Week 9 - MKTG349 - Performance, Profitability and Growth

Performance of a system is what will determine the success rate of profitability and growth. The platform must be strong fundamentally established to with hold through it all. This can apply to anything you create. can also go into the job aspect. Before accepting any job, it is fair to ask about salary. Never assume that you will be given a fair wage. The employee will try to pay you the lowest it can to save money and if you don’t negotiate you can end up working at a job making $20 per hour where as if you would of negotiated you could have been making $32 per hour. I don’t want this to happen to anyone so we need to put the fear aside and learn how to negotiate the salary wage.

1. From the beginning, the employer knows the highest figure they are willing to pay you but they will try to get you for less to save money. Whereas you are trying to take the most capital you can home.
2. Never be the first one to mention a salary figure. You want the employer to be the first because whoever mentions a salary figure first, usually loses. If asked by the employer what figure you are looking for, the best response would be: “Well, you created this position, so you must have some figure in mind, and I’d be interested in first hearing what that figure is.”
3. It would be ideal to do some research on typical salaries for the field of interest and in the specific company/organization you are applying at. You can gather this typical information in a few days and it can benefit you in the long run. This will give you an advantage in the negotiating process because you now have an idea of what range salary you are working with. The research can be done online or off the internet (books, talking to people, or work agencies).
4. Once you researched what the employer likely has in mind to other you within a range then define an interconnected range for yourself that is relative to the employers range. This way you are more likely to reach the employers highest salary offer. It’s a clever and risky task that will take some work but will be beneficial at the end.
5. In the salary negotiation, fringe benefits must be discussed before closing the negotiating process. A fringe refers to life insurance, health benefits, vacations, retirement programs and so on. So keep in mind in order of importance the fringes you would like to negotiate. Once the negotiating processes is done make sure to get the terms that were agreed upon on paper and have it signed by both parties. This is your letter of agreement. 

Now that you have these tips at your disposal make sure to implement them into your negotiating plan and get the highest salary possible. The more prepared you are with research and a plan getting into salary negotiations; the more comfortable you will be negotiating with the employer and hopefully bring more money into your pocket.

Week 8 - MKTG349 - Getting Traffic Moving

So, now that you know how to start a blog on Blogger and connect it to Google Adwords. We use Google Adwords to view the traffic of a website, or in our case a blog, that is being monitored. When starting off the blog we need to generate traffic in order for us to be capable to look at analytics.

One easy way to generate traffic to start off is by sharing the link on social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Make a Pitch: Before posting the link of the blog to social media you need to generate a pitch. The pitch is an explanation of what is being done, and an invitation to take a look at the link.

Post it to Social Media: On social media post the link of the blog or an individual blog post along with a pitch.

Some social media websites to…

·         Facebook

·         LinkedIn

·         Twitter

Promote Your Post: Even though posting on personal profiles in social media is an easy and free way to share your post, not many people will see the post, but websites such as Facebook can help promote the blog for a fee. They will help you generate more traffic.

Make an Ad: A Facebook ad campaign is another way to get more clicks and generate more traffic. With the Facebook ads there is more control on who you want to be exposed to it. You can choose the region, interests, pictures, and age range. A budget will be created by yourself to fit your needs.

There you have it a few ways to get exposure of websites or blog and generate traffic to get a look at analytics.

Week 8 - MKTG347 - Your New Resume

Finding a job nowadays has become extremely difficult and to go out job hunting we need a resume. Now with the technology innovations we have experienced throughout these years with the internet finding out information about others has become relatively easier. Future employers can find out who the applicant is by searching about the individual.  This is easy because of social media; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and so on.

If google is working as the new resume then we need to be careful what we put and don’t put on the internet. In the social media and other websites where we expose ourselves, we must.

●     Edit: requires going to any and all sites that we find ourselves on, and edit what we have on them. What you have on there will leave an imprint how the employer sees you as a candidate for the job. Therefore make sure to leave a worthy impression.

●     Fill-in: any site usually allows you to fill out a personal profile. Make sure to fill out completely and keep updated, particularly on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Plaxo.

