Sometimes it's not about being smart, it's about being clever!

In marketing, sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel, or even come up with a great new product. Sometimes it's just about being smart and listening to your customer.

Consider Diamond Shreddies. What are Diamond Shreddies? Well they're just regular Shreddies photographed at a 45 degree angle. Seriously! The month that Shreddies launched their campaign, sales rose by 18%! That's a smart idea.

Another great example is the great feature on the 2013 Ford Escape ~ the foot activated truck opener.

In the competitive automaker world, having a simple, unique feature is difficult to find. Ford have really listened to their customers, done some creative thinking, and come up with a novel feature that makes their product stand out. Smart, maybe. Clever, yes.

So next time you're stuck on a campaign, go back to basics, consider your product, and be clever!

Analyzing a Facebook Page

As a marketer, it's always important to run a critical eye over your work, look at it from a consumers perspective, and understand how you can improve. One of my current marketing tasks is to manage the Facebook page for the Greater Vancouver Orienteering Club. Here is my analysis, and notes on what I need to improve on.

I first signed out of Facebook, and looked at this site as a first time visitor would. I need to update the cover photo, as the one at present is not quite in focus, and has been up for about 2 months. The profile picture should be more zoomed in, so it is more legible. Also, the photos for each of the apps should be updated, as the welcome page does not even have a proper photo. All of these details are important, because they are the first items a person will look at before they even see the content, and will create the first impression.

This is what users see currently when they log on to the Orienteer Vancouver page

In terms of content, my posts are fairly regular; one every 1-2 days. The new addition of being able to schedule posts has made managing content way easier, as I can set posts to appear around 6pm when I am at school/work/out running, but this ensures that when our fans log on in the evening or early morning to check their Facebook (heaviest usage times), my post will be near the top of their feed. I should look at posting content everyday, rather than every 2 days.

Most of the content is promotion of our upcoming events. As we hold at least 1 event per week, this is understandable. However, the event information links are usually just text and a link to our website, which has no image. I will look in to adding an image of each park we visit to the event page of the website, so an image will appear on Facebook. This should give more visual appeal to the posts.

I will also look in to adding a better variety of content, such as sharing information on other running races in Vancouver (as many of our members are also runners, bikers, or engage in other physical activity). I currently follow Canadian Running Magazine and Get Out There Magazine, but I should look for more local running clubs and sites to follow.

In terms of interaction, most of our posts either have likes or comments. I noticed 1 comment that went unanswered, and have corrected this. I could increase interaction by engaging users after a race and encouraging them to share information on what routes they look, or issues they had with the map.

Overall, I am pleased with the way our Facebook page looks and feels, however, I would like to increase the amount of interaction. I will act upon the suggestions above over the next week, and analyze, using the Facebook Analytics system, to see if increases engagement and interaction.

Please take a look at the Greater Vancouver Orienteering Club Facebook page, and leave a comment if you think there's something else I could work on that I have not covered above.

Research in Social Media

In case you haven't noticed yet, I'm heavily involved with a sport called Orienteering. As well as keeping me fit and active, I have the opportunity to do some marketing and communications work, both for my local club and for the Canadian High Performance Program (HPP).

As part of my communications assistant duties for the Canadian HPP, we are trying to raise the profile of our athletes within the Canadian orienteering community. Our main communication tool is our online blog. The blog is now fairly well established and has a reasonable following. However, I would like to increase the number of people viewing our blog, and the number of interactions that take place on each entry.

To increase the number of people coming to the blog, I would do a survey of members of the orienteering community (online, distributed via local club member email lists) to see which websites these people frequent most, and look at setting up accounts on these sites to push traffic through to the blog. I would also do a campaign to ensure the community members are aware that the Facebook, Twitter, and Team Canada blog exist, and that they are connected with us.

To increase the number of interactions, I would have athletes post on a variety of topic categories, such as race report, training report, goal setting, athlete interview, and health and wellness. I would also look at factors such as the author of the post, whether photos were used, whether maps samples were used, and so on. Using the number of views and comments per blog post, the number of 'likes' and comments on Facebook, and the number of retweets and replies through Twitter, I can clarify which blog posts were not only popular, but compelled viewers to engage in further interaction. The athletes would then have further clarity no only on what topics to post, but also whether they should use photos, map samples, and so on.

Can you suggest any further metrics I could use to measure engagement?