SOSTAC Analysis of Al Jazeera America Company - Report Example

SOSTAC Analysis of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) Company Insert (s) SOSTAC Analysis of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) Company Situational Analysis Al Jazeera America (AJAM) is a US based cable and satellite television news network subsidiary of the Qatar based Al Jazeera Media Network. Launched in August 2013, the well bankrolled television channel directly competes with a number of American cable/Satellite television providers such as CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and HLN. AJAM particularly marks the second entry of Al Jazeera into the United States television market after the company launched beIN Sport in the year 2012. Finally, although the channel is headquartered in Manhattan center, New York, it has numerous studios and news bureaus across the United States. SWOT analysis A SWOT analysis is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats involved in a particular business venture (Hill and Westbrook, 2007, p.34). In the case of an existing business like Al Jazeera America (AJAM), SWOT analysis would be particularly critical in the strategy formulation as it will provide the information needed to match the capabilities and resources of a firm to the competitive environment in which it is operating in. Strengths One of the major strengths of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) is that the organization is heavily financed and bank rolled by the government of the Oil reach country of Qatar. As a result, the channel has been able to hire some of the best media personalities as well as run news with less long commercials as compared to its competitors. In addition, the purchase of Current TV allowed AJAM to inherit its millions of potential household audiences. Another possible strength of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) is that its mother company, Al Jazeera is well established in the Middle East as it has the largest viewer base among its competitors in the region. Besides, Al Jazeera is praised for its consistent history of featuring stories from all over the world. Finally, Al Jazeera is quality oriented and this is its main focus, which they demonstrate by a distinctive inspective reporting approach. This unique way of approaching stories is what contributed to the success of Al Jazeera in other parts of the world as it offers a unique selling proposition differentiation point for the company. Finally, the other important strengths of the company include skilled and experienced workforce and existing distribution network. Weaknesses Despite the company’s numerous strengths, it has a few weaknesses that may ultimately impact on its attempts to capture American audience. Firstly, many people are currently not aware that it is available in the market. On the other hand, Al Jazeera’s perceived image of being Anti-American is another potential weakness. According to Alexa.com (2015), the number of visitors and engagements on Aljazeeera.com, the official website of Al Jazeera America has been decreasing as compared to its market rivals such as CNN. This may be attributed to the restrictions on the cable distribution as well as the company’s perceived anti-Americanism. Opportunities One of the potential opportunities for the company is that in the past couple of decades Middle East is the part of the world that is making headlines. Additionally, through monitoring reviews feedback on twitter and Facebook, as well as on news channel websites in the U.S. as Fox and CNN I concluded that the American audience is accusing them of being bias and not showing the full story (Powers, 2012). Lastly, Al Jazeera has an opportunity of delivering the message of the other clusters that their voice is ignored. Threats Some of the potential threats to the success of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) in America include the rising costs of operations, as well as competition from the existing satellite/cable news channels such as CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and HLN among others. Objectives Based on the above situation analysis, it is evident that there is a gap between the desired state and the current situation. In order to overcome this diagnosed gap, clear objectives are needed to guide the action plan. Thus, we will be aiming to increase the traffic to Al Jazeera’s website by 30% within Twelve months. On the other hand, since there is a lack of awareness, the second objective is to boost awareness by 45% within twelve months. The third objective is to increase engagement on the website by 40% within Twelve months as that’s implied mainly from the earlier highlighted issue that the rate of viewers stay on the website is decreasing among other reasons from the situational analysis. The campaign is scheduled to take place between September 1, 2015 and August 31, 2016. Generally, this particularly means that it will start two months before the election periods in America which is likely to be a good opportunity to show AJAM’s propositions. Strategy In order to achieve the objectives stated at the previous section and taking into account the OVP of AJAM, the following strategies have been chosen to direct our efforts. First and foremost, , we will be focusing on “search engine optimization” in order to increase awareness mainly by increasing Al Jazeera’s website organic visibility whenever a matter that’s related to it has been searched. According to Aljeezira.com (2014), AJAM’s