●     Expand: increase presence in the Internet using forums, blogs, twitter, and videos.

●     Add: compose an old type resume and post it on the internet where employers can have easy access to it.

Even though resumes isn’t the key way to get an employer to know you as a valid applicant nowadays, we still need to have them to summarize and organize the information about ourselves in one place whether it’s online or off.  After getting it down on paper you can either post it on the internet for anyone to view or send it to different employers and customizing in the way you feel will attract the employer to you.  

Week 7 - MKTG347 -LinkedIn

LinkedIn has been an on growing social media network in the professional world. A place where you can create exposure and online presence for an organizations or better yet for yourself. It is also a tool that can be used to create groups to have group discussions based on any matters. For example, certain college course especially in the business field incorporate LinkedIn with lectures for discussion. Although you can use LinkedIn to create a professional profile for a company or organization, it is more important to first create a strong personal profile exploiting yourself. This will be the foundation and most important part of how to establish a successful LinkedIn presence. With a strong personal profile, creating a presence for a business or organization in LinkedIn will be a much easier task. Think about it like this, a home will only stand as long as the foundation it’s built under allows it too. The stronger the foundation the more likely of success.

Something else that you can utilize LinkedIn as is a resume. That’s why this is more of a social media tool for the professional world. It will be a great tool to get you exposed to top ranked companies and organizations. The connection you generate don’t necessarily have to be for employment. You can use it to make friendships, class discussion, and even advertisement (one of the big ones). Be aware that with LinkedIn there is the option for B2B and B2C social media, and as mentioned advertising options for employment, products, or services. So easy to say that there is much that can be done with LinkedIn, just depends on the approach one wants to take and the goals that need to be meet. An adequate strategy will need to be implemented of course. 
For anyone who doesn't already have a LinkedIn account, I would recommend get on it, it is only to your benefit. Check out www.linkedin.com and get started. As for those already with a LinkedIn profile keep up with it and make a strong professional representation of yourself via LinkedIn. The fact that we are moving toward an era where everything is going digital, should encourage you to have a well developed LinkedIn profile that could possibly even be used as your resume. If you have any questions or concerns about how to use LinkedIn, you can reach out to me or check out www.linkedin.com for more information. 

Week 7 - MKTG349 - Analytics AdWords

In continuation to ecommerce analytics, I will now be talking about AdWords. AdWords is a Google advertising service provided to the public for businesses wanting to post ads on Google and its advertising network. With the program you are allowed to set a budget for the advertising and only pay as people click the ad. With AdWords you get the ease of advertising a site and tracking conversions – namely, this is tracing all things from an ad to a purchase on the site. This program is a valuable tool for online marketers, which will help generate ROI (return on investment). 

To get started and create an account, go to http://www.google.com/adwords. Once the account is active, you will want to connect AdWords with your ecommerce site to be able to track conversions. AdWords will now be able to inform you which specific ad was clicked on and resulted in a purchase, therefore ROI is calculated and we can see the results.

Next we can start an AdWords campaign, starting an account on AdWords is free but in order to get an ad to run capital will be required. Now don’t be discouraged with AdWords you can set a budget and have control of the ad, to create cliental, so you can know your investment is being used efficiently. AdWords has many feature and tools that help to experiment and find different methods to display and approach the campaign. Play with prices and bidding, use different headlines to grad the reader’s attention, and set different keywords and landing pages.

AdWords along with Shopify and other web analytics programs can help make a business become more successful. These tools make is easy to get a competitive advantage and acquire potential revenue with proper online exposure. I suggest taking a look at it even if you don’t plan on working on this particular field of work. It is can be very informative. For more information on AdWords you can visit their website or you can reach out to me. 

Week 9 - MKTG348 - The Power of Smarketing

Finding a job nowadays is no easy task and once you find one, you aren’t guaranteed permanent employment because we are replaceable. One of the best moves to help prevent such a case is to start a business. It is a risky task, which needs to be implemented properly to see real success. And what better way to start a new employment where you are your own boss, now that’s dream of most of us I would say

Starting a business can be different but in some cases it is really easy. Now this all has to do with the right approach.  Having money to invest will help tremendously, but there are other ways that doesn’t require for this luxurious advantage. Thanks to the internet we have access to many free tools that will help use start a business, especially one that runs essentially with the use of the internet as the main tool.

