Week 17 - Final

My use of social media has changed drastically over the course of this semester. I started out not really knowing how to like things as my business on facebook. I used to know how to, but when facebook changed their layout I did not know how to for a while, until now.

I find myself scrolling through all of the pages I liked under my business account to find interesting videos and other related content. I can now like posts as my business instead of just under my personal account as well. In addition to that, I have found that by cross posting my blog articles it seems to draw a little more interest.

I was using facebook pretty much exclusively before I started this class. Now I am using Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google + and more. I hope to be able to use all of the tools and techniques that I gained over the course of the semester and apply them to my businesses.

There has been a small but noticeable impact on my business. I am seeing more interaction from customers and it seems like that is helping to increase conversions as well. By keeping an applicable conversation going, it is very easy to keep customers coming back looking for more.

I had a great semester and I learned a lot, all of which I can apply to my business going forward into the future. I really hope that all of my classmates were able to get as much from this course as I did, and I hope that they are all successful in all of their ventures.

Week 16C - Future Strategy

Based upon the variables identified in recent lectures, there are several tools that I will be implementing into my online marketing strategy. Most certainly, using the free tools such as Google Analytics and Facebook Insights can help to determine what strategies are effective and which ones are ineffective. In addition to that, using the paid services such as adwords and other PPC marketing methods would be extremely effective after developing a target demographic and psycho graphic customer base.

I think that by spending a few hours a week on research and development of a marketing strategy for social media, it could be very beneficial to my business. The reason being that I am not an expert yet and I need to do a lot of testing to find the right target market, all while on a limited small business marketing budget.

I chose the google and facebook tools that I did because they seem to be the easiest to narrow down a specific target market with. Since I do not have a huge marketing budget currently, it is imperative to make sure that every dollar spent is being maximized to ensure the most number of conversions.

I plan to continue blogging daily on my sites as well as to keep cross posting my blog articles on all of our social media platforms. I hope that this will continue to increase the number of people who visit the site and find out about us, because nobody can use the service until they find out about it.

Week 16B - Blog Comments

This week, I commented on the following Students Blog's:

Alison Carlo
Hernan Hernandez
Laura McIntire

Week 16A - Semester Review

The social media platforms that best integrate with my business are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. I think that YouTube would also be a great fit, but since I do not have any experience with producing videos, or a budget to hire someone who does, I think that platform will have to wait until next semester. I also plan to start using Google+ after reading the assignment and chapter and seeing how much influence they have.

I have enjoyed using Pinterest the most personally, because it is so easy to use. As soon as I go to the site, it automatically logs me in, and I do not have to re-post my blog articles the old fashioned way. I can simply input the link, it will pull up and images from the page, I then select the image and add some of the content from the post to it.

So far all of the above listed platforms have worked out very well as a daily use platform. I think that YouTube is the only exception for now, which will be used sparingly until I am able to produce videos with applicable content on a more frequent schedule.

Week 15B - Facebook Insights

After navigating to the analytics section of my business Facebook page, and then to the insights page and setting the date range to the last week per the instructions, it is easy and clear to see exactly how my page has improved and where improvements can be made.

While the page views and page likes have increased significantly, the reach, post engagement and videos have actually decreased slightly. I can attribute this to me not posting as many videos this week, and also to not having as many recalls to post.

 It is clear that by tracking the insights and making adjustments by doing A/B testing and other common practices of the like, I can easily increase all of the categories over time.

Week 15A - SEO & Social Media

After reading the chapter and assignment as well as reviewing all of the features that Google Analytics has to offer, there are a lot of different categories that I would be interested in keeping track of.

The first and most important feature for my business, would be the Funnel Analysis, which would allow me to see exactly where customer's are finding the site and coming in from, and to see exactly what the customer is doing on the site. This way, it will be easy to see where the traffic is being lost and where future improvements can be made.

In addition to that, the Audience Demographics feature seems like a very applicable category for my business. That can help me to decide how to allocate my Adwords budget to ensure that I am reaching the best target market for the money that I am spending.

Week 14 - Create Ads

Here are a couple of screenshots of the ads that I created on Facebook:

I feel that these ads would be effective because they encourage the potential customer to ensure that the purchase they are about to make is exactly what they are expecting. A motorcycle is usually a large purchase price, and for a small amount up front, the customer can know that the large amount they are about to spend is worth wile.

An objective is a goal or desired end result that you want to obtain. Conversions would be the most appropriate type of Ad Objective in this business, since the end goal is to get the potential customer to go to the website and purchase a history report. By including a clear call to action like "Learn More", it encourages the customer to check out what we have to offer and can lead to more potential sales.

Week 13B - Ad Formats

Facebook offers several different basic formats for advertising through their site that includes the following categories: Photographs, Videos, Slideshows, Canvas, and Collections. They also offer several different advertising formats for specific objectives which include the following categories: Lead Ads, Dynamic Ads & Link Ads.

Using Banner ads is another great form of advertising that would be potentially beneficial to my business. Twitter also has several different advertising campaigns which include the following categories: Website Visits, Followers, Brand Awareness & Tweet Engagements.

I think that using Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for advertising can be very beneficial. I would probably focus the most on Link ads on Facebook/Instagram and focus on Website Visits/Brand Engagement on Twitter. The reason being is because I am more concerned with conversion than I am clicks. I would estimate a budget of around $10 a day to start & advertising being done every day.

I have tried boosting posts before and targeting certain demographics on Facebook in the past. I did receive a lot of clicks, but not a lot of conversions so I discontinued that practice and enrolled in this class with the hopes that I would learn a better strategy.