target audience is everyone who wants to know national and international news. The AJAM VP is that they deliver people-centered, impartial, full-story news. The OVP on AJAM website is primarily to keep the audience updated and knowledgeable by providing these stories and making them accessible from anywhere. This is derived from the threats AJAM faces in America as it is placed on higher paid packages which leads to a limited audience reach, so the Website was introduced as another distribution channel. In addition, SEO should lead to our objective of increasing traffic to Al Jazeera’s website as well. As shown by study Beel and Wilde (2010) this method of advertising has proven to be effective in increasing research attempts about the advertised subject, enhanced recall rate and boosted awareness of the brand. Considering this makes it a suitable strategy for increasing awareness and driving more traffic to Al-Jazeera’s website. On the other hand, content co-creation (UGC) and news-live streaming content strategies will be used to increase engagement. As for the UGC, it is now witnessed that people are constantly generating new content with all the social media trends and platforms. According to a study Ipsos (2014), User Generated Content is 50% further trusted by people than the content created by institutes. This will ultimately create associations in the mind of the consumer that AJAM gives a stage for people to reach the world. Generally, news-livestreaming content strategy is critical in the case of AJAM mainly to overcome the obstacle it is facing of being listed on higher paid TV packages as mentioned in the SWOT analysis part; which leads to a limited audience reach. Moreover, it is now more challenging to keep up to the consumer’s demand; since with the growing Internet capabilities people are now consuming news on the go; as podcasts, live-streaming, blogs from wherever the consumer is. According to Van and Merwe (2002), news live-streaming can significantly enable a news media company like Aljazeera America to capture a significant online market share. Tactics This part is to feature the details of the strategies that are going to be used to achieve the three above-mentioned objectives. As mentioned earlier, the primary aim of this project is to increase brand awareness and traffic building through “search engine optimization” (SEO) and “online displayed ads”. Firstly, SEO is mainly about managing some factors to affect the ranking of a website on a search engine. To improve AJAM ranking position on search engines it will first conduct a “key phrase analysis” in which AJAM will find the popular key phrases via Google Keyword Tool. Then experts will assess how the company is currently performing for these critical phrases via http://bit.ly/smartranking. Afterwards, AJAM can set its goal and identify phrases that have a huge prospective if improved, so it will select the key-phrases it wants to be visible for. Towards further SEO and with the “Key phrase Analysis” as a departure base, AJAM will focus on utilizing the four common factors that affect the search engines results as listed in. First, on-page optimization, where AJAM will assess its own website in terms of the frequency a critical phrase appears in it, the phrases associated to the visual content on its website and its pages Meta data as it plays a critical role in defining the website search position. Moreover, AJAM will look at off-site optimization because the material in the pages that are linking to AJAM’s website controls its place in the search engine’s results list too. Although companies have little control on this, AJAM will act proactively and influence it. Here AJAM will focus on the content quality and quantity they are providing with a goal of making it appealing to the users so that would encourage sharing and participating. A content co-creation strategy that will be introduced later in the plan supports AJAM’s off-site optimization (Beel and Wilde, 2010). Furthermore, AJAM will work on its internal link structure. It will first assess the links on its website via Google Webmaster Tool. Then it will further work on increasing the hyperlinks leading to the page it wants to advance its ranking position. The fourth factor is the user behavior signals. Here also the user engagement level has a critical effect. To affect this AJAM will work to make the user stay longer on its website, bookmark pages and share more. This as well will be enhanced by the content co-creation initiative that is mentioned later in the plan. AJAM will invest in reaching the audience through placing advertisements on the Internet. Online Display Ads had proved usefulness and effectiveness in both raising awareness and generating a response (Moe, 2013). These ads will carry a message of AJAM online value proposition besides focusing on AJAM’s unique approach of dealing with the news; as it is objective, people-centered and showing the full story. Likewise, a link with a call to action will appear in the ad like ‘know more, visit Al Jazeera America website’. These Online Ads will be placed using two placement types as it is suggested by a study conducted by ComScore that the use of more than a placement type improves the effectiveness of the campaign. One type is “Contextual Targeting” which is going to target websites with related content as Newspapers web pages. The other Ads placement type is “Retargeting”, as per the ComScore study this technique centered on people who has landed on the AJAM website before. “Retargeting” will