Digital Frontiers

Now that this semester is coming to an end, I feel comfortable divulging my feelings about this course, the “Digital Frontier”. If you’ve kept up with my posts, you would have noticed that I lost motivation somewhere along the line. Just look at the contrast of tones from my first post, Who is Jeff Goetz? (click to read more), to one of my last, Conversion Marketing is a Tool for Tools. You may have also have wondered why I chose to discontinue my weakly posts, earning zero credit for the remaining assignments.

What happened to Jeff Goetz, that optimistic honors student, that young man with the keen desire to learn from others,  who enjoyed extending the learning environment beyond the classroom?

Well, my readers, I am right here.

I stopped posting  because I learned, through this course, that it is not worth my efforts.  James,  from Campus Talk, taught us that if we have no passion to write a blog post, then don’t write it. I listened.

To the course instructors, I lost my enthusiasm when I saw our contrasting motives for the use of social media.  Our view points differ not in the power of marketing with social media, but in how we ought to use that power . We learned how a business can use viral marketing, user generated content, or web analytics to increase their profits. In my opinion, this is  malarkey. I believe it is unscrupulous to use social media as a means of gaining more customers, and if this your goal, then it will fail in the long run. Just look at the marketing results of the Gainesvillains, whose only successful marketing approach was the one that provided value to already existing fans. These students learned that an increase in Facebook fans or Twitter followers is not mutually exclusive with the result of  increased business. I hope this is something we’ve all learned as a result of this course.

To my fellow bloggers and classmates.  It was a pleasure working with the you to make this course a unique learning experience for each of us. I encourage you all to take the time to reread our user generated content. Our footprint goes much deeper than you may realize.

And finally, to my readers, thank you for taking the time to read my blogs and share you feedback on my content. Some of you my still not know how to pronounce my last name; but one day, you’ll meet me in the real world, and it’ll all make sense. My next endeavor is to blog my experiences as a first year dental student at the NYU College of Dentistry, and to hopefully, contribute valuable content to both my fellow students and to my instructors (sound familiar?)

But until then, I’ll leave you with one final question:

did you solve my puzzle?

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Hey guys,

Jeff Goetz here. I’m going to have to keep it short to today as I am overloaded with coursework.

Below you will see the instructions for this week’s blog post:

instructions.png

I have included this image of the instructions because I wanted to display user generated content (UGC) to the students of this course.  I hope that this content is useful to you by giving you a quicker route to the directions, thus saving you,more or less, 15 seconds. Posting this picture is also beneficial to me, as the “picture and creativity” is a requirement for this post. I would also benefit if you consistently return to this page to view the instructions, thus increasing my popularity count.

To summarize what I wrote above, the major con of UGC is that it most always creates a win-win situation for the users involved. So there’s a pro, but what  about a con?

One con I’ve found is that in some situations of UGC, the users who contributes the content aren’t actually any better off. Some users may feel like they truly made a difference or that they gained something from their efforts; but I believe this is just cognitive dissonance. For example, am I really learning something from writing this post? does my popularity percentage actually increase my happiness in real life? These are good questions.

Now, for my discussion on the use of Facebook and Twitter to drive business, I will link to the case studies I wrote about two weeks ago.  In my analysis, I wrote about what I thought was a successful discussion board on the Burrito Brothers Facebook fan page. According to the suggestions by the F&B Consulting fan page, the Burrito Brothers fan page still needs a lot of work. It’s got great discussion, but without some user generated images, it is behind the competition.

…and now, back to my all-nighter.

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In our course, The Digital Frontier, we spent the last week attempting to learn the value of conversion marketing and web analytics. On Monday, we listened to Robert Parker speak about web analytics in the digital world, and on Wednesday, group 2 presented on how to actually use the web’s analytical tools.

…and what did I think of conversion marketing? It is a tool for tools.

I made this connection after reading the following quotes:

1. “Conversion marketing is when the consumer takes the marketer’s desired action.” from How to quantify and evaluate your online presence by Daniel Byon
2. “Consumer marketing involves the customer performing a certain action directly resulting from marketing schemes….You may wonder; how exactly will the blog lure them in? The Gainesvillains will soon offer an irresistible downloadable mix tape.” from What Do You Want Me To Do? by Jackie Arellano.

It makes me sick to read what these students wrote. This causes me to see conversion marketing as manipulative and unethical.

Fortunately, a handful of students did provide value in their analysis of conversion marketing.