When you have no Idea what business you want to go into. There are four steps to consider if you want to approach this dilemma intelligently:

1. Write: Get out a piece of blank paper, and jot down any ideas. Use your resume as a tool.
2. Read: Read up on all the benefits and risks of running your own business. Look before you leap! The Internet has tons of stuff about this.
3. Explore: You want to interview others who have started the same kind of business, so you must find out what skills, knowledge, or experience it takes to make this kind of business idea work, by interviewing several business owners. Then you need to make a list of the skills, knowledge, or experience that you have. After that compare the two and finding what you are missing to start the business, you must then go out and hire a friend or helper who has those skills you lack in. This can be temporary till you can do it on your own.
4. Feedback: Get feedback from the progress in the business and analyze it to implement new business strategies.

These are just a one simple way to go about starting a business there is more to it, but this is the over view of how you should act on it. I believe starting your own business is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Yes, it can be quite hectic, but at least you are working for yourself and not making money for someone else. All your hard work will be done to install a better future.  How to Start Your Own Business

Week 6 - MKTG347 -Twitter

In the social media world, Twitter is one of the most well-known and used networks. For those that don’t know what exactly Twitter is, it is an online social network service that gives access to users with an account to send or read short messages that are known as “tweets”. Their mission is “To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.” And like Facebook, there is no right or wrong way to utilize Twitter; it can be used for personal or business use. Advertising and customer interactions have risen through Twitter as it helps companies and organizations select their audience.

If using Twitter for business like always take into consideration ROI and making sure to implement proper strategies that will help meet goals set. Some useful ways to use Twitter in the business model is by

• Posting tweets regularly on any and all matters
•  Advertising with Twitter Ads
• Answering tweets or DMs from customers
• Create trends

There are many more things that can be done; this is just to get an idea. Each business model will use Twitter in different ways depending on the goals that are being tried to be met. For example, Nike has a blog and in order to promote it. They use Twitter to get exposure. Every time they post a new post, they go onto Twitter and make a short tweet advertising the blog post. Within the tweet could be a link attached that will redirect the viewer to your blog post. This is a very easy and effective strategy. Although you may not necessarily have the need to use Twitter for business use, it is good to be familiar with it because you never know when it could be of good use. For more details about Twitter and its functions visit www.twitter.com or you can comment below and I will get back to you. 

Week 6 - MKTG349 - The Value of Blogging

Once you have a Google Account, you will have automatic access to a blogger account in the tool Blogger. Here you can start a blog with the content of your choice. You can create multiple blogs and each will be entitled to a personal address that you will generate. With this address anyone can access your blog to view your posts.

In the process to attract new visitors to a webpage, there are multiple things that can be done to achievement this goal. One of the most recent methods involves blogging. Even though blogging has been originally for the. Job-hunting is all about human nature and in its essence is most like another human activity that we call dating. In the end it comes down to two questions: “Do you like me?” and “Do I like you?”  The second question needs to be stressed because the possible employee has just as much power as the employer in the hiring process. Here is where the applicant needs to make a decision to ask questions now and see if this job will be a good fit or just don’t ask anything to the employer and find out weeks, months, or years later that it isn’t working and quit. Hence your opinion matters just as much as the employer’s.

You are not as helpless as you think you are. There is always something that can be done no matter how challenging it may sound we will always have some percentage of control. And with that little power you can make a change for the best. Same applies to job-hunting we may feel that employers have all the power and that you can’t be picky because “there are few vacancies available” If these statements were true, we still have some control to alternate the outcome and find a job we desire.

Week 8 - MKTG348 - Creating Content with a Purpose

Content is what runs the internet. It is the message your inbound marketing strategy delivers to the people that will view it. This can be done multiple ways from blogging to social media. Content is essential thought out the whole process of Inbound strategy, you want to keep the visitors to the page interested and satisfied to turn them into customers and possible promoters. At all time with every email, landing page and so on that is viewed must be attractive and professional. Content drives inbound strategy and the internet as an all.

