IBO-+Amway's+Derrick+Caldwell


 * Rodneya Ross**
 * Jakita Criswell- Personal page but I post what we did as a group**
 * Ashley Banks**
 * Independent Business Owner, Amway Corp.**
 * Twitter: @AmwayDerrickC**
 * Facebook:** []
 * Website: www.amway.com/derrickc**
 * LinkedIn:** []


 * This week: Still wating for you guys to do something, anything, to get this project going. Your grade is already going to take a big hit.**


 * Last week: Hi, you say 'stay tuned' and I have been. This is a very disappointing effort (you were supposed to write 250 words) and from this I'm not confident Derrick will benefit from your lackadaisical** **involvement. You should have two week's efforts explained here and have a detailed mind map outlining your strategy for his business. Very disappointing. -Karl**

Together, we decided to help out a new small business owner become successful. We chose Derrick Caldwell, a 22-year-old IBO of Amway Corp. Amway Corp. is a network marketing company that helps people start a business through selling products online. There have been plenty speculations about the actual success of IBO's in this particular company and company's like it. Therefore, our goal is to introduce Derrick to online marketing strategies to help drive customers to his website.

__**Derrick's Goal**__ The new IBO would like to create more customer volume on his website. He has support from his family, but understands that in order to be successful, he needs to broaden his audience. However, he is not sure how to do that effectively.

__**Current Marketing Strategies**__ Derrick does have a Twitter page dedicated to his business. However, he is not consistent with marketing. He does not have a Facebook page strictly for his business, but he has a link of the website on his personal Facebook page. It is very hard to find.

__**Our Task**__ Our Task is to help Derrick with managing is Twitter Page and create a Facebook page for his business only. Currently, he has 254 followers to date and 67 Tweets. On his website http://www.amway.com/derrickcaldwell, he has 7 customers.

We will be coming up with some ways to help build his confidence and his customer volume. Stay Tuned! And feel free to check out products. It's more than shopping online, it's household products, gifts, food, etc. Save gas, time, and money...

__**Week 2**__ As a group we met up in order to plan out strategies to help Derrick's business. Since Derrick already had a website given to him by the company, the idea was to promote his products on the website to help build his business. We created a mind map to lay out the expectations of each social media site we wanted to create: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

**__Week 3__** We suggested to Derrick that tweeting consistently about his business would help improve awareness of the products he is trying to sale. Using hashtags (#) in his tweets would ensure consistency. However, he was not that consistent in tweeting. Therefore, from time to time each group member would access his Twitter account and tweet for him. Since his profile picture on Twitter was not professional, we also suggested that he upload a more professional photo. Meanwhile, we continued in constructing the Facebook page, making each one of the group members admins. Again, we made status, uploaded profile pictures, and post links to Derrick's website. Checking his website every so often, we did notice an increase in the number of people who visited the site. However, the number of people who became customers stayed the same. The lack of business Derrick was receiving began to take a toll on him continuing his business. He was losing interest. The idea we came up with was for him to host a demonstration of his products with family and friends, in hopes that he gain more customers and motivation. __**Week 4**__ Because Derrick's website was constructed by the company, there was nothing we could do help improve it. After visiting the website to retrieve promotions, discounts and new items to tweet about, there was nothing new about the website weekly. It was quite hard to navigate. As a group, we felt that the website is not attention grabbing enough to drive clients to actually take the time out to explore the site. We were starting to feel like Derrick's position was more of a sales representative for a company, instead of an actual "business owner". He really had limited control over products, if any. Ultimately, as a team, trying to help build customer volume through social media marketing there was little to work with. The meetings with Derrick began to become redundant. Though, we did take time out to update Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, we were the only ones contributing. Derrick sort of gave up. Especially, since his "business partner" stopped contacting him early on. __**Week 5**__ Again, as a group we met to do an assessment of our efforts in marketing Derrick Caldwell. As stated in other week updates, there was nothing left for us to do besides Tweet, ask Derrick to update Facebook status and make more connections via LinkedIn. To try to write remaining update information would be to no use. After a few weeks, things began to become boring and redundant. Working with a small business or new and fresh "Independent Business Owner" was definitely hard. Rodneya, Ashley and I would have definitely had more work to do if we had to design a website or market for a brand that just needed help with social media. This project was much harder for us because of the type of business. I think we all realized before you can market a business or a brand, the person your are helping need to be truly driven to promote their product. For Derrick, the only way to interact with products were to buy them. Our job was to help the client with marketing via social media. It was very frustrating at times for all of us, including Derrick. After a while, he felt discouraged from continuing Amway. It's bittersweet since knowing that he was excited and motivated to find ways to promote his "business". Eventually, he learned that what he was told the "business" was, was not the "business" at all. The "business" was to get other people to join what he joined. Derrick says that's not what he was led to believe. It was definitely a learning experience for Rodneya, Ashley, Derrick and I. However, it was a long, somewhat disappointing journey. While we did promote and offer strategies, things for Derrick was not working out.