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Thursday, September 29, 2016

Week 4A: Finding Your Peeps

There is a mysterious concept in the advertising world. They call it target marketing.


Kind of creeps me out.

Am I their target? Will their marketing arrows hit me?

How many points do they get for an old lady in her 50's?

Am I going to end up looking like a pin-cushion?


Chill out Crafties.

It's all about finding your peeps,

a tribe with the same vibe,

the rockers that you roll with.

For instance...

Let's say, you want to sell hip-hop CD's 'cuz your hip-hop band is all that.

Well, your Tribe with the Vibe might be these kinds of people:
  • Millennials who are down with the hip-hop vibe and buying those CD's
  • X-Gens who are checking out Jay-Z on facebook.
  • Homies who just came back from a Kanye West concert and just sent a tweet about how amazing it was.
See, that's not so bad. But what if your band doesn't really have a CD yet and only plays in, let's say, Milwaukee? Now you need to find your local peeps in that town and invite them to your next gig.
And yeah, that's possible with social media.

So let's check out two sites and brainstorm about who their tribe is, their peeps, their target market.

Chili's

This site strikes me as clean and organized. Simple menu at the top lists a few easy choices for where you want to go. For some weird reason, the fist thing I did was scroll down to the footer. Lately, I've had this footer fetish thing going on.

Well, way down there is a link about nutrition. Amused, because I think of Chili's as fun and maybe delicious, but not nutritious. I take the bait. There, is actually a lot of information about the food. Allergens are listed as well as a long list of their menu items with all manner of food stats like fat, carb and calories. Lots more than that, even.

Then we get to the meat of the matter. Or anti-meat actually. Here they admit that the vegetarian dishes listed may not be perfect. Meat products may wander in (so to speak), so they can't guarantee anything for sure. Nice transparency. Still, there are many dishes listed there. My conclusion is that many vegetarians would feel comfortable there and be able to have a nice meal.

So, we have stumbled across the first two groups that Chili's may be targeting. The Health Conscious and Vegetarians.

Next, we click on "Chili's at Home". I assumed this would be a take out service but was surprised to find that Chili's has created a line of single portion frozen food that can be found in grocery stores. Who might they be targeting?

Well, they do have multi-serve packs so it could be the parent of a family with kids. More likely they are trying to appeal to single folks, though. There seems to be an emphasis on appetizers and single serving offerings. The convenience of popping it in the microwave is great if you only need to feed yourself. So..

Health Conscious * Vegetarians   *  Families  *  Singles

Back to the top of the page and click on the Menu. Here you find beautiful photos of their offerings with no prices. Click order, fill in your zip, and you can easily order food to take home. So very convenient. So we add busy people to the list and perhaps busy people who can't cook that well or just don't want to do it. We'll call them un-cooks.

Maxine's target market list.

Health Conscious * Vegetarians  *  Singles  *  Families  *  Busy People  * Un-cooks

Of course, not everybody can afford this food, so we could add some income. Maybe start with $60K per year for a family, shooting up to, well superstar. Of course, their personal assistant is sent in the limo to pick up this posh vegetarian cuisine, darling.

 The Yellow Deli

The ultra, uber first thing I noticed is that I can't read the menu at the top. Frowning, I scrolled down through a bunch of photos of buildings, hoping to satisfy my footer fetish. Not much there. I drooped in my chair.

Maybe these people sell buildings?

So I blindly clicked on a link in the top menu. Oh, I get it now! Maybe the hard-to-read top menu is locations? And when you click on a location, then there is a minor little menu on the left. If you look real hard, you can see something called Menu. Amazingly, there was no food listed on the first page.

I decided to give them one more chance and clicked on Photos. More buildings.

I got bored and called Chili's for a late night snack. Sent my man to pick it up (thanks, babe).

What do we conclude about The Yellow Deli? The market they are targeting might be the following.

Architects?  *  Realtors?  *  People who like Chandeliers?  *  People who don't like footers?

I don't know, but I can hardly wait for my Guacamole Burger with a side of Loaded Mashed Potatoes.

