Ashley Oleszkowicz Assignment 8:Brand Monitoring

After reading about this week's assignment and what we had to do I was pretty interested because, I have never actually used a tracking website to basically monitor a company. It took me a while to figure out what company or brand I wanted to take my time and focus on, but after sitting and actually thinking long and hard about it I decided on monitoring a company I worked with all through out college for, and that is Mid American Pompon. Many people do not know what pompon is because it is only a northern sport. Pompon has been around in high schools, and middle schools for decades now, and it has recently moved its way up to being a sport that is practiced in many colleges around the states of Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. One day I hope it will spread all over the nation, especially to the west coast someday.

Mid American Pompon not only focuses their time on pompon teams all over the state, but they also work with both boys and girls who are interested in dance and taking classes at their studio, which is located in Farmingtion Hills, MI and of course they work with interested people of all ages who want to increase their strength and fitness. Mid American Pompon is an extremely diverse company that advertises their company and service to many selected targets of people. 

The tools that I will use to monitor my previous place of work will be (www.Trackur.com), Facebook, and their current website (www.pompon.com). Mid American Pompon is a well-known company for those who are interested in their service, and products such as; dance and pom shoes, leotards, t-shirts, hoodies, poms (etc.) The overall word of mouth and clients that they have in the Greater Detroit Area is awesome, especially in the Farmington Hills area. Many keywords that I will focus my time on monitoring is anything involving promotions for the summer months, newest hiries, and upcoming dates for their pompon/dance camps, and competitions. A current employee Jillian Troher, recently tweeted about Mid American having a great deal that is now live on living social;(www.livingsocial.com/deals/43013-kids-dance-workshop-or-4-ballet-classes...). This not only is an awesome deal for those who have been loyal clients to this company, but this deal also brings in many new consumers who have never been to Mid American Pompon. 

I am focusing most of my monitoring on the negatives that I hear about this company. I actually have been in the "inside" of the company for 4 consecutive years, now it's my time to be on the outside. One thing that I have noticed is that they do not have a twitter account, nor do they have a blog. They also rarely ever post any new pictures to their company Facebook page, and who is ever in charge of the Facebook page is never updating any statuses ever. The most recent item that was posted to their page was on June 6th, 2011. Personally, they have been in this since the late 1970's and I feel like they should know who their target market is, and most if not all of them are on social media sites like Facebook constantly. There dance and pompon camps are launching next week, and of course I will be interested in monitoring anything negative I hear about the camps. This will really help the company be more successful in impacting their "brand image" with fixing their mistakes. One interesting thing I learned about them with using my Trackur.com account was that they rarely have anything monthly or weekly being posted about them. On their website the most recent "In The Press" was from 2010; people want to see new releases constantly not old ones from almost a year in a half ago. 

Mid American Pompon has been overall a successful service company, but they do need help in really focusing their company more through many social media sites, and even traditional advertising. This assignment was actually pretty interesting and fun because I got to monitor a company that I used to work for. 

HW LINKS: (Many throughout my post) 

This image shows the many current employees that still are employeed at Mid American Pompon today. When young high school and middle school teams go to summer camp this summer, they will be working one-on-one with these instructors. As you can see, I am pictured near the middle. This picture was taken last Spring 2010 and posted on the website and brochures sent out to the many school districts. I worked for Mid American Pompon for 4 years since 2007. I worked with choreography, was an instructor at the studio in Farmington Hills, and instructed teams every summer for 4 years. People ask why I am not doing it this summer, and that is because 4 years is the limit. I miss it very much but I know that it is time to move on.