Social Media Health Check for ' The Sizzle'

Hey guys, sorry for taking so long to do my new blog-post. Anyways the topic is quite an interesting one because this carries news for people who take 'Social Media Marketing' for granted. It is something way more deep and if you want to do it right, the name of the game is 'Engage'

What really is Social Media Marketing???

Even though people and corporate managers think it is all about the number of facebook likes or twitter followers the brand has, that really is not the case. In SEM the most important thing is the ability to create conversation between customers and if that is happening around your brand, then you are a successful marketer. In order to check that ability to create conversation, for your brand I'm calculating a Social Media Brand Health Check for ' The Sizzle' restaurant comparing with Chinese Dragon Cafe, Brewery by O, CIOCONAT Lounge and Hilton Colombo.You will understand what I am talking about when we talk along that output. And for a better and more detailed introduction on the same topic refer my colleague, Ruchira's blog.

The output for the social media brand health check statistics for ' The Sizzle' looks like this:

• The facebook fan count gives out an important message about the engagement level, amount of reach and the digital media activeness of brands. In my example, according to pure statistics, Chinese Dragon Cafe has the biggest amount of likes. But these figures cannot speak for themselves. Because the fan count depends on factors like the amount of time the page was running,the geographic coverage,etc... where as 'The Sizzle' is a restaurant that was launched not so long ago. CIOCONAT lounge and Hilton has appropriate likes as per the caliber they cater to. And Brewery by O is a restaurant that got famous recently, which has less likes than 'The Sizzle' proving that 'The Sizzle' is doing quite a good job.

           The recommendation for 'Sizzle' would be to maintain the status quo and keep doing their extremely engaging activities to attract fans. Eg:- Posting photos of birthday parties held at 'The Sizzle' and may be go an extra mile to make sure customers interact through facebook by creating competitions, fun activities and quizzes.

• Twitter follower account screams out the engagement level and reach of the business too. Even though twitter is quite unpopular compared to facebook, there are solid users of twitter who would appreciate to see a twitter account for his/her favorite brand.The CIOCONAT lounge being a very good performer on social media, 'The Sizzle' has managed to get a similar number of twitter followers as CIOCONAT. And also amazingly I found out that Chinese Dragon twitter engagement is very low may be because the loyal customer base for Chinese Dragon are mostly aged people, who are quite unfamiliar with social media platforms. Brewery by O has a acceptable amount of twitter activity and Hilton Srilanka being a prominent hotel, didn't have one dedicated local twitter profile for that. So the point where 'The Sizzle' stands is very much favorable.

         Recommendations would be to make use of it more often and in different ways. As 'The Sizzle' experience is unique, it can make it a point to give away that unique experience through twitter. And the target market is mostly the young crowd, who are experience driven and they are readily active on twitter. 'The Sizzle' has to bring to their attention to follow the page on twitter, maybe through business cards or through facebook or any other material.

• Youtube channel views is another way of examining the medias through which the business speaks to the customer. And in my example, I guess restaurant industry and youtube doesn't go much together. But that can be argued with the level of engagement people express through social media. CIOCONAT lounge has 40 channel views and Hilton has 2177 which is not surprising as it is an internationally recognized tourist hotel. I choose to be neutral at this point, because I'm not very sure if 'The Sizzle' needs a youtube channel right now. 

         Recommendation would be to experiment with one. As 'The Sizzle' is all about sizzling, the whole concept can be delivered in a youtube channel with presentations on preparing sizzling food, sizzling music, sizzling fashion and etc... There is a high chance that it might work out for the organization.

• Number of other social networks the brand is active on is another measure of social media reach. And the best performer is CIOCONAT lounge. It's also present in foursquare, pinterest and instagram.

My take on 'The Sizzle'being present only on twitter and facebook is neutral. As being present in many platforms need more focus and hard work. For a business like 'The Sizzle' I guess the awareness they generate through twitter and facebook is fairly enough.

But as per recommendations, it is good to be present in places that will do you benefit. So'The Sizzle' can evaluate the other platforms and do a cost benefit analysis to choose and focus attention on a selected social media presence.

• Percentage of local facebook fans show the quality of audience. In my example I assumed that 100% of the fans are local as for the lack of information and as they are Srilankan restaurants. In the case of Hilton it may be little less than 100%. Somehow the percentage of local fans show what kind of customers you attract, their ethnicity and how proud they are of that srilankan brand.

          Recommendation for sizzle would be to try out ways of attracting different audiences. For example -older crowd , foreigners etc.., which will give a new look to the restaurant and create uniqueness among srilankan fans.

• Number of good followers on twitter is another measure on quality of the audience. 'The Sizzle' has a very high percentage of fake followers compared with other restaurants, for some reason. It is a very pathetic fact. As it's performance as a restaurant is very good.

         The recommendation for 'The Sizzle' would be to minimize this number of fake followers by any means as it won't do any good for them in their social media activities.

• Percentage of people talking about the brand out of the total fans gives a message about how engaged the business is. People talk about it when they really want to express their ideas about the service. 'The Sizzle' matches the score with Hilton, saying that their engagement level is quite high. Chinese Dragon Scores low, again maybe because their loyal customers are aged and not so familiar with social media. Brewery by O had created a hype among the youth, resulting in a high score and the highest scorer is CIOCONAT lounge with it's unbeaten social media performance.

         The recommendation would be for 'The Sizzle' to keep people engage and give them more topics to talk on. In other words ' create the hype'.

• Klout score for the brand is another measure on engagement level of the business in social media.

The Klout Score measures a person’s overall online influence on a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the most influential. Klout’s system analyzes multiple social networks based on your engagement. It is the number in the orange box on your profile.

Klout score of 'The Sizzle' is a satisfactory one, with much room for improvement. The best performer, CIOCONAT lounge scoring 51, 'The Sizzle' is at 25, which is good.

Recommendations would be fot 'The Sizzle' to engage more and be more online and give customers things to read and stuff to look at simply.

• Number of relevant results on Google blog search,in the first 20 links shows share of voice of the business. 'The Sizzle' performance on this aspect is outstanding by being the second highest and highest is Hilton, which means people talk about how 'The Sizzle' functions and it creates word of mouth, which is free marketing.

          Recommendations would be to add to the amount of experience delivered at the restaurant. Then people will have more things to talk about simply.

• Number of twitter mentions in the last 48 hours is another measure of share of voice, where all the restaurants scored low or zero, with only CIOCONAT lounge standing out. Others had tweets because of the month end, where those are biased too. But thinking about the industry again we can justify that people don't tweet much about restaurants but you never now with the current trends.

         Recommendation for 'The Sizzle' would be to be more active on twitter and make it more interesting for customers to find 'The Sizzle' on twitter.

• Percentage of negative sentiments in brand mentions is a way of measuring sentiments, where 'The Sizzle' scored 0.And only brewery by O and Hilton scored low figures as per their nature of business.

          Recommendations for 'The Sizzle' would be to keep doing the good work where people will have only good to talk about them.

After the ranking was done the social media brand health score for 'The Sizzle' could be seen as 72.73 and it can be interpreted as 'you are comparatively a successful brand on Social Media. However, there can be few areas where you can strengthen your presence'.

I guess that 'The Sizzle' being a new, really good restaurant, has performed pretty well through social media and looking forward eagerly to see what other interesting steps they would take in the digital world in the future.