Maxine

Monday, September 26, 2016

Week 3B: A Little on the Fringe

Social Crafties, by now you may have guessed that I'm a little on the fringe. I love alien videos (always blurry, of course), conspiracy theories (by people even fringe-ier than me), and a good ghost story by the campfire (on YouTube). These are the people that really believe, "The Truth is Out There".

It all makes me feel so normal by comparison.

That's why I listen to a late night radio show called Coast to Coast AM (C2C). They present radio shows on all of the above and more. Many shows feature social issues like sustainability, the environment, and alternative medicine. I listen to their radio show almost every night until I fall asleep.

I know... some of you are thinking, "Loser!", but this show boasts millions of listeners. I've got lots of C2C bro's and sista's.

Their website, Coast2CoastAM.com, includes oodles of videos and articles. If you want to find out what is on the show tonight, it is easy to find. If you have a favorite guest, you can find out when they were on the show last and what they talked about. The short double stacked menus at the top easily take you where you want to go. If you subscribe to the site, you can listen to shows for the last five years.


At first glance, it appears busy, but the layout and groupings are genius. You can scroll down a bit, find whatever catches your eye, and you're off and running! I wish I had an hour to cruise this site every day. It would never get old. So very much information, so enticingly laid out, and it changes every day. It is truly astonishing, how they handle all this information, all the time.

Big headlines make it easy to pick out your favorite pics, videos and articles. Lots of weird pictures grab your attention, drawing you in. The color scheme featuring black and midnight blue fits the late-night feel of the show. Their customers are the night owls, and they know just how to cater to them.

What could they do better? Not much, but I think if someone stumbled across the site and didn't listen to the show, it may take a while to catch up. A little two sentence explanation in the header might be good. What do you think?

Oh, and if you want to listen to the show, it is on:

KOGO, AM 600, 10 pm to 2am.

KFI, AM 640, 10 to 2 am, except Saturdays.
______________________________________________________________________

The other site that makes me crazy (in a good way) is YouTube. Oh, the hours I have fiddled away on that site!

On the other hand, I have learned so much.

YouTube is a site full of videos that people load up. Land on the front page, and the platform already knows the kind of stuff you like, or maybe the kind of stuff other people like who use the computer. My partner's a history buff and a gamer. See what YouTube suggests below...


But the glorious thing about YouTube is the unassuming little search box at the top of every page. Here you can search to your heart's content for all the stuff you enjoy. YT's humble search box is really a powerful finder of what you want. You can put in one or many words to find what you need. Let's try "Social Media Tips & Tricks" and see what happens.

Up comes a list of videos just for you. Picture on the left and description on the right, nice grouping. Using white space, they make the screen appear orderly, neat and clean. They show a title, who made it, how old it is, and how many people have viewed it. Everything you need to know in order to make the first decision.

When you click on one, a window fills about 1/3 of your screen. At first, this window may have an ad. That's OK, we've all got bills to pay. Usually you can click it off after about 3 seconds. This is the moment you begin to see the video. There are controls under the little screen to help you put it on pause, control the volume, and blow it up big enough to fit your whole screen. It's a blast.

Now here's the enticing part. After your video, there are more suggestions to the right. All laid out clean and neat, for your perusal. Let the stickiness begin.



These new suggestions may or may not have anything to do with your recent search, like the "Grandma Catches Girl Poopi..." No, we're not going there, but you get the idea, you can click it if the mood hits you.

If I could fashion a virtual crown, and have a contest for the "Grouping King", YouTube would win.

...................2 min .....................3 min .......................4 min .........................
(Where the heck did Maxine go?)

Sorry, got distracted on YouTube. What was I saying?

Oh yes, YouTube is the "Grouping King". He's also slick, and sleek and sticky. Oh... so... sticky.

<sigh>

YouTube you're awesome.

Maxine

The Team 

 I left comments at these blogs. Check 'em out.

 

Matthew Truss - Big reveal on four sites.
https://csittruss.blogspot.com/2016/09/week-3a-website-critique.html?showComment=1474939529415#c1471796508331234678

Travis  Stehmeier - The optimist.
https://semi-there.blogspot.com/2016/09/week-3a-principles-of-good-social-media.html?showComment=1474939838347

Tiffany  Lehman - Lady with a good eye.
http://tiffanylehman365.blogspot.com/2016/09/evaluation-of-different-websites.html