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!HOW TO IMPROVE ORANGE FIZZ’S SEO USING SOCIAL MEDIA !

!Project Report Prepared for: Orange Fizz.net Prepared by: Mengyu Chen !!!

ORANGE FIZZ

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!PROJECT REPORT 1

Executive summary 3 CLIENT 3

GOALS 3

SOLUTION 3

RECOMMENDATIONS 3

Findings 4 WHAT TOPICS ORANGE FIZZ SHOULD PUT ON SOCIAL MEDIA SITES 4 WHEN TO POST OR TWEET 5 1 ) SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY BASKETBALL: 5

2 ) SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL: 6

HOW TO POST AND TWEET 7 1 ) ADD SHARE BUTTONS 7

2 ) ADD HASHTAGS 8

3 ) @<FAMOUS PLAYER> 9

4 ) ADD “PICTURE” AND “URL” 10

5 ) OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS 11

REFERENCES 12

APPENDIX: INFOGRAPHIC OF THE REPORT 13

ORIGINAL IMAGE ATTACHED IN WORK SAMPLES (ORANGEFIZZ INFOGRAPHIC.JPG). 13

ORANGE FIZZ

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY !Client Orange Fizz is a website reporting news about Syracuse University basketball and football.

Goals Our team helped the website to rearrange its content and improve its Google search PageRank. I was in charge of the social media part to help its Facebook and Twitter accounts to better engage with its customers and attract OrangeFizz’s website traffic.

Solution I used “Google Trends” to figure out what topics people are most interested in and during which time of year people are more likely to search for Syracuse University sports related news. In addition, I used “Hashtracking” website to measure real-time hashtag trends to help Orange Fizz use hashtags effectively. Last, I assisted the team to create an online survey and analyzed the results to gain our target customers’ insights and learn more about their reading habits.

Recommendations Based on my research, I recommend that Orange Fizz should • post or tweet content related to “Game Schedule”, “Player’s Profile”, “Game Recap” and “Game Interview” • post or tweet in the early morning and late evening • post or tweet basketball related news on every Friday, especially the time period from November to March each

academic year • post or tweet football related news on every Saturday, especially the time period from July to September each

academic year • add share button on website • add images, links and hashtags when posting and tweeting • measure the results every week year around and adjust the content relevant to the current trends !

ORANGE FIZZ

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!FINDINGS !What topics Orange Fizz should put on social media sites !

I used “Google Trends” to search the term “Syracuse University Basketball” and “Syracuse University Football”. Through the “related searches” area, I found additional topics people who look for “Syracuse University Basketball” and “Syracuse University Football” are also interested in. !When I searched ”Syracuse University Basketball” and “Syracuse University Football”, I set the time range from Jan. 2011 to Nov. 2013 to get the recent search trends. I found that top related searches are about the “SU basketball/ football schedule”, ”SU basketball/ football roster” and “Syracuse basketball/football tickets”. In addition, the number of times “SU basketball/ football roster” had been searched experienced a large increase in the both search results, 60% and 40% respectively. From our online survey, I found that the respondents’ favorite types of story are: Player’s profile, Game interview and Game recap. !Based on “Google Trends” and our online survey, Orange Fizz should utilize these topics: “players”, “game interview”, “game recap”, “game schedule” and “game tickets” on both Twitter and Facebook.

!Google Trends search report for “Syracuse University Basketball”, Time range: from Jan. 2011 to Nov. 2013

Source: Google Trends

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Google Trends search report for “Syracuse University Football”, Time range: from Jan. 2011 to Nov. 2013

Source: Google Trends

!!When to post or tweet !1 ) Syracuse University Basketball:

!From the hashtag tracking report for a two week period, I found that every Friday, the number of tweets including #subasketball spikes. Since I only obtained two weeks’ data, my finding might be limited due to the small sample size. However, if I collect more data and the results are the same, then Orange Fizz should post more content about Syracuse University basketball on Friday. !From the Google Trends report, I found that every year from November to next year’s March, the number of times search for “Syracuse University basketball ” increases, reaching its peak in March. Orange Fizz should focus on Syracuse University Basketball from November to March every year and post the topics I suggested in the previous section. !!!!!!!!!!

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!!Hashtag Tracking report for “#SU Basketball”, Time range: 11/13/2013-11/30/2013 Source: Hashtracking.com !!! !!!!!!Google Trends search report for “Syracuse University Basketball”, Time range: 2004-present Source: Google Trends !!

!!!!2 ) Syracuse University Football:

!I used Google Trends to search “Syracuse University Football” and set the time range from the past 90days. I found there is a peak every Saturday. When I set the time range from 2004 to present, I saw that the number of times people search “Syracuse University Football” starts to increase from every July and reach its peak in every September. !I suggested that every Saturday, Orange Fizz should post or tweet content focused on Syracuse University Football, such as “football schedule”, “football player introduction”, “football game interview” and so on. In addition, every year from July to September, people are more likely to look for Syracuse University Football information, therefore Orange Fizz could provide more information about Syracuse University Football when tweeting, especially in September.

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Google Trends search report for “Syracuse University Football”, Time range: from past 90 days Source: Google Trends ! !!!!!Google Trends search report for “Syracuse University Football”, Time range: 2004-present Source: Google Trends !!!!

