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Twitter contest for Costco

This contest would be posted via twitter.  The contest will include a four-question option, where the prize would be a 5-year membership to Costco.  To win the contest you need to be following the Costco twitter account, along with liking and retweeting the poll.  Then the winner will be selected from the people that answer the question and follow all the steps.  The tweet will be a holiday focused question due to the relevance of that it is the holiday season.  The contest will be giving away a Gold Star Executive Membership for 5 years.  The goal of this tweet is to start targeting the younger generations into getting memberships at Costco.  This message has a great chance to go viral because this is a great offer that values around $600.  This is a great place to shop for food at a discounted price and get cheaper gas. Costco is also already a larger company with many followers that will jump-start the viral process. The last reason that I think this will go viral is that the steps are so simple and the question is very easy.

The actual tweet

Win a 5-year Gold Star membership to Costco! Simply follow our twitter account, like this post and retweet.  If you answer the question correct and follow the directions, you have a chance to win. Winner will be announced and DM in 3 days.

The question: What is the name of Santa’s 5threindeer?

1.    Blixem

2.    Cupid

3.    Comet

4.    Donner

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Improving ad position

The article that I chose to read that talked about improving ad position was called “Improve paid search results through the routine, scheduled maintenance” this article was published on November 9, 2018, by Megan Taggart.  The publication of this article is from Search Engine Land.  The main idea of this article is how to improve paid search results and the goes on to give three main ideas.  Those ideas are, “assessing paid vs. organic strategy, testing attribution models: How paid search efforts fit within the overall channel mix, and assessing scalability of paid search accounts” (Taggart, 2018).  Following these three ideas, a company should be able to improve their ad position.

My thoughts on this article are that it comes off as the author is a little bias when stating her position in this article. I think that this article provided some great examples of how often you should check the different three steps.  When a company is assessing paid vs. organic strategies the company should be checking this bi-annually.  When a company is testing attribution models they should be checking the ad position quarterly or any time they release a new product.  Lastly, when a business is looking at assessing scalability of paid search accounts they should be checking the progress monthly, quarterly, and annually.  This article is relevant to the chapter in the book because it relates to chapter 6 paid search advertising, and more specifically analyzing the results on your ad.  This article talked a lot about analyzing the data that you are putting out there so you know that your information is being seen. The book talks about different ways to analysis like “impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, cost, conversions, conversion rates, CPA, and return on advertising spend” (Larson & Draper, 2017).

Overall I thought this article was very knowledgeable because it proved great information that was backed up by research and tables that showed the effectiveness of checking your ads regularly to make sure that they are up to date and still relevant.  The website will begin to lose more and more clicks if it is not relevant information.  Doesn’t matter if the ads are organic or paid for.

Larson, J., & Draper, S. (2017). Digital Marketing Essentials. Rexburg, ID: Edify

Taggart, M. (2018, November 9). Improve Paid Search Results through Routine, Scheduled Maintenance. In Search Engine Land. Retrieved November 12, 2018, from https://searchengineland.com/improve-paid-search-results-through-routine-scheduled-maintenance-307516

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Blog #1

How to use SEO, social media and content for increasing profits

           This expert session had a lot of great information. It talked about everything from SEO” search engine optimization” to what key terms a company needs to be using on their social media.  I do think the content of this information was a little outdated.  I think everything we knew about marketing in 2011 has all changed dramatically since then. But not all the information was outdated.  When in the session it talked about how people search and that there are three ways, information, navigational and transactional.  This was something that I found to be very true when searching online. I also liked how the session mentioned the two parts of the SEO, the on-page and off-page.  This refers to the relevancy and the popularity of the website.

           Some things that I really noticed during this expert session for increasing profit is that how the business chooses to word their websites and social media are everything.  Google uses a word generator that when someone googles something that it searches for keywords on that website.  So, if your website has keywords like “best or the current year” they are more likely to come up as popular searches.  I also noticed that when someone is searching for something that almost all the clicks are within the first four websites.  It is rare that someone searches on the next page for a website.  So this is critical for companies to either pay to be at the top of the searches or have a website that is very popular and gets lots of traffic.  Even though this research is older it sees has the same concept now were that people are going to click on only the top few options and that when they search they are more specific on how they word the search.

           There are a few problems that come with search engine optimization.  Those problems include using multiple of the same word, not enough information, poor use of keywords, no site authority, and lack of a professional business. When these key features are missed it could cost the business lots of online traffic and potential customers. The most important thing that a business needs when using online sources is having proper and accurate content. Overall in this expert session, I think that it had lots of very valuable information for companies to improve their web presence and profits.  I would have liked to see more recent data but I think a lot of the same information applies still.