Creating a remarkable content is critical. This way you will have people continue to read and share the content, then possibly turning into constant visitors. Ideally this should be the goal, now to achieve this a 4-step process goes into play.

1. Plan: Determine the purpose for the website, whether it’s to get customers or to just get some clicks. You must then choose a format to illustrate the content that you are trying to present. This can be done with slides, videos, reports and so on. Make sure it’s format that will attract the market you are trying to target. Figure a topic that reaches to your ideal customers and will keep them interested yet at the same time helpful for what they search.
2. Create: Creating content the visitors experience is important. There are different stages in a visitor’s journey that must be taken into account. In the awareness stage, assets such as reports, eBooks, and educational content are suitable when individuals are experiencing a problem to educate them. In the consideration stage, assets should find a solution to the problem to close the gap between the awareness stage and the product/service without connecting the brand. Videos would be a great source to use. In the final stage, decision-making, the individual is making a decision on what strategy to use for the solution. They now know what the problem is and a solution. Content in this stage is all about the product and service, so you have to make it compelling. You can use product comparisons, trials, or demos to enforce interest. There are different types of content so this can vary and it all goes down to analyzing to find what will work for the specific product and service offered. Just remember the content must be set on complying with both the visitor and the creator of the page.
3. Distribute: Successful distribution plan gets the right content to the right people at the right time. Creating the content and making it beautiful is needed to attract, but distribution is just as important for it is what will get you the clicks. Using social media, calls-of-action, and emails will aid you with this step.
4. Analyze: Like any other part of the business world, analyzing your work and process to get the most out of it. Eliminate what isn’t working and edit or add on to what is. Google Analytics and AdWords are resources that you can use for this step to show you the actual numbers of views and clicks.

Continue to repeat the 4-step process to innovate the content and keep turning visitors into customers. Set new goals if needed with progression, but keep in mind to follow these steps. For further, information visit www.hubspot.com.  

Week 5 - MKTG349 - Facebook Ad Campaign

The use of Facebook ads is in my opinion is an ideal way to get your business or in my current situation my blogs out to the public and get recognition. Facebook is one of the most popular websites on the internet. Everyone has Facebook nowadays.  So picture this, in approximately one month Facebook has over a billion active users meaning plenty of exposure.  With the Facebook ads there is more control on who you want to be exposed to it. You can choose the region, interests, pictures, and age range. A budget will be created by yourself to fit your needs.

So to promote and get some traffic using Facebook Ads, we start by going to http://www.facebook.com/ads/.

You can choose to start creating the ad and go through the process, which is pretty straightforward. If any difficulties occur then you can go to Facebook for assistance or Google it.

Towards the end, you choose how long you want your ad campaign to run and how much you want to spend. Finally, make the payment and place the order. And wait for approval from Facebook to start the advertising.

To see if there is any traffic from the ad, you can check this website: https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage. Or refer back to the Google Analytics account linked to what is being adversited.

Week 7 - MKTG348 - Guiding the Next Step with Thank you Pages

If job hunting isn’t hard enough, what comes after is nerve racking: the interview. Here the employer has a valuable insight into your personality and abilities, and it permits you the chance to determine whether your credentials and career goals tie up with what the employer is seeking.

Just like anything in life, there needs to be preparation before going into the job interview. Being put on the spot, typically, makes one nervous. Thank to technology innovations, lots of job interviews are via video through Skype per say. Although this can be less nerve racking than face to face interview, we still need to be prepared!

Here are a few tips that you can implement and keep in mind for job interviews.

• Employers differ from one another. They each have their own methods and requirements for hiring. For every no you get, you are one step closer to a yes so don’t get discouraged.

• A job interview is like dating. It is a two-way decision to see if both the employer and interviewee like each other.

• Prepared to answer question such as

1.      Tell me about yourself

2.      Why are you applying for this job?

3.      What are your major strengths?

• Mix 50-50 in the interview by mixing speaking and listening. And to make the best impression, answer employer’s questions in a time frame of 20 seconds to 2 minutes.

