Week 15 blog: Wrapping things Up

 

 

An interesting thing I learned in this class is that there are a lot more Social Media platforms than I thought or had even heard of.  I don’t know how anyone can keep up with all of them.  As you stated in your email, the younger users are always looking for the latest and greatest platform and people in the older group are just getting well versed in programs such as Facebook, YouTube, email and others.  I did learn that I cannot rely on my two children to be up on the latest social media “craze”, as neither one of them are that involved with it.  My son is texting and emails – no Facebook page; my daughter has a Facebook page (and only recently has started to post to it), texting, emails and Instagram – so I might be the one “training” them. 

I had never blogged before this class, and I had never followed a blog before, although I had occassionally looked at one of my bosses’ blogs to check out his latest photographs.

If my daughter and I get our Remnants Reworked business started, I will need to make sure that we get our blog up and running (though I plan to keep writing on this one going, as I will be traveling a lot in the future), keep our Facebook page up to date, get my son’s help in creating a web page, post photos on Pinterest (maybe Instagram), send out Tweets (as I have a Twitter account – though I mostly use it to follow), start selling items via Etsy and other craft sites and eventually create YouTube videos.  I would never have thought of these if I had not taken this class. 

If my daughter gets her dream of her own production company, this knowledge will help me to get her business out there via Social Media too.

I enjoyed the class, I learned a lot, though I have to admit sometimes it was confusing jumping from one textbook to the other.  I am keeping my notes and textbooks to use as reference materials when the time comes.  I may also suggest to some of my friends who have their own small businesses that they might consider using some of these social media platforms to get their businesses better known and increase their customer base. 

Thank you again for your patience and I wish you all the best for the coming new year. 

Week 14/Blog 3: time spent on social media

The first thing I would do is create an email specifically for the business.  I would write on my blog and Facebook and add photos and post to Pinterest also.  Since Twitter is still very new to me, I am not sure how much time I would be on Twitter.  I would check my blog and Facebook every day and I think I would post on each on opposite days.  For example, Monday, Wednesday and Friday I would write on my blog and Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I would post to Facebook.  At the beginning, I would invite all my personal contacts to check out my new business (via email, text messages, my personal Facebook page).   

I have to view this realistically, and realize that I must keep my 40 hour/week job, especially while trying to start up this craft item business.  I will need to do research regarding craft fairs and markets; places on the internet which could help get my business name out there also, besides Pinterest.  So my time will be limited and it will be hard to identify exactly how much time I could spend on creating my small business, getting the sites up and running and basically, just getting it out there, but still be able to work to pay the bills, feed my family, etc.

Before I could start this business, my daughter and I would need to create some actual items for sale.  This could take a few months what with our actual jobs, school schedules, my one night a week teaching job (including the preparation time for classes) and other responsibilities.  Since we are the only employees it will take both of us to build the business, though I might be able to con my son into helping create the website (he has done this as a hobby in the past).

I would need to create an actual website for my business in which to showcase our product and include a way for customers to order and pay for the purchase.  PayPal would also be a good system to use, so I would need to create that system.    Next I would need to create photographs and put them on both the website and on Facebook.  I’m considering creating a postcard containing a series of photographs on one side and information about our business on the other so we could do a mass mailing via “snail” mail.  A similar type of email could be prepared to send out to my contacts.  I would include some type of a coupon offer in both the mail ad and the email ad and include a code on my Facebook and blog sites which would enable customers to receive a discount or free shipping and handling within the United States.

Google Analytics would be used on my blog and Facebook in order to help me uncover how people are finding my site and how I am obtaining customers.  From this I could learn how to create AdWords and such to build up my customer base.  At the same time, we would need to keep a spreadsheet/database of what items are popular, what colors are most preferred and so on.

I realize it will take a lot of time and effort to create this business and get it off the ground and initial costs will most likely inhibit how much advertising we can do at the beginning.  To start we will need to stay with the free social media sites and keep other advertising costs to a minimum.  However, as the business grows, we will be able to increase what we can do. 

Week 14/Blog 2: sites I visited and commented on

I visited a few sites, and commented on the following three (I hope - I know I typed a comment on their pages and hopefully they are there): 

David Harris:  “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to My Marketing Career”

Jennifer Mencher:  “Six Seconds”

Nathan Scharff:  “Manvolution Blog Page”

 

Week 14/Blog 1: Online Social Media

 

For a craft or handmade business such as the one I envision, the best social media sites are Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and, of course, my blog which will include my travels and the international purchases made for the business.  These would be best types of social media for us to use in the beginning in order to grow our customer base.  We would augment these with print ads and mass mailings within the local area and contacts with businesses that might like to carry our products.  Since my daughter and I would be the business, the manufacturers and such, I would need to make sure that she is fully capable of handling these three types of social media-she’s not very well versed in them as it is now.  However, we must be able to communicate with our clients as fast as possible in order to build up the clientele and keep the good reputation of our business. 

I thought I might create a new Linked In page for the business (so as not to confuse my full time job with this one).  This could lead to engagement with possible business partners, investors or venture capitalists.

As the business grows, I would investigate other forms of social media.  As we currently have no income from our business yet, and thus no budget, we need to keep expenditures down so we may try some Google AdWords to begin and use Analytics to uncover where our customers are coming from and thus put direct our funds into the areas that might direct more customer traffic to our pages hopefully to order our products. 