be used to overcome the issue of declining repeated visits to the AJAM website as it was shown in the ComScore study that it had a great impact on increasing website visits and brand search attempts. After driving people to the website, we aim to make it engaging. While it is all about the content in news related websites – or else it isn’t a news website- firstly and as we previously mentioned the benefits of it, we will focus on UGC. Still, how are we going to encourage people to share content with AJAM? People have a need for recognition from other parties in the community, thus by sharing their content a brand is boosting engagement and encouraging people to continue sharing. Plus, AJAM already has established social accounts on Twitter and Facebook where they will announce about the initiative under the hashtag #BeTheReporter. A link will be shared on all its social media accounts and AJAM bio; the link will lead to a page on AJAM website where people can easily share their stories with AJAM, videos or any type of news. As soon as this initiative starts, an automatic informative message will start popping-up when someone lands on any page of the web site with a brief description of the initiative and a ‘learn more’ link to lead to the initiative’s page. At last, we come to the news live-streaming content strategy. Mainly to achieve the engagement objective stated in the beginning, which in its turn will positively impact the time users spend on the website. As it was found by using (alexa.com) that the time is in decline and users spend more time on rival’s websites. So, As a First step, AJAM will need to decide what to live stream. This will be decided using a poll that will be impeded in the first page to measure people’s preferences. Besides, AJAM can analyze the watching rate for each show. After that, a page should be created on the website for the live streaming and launch it. AJAM will need to announce it using a banner placed on web site’s front-page and create a distinctive tap that they can be titled ‘AJAM Live’. It should be announced on AJAM social accounts as well. By skimming through the comments and mentions of AJAM on social media (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) I came across many welcoming mentions and re-tweets from when AJAM launched. Then, many comments followed as well, but this time people were calling AJAM to find other means to be reachable, as many TV cables are not listing it (Moe, 2013). Also, people were asking for real content. Therefore, this live streaming is to cater to these wants. After the streaming is done, it will be filed and categorized on the web site to form a ‘visuals library’ for people to get to it whenever they need. Just like all the content on the web site this will be injected with the social media share bottoms, email, and comment space, to serve the SEO and traffic building. Actions There are a number of basic skills and related personnel that the proposed marketing campaign will require. Firstly, a professional SEO company will be contracted to analyze and improve our situation as planned. This company will be working closely with AJAM IT and Marketing departments to ensure consistency. A budget will be allocated to purchase online ad spots. Besides, the marketing and corporate communication departments will be working on delivering the ad designs and get approvals on them in 1 months. AJAM will outsource the designing of the live-stream page to the company that designed its website. They are expected to deliver it in 2 months after testing it. Furthermore, AJAM will designate two of its corporate communications department to handle the comments and mentions it receives on its website and social media as to foster the content co-creation and communication. Although the budget is not an obstacle for AJAM as the founders are extensively supporting it, yet a budgeting allocation will be planned according to estimations and quotations to ensure the best project planning. Control In order to judge and determine if the project to enhance the online presence of AJAM is on the right track towards its objectives, a number of controls will be put in place to consistently measure the work they and make sure tactics are working or take an action to put things on the right place. First, AJAM will measure the awareness level by using surveys. This will be conducted every 4 months as well as a one time before the campaign starts to know where they are standing. If improvements didn’t happen then an analysis of the ads will happen to decide on what’s to change. Furthermore, ‘SEOMoz’ toolset will be used every 4 months to monitor our SEO position and take further actions where needed. Engagement is the second objective to be measured. ‘Google Analytics’ will be used to generate reports every 3 months to see how customers spend their time on the website. Besides, an analysis and monitor of the shares, likes and comments will be generated in a report to measure any changes. If the required improvement didn’t occur, then additional interaction and personalization criteria will be added to the website design. References Alexa.com. 2015. How popular is aljazeera.com? Available at Beel, J.,Wilde, E. (2010). Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO): Optimizing Scholarly Literature for Google Scholar and Co. Journal of Scholarly Publishing. pp. 176–190. Forman, G.2003. Extensive empirical study of feature selection metrics for text classification. 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