1. “In order to see his unique visitors tally climb ever upwards, the smart blogger must add content that is interesting, relevant, and regular.” from  What Are Your Book Marks by Allan Long
2. “I don’t care about conversion optimization or any other strategy that derives its basis from convincing people to give you their time or money. Learning about these terms and ideas makes me feel greedy; the words seem soaked in do-anything-to-make-money avarice.” from Baptizing the Heathens With Commercial Marketing by Nate Stein

Now let’s make sense of these opposing views…

My take is that there is a conflict of interest in applying the funnel towards gaining sales. This is because, in many situations, application of analytics increases company sales at the expense of wasting the non-purchasing visitor’s energy. It is unethical to apply the internet in this way because it is a win-lose situation. It is only ethical if these new visitors, on average, actually find new value by stumbling across your website. A great example of this would be applying analytics for Citizen Co-op, so that organic growers can find a community business that care for their success (not for their money).

Success on the internet will only come to those whose goal is to create value for their customers.

Think about it…

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How we can we create more word-of-mouth for our local businesses?

I have an answer, but I want to see if you can figure it out on your own. To help you do this,  I’m going to present a quick case study which will allow us to see why certain forms of advertising work better than others. My goal is for you to read this post and to come out with knowledge applicable towards improving the marketing plan of your local business.

I formed this idea after reading the post by Matt Garrett about Leonardo’s Pizza’s presence in Gainesville.

This picture is a link to Matt’s post (you can click it) and within the second paragraph, Matt presents some digital marketing strategies of Upper Crust, Burrito Brothers, and Leonardo’s Pizza. To begin this exercise, I want you to look over the following three web pages, spending as much time as you need to form an opinion about them. (please take this seriously!)

1. Facebook page of Upper Crust
2. Twitter page of Burrito Brothers.
3. Facebook page of Leonardo’s 706.

Now that you have your opinion, see how your experience compares to mine:

When I glanced over these pages, I first noticed they were covered with blurbs that looked like they came straight off the “specials of the day” chalkboards. I then clicked on the miscellaneous Facebook tabs to make sure their wasn’t anything important there and then hit the back key to continue reading this post. In other words, they were extremely boring, and I just wanted to get back to my own business.

This leaves us with the question: Why were these pages so boring?

To get the answer, lets compare these websites from above to a website I find to be much more interesting. This website is the facebook page of Burrito Brothers. (FYI, I had no intention of selling the success of my local business’s web page. Remember, this is merely a case study which I want us all to learn from).

Now, I’m guessing most of you looked at this Facebook page and didn’t find anything different about it. It has the same pictures and the same info about the soup and guacamole. Why did I find this  Facebook page more interesting than the others?

You will find the answer by asking yourself, What Would Google Do?

If you read the book, the answer should come instantly. This Facebook page was successful in catching  my interest because it allowed me to see the word-of-mouth of Burrito Brother’s customers and it invited me to participate in the discussion. If you can’t see what about this web page I’m talking about, click on the “discussion” tab or click here.  This discussion section serves as a platform that enables its fans to create their own conversation and to, unknowingly, create positive word-of-mouth.

Isn’t it interesting to see how we can apply the perpetual words of Jeff Jarvis?

Now that you’ve made it through my case study, I hope you take the time to come up with your own idea for optimizing the word-of-mouth about your local business. Please feel free to create your own discussion below.

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Hi, my name is Cuspy! I’m the 2nd right molar of Adam Daugelli, you know, the guy who gave you all the candy in class. I’m posting a blog today because I need your help. I think I’m in danger!!!!

…you see, I think I’m being followed by a dentist named Jeff Goetz, and on top of that, I’ve had this terrible headache!
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One thing you should know about me is that I am constantly thinking up crazy ideas. Only rarely, however, do I have the opportunity to implement them. [More]

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After the surprising success of their day project for class, Jeff and Nate set off again on Thursday to collect more money for the Bush-Clinton Haiti fund.  A passerby took the video above of the team working to raise awareness.  To learn more:  about the project here or the source of the video.

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For background on how Jeff and Nate developed this idea, check out yesterday’s class assignment.  The quick synopsis: we gave the class an hour to create as much value only using post-it notes.  Nate and Jeff really took the “only use post-it notes” part to the fullest.

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“people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou
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Dear fellow student,

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I will begin by presenting a puzzle which you must figure out over the course of the semester.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Who is Jeff Goetz?
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