 

Lecture 13 – Google Analytics Features

I will get caught up this weekend if it "kills" me.

 

If we start our business, it will be very small to begin with, so I believe it would be best to limit the features we use in the beginning and if the business grows to where we need to add additional employees, I would add additional features from Google Analytics.  I am not sure if we would employ mobile ads in the beginning .  However, I still would need to uncover just what my customer base is and how they get to and work with my site.

I have learned from my current job, that Dashboards are great for a quick overall view of how things are going.  It’s a summary on a single page and it has drag and drop widgets for customization (I find widgets are usually “fun” to “play” with).

The use of AdWords would be helpful in order to discover what key terms to use in order to bring business to our site.  Google offers support and help and you decide how much and what you pay for (clicks).  The Google Display Network allows us to use AdWords to creat and manage marketing campaigns by inserting tags so success can be measures.  Using AdSense would also be good as it allows content publishers and bloggers a way to earn money by placing ads on their sites.  It would also allow me to put ads on my blog to create interest in my business.

Using the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) report would be good as it allows me to see what search queries enabled the potential customers to visit our site.  Using the Content Experiments allow me to create and test variations of my pages and figure out which ones seem to bring in the customers.

The more useful reports would include the Advertising reports which would give us a view of conversion rates and returns on all the social media channels we employ.  The remarketing might be interesting as it would enable us to locate customers who have searched for products similar to ours.

Another report offered is on audience data.  This would allow me to figure out what common factors there may be among the customers or people who visit my site and then I can adjust my ads accordingly.  Then you have the social reports that let you see what impact social media has on your business (both goals and conversions). 

Being able to see how visitors interact with our page(s) using something like In-Page Analytics would be good as would Flow Visualization.  Site Search would be valuable as it would indicate what searches were used by visitors and possibly let me know how I may need to adjust my AdWords.  Alerts and Intelligence Events will monitor my website’s traffic to detect any anomalies and alert me to the same.  This would let me know if there was more traffic coming from one particular area or another site.

Google Analytics offers so many possibilities, it is almost mind boggling.  I hope some day I will get to use it to grow a small business.

Week 12: Blog 2 - Coupon Deal?

Since we sell a unique and one-of-a-kind product, I am not really sure what kind of a coupon we could use for our business.  Neither GroupOn or livingsocial would be appropriate for our type of business.  About all we could do is offer a percentage off or free shipping and list that on one of our ads. 

It must be remembered that we create items to order, and the customer picks what type of item, tells us what colors or color scheme they want, and if they wish, they can also pick the fabric used.  We cut out the pattern for the item, and sew it together.  This is why I could only come up with offering a percentage off on a customer’s first order, or possibly a percentage off on the customer’s birthday, or free shipping.

I would appreciate anyone’s ideas or help if they can come up with another way we could offer a coupon deal. 

Week 12: Blog 1 – Four additional online marketing tools

 

Well besides using Facebook and my blog, the other social media sites that might work for my business are Pinterest, Google+, Yelp and FlipBoard (also a possibility). 

Pinterest would work because the photographs that people pin include the link to the site where found.  I would create a business Pinterest board and I could direct my blog readers and Facebook followers to look at my board. 

I have a personal Google+ account but it is fairly recent and I have not had a chance to play with it yet.  However, according to your lecture, I can create a business Google+ page off of that and keep them separate.  In Google+ I can join communities with similar products as mine, or maybe suppliers.  I can create Circles to separate fans, customers, family and others.

Yelp will be helpful, more so after the business gets up and running.  I’m not sure having only 1 or 2 positives is very helpful.  A concern of mine is that there is no real “control” over the likes and dislikes.  I recently watched a TV program where a well know hotelier would assist other hotels/motels that were closed to failing.  In this show it was a family hotel and it was a bit dated in looks, but he was able to assist with the updating and other parts of running the hotel to keep it from going bankrupt – from the kitchen, the housekeeping staff, the hotel staff and the owners.  One thing that came up was some reviews on Yelp that really denigrated the hotel and even stated things that were not true about the hotel.  He made the owner contact Yelp and have them deleted.  I did not know that was possible until this show. 

FlipBoard is referred to as your personal magazine.  First I would need to come up with a creative name, something that would come up when prospective customers do searches.  I can have a “window” or page related to useful sewing or fabric information, e.g. care and handling of various fabrics.  I can add my Twitter timeline to Flipboard and flag tweets that I feel are most appropriate.  I can link YouTube channels to my flip board that I also think would fit with my business.  I read where a good rule of thumb is:  “if it interests you as it relates to your specialty, chances are good it will interest your intended audience” and also I could use it to promote the work of other folks (and hope it might bring more business to my site).  Once you have created it, you need to hit the Share button so you can promote it via any account you’ve added to Flipboard, such as LinkedIn, Tumblr, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Since I don’t have a storefront, Google Maps is not an option at this time.  However, I was thinking that if I was able to get some of our products in a store on Consignment or maybe they purchased it for resale, I could use Google Maps to let people know where they could find our products. 

I do not think GroupOn or Living Social are good for my business or for the type of products we sell.