redesigned website, in return keeping the engagement up on the website. Hopefully all of this will bring in new customers and keep current ones.

Another Social Media Site that we have been experimenting with through this class has been Twitter. We are not as regular with Twitter has we have been with Facebook, but we are working harder to get more tweets out. Currently I Tweet up to three times a week. They are usually electrical tips, jokes, or trivia, with a few job photos thrown in. I am trying to figure out what type of posts work best for Twitter. It has been slow going, but I am putting more effort in to it and plan on Tweeting more. it has not been a total failure, after only two months we already have 62 followers. It seems like Twitter has been a little more of us connecting to General Contractors and companies that we want to work with as opposed to our customers. I am trying to post Tweets that would interest both of these different types of clientele. The plan is to put out at least 4 Tweets a week and to look into our types of followers on Twitter and what I can do to get them to our Facebook page and Website. We are looking at Twitter to connect us with what is going on in the construction world and connect us with Contractors the we are interested in working with in the future.

We have also been building pages on Google+ and Yelp. Google+ is just beginning to become part of the Cockrell Social Media Regiment. It is very easy to work with and has been slowly picking up Followers. I have only posted a couple of Cockrell Building photos and electrical tips. After the beginning of the year, I would like the design for the Google+ Cockrell page to be a little more like a blog. More updates about what is happening with jobs and daily service calls. Newsflash types of posts regarding Cockrell Electric is what I have in mind for the Google+ page. I will like to begin putting that plan in to action after the first of the year when I can step down out of Human Resources and step up in to the Marketing Director position and begin working full time on our Social Media Marketing plan.

We will begin our first paid online advertising campaign after the New Year with Yelp. They are a great match with what we want. Their Market Demographic is 30 to 50, educated with a bachelors degree and $100,000+ a year income. Yelp offers great plans with fair pricing. You can choose how long you would like the ad to run and geographically where you would like it to run. We like what Yelp is offereing us and we are looking forward to beginning our advertising with them. We will most likely take the "year" advertising deal and all of the options that come with it. One of the really great options is a film crew comes to your office and shoots a short commercial to play in a loop on your Yelp page. That alone is worth the price they are offering to advertise with them. I believe the best part of advertising on Yelp is that when someone is on Yelp and searching for an electrician, they actually need an electrician, instead of us putting a bunch of advertising out there and hoping that someone that sees it at some point needs an electrician.Working with Yelp, we are eliminating the part about us waiting for a customer and instead bring that customer right to us.

All of these plans to continue our Social Media Marketing will be keeping me very busy for months to come. At the end of this class, I will immediately be updating our website and adding links to all of our new Social Media pages. I believe this will bring even more engagement to our website and in return bring in new customers as well as keep the current ones. We will continue everything that we have learned and do everything we can to stay as up to date as possible on all things Online Marketing and what our demographic is currently into. I can't stress enough the difference this class has made to us and our marketing future, and marketing present for that matter.

At the beginning of this class, when you Googled for a local electrician, we were not even on the first page of the results. Now after all of this new online presence for us and all of the new website engagement, we are number three on the list on the first page! And shortly after this happened and we were moved up to number three on the list, for the first time ever someone called for a service call and stated that they had found us on Google! That is the first time ever! We were blown away when we saw it at number three on Google and totally blown away when a customer stated that they found us there and we absolutely knew at that point that we were going to keep moving forward with our Social Media Marketing and that I am going to continue my education in marketing. It's been such a great class and I am so sorry to see it end, but it has been such a great learning experience. Our teachers have given us the information that we need for success in the new Online Marketing world. It is up to us to be succesful.

Posts I Have Commented On

The following are posts that I have commented on for our Week 14 Thursday homework:

• Mella Webster
• Alexandra Spector
• David Harris
• Cynthia Ogg

What Works for Us

Throughout this class we have tried multiple Social Media platforms, some of them were okay, some would be better for us later and some didn't really go with what we have going. There were a few though, that were so right on, that they are already making us a nice profit. I knew it was going to be a fun class, but I had no idea how fun. We have learned how to make money for free. Of course, it takes our time and these days especially, that isn't free, but we have really been given a platform to succeed in virtually any thing we can think of.

With every few assignments there were different Social Medias for us to work with. Most of our success came from Facebook. We tried the others, but it is absolutely the best for what we want to do in the future and such a great way to keep our customers. It's a way for them to feel like they are part of our team and part of what we have going on. I have loved coming up with posts and being able to preset them to post in the future. I love the way the customers and friends have engaged in our posts and added to them. It has been such a great experience and really the best fit for us right now.

We also set up an account with Yelp, Twitter and Google+. With each new account, it was so great to be able to post on Facebook about those new accounts. We have been steadily picking up followers on all of them. Facebook alone already has 340 Likes and it's just a couple of months into it. I have spent a majority of my time on the Facebook page, with a random Tweet or Google+ post here and there. I just really like the Activity Log on Facebook and the way I can plan posts for an extended amount of time. In fact right now I have two months worth of posts scheduled to post and it has been like that since I started working on the business page.