• It’s the small things that can kill you. And they can spot this within the first two minutes of the interview.

1.      Appearance and personal trait

2.      Nervous characteristic

3.      Consideration of other people

4.      Values

• Be aware of the skills most employees are looking for regardless of the position you are seeking.

• Thank-you notes must be sent after each interview. They can help the employer recall who you are, give you an opportunity to correct any wrong impressions, and it’s an action of respect to back up your good skills and manners. 

So here you have it a few tips that will definitely help you in the job interview process. It is inevitable to feel nervous going into a job interview, but these steps can help you feel more confident.  If you would like to look into these tips and others with more detail you can find them in, What Color Is Your Parachute 2016 Edition. Hope you consider these tips it will definitely make your life easier. 5: Tips About Interviewing for a Job

Week 6 - MKTG348- The Fundamentals of Blogging

To get the basic understanding of analytics, we can start by finding out how to track web traffic. To get this concept down we can start by can creating a simple blog, start a Google Adwords account, and link the two then analyzing the data.

Step 1: Create a Google Account

By creating a Google Account, you have access to many free tools offered by Google including Blogger.

Step 2: Start a Blog

Once you have a Google Account, you will have automatic access to a blogger account in the tool Blogger. Here you can start a blog with the content of your choice. You can create multiple blogs and each will be entitled to a personal address that you will generate. With this address anyone can access your blog to view your posts.

Step 3: Start a Google Adwords Account

In http://www.google.com/adwords/ you can go create a Google Adwords account. You can sign in or create this account via the Google account you recently made. We proceed here by creating an account around websites or mobile apps. For each website or mobile app you want to track, you create a new account in your personal Google Adwords account to keep track of each one individually. Let’s classify websites and mobile apps we are trying to track as properties.  

Step 4: Connect Google Analytics to Blogger

After setting up your property, you get a tracking ID that you will link to the site, or in our case the blog, we are trying to track. So go to Blogger and connect it to the Google Adwords account.

Step 5: Taking a Look in Google Adwords

To get this going and see some results in Google Adwords on your blog. You should share it on social media perhaps on Facebook and wait to see what kind of traffic it generates. You will use Google Adwords to find trends and generate significant information that will help you reach the goal you’re trying to accomplish with the site that is being tracked.

These five steps will get you on the right direction to set up tracking system for a site or blog. In the business world we can use any help we can get to find success. Google Adwords is a useful tool to help prepare anyone for the business world and to find extensive results.Using the data gathered from Google Adwords, you will be able to see how the public responds to content on the site and what types of content your viewers respond to the best. With the results of the data, you will be capable to improve your content to have a more successful business. 

Week 5 - MKTG348 - Online Marketing

     Take a look at my article on online fundraising. Fundraising has revolutionized making it easier to reach out to the right people and for people to donate with online fundraiser. Even though online fundraising is growing, it only pertains to a small portion of the capital charities collect. As the years go the use of online fundraising will grow.

     To promote this page I have posted it on Facebook. This will help me generate views and clicks. With the information and data gathered I can then optimize my article to get more view and clicks. Keywords can be added or edited to help my page get recognition and work my way up the rankings. Checking on the SEO rank of the keyword fundraising shows that my page has yet to be ranked.. Hence, there needs to be more work getting recognition on my page using keywords and promoting it on social media.  

     I will leave the link the article at the bottom. Feel free to read it and leave a comment. 

SEO Tool Bar

http://www.rgbexchange.org/nonprofits/fundraising/introduction-to-fundraising

Week 5 - MKTG347 - Facebook Ad

As there are many ways to advertise, social media websites have evolutionized the way advertising is done.  Facebook, in particular, has shared its contirbution to the innovation of advertising. In this day of time nearly everyone is on Facebook; making it a primary location to advertise. 

 Now Facebook offers mutilple ways to advertise both free and for a fee. Its free to create a page to promote a anything you want persay a business or blog, but in order to boost views from both mutual friends and outsiders, Facebook offers ads to meet the goals set. Goals can be set to get more views on a video or more clicks on visits to a blog post. Most Facebook ads goals are set to promote Facebook pages to get more likes from users. It is a powerful tool, that if established correctly can result in a positive ROI. 

