Still trying to figure out Audience Targeting

These are some pictures of user maps from this blog, (Top-Bottom) oldest-to-newest over the past 6 months. In terms of density or quantity of visitors, the site has made some progress. It gets anywhere from 5-25 visitors a day. This makes sense to me as I've learned a few tricks about cross-promoting it on Twitter or LinkedIn. But the slight demographic shift from Europe to Asia still has me somewhat confused. Obviously I get a little more traffic because I've been writing so much about our trip to China over the past month, but I'm not sure where all the European visitors came from previously. Other than "WFU MBA" or "bgracely", almost none of my topics or keywords would trend high enough to make the first couple pages on Google.

This is still in experimental mode. It's nice to be able to experiment and learn while doing something you love to do (writing), which is maybe the best lesson I should be learning from this. Find something you love to do, and then figure out if you can earn any money from it. I make nothing from this now, but hopefully I'll be able to translate some of the learnings from this digital identity experiment into something more sustaining over time.

Strategic Marketing Presentations

One of the things I really like about our Strategic Marketing class is that it is primarily focused on analysis and application of marketing as it relates to our current role (or future role).  It's not heavily focused on quizzes and exams, which often tend to be exercises in memorization (imho).  One of our group projects for the class is an analysis and presentation of an area of marketing that we believe is new, interesting and potentially of use to our companies.  The topics are chosen by the teams, with the goals being both team analysis and teaching something new to the rest of the groups.  I wrote about the Team 5 topic in an earlier post, but the rest of the team projects were announced this weekend.  I haven't seen their abstracts yet, but I thought it might be fun to list some of the things I'd like to learn, and see if any of those aspects get presented.

February 7: Team 1 – “iphone apps”

• How does Apple market the AppStore to developers vs. how Facebook markets their platform (Facebook Connect, Facebook Applications) to developers ?
• Is Apple doing enough with the AppStore concept to leverage developers (or customers) to look for applications that could work between Macs, iPhones, AppleTV, etc..?
• Apple is claiming huge download numbers for AppStore.  What flaws do you see in their model or execution?

February 21: Team 3 – “Search Engine Optimization”

• Beyond paying the highest bid for keywords, what other techniques are companies using to get on the 1st page of Google searches? (Digg, etc.)
• Are the SEO techniques and strategies different for company websites vs. personal blogs?
• Do you expect SEO models will work the same with mobile computing as they do today with desktop computing?  Does the location aspect of mobile computing offer new SEO paradigms?

March 21: Team 4 – “Social Networking”

• If you were VP of Marketing, what would your mission statement look like for using Social Networking to enhance aspects of your company?
• Success with Social Networking requires a willingness to be open and give to the community, which is often counter-intuitive to companies used to controlling information, branding, etc..  What have successful companies done to find the right balance of control vs. openness?
• Talk about how Zappos is using Twitter to impact many aspects of their business, especially as it relates to customers and the community that looks to Zappos for footwear.

April 4: Team 2 – “Interactive Marketing”

• Is it a good idea to create forums where your customers can have interactive conversations which could turn into interactive marketing, without your company being in the middle?
• What are the keys to creating authenticity in interactive marketing, as opposed to coming off as phony?
• Are some groups within a marketing organization (or any part of the organization) better suited to drive Interactive Marketing initiatives that others?  Is there a minimum or maximum distance from the customer (or target) that is required from that organization?

April 18: Team 5 – “ObamaNation: Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media”