I currently post an electrical "tip" on Monday mornings at 8:50am, the tips are a hit, and it seems to get a lot of attention at that scheduled day of the week and time of day. I will either post an electrical "fact" on Wednesday at 11:00am or an electrical "joke." These times show our most engagement in the Facebook Insights. Then on Friday at either 8:50am or 11:00am, I will post a really nice job photo. The rest of the days and times are left open for the owner to post if he wants or either he or I will share interesting electrical posts that we have found in the Cockrell Electric newsfeed. It has been working really well and brings with it tons of engagement. Once a month I will also schedule an employee bio post. These have also been a big hit that brings engagement, shares, and likes. I will stay with this schedule permanently or until the Insights begin to show otherwise.

Google+ and Twitter are the others that we are posting to on a semi regular basis. Not because they are less important, but because I have been focusing on Facebook as a learning tool on what works and am now beginning to take that over to Google+ and Twitter. Their posts will become more regular and everything will be linked to the Website. I do not have a schedule for these accounts yet, but I will be more engaged in the future after learning all that we have about them.

The other site we started a page on was Yelp. They have what we are looking for with their advertising plan. Their demographic is exactly what we want for our clientele. Their key demographic is 35 to 45, educated with a bachelors degree, income of 100,000 plus and speak English. These are people that are searching for the right Electrician, people that are actually searching for an electrician, not just us advertising to random people hoping they may someday need an electrician and that it might be us. I have set up an appointment after the first of the year with a salesperson at Yelp to begin the process of us advertising with them. They have a few different ad plans, but I think we will be going with the year plan because of the options that come with it. One of the things that happens when you are advertising with Yelp, is that when people are searching for your type of business in your area and they click on someone else in your area, you will be the advertisement on their page.

There were so many different positives that went along with all the different Social Media sites and so many different ways you can make them work for you if you try. We will stay on track with Facebook and pick up our presence on Google+ and Twitter as well as adding the advertising on Yelp in the new year. It is really exciting and so much to look forward to. It really has been a great class and I am sorry to see it end.

A Insights Dramatic Change

Since starting a Facebook page for our business I have been obsessed with the Facebook Insights. So much so that everyone else in the office also knows exactly what is happening with our Facebook Insights, whether they care or not, although I have to say, they get pretty excited to when I tell them the huge progress we have made in such a short period of time. I have kept everyone up to date with what is happening and how quickly it has been happening.

This past week our engagement and post views dropped dramatically compared to last week. I believe there are two major factors involved in such a dramatic drop, especially in our over all reach. First, it was Thanksgiving week and people were busy with cooking, shopping and eating. This is actually good news and shows that we as a people are still more interested in Turkey, Family, and Football then we are in the latest Cockrell Electric Facebook post. Although we did have some engagement and a few new likes over the Holiday weekend.

The second major factor is because these last few weeks I have been boosting some our posts. We tried to use Facebook as a way to reach out regarding a job listing. We posted that we were hiring for a Purchasing Agent and for Front Desk. I boosted both posts for about $25 each, $5 a day for five days. We decided to spend the money to boost these posts after seeing Monster.coms cost for posting a job listing. The posts received so much attention and we got numerous resumes from friends of friends. The posts were shared by a few people and we received a huge amount of engagement because of it. We actually did find someone for the Purchasing Agent job. In fact he starts tomorrow and we are really excited about that.

Due to both of the previous factors, our reach went from 20,000 the week before to 3,000 last week, our post clicks went from over 700 the week before to only 177 this past week, and our engagement went from over 900 to 133, which is pretty big drop. I understand that a lot of our engagement and reach came from the posts that were boosted, but we also get a ton of engagement on posts organically. I recently posted something funny and we received over 500 views on the one silly little joke, so I know we can build our brand organically almost as well as we can when we pay for it. I will continue to monitor the Facebook Analytics as well as the Google Analytics obsessively and base my posts on what is working and what isn't. I just think it is really amazing that we have this type of information at our fingertips and it truly is setting us up for success.

Google Analytics Beneficial To Us

There is a lot of input on my Google Analytics page. The information available to us is truly incredible these days. In 1951 The Complete Encyclopedia of Baseball was published. Before this it was difficult for the average baseball fan to access baseball stats. Stats are as much a part of Baseball as Sunflower Seeds. Fast forward to the present and every player stat that you can possibly think of, the players private lives, even photos from their vacations away from baseball are available to the average fan with the click of the mouse. Analytics have gone from being something totally far fetched to being a part of our every day lives from our online shopping habits to what we purchase at our local grocery stores, analytics are here to stay.

My local grocery store is definitely keeping stats on me and I love it, because every two weeks, I get the exact coupons that I need for the stuff that I need to buy. I love that I can look up in Facebooks Admin page and check what type of posts are doing better, photo posts, link posts, or status posts. I will change it up to follow whats receiving the most engagement. Having this information available to us and utilizing it to its maximum is setting us up for success. Google Analytics does the same thing. Google makes it possible for us to follow the stats on multiple pages at once and is very easy to understand.