With Facebook ads many options are are available in order to help reach the trgeteda audience. Starting off you create a campaign that then asks what the aim of the ad will be, not to forget though that this can be changed over time.  Make sure to also make the proper accomendations to setting of persay geographics, language or budget obtions. If you intend to five Facebook ad a try, it might be a good idea to give it a test run first. 

Create a page thru Facebook on any interest you may have and run an ad that will help promote the page. To promote and get some traffic using Facebook Ads, we start by going to http://www.facebook.com/ads/.

You can choose to start creating the ad and go through the process, which is pretty straightforward. If any difficulties occur then you can go to Facebook for assistance or Google it.

Towards the end, you choose how long you want your ad campaign to run and how much you want to spend. Finally, make the payment and place the order. And wait for approval from Facebook to start the advertising.

To see if there is any traffic from the ad, you can check this website: https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage. Or refer back to the Google Analytics account linked to what is being adversited. If you have any further questions on Facebook ads or would like help getting one started you can reach out to me and I will be more than glad to assist you. 

Week 4 - MKTG348 - Sending the Right Email to the Right Person

It goes without question that job-hunting is no easy task and at times it makes us feel inadequate. You go job after job and nothing seems to work out, but never give up. Virtuous possessions in life are not given to you on a silver platter; it’s a working process that will consist of many bumps and bruises. Even when you feel like everything is against you and out of your control, don’t give up. There is always something that is in our power to make a change and find employment.  

Luckily there is more than one way to go about it.

• Here we look for a job how we all normally do. We get a resume together and send it out to, post it everywhere, look in ads online, and so on. You’re main focus is to find a job.
• Your effort will also be to find a job, but not just any job: a “dream job”. You want to discover who you are as an individual and what you love to do. After this you do research to see which companies or organizations matches you. You don’t wait till there is an open position or even approach them with a resume. Here you want to get connected to the employer through a person who knows both you and the employer.

Here’s something to think about. What do you presume to be the best way to look for a job? I believe many of us would say it would be answering job-post on the Internet or sending out your resume to employers. These two methods are actually some of the worst ways to find a job. So for all those who go about finding a job in those ways is wasting their time and energy. In fact knocking on the door of employer, using yellow pages to find employer of interested field, and the parachute way, statistically, has better results in finding a job. There’s a higher percentage chance of find a job and not just any job, but a “dream job” that is of your true interest.

                            

There you have it, for those that didn’t know what truly will give you results job-hunting. So if things aren’t working out for you reconsider your job-hunting methods. In What Color is Your Parachute: Ch. 6, you can read more about these methods and others. 

Week 4 - MKTG347 - Facebook pages

      Facebook has become one of the top sources for social media marketing and why wouldn’t it be everyone is on it. It’s a great way to get exposure and it’s free. Even though it is free you can pay to get more exposure to people you may not know, outsiders. Ever wonder how Facebook and other social media pages make their money, well it’s through advertising among other things. Facebook’s business model is similar to that of Google’s, they created a websites that allowed people to get free exposure but now make people pay a fee in order to get an extra boost. Facebook is particular charges for boosting posts and getting your name out to people you don’t know.

      If you already have a personal Facebook account adding on a Facebook page is quick to add on. A Facebook page can build a closer relationship with your audience and customers. They don’t necessarily have to be used to advertise for a company or organization but also movies or events, basically anything. To create a Facebook page you can click on this link for guidance. https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/set-up-facebook-page

      I personally have made my own Facebook page to get more exposure for my marketing blog. The set-up is similar to that of a personal Facebook page. You get likes on your page so that people can view and be updated on what is posted as well. I didn’t put in money to get my posts boosted, but still receive enough exposure with the friends I invited from my personal Facebook page to my blog Facebook page. The fun thing about Facebook is that there are many tools and options that it offers. You can experiment with it and then do some R&D in order to improve the page. Check out my Facebook page and let me know what you think. I would enjoy some feedback. https://www.facebook.com/Arturos-Marketing-Blog-1663980717151895/

