Blog post 4

 E) Critically evaluate marketing strategies and performance:

Event Marketing and Public Speaking:

Pros: This event produced positive results, people signed up for email updates, they were interested in learning about the event and several of those attending the ULOUK event now follow The Next Generation of Liberia social media accounts. 

Cons: The main event at ULOUK ran over time, resulting in my colleague having less than half of the intended time to introduce the project. Due to the delays I did not video record her speech, which I believe would have been valuable to post on the new social media platforms. 

Video Marketing:

I created an original video content by scheduling an appointment with the secretary to the Ambassador and asked her to record an introduction to the program. I also asked another member of staff to talk about Liberian food and to share some of her favourite recipes. 

Cons: I only managed to record one video, because of the time it took to set up, re-record the video several times. I found that not only it is time consuming to record, set up and edit, but it is also demanding on those who have offered to record the video, as it takes time away from their regular job. Scheduling a time outside of working hours would be ideal, however that would involve staff members giving up their free time and having to keep the Embassy open outside of the usual working hours.  

Pros: The video content adds such depth and is so valuable that the effort was worth the time spent creating it, especially as it is featured on the website and all the other platforms. In the future, video content will be easier to produce I believe, because content will only be posted once a week.

Pros:The real success in video marketing for this project was the large number of views and likes received on a video content, which I created using an original photo of carved Liberian handshake to which I added a video of two men performing the Liberian handshake. Simple editing generated the highest number of views. I believe the photo alone would not have attracted such a large audience.

Social Media:

Pros: I increased my knowledge of video editing, working under pressure, the use of adobe software platforms and photoshop, I also increased my skill in the use of abode software platforms, premier pro, after effects. I increased my knowledge of Instagram stories and the integral use of highlights and the use of story highlights on Instagram pages in order to establish a theme, increased my ability to source innovative material for the purpose of engaging younger audience and audience analytics helped me create content specifically targeted to my target audience. From receiving feedback for my specific posts inspired  me to create more content based informative and insightful post.

Cons: When attempting to post a video in a Landscape format the newly established rules of Instagram profit the posting of over 60 second plus videos without appearing in a vertical REEL format, which essentially disrupts the viewing of the video, enlarging the video and losing the professional quality. Instagram and Facebook enforce a time limit on videos and as content is required to be efficient in a fast paced digital age, this poses limitations on the quality of the content being able to be viewed. 

Website: It has been insightful to employ and learn about specific marketing tactics such as the use of key words and SEO strategy in order to boost traffic and engagement. 

Pros. Hostinger is inexpensive and provides a customisable email domain address, utilising Google Cloud to connect to your new and original email to link inboxes and to ensure sign up page submissions are directly sent to The Next Generation's professional email domain address.

Cons: Hostinger/wordpress.org was difficult to navigate at first due to overwhelming influx of plugins, which required additional fees to employ, such as significant sign up forms. Also, there is not as many themes as would have been desired, also some themes require high knowledge of coding to be able to edit certain themes and home pages, therefore it limited my choices. However, it still has many useful tools, which help with SEO and the boosting of traffic.