Google Analytics gives us a lot of information that can be truly beneficial to our business and beneficial to where we want to go with our Social Media Marketing. My favorite parts of Google Analytics, that I check frequently are our ratio of new visitors to returning visitors and the average visit duration. The latter I use to decide on new posts and what type of post is getting the customer to stay on the page. I had one day recently that had an average visit of over 20 minutes per visitor. I went back and checked to see what I posted that was so interesting. It turned out to be Electrical Tips, so since then I have posted Electrical Tips more often. The electrical safety tips get an average of about 300 views, which is incredible for a page that has only been up for a couple of months.

Like I said, I also really like the fact that it shows us if the views are from returning visitors or new visitors. The same goes for this stat. I will go back and see what it was that I posted that received so much attention and brought in so many new visitors, then try to replicate it. It really is amazing that Google makes this information available to us and lets us in on their key to success.

Our Deal

I have been trying to come up with a really good deal that we could offer at Cockrell Electric, other than the usual, free estimates. We have offered free 24 point inspections in the past that went well. They consist of us going in and checking 24 different areas in your house were there could be electrical issues and to make sure everything is up to date and working reliably.

One of the offers we have tried in the past is offering a percent off of their work after so much money is spent. The customers definitely respond when we offer a percent off and it usually isn't a big hit to us monetarily speaking. The thing with the percent off is that it doesn't necessarily bring in new customers or extra work. It just gives our normal customer base a percent off of their bill.

We also don't want to decrease our rates for any amount of time either, even if it is for a special. It is such a big deal for us to raise our rates, especially after not having raised them for the last 15 years. We have to send out notices months ahead, deal with the backlash (there's a little backlash), and stick to our guns no matter what our customers say to get a lower rate. We don't want to give an opening for us to have to go back to our lower rates. That now leads us back to the free estimates.

The free estimates are actually a great special, even if we do offer it all the time. The customer doesn't know that, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I get phone calls every day asking if we do free estimates. I believe we would get at least twenty percent more calls from people with it already in their minds that they want us to do their work if they call us already knowing they will get a free estimate from us as opposed needing to call to see if we even do estimates. It's an easy idea to market too.

Advertising that we offer free estimates can be advertised on any of the Social Media that we have worked with. It could be posted on Facebook and "Boosted" with a great Cockrell picture of one of our guys doing a service call. Or we could advertise on Yelp, where when you do an advertisement, it is placed right under all of your business information and business photo. Or we could Tweet it or make it stand out on the newsletter at the beginning of each new season. Regardless of how we get it out there, we should do what we can to let our customers know that we do estimates for free and advertising that would be an immediate boost to our amount of service calls that we receive.

Online Marketing and Business Growth

This was another great assignment. I know that we had to pay to take this class, but what we are learning is priceless. This is information that we can use for the rest of our lives and it is giving us the tools to be very successful online and otherwise. With these tools we are able to market our products or businesses directly to the people that want them. How easy is that? Every one of the online marketing tools that I read about for the assignment were great, but there were just a few that would directly benefit our business. A couple of them would benefit our business almost immediately.

I don't think it's a coincidence that after Facebook, some of the four most popular sites would be to our best advantage. They are LinkedIn, Yelp, Google+, and Groupon. Although I'm not sure of the last one being in line with us, only because of our particular demographic that we are marketing to. I don't have them listed in any particular order, but my least favorite online marketing tool is Groupon. If we were marketing to a younger, hipper, on a budget demographic, then this would be our cup of tea, but we aren't and it isn't.

Next is LinkedIn in the second to least favorite spot. It is great for so many reasons, number one being that we have access to professionals that are qualified for the types of positions we will be needing to fill in our company in the future. It is mainly a good place to find employees and for them to find us.

The last two choices are absolutely beneficial to our business, Google+ and Yelp. Google+ for the obvious reasons, having all your info on the screen when you come up in a search. I love when I find that with other businesses and I'm sure our customers would feel the same. Yelp is my absolute favorite and not only are we claiming our page and setting up an account, but we will eventually be advertising with them.

The main reason why I like Yelp is because our page is getting out to people that are actively looking for an electrician. They have great tracking tools, including mobile calls being tracked. The tracking tools are a big part of their program and they make it easy to keep up to date with everything that is going on with your page. Yelp gets new customers, as opposed to Facebook that is mostly about retaining customers and getting our name out there. The demographic for Yelp, through a census done by Neilson, is ages 40 to 50, educated with a bachelors degree, and earning 60 to 80 thousand a year. This is the exact demographic that we are looking to market to when expanding our service department, making it easy to integrate them into our current marketing strategy. It seems that the quality of clientele with Yelp would be better than most, just based on the fact that we know they do their research and extremely tech savy. I like all of my online marketing choices, but I really do think Yelp is the absolute best fit with our current strategy and our next step in online marketing.