Week 4 - MKTG349 - Measuring and optimizing performance

After initiating the campaign and getting some data of the ad performance. You must analyze and optimize the account, campaigns, or the individual ad groups to make improvement. Look into things such as which clicks lead to visits or which devices are performing ads best. The dimension tab can also be very useful to measure results. It can inform you on the time ads performed best, geographic views and what the landing pages a customer viewed. In order to track these performances you can also be using conversion tracking, Google analytics, and campaign experiment. In older blogs I have discussed these tools and how they function. So if you want more information on them go check my older post.

With AdWords everything must be taken into consideration to effectively process a campaign through. Here are some things to measure

• Measure website traffic
• Measure conversions
• Measure return on investment
• Measure return on ad spend
• Measure brand awareness  

The last thing to do and to continue to do during a campaign is to optimize it in order to improve return on investment which is in your best interest. That’s the main goal for any one investing in AdWords should be to make more than what is invested. Find proper keywords, text, and budget that will improve and increase attracting the right cliental for the products and services provided. Overall, AdWords is essentially a tool to create a strong, successful campaign to advertise any products or service one might offer. Every aspect of the campaign is important but measuring and optimizing performance of the campaign, in my opinion, is the most important because here you carefully analyze what you have done and work to build a more efficient campaign. For further assistance on measuring and optimizing performance you can reach out to me or check out this page out: https://support.google.com/partners/answer/6173427?hl=en&ref_topic=6123873

Week 3 - MKTG347 - Resume linked with Social Media

     Using the social media as your resume can be of more benefit than you think. The framework of the resume will be more appealing to the eye and professional. LinkedIn along with Google can be valuable source to make your resume go digital. All a resume is used for is to get you the interview not the job. So you want to make your resume look worthy, but you don’t want to put everything on it. Leave the employee with the urge to meet you after looking over your resume, so what a better way to do that than through a well-designed LinkedIn profile.

     LinkedIn, along with other social media sources, has made it easier for employees and employers to connect in the professional world. As appose to the old fashion of mailing out your resume and waiting longer periods of time for delivery and reply. It’s also to the benefit of the environment to go onto digital resumes to waste less paper and hence, save trees.

     I highly recommend that if you haven’t already created a LinkedIn account, or another social media source to replace your resume, to do so. It is for your own great benefit, just make sure like any resume to continuously update it with new skills learnt, new jobs, blogs, and so on. The nice thing about most social media source is that they are at our disposal on apps for phones. This make it just that much more helpful since we all have phones that we carry with us at all times. So remember make yourself stand out from the group. I myself am working to develop a more effective profile in LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/arturosolis0923. Go connect with me, I’ll appreciate any feedback. 

Week 3 - MKTG347 - Skillbox: Content

Essentially the internet is all a bunch of zeros and ones that come together through code to create content. Now many of us aren’t computer geeks and can’t comprehend the extensive process of coding to create content. Luckily the internet offers use with free easy to use tools to create the content, lets call this the skillbox. Google is a primary example; they offer multiple free tools to make it easy to work with content. So create a google account, if you don’t already have one, and experiment around.

Just to mention a few tools there is Blogger, a great tool for blogging that is linked with Google. I highly recommend using this one, works great and it’s easy to use.  Weebly is a site that is used to create a free website. It is appealing and there are many things you can do with it. To make videos, YouTube offers accessibility to editing and posting of videos online. All these sources are linked to Google, so the importance of a Google account is crucial. Remember these are only a few of the tools in the skillbox. There are many more out there that are free or can be purchased. Find what you find most appropriate and get working.

In terms of the content itself we approach it in many ways, but in terms of social media marketing focus on curation, creation, and collaboration.

