Social Listening

I chose to look up Cooking Fever on Twitter to see what people are saying. It appears as if their value proposition is 'addicting'. Their feed is nothing but comments about becoming obsessed or addicted to the game. Also a lot of crying emoji's due to their frustration over their new addiction. It's quite interesting to see both a love of the game and a frustration that they can't put the game down. People also post about how they received their free gems and coins. What's really interesting here is how in order to get those free gems you have to have another person download and play the game therefor spreading the addiction to other potential players. Or you can like it on Facebook or Twitter for half the amount of free gems. Now I love and play the game, but it is something to see the frustration that people have in liking it too much. It's real and actual complaining, almost like a warning to other people considering downloading the app. One post that stood out to me was a guy complaining that his girlfriend wouldn't get off his back about downloading the app, because she really wanted her free gems! Also noteworthy is how this game makes people want to cook in real life. There are enough posts here and there about actual cooking with a #cookingfever below it to see that it has that effect on people. I don't personally get that feeling, but it does seem to be one positive of the game in a sea of obsession, frustration, and downright complaining that they love the game too much. Despite the initial warning bells that may or may not go off in your head when seeing this twitter feed with all it's crying emoji's and talk of obsession, I believe it is still a marketing success. Cooking Fever is actually doing extremely well and this feed just seems to get more people to download the app to see what all the fuss is about. The customers (players) of the game are the marketers now, and it's nothing but beneficial for the company. If I were the brand manager I would respond by saying "I'm glad you like our game so much, and sorry you can't put it down! 😉" It puts a playful spin on the whole thing.

This week's article is also on the Entrepreneur site. It's called How to create a Marketing Plan . The article starts out with a short video summarizing the articles main points. I guess this is for the people who don't have time to read the whole thing. Regardless, here it is:

Despite the title of both the article and the video, they actually talk more about WHY you want to create a marketing plan than HOW to create a marketing plan. Either way it is good information. The first takeaway should be that your first marketing plan should cover a full year and take a couple months to write. It should also consist of at least a few pages, but probably more later on when your business grows. The point that is driven into our brains throughout the article is that everyone in your company should see and participate in your companies marketing plan. This at the very least will not only get more ideas on the plan, but also get employees excited and more committed to your business when they see where the company is going.

Now the article gets into WHY you should create a business marketing plan. The core points are that it is a reference chart to success, it captures the big picture of the company, and it acts as a to-do list when focusing your priorities. These overlap obviously, but that further makes the point: you need it to put all the pieces together! It sounds like the marketing challenge of this article is to get the reader to see the importance of a marketing plan at all. If you don't see the importance of doing something you likely won't do it, especially if you are a very busy proprietor of your own business!

I'd say if this article had to have a value proposition it would be the word vital. All successful and growing businesses have a marketing plan that they use, and so it is a vital part of a growing business.

The biggest thing I learned while reading this article and watching the video is that the marketing plan shouldn't stay within the marketing department. It surely will be more of a successful plan the more people in the company know and can contribute to it. My marketing class talks about evolving to an ever-changing market. You don't like social media, do it anyway because the market dictates it. Well with an ever-changing market, doesn't it just make sense to have as many perspectives as possible on the plan about the future of your business? After all, you need to know in order to evolve.