Analyzing Sweetwater

I wanted to take a look at Sweetwater.com, my musical instrument and equipment dealer of choice for probably more than 20 years now. 

The top of the website contains a large repeating video, which shows a guitar technician setting up and putting strings on a guitar, under the text "You Deserve a Great Guitar" which I happen to agree with, even if my budget does not.  

 

Under this, there are sections for different categories of items they sell:

 

Below that there's a section called "hottest gear" for new items, another section for best selling guitars and exclusive guitars, than an ad for an exclusive effects device ... then another section called "trending gear" then there's more and more featured instruments and deals, then eventually you get to an ad for financing, an ad for the "gear exchange" which lists used equipment ... then more "hot deals," then a handful of articles on gear and recording techniques, then a link to their job openings, then upcoming events that they're hosting at their one in-person campus in Indiana ... then FINALLY the bottom of the page, which is essentially a list of links to other destinations within the website.  

 

They are active on Facebook, mostly sharing photos of instruments, but also featuring videos of performances recorded in their in-person studio. Their YouTube page features in-depth reviews of bestselling gear and interviews with artists. Their Instagram and TikTok pages are similar to each other, featuring short videos of content related to their products and clips of performances at their studio - along with some funny musician-related memes. And they haven't posted on X (formerly Twitter) since August of last year, indicating that they - like many, many others including me - have left the platform since it changed ownership. (It's very small, but that earns them points in my book.) 

The rhetoric they use is that of an expert in their field who loves what they do. Their prices and deals are featured, but not as prominent as content that emphasizes their product expertise, their joy in making music, and their standing within the field, also being home to a well-known recording studio. Their rhetoric is purposive (Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, et al. 2014) to sell you products not just by virtue of price, but by virtue of their other qualities. An example is that the video they show at the very top of their homepage shows technicians working on guitars, not someone playing one. 

One improvement they could make would be to feature some of the content they have on their social media pages on their main website page. You can find some of it if you scroll way down on their website, but their interesting gear breakdowns and reviews and interviews are mostly found on social media. They also don't have a blog for written materials like step-by-step guides for guitar repair, for example. Not all content is best-suited for video, even longer-form like YouTube. I think this would further cement their reputation as a go-to resource.

 --- 

Works Cited: 

Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, et al. The Rhetorical Act: Thinking, Speaking and Writing Critically. 5th ed., Cengage Learning, 2014. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Social Networking: Benefits and Drawbacks

I thought it was interesting that this week's questions referred to "social networking" as opposed to "social media," which really made me think about the two different but parallel roles that these platforms play in our lives. I'll be totally honest, I typically refer to these platforms as social media, but I think this is because I tend to use these sites as providers of content, as opposed to ways to connect with others. I'm more of a consumer than a networker. :)  The exception for me personally is Reddit, which by design (Gutman-Wei) has an extra layer of anonymity and privacy to it, in that I'm not communicating with people I know in real life, nor am I using my real name. This gives me a lot of freedom to connect with others on topics I'm not comfortable talking about as myself. (Even though this blog is technically public, it's unlikely that any future employers will search for me here, so I'm okay talking about it here too ... I...
Read more

Hello from Minnesota!

Image
Okay, I'm not actually "from from" here, but I moved here in March with my family, just outside Minneapolis. And honestly right now with everything going on in my (relative) backyard it's hard to imagine being in a worse mindset to be undertaking this assignment, but I shall do my best.  I'm Aaron, like the title of my blog says. I'm a Psychology major here at Oregon State, and a returning student going back to school after a few decades of working, most of which I've spent in the nonprofit and social justice world. Here I am with my older kid I live in Minnesota, having moved here from Oakland, CA ... having moved there from New York, NY ... having moved there from Boston, MA ... having moved there from a bunch of other small cities and towns scattered around New England ...  and back to just outside Providence, RI where I was born and raised. This is my first time living in the Central Time Zone, or really anywhere not within an hour of a coast. I took ...
Read more

A tale of love and blogging in the early 2000s

Image
In 2002, right near the onset of the blogging phenomenon, I started one of my own. It was a comedy blog, and part of a "blog ring" with a group of friends I had in New York City (many of whom went on to be successful writers and stand-ups, not that I'm bitter). In 2003, my now-wife found my blog because one of her friends followed me. She thought it was funny, and sent me an email introducing herself and linking to her own blog, which I found very funny as well. Over the next year or so, we'd exchange jokes through the comment sections on our respective blogs, and we got to know each other through our senses of humor. She had one photo of herself on her blog and it was when she was six years old. I had one photo of myself on my blog, and I was dressed up like Anne of Green Gables , pigtails and all. Neither of us had any idea what the other looked like nor had we ever met in person or spoken to each other; our initiating phase was entirely written, and lasted nearly ...
Read more