MyPizza.com

MyPizza:

I first got introduced to your brand today when looking for work, and stumbled upon your blogger/social media/advertising opportunity. While I am still somewhat unaccustomed with your business, I have spent time today doing research and believe I would be a great fit with this opportunity. I have a keen eye for design, customer experience, and analytics that should certainly fit in line with the job description. In this memo, I will include thoughts, concerns, strategic input, and other points that I hope can convince you to look at me further.

Let me preface by saying I do not have data or research about your business (I LOVE data/stats/etc. and I'm sure your business generates some great data points). I do not know specifics of problems that you are trying to overcome so if I attained more information on this matter then I can be more specific in my thoughts, but I will still make suggestions. For example, I'm not sure if mobile is becoming your focus (I know your iOS app just launched and your Android is coming soon) so if it is a primary focus (which I assume it is) then my strategy for social media would be different then if your focus was in say your website.

As I said, I am new to your brand, but I have been examining your overall service, which includes your website, your new iOS app, and your social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) and believe there is a lot of potential. I know this position is for social media purposes, but your social media value is only as good as the consumer experience you produce. Social media can be a powerful tool, and I feel like a business such as yours can thrive in such an environment, but only if the right tools are implemented. Every second that a consumer spends with your brand must be positive because in this day and age, one (tiny) miscue can be the difference.

I downloaded your iOS app today. Right off the bat, I noticed some glaring mistakes that should be addressed*:

-When entering information on the first page (address, unit, zip), an option for "use current location" should be somewhere. Entering this info is a pain and any way to speed this process should be used.
-There should be a "remember me" checkbox so I don't have to type in my address each time.
-When switching between Delivery, Pick-up, and Show All tabs, there is no change. Why is this? Seems unnecessary.
-Ugly picture/aesthetics of the main page (no offense).
-Adding an extra option to include Twitter handle for following/promotion purposes

*Keep in mind I have not ordered a pizza so I can't go through the whole experience so my critique may be unwarranted.

Anyways, I didn't really mean to get into an in-depth assessment of your product because that can be discussed at a later time.

I think your product is very exciting because there are many possibilities to connect with the customer. As you said in the job description, pizza is a fun topic and I see tons of potential. I am glad you are on board with contests and promotions as I feel that not enough brands utilize this asset within social media.

Polls:
It's too bad Twitter/Facebook don't have polling options because it would make this so much easier. Still, polls should be implemented for data and interaction purposes.

Twitter:
I am a big believer of quality over quantity on Twitter. Too many brands clutter their feeds with what I believe to be unnecessary things. As of right now, you guys have 651 tweets in 4.5 years so I believe you may feel the same way. Ultimately, I think Twitter should be the main focus because it can be the centerpiece of all your marketing efforts.

People don't like unnecessary noise on their Twitter feeds (at least, I don't). When brands have "conversations" on Twitter, it is irrelevant to most peoples feeds it shows up on. Basically, it encourage people to unfollow you as it is annoying and irrelevant to their needs. I think you should stick to have conversations on your Facebook page where it is much less cluttered.

I said earlier that you should include Twitter handles in your app. This setting I believe would encourage sharing if you executed correctly on your apps. People love taking pictures of food so I'm sure theres some kind of situation where you encourage customers to share pictures of food they eat and where they ate from. This could add value to the customer who is not exactly sure what to get/where to get it from. Pictures can be a powerful resource, especially for pizza.

Facebook:
Conversation content. Interact with customers, announce contests and promotions, encourage sharing

Feedback:
Feedback should be implemented somehow. Make a Twitter hashtag where people can complain or put it in the app or something; wherever it is, it is important to see where the product is going wrong.

Contests/Promotions:
Initial ideas include:
-most orders/most money spent in a year
-best uploaded picture (voted on by other customers or social media)

The holidays are coming up which I'm sure is an important time for you guys. Promotion over this time should be essential.

Apps:
-Within each possible restaurant to order from, include user uploaded pictures of their food.
-User-rated recommendations. Think Yelp.

The focus of your apps should be personalization. If you "know" your customer (or as I say, give the illusion that you know them), they will definitely be encouraged to use your product in the future.

Real-Time Marketing Opportunities:
I can't really think of any specific real time marketing opportunities right now, but they are there. RTM is becoming more and more relevant and your product definitely has potential to use this tactic.

Data Points/Analytics:
There are potentially countless data points you can gather from your app. I can go in-depth on this later if needed, but data should be a focal point in strategy.

Instagram:
Almost forgot this. Maybe run promotions/contests through here as I said earlier people love posting pictures of their food. Has potential to be a focus point in marketing related activities.


