To do an efficient project, a team must have plans, organization and everyone must be focused at all times! That's why, at CZ^2 we always follow this value and do things "Step by Step"!
So, the first step that we took was to identify existing problems with the restaurant through the conversations with the CEO of the restaurant.
Problems we have identified (Who):
- Youths nowadays do not know much about Spring Court Restaurant because of the generation they are in. Youths are also not very interested or know a lot about traditional food as they think it is boring and always the same of presentation.
Then, we went to look for the CEO again and asked for some information about Spring Court that he would like us to present and emphasize.
Results:
- Spring Court is a Family Restaurant! :D
- Spring Court is an authentic Singaporean-Cantonese restaurant! :D
So, we have done enough research to get our engines moving! :D Next, understanding the needs of the restaurant and what we can do to help them.
Critical Thinking:
- Spring Court would like us to promote that it is a Family Restaurant and an authentic Singaporean-Cantonese restaurant.
- Thus, we would need to get this message to the public in a clear and "Short and sweet" way.
How should we promote it to the youths?
- Youths are generally more interested in videos, blogs, animations, social medias, sound and video effects etc.
- We should not use too much text in the blog and make it as interesting and animated as possible, using a creative, innovative and effective way to tell our message to the youths.
- We need to maintain the restaurant's reputation at all times when doing the project!
What platforms and why should we use to promote it to the youths?
- Facebook
- Twitter
They all like socialising on Facebook and Facebook has lots and lots of users. We will have a better chance and get a better outreach to the public using these platforms! People also like to use twitter for "Short and sweet" messages! :D
- Blogs
Of course! :D Blogs is where we can put all the information we want in a organised and effective manner.
- Google Docs
Google presentation, google maps, google earth etc. are all very useful techniques to enhance our blogs by its wonderful and amazing graphics, useful for getting the "Wow" effect to visitors of our blog.
- Videos etc.
Youths just like videos so much! :D
What innovative and creative ideas should we use to make it pop or stand out from other blogs?
Other than the original and boring dock at the top of the blog which allows users to see all the subheadings and thus allowing them to click on each subheading and see the contents, our group did something else.
Why? Because the original dock is at the top and there is a trend where users does not scroll down and see all the content of that subheading(Research). It is also boring which makes it look like all the other "borderline" blogs.
So? We have decided to place the "Dock" at the end of each page where users will scroll down and see all its content. We have used Google Presentation to make a "Square dock" which users can click on it to go to consecutive pages. It is also made in an attractive and creative manner.
Other than the original blogger templates, which allows users to simply choose a template, easy and quick process, and visitors of the blog would be able to see it in the background. Our group decided to do something else.
Why? Because the templates blogger gives to us does not seems relevant to the information we are presenting to the visitors of the blog. We wanted backgrounds that fits with the things we are trying to bring across our audience. The templates also does not look very innovative, creative and cannot stand out from other blog.
So? We made our own custom template, featuring the foods that Spring Court offers at the main page of our official blog. This is much more creative and relevant to the things we are telling our visitors!
As we have mentioned earlier on, we thus used videos.
Other than the original "Welcome to our blog! :D" that most blogs do, which gives visitors a borderline welcome, and maybe because of that "explosion" of all the content of the blog all in one straight line downward, drives visitors out of the blog in less than a minute (Research). Our group decided to do something else.
Why? Because we do not want that "explosion" of all the content of the blog all in one straight line downward (It always happens), which drives visitors out of the blog in less than a minute. We want to have a high level of engagement of our audience and thus allowing them to find interest in our blogs and they will read on.
So? We made an atmosphere of suspense and "Wow" in our intro video, which all visitors will see upon accessing the URL we gave them. This is creative and innovative, making visitors gain interest in our blogs!
What innovative and creative ideas should we use to make it pop or stand out from other Facebook and twitter groups?
We have our Video of the day, fun fact of the day, which makes our Facebook and twitter group stand out as we did not see any other groups doing that in their Facebook and twitter groups.
We also have a discussion page, facilitating group discussions on the food that Spring Court sells along with some other discussions.
We also have a lot of photos uploaded, letting our visitors see the fun we had at Spring Court Restaurant.
We also update our visitors daily about our progress, ensuring they know what we are doing, be interested in our work (They were) and also visit our group frequently to get newest updates.
We update them about how well our group is doing, example, Hey Guys! We have reach 100 likes! Thank you for your continuous support! We are looking forward to receiving 150 likes! :D. This gives them a sense of belonging to the group, along with some sense of achievement.
We also used bit.ly to shorten our URLs for visitors to easily click on a shorter, easier and "aesthetically pleasing" to remember link, making things more efficient.
We constantly tell visitors to inform all their friends, so that they will tell their friends to like our page which creates a "domino" effect (It did). We also tell them that they can invite people from overseas, simply by telling them how we did it.
From the above, we invited people from overseas, from Japan and USA, to join our group and we succeeded getting quite a big amount of people liking our page from overseas. We simply told them, in a entertainment Facebook page and blog, Would you like to visit Singapore someday? Why not make your trip more interesting and fun by learning more about Singapore's pure tradition? Come to Spring Court, 81 years of history, Singapore's Authentic Singaporean-Cantonese Restaurant located beside Chinatown MRT train station. This made our page unique as we also promoted our brand overseas!
How to make our page recognized by popular search engines to ensure large traffic flow to our blogs and pages?
We also pinged our blogs and pages by using pinging services, FeedShark, Ping-o-matic and Pingoat.
All the above are like most borderline advertisement blogs "I am good! I am better". This advertisement technique as we have learned in the Social media Workshop is just Pushing, pushing all the information into the visitors minds and were techniques used long ago. Our group decided not to do that.
Our group, went to Spring Court Restaurant, and gathered customer reviews on the food, services, etc. We also asked them if they would recommend it to their friends. This advertisement technique, when uploaded to the web, then becomes pulling, pulling, all the visitors attraction and interest towards our brand!
Lastly, one important step to take when doing a business is to know clearly the strengths and weaknesses of both us and our competitors.
Then, we obviously need to find a technique to counter our weaknesses and make use of our strengths to be a step ahead of our competitors. So, our group have found out that, in this competition, the main focus is online platforms. But, our group also think we should not 100% focus ourselves on the online platforms as this would not make us pop or stand out from other groups and thus fall into the borderline category. Thus, our group did something else.
Our group started to focus on offline platforms as a form of advertisement. Thus, we brainstormed of a list of things we could do offline and decided on the things to do with the criteria of cost-effective and how time consuming it was. We decided to go to Spring Court to get surveys done as mention above, promote to the customers there by giving out pamphlets about our groups general information including the URLs of our blogs, Facebook and twitter page.
Yep, that's the careful, precise, and critically thought Steps we have taken :D
☺LIKE our Facebook Page: http://on.fb.me/apUfVp
☺Link back to Our Welcoming Video: http://bit.ly/bktso0
☺Check out our Personal Blog: http://journeytosuccessczz.blogspot.com/
Link to YEA blog: http://www.yea.sg
Link to YEA facebook page: www.facebook.com/YouthEnterpriseAcademy
