I'm the little guy...A sapling in the worlds largest rainforest, striving for light in the shadows of the forest above...I have few friends and even fewer followers, nobody knows that I exist, but I know if people could just see me, they would see the difference I want to make...

I can't see the wood for the Amazon trees...

But then a small ray of sunshine, a realisation that this big dark forest, with it's ever extending branches rushing for the sun, can only reach so far, and from up there, they lose sight of what's happening down here...

My roots are starting to spread, my pollen's starting to blow in the breeze and connect with others… I know that by sharing my small ray of sun with my neighbours, we can grow together and that precious ray of sunshine gets ever so slightly bigger as we rise up together. The more we share the sunshine, the stronger our roots become and our branches intertwine as we start to grow as one.

We've not taken over the rainforest, that's not the plan (and it's way too big!), but by working together we all get enough sunlight to grow together and our neck of the woods is a much nicer place to be, full of light and continual growth…

My vision is of a world where everyone helps everyone else and where every transaction has a positive reaction, where the book you buy from me helps someone else learn to read, the CD you purchase provides a wall of sound to someone for the first time and that latest comedy you ordered puts a smile on the face of a stranger for the first time.

Please come and enjoy the sunshine with me!

The Problem;

Our business has grown solely through sales of our products on Ebay, we have no brand equity outside of eBay and promoting the positive feedback we have on eBay gives the incorrect impression on the quality of our service, business and product.

So essentially we're we 3 year old company, starting our brand awareness from scratch!

The Objective;

To take those customers that are currently and happily purchasing from us via eBay over to our own website www.oodals.com.au
Building a successfully following through social media who have a clear understanding of our brand, mission and values and want to purchase from us because of this understanding.

The Incentive;

Pricing will remain competitive if not better to the price of an identical item on eBay, however 10% of the sale will donated to Australian Literacy charities.

We can do this as we're a UK company company and therefore exempt from paying the 10% GST, Australian sales tax.

This allows us to act in a socially responsible manner whilst keeping pricing competitive with the market and ensuring that Australian competitors can remain operational thus reducing any negative impact such as loss of jobs, Taxes and choice in the very market that supporting our business.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PLAN

FACEBOOK;

The focus of our posts on Facebook is to encourage likes and shares. Being a bookseller (among other things!) the world is our oyster when it comes to quotes/statements etc.

We want to give people the opportunity to use our Facebook posts to promote their own brand and identify of who they are and what they like.

Books by there very nature allow people to do this. It's why most home have a book shelf. A book shelf isn';t there to store the book you've already read so you can go back and read it again sometime. It's to say to people look at me, I'm well read and look at these great books I've read - how intellectual am I, how liberal I am, what a great sense of humour I have, look how much I love sports.

We want to tap into this insatiable need as humans we have to ensure people understand who we are and what we're about.

The first way in which we've attempted to do this is to allow people to show others that they simply love to read. We're doing this by posting statements in the form of pictures that states exactly that - an example of which is below and is very generic.

Once we have a larger following on Facebook , it will allow us the opportunity to promote more specific genres to allow people to identify themselves in a more in depth manner.

We'll also give people the opportunity to show that they care about the world around them and that they value the importance of literacy which will help enforce and identify us as being a socially responsible and aware brand.

Some early examples of the quotes and pictures (or cards as we've been calling them) we've used are shown below.

What we've found is that the quotes geared towards being a book lover/avid reader garnered a larger amount of shares than a popular inspirational quote from a popular book.

An Example of a popular inspirational quote;

Jab Jab Jabbing to Knockout Amazon - image 1 - student project

An Example of a Quote directed to book lovers/avid readers;

Jab Jab Jabbing to Knockout Amazon - image 2 - student project

The Inspirational quote had a reach of 393 people, 5 shares and no comments.

The Book Lovers quote had a reach of 921 people, 9 shares and 2 comments.

We placed some text with the book lovers quote asking "don't you agree?" and the comments we received were in direct response to this question.

We'll trial not asking the question along side and see what, if any, difference this makes. We're concerned that by placing the "don't you agree" we're asking to customer to respond which may seem over pushy when this content is simply meant to be a jab.

We've used fonts that identify the brand as homely, literate and creative and ensured we keep the text to a minimum to grab the attention of the scrolling world.

We've also included our logo in the hope that this intrigues people and encourages them to take a look at our Facebook page.

As our key message is how "your transaction will have a positive reaction" we will reiterate this when we're promoting a call to action, or hitting them with the right hook, we will ask them to do something good, to be amazing today, to buy from us rather than the competition to allow us to do good.

Using the information provided to us via Facebook and through our own testing we will always look to present our Facebook cards at the most opportune time. Currently this is between 7-9pm on a Sunday, however once our demographic moves away from those people that follow simply because they're friends this may change.

Gregg Lander

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