!In addition, based on our survey, I found that most respondents tend to read sports related news during morning and evening. Therefore, Orange Fizz should tweet and post new content during early morning and late evening. !!How to post and tweet

!1 ) Add Share Buttons In order to generate more traffic and help SEO by using social media tools, web programmer should add “Facebook” and “Twitter” share buttons below every article and on the homepage. In this way, audiences could more easily follow its Facebook and Twitter account and share the Orange Fizz content with more people.

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2 ) Add Hashtags When looking at the tweets by Orange Fizz, I found that Orange Fizz doesn’t use many hashtags. Orange Fizz should start to add hashtags when tweeting. Orange Fizz could consider providing a single hashtag such as #OrangeFizz to speak for Orange Fizz. This could help to create more interaction with its followers. Orange Fizz could use this sentence on its webpage: “tweet your thoughts about Orange Fizz to #OrangeFizz”. Using #OrangeFizz probably won’t help Orange Fizz to generate more follower immediately, but it could help Orange Fizz start building its brand for the long term. In recent research conducted by Cheryl Conner, she finds that hashtags help business to expose its business to new customers. 34% of hashtag users use hashtags to search their favorite topics, and 51% of people who took the survey think that hashtags are helping companies to brand themselves (Conner, 2013). !!In the hashtag tracking report, the top other hashtags are the hashtags most frequently used in conjunction with the hashtag that was being tracking. I find that the one of the top other hashtags is #thanksgivingeve. The time range I set was during Thanksgiving break. Thus, I suggest Orange Fizz should add hashtags relevant to the current event when in tweets. Orange Fizz could also combine other popular hashtags with #OrangeFizz, such as #SUFootball and #SUBasketball, to get more exposure and more re-tweets. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!Screenshot of OrangeFizz’s Twitter Account Source: twitter.com/OrangeFizz

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!! !!!Hashtag Tracking report for “#SU Basketball”, Time range: 11/13/2013-11/30/2013 Source: Hashtracking.com !!!!!!!!!!

3 ) @<famous player>

!The “Most Popular” list shows the most popular tweeter associated with a hashtag. The Most Popular lists calculates the top participants in a hashtag as the sum of two numbers: “hashtagged messages directed @them(@mentions), plus the total number of retweets(RTs) of their content”. From the Hashtag Tracking report, I find that the top two most popular are two basketball players from Shenandoah University, which means the tweets @these two players are the “most popular” among the tweets including #subasketball. This means followers would like to follow basketball player’s tweets about the game and have interaction with basketball players. !I suggested Orange Fizz to @famous player when tweeting and posting. For example, if the player has an extraordinary performance during the game, Orange Fizz could @the player. If the player retweets Orange Fizz’s tweets, it will help Orange Fizz reach more tweeter users who followed the player or who using hashtags to search for related topics. Additionally, Orange Fizz could consider invite a Basketball player or a famous coach to comment and retweet it tweets to get more reach. !Orange Fizz could also help OrangeFizz.com SEO when posts or tweets by adding URL link. From Google Trends and online survey, I already find that people who search “Syracuse University Basketball” would also be interested in players’ information. When Orange Fizz @player because of the player’s performance or some other related information, they could put a URL link in tweets to lead the followers to its own players’ profile webpage if the followers want to learn more about the players’ information.

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!!Hashtag Tracking report for “#SU Basketball”, Time range: 11/13/2013-11/30/2013 Source: Hashtracking.com !!!!!!

!4 ) Add “picture” and “URL”

!In the online survey, we asked the people to think about the last Twitter feed they remember clicking on. The picture link and the article link rank the top two on the list, respectively 44.7% that are much higher than other types of links. Orange Fizz should add high definition picture when tweet. !I also suggest Orange Fizz to add URL links when tweeting or posting Facebook status, since it will be more convenient for people to read the article and generate more traffic to the website. At the same time, it will help the website increase its search engine ranking results because of the increased traffic. !!!!!!!!!

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!5 ) Other recommendations

!Orange Fizz could offer some interaction weekly with its followers by providing some prizes for users’ participation. For example, Orange Fizz could tweet and say in an article to “@two friends and win a SU yoga mat” or they could ask some questions and then say to “tweet your answers to @Orange Fizz to win a SU yoga mat.” The gift should be something that attracts its followers, such as sports related products. In this way, more and more people will get to know Orange Fizz and interact with Orange Fizz and these people would probably follow Orange Fizz in the future. Facebook could do the similar action, such as “share Orange Fizz’s post to win a SU yoga mat.” !In addition, Orange Fizz could start building its “Google+” page. In research conducted by Drew Bowling, he investigated whether social media could help websites improve its organic search engine ranking. The investigation results show that Google+ is the best way to push up a site’s ranking by 14.63%, compared to Facebook (push up 6.9%) and Twitter (push up 2.88%)(Bowling, 2012). !Last, Orange Fizz could use tools, such as Hashtag tracking and Buffer, to monitor its social media weekly year around. Based on the analysis report, Orange Fizz could know what kind of tweets or posts get most clicks and retweets to figure our what topics its follower would most interested in and adjust the content with the current social trend. !!

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!References

Bowling Drew. (2013, May 3). Google+ Promotion May Improve Organic Search Ranking. Webpronews.com. Retrieved from http://www.webpronews.com/google- promotion-may-improve-organic-search-ranking-2012-05 !

Conner Cheryl. (2013, June 22). Why You Need A Hashtag Strategy For Your Business. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/06/22/why-you-need-a-hashtag-strategy-for-your-business/ !!

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Appendix: Infographic of the report

Original image attached in work samples (OrangeFizz infographic.jpg).

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