Honestly, I could go on and on with this. But as I said earlier, I lack information and metrics which would be useful in my strategy. These are only some of the things I came up with on my first day of analyzing your brand. Your product has great potential in this Digital Age and I believe I can help it surge ahead of competitors and ultimately make your digital footprint larger.

Tyler Yearian
@KizmitSolutions

My Skills & Value

I strongly believe my skills line up perfectly for the 21st century. The worst part (from a job hunting perspective) is how to display my attributes to potential employers. As a result, I will use this blog to show my thought processes, creativity, and critical thinking/data analysis abilities.

As I said in my intro, numbers/data analytics is ultimately my strong suit. I absolutely love looking at numbers and interpreting them, and cannot get enough data. In a perfect world, I could work with the largest brands to look at their data, solve problems, and ultimately create new solutions that provide value to the brand. 

One job description I have been pursuing is a data scientist. Relatively new, this job has plenty of opportunity in the upcoming world. Unfortunately, one of the largest requirements, programming experience, is one I do not have. BUT, I have been told that it is not a deal breaker if I do not have this experience. So what do I have to offer? This article (http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/predicted-to-perform-how-to-hire-analytic-talent/) explains it well. Specifically, 

• They have a cognitive “attitude” and will search for deeper knowledge about everything.
• They are driven to be creative and will want to create not only solutions, but also elegant solutions.
• They have a strong desire to “do things the right way,” and will encourage others to do the same.
• They have an extremely high sense of quality, standards, and detail orientation, often evaluating others by these same traits.
• They tend to be somewhat restrained and reticent in showing emotions, and may be less verbal at team or organizational meetings unless asked for input or if the topic is one of high importance from their perspective.
• They may take calculated, educated risks — only after a thoughtful analysis of facts, data, and potential outcomes. They persuade others on the team by careful attention to detail, and through facts, data, and logic, not emotion.

This is exactly the type of characteristics employers are looking for, and exactly the type of strengths I possess. Since I don’t have this programming experience that is so prevalent in data science job requirements, I need to (and can) make it up in other areas. I feel like one of the main reasons I haven’t been looked at in the data science field is because the recruiters do not know how to extract raw talents like the ones listed above and instead are focusing on established credentials (ie programming languages) which is fundamentally wrong. One blog post I will go in depth on is the new age of recruiting (i.e. not only sending in resumes like so many companies do).

Intro

My name is Tyler Yearian and this will the blog of my personal brand, Kizmit Solutions.

Kizmit is my cat: she is a a gorgeous tuxedo cat and is the face of my brand. I chose Kizmit as the depiction of my brand because she represents something that is very important to me: trust. She is an incredibly shy cat and you will only see her if she trusts you.

This trust goes hand-in-hand with my beliefs and ultimately my strategy in the business world. My mission is creative solutions for all products, brands, and services, but my vision is to create a brand that the consumer can trust to bring superior ideas and designs to all of the worlds largest brands, and ultimately create value-added activities to the workplace. Basically, when someone sees the logo of my cat (coming soon), they will automatically associate it with a superior activity within a brand. I have a knack for being able to objectively critique anything I experience, or you could just say it is hard to impress me and am always thinking about something for what it should be rather than what it is. Consider me the ultimate 21st century consumer :P.

The purpose of this blog is to share and portray my ideas for the world to see. I will provide examples, links, and other things that will support my arguments and thoughts into which people who read this can express their thoughts and criticisms. I am hoping this blog can gain traction and I will be able to work with these brands and lead the way in the 21st century.

People are now more connected than ever. With this connection brings opportunity. I believe all types of industries can and will use this connectedness to their advantage. Within this blog, I will attempt to dissect all types of companies from all types of industries; list their strengths and weaknesses, as well as opportunities within their business. One such example that I will go into much deeper detail later is the advertising industry. This is just one of many that is going under radical change and NEEDS someone like me to implement ideas that will be game-changers.

ABOUT ME:

I am 22 years old and just graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Finance. While finance is a great degree to possess and the knowledge I learned will help me tremendously down the road, I look at the world around me and see so much opportunity elsewhere that I feel that I cannot get a traditional job and work my way up like my colleagues are doing. I have always prided myself for my creativity and hope to find work where I can flourish with these creative ideas. 

Along with creativity, I have always been a numbers guy. Basically, I’m a data junkie. I am always looking for stats and information beyond what is given to me, and it frustrates me to no end when I cannot get such numbers to satisfy my number cravings. I never really knew what I wanted to do until I heard the term “data scientist”. Being able to examine different companies data and solve problems through the use of their data is appealing to me. So appealing, in fact, that I think my value in such a category is limitless. Seriously. My love for the numbers combined with my creativity is a definite recipe for success. With all of the data that is being stored these days, there is gold waiting to be mined, and I want to be that miner.