1. Curation: the process of researching content and then reviewing, commenting and/ or sharing. For example, bloggers go out gather data and articles in relation to a topic. Then briefly summaries on the findings and to get awareness post up on social media.
2. Creation:  to create the content you must assure who the audience will be. This will take time for the reason that it should have high-quality. Articles, blogs, or even videos are the best kind of content, but it can vary depending on the company/organization, the targeted audience, or what approach you are trying to take. It is helpful that once content is created, to ask for feedback to keep up with customer needs.   
3. Collaboration: find people to work with. Someone’s weak point can be your strong point, and your weak point can be their strong point. It would be in benefit of both parties to unify and work together to create a stronger content. This can be a good learning experience to learn from each other and learn to work as a team. It like in the business world when two companies collaborate to keep the business running. Don’t be afraid of some help, we all need it at some point.

Week 3 - MKTG349 - Setting up an AdWords Campaign

     When setting up an AdWords campaign, you will need to choose a type and sub-type. The campaign type establishes where the ads are shown and the format they will be demonstrated in, while the sub-type determines settings and options available. Some type of campaigns include search engine only, display network only, search network with display select. Depending on what your goals are for the campaign, you can modify features that are significant to the campaign.

     An efficient AdWords account will help create campaigns that will help reach your goals more profoundly. Each campaign should be aimed to a single business goal. In the campaign you can control how much is spent on clicks, geographical locations, and other settings. To organize the campaign you add on one or more ad groups. To help boost your ROI you can organize into sets of ads and keywords relating to each other. Separate ad groups will be needed for each theme or product being advertised. Making sure the ad reaches the right audience will implement what success you have with the campaign. You can use significant keywords, location and language settings, and demographics that will be applicable to your targeted audience.

Other great options AdWords lets you play with are budgets and bids. You choose a daily budget that will be spent per day and depending on the results you can play around with the budget and adjust it as needed. Bidding strategies can’t be figured out until you know who you’re targeting, and your goals, then you can decide which strategy is best. For example,

1. Cost-per-click (CPC) bidding: Use if you want to drive customers to your website.
2. Cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding: Use if you want to make sure that customers see your message.
3. Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding: Use if you want to maximize conversions on your website.

     After getting all this organized, you need to create ad groups for each theme or product under the campaign with its individual keywords, ads, and bids that could later on be optimized to improve ROI.  

     Remember to consistently optimize the campaign. As you get results make accommodations and research what will help you get a higher ROI, maybe you might want to try a different approach. Keyword Planner and Display Planner are tools offered by AdWords that can help build campaigns and achieve goals. So if you’re ever in the market looking to advertise give AdWords a try. Here’s a link for some assistance https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1704395?hl=en or you can reach out to me. I’d be more than glad to assist you. 

Week 3 - MKTG348 - Optimizing your Website

The internet is a tool that has modernized marketing. Anyone can try to use the internet to market, but a proper strategy is needed with Inbound strategy you can optimize as progress goes along taking you towards a successful path. To get an individual to become a visitor on one’s website, what you need to consider is an approachable and attractive website. This is a crucial to have. Using sear engine optimization, or SEO, will help bring more people for clicks. Search engine optimization is the process of improving your website to attract visitors from search engines.

     We have all been on Google at some point, right? Well every time you search something you get multiple search results. Those results are organized by rankings, so the more clicks you get the higher your ranking and the higher possibilities to be on the first page of the search engine. SEO and Inbound strategy will get you to this spot.

     To start off, brainstorm a list of keywords. Keywords are words that are typed into search engines in order to find what is being searched. They have to be words that the searcher would use. You must try to think what someone would type into a search engine in order to get to your page. Be straight forward, you can also use autocomplete to help you think of things that are popular in search engines. You will need short keywords but as well long-tailed keywords, more specific phrases.  .

• To optimize the website you will need to pick a primary keyword. You will need to add it to.
• The title: if there is a company name include it with a vertical bar
• The URL: for long-tailed keywords use dashes instead of spaces
•  Header and content: attach to imagines throughout the page as well.
• Meta Description

You will need to add on links to get more hits, edit the pages to promote great visiting experience, make it easy to browse around, and finally opt in the website for mobile usage since mostly everyone uses smartphones to access the internet nowadays.

     The more clicks you get the higher your ranking and the more you’ll continue to see results so its is encouraged to also promote the website to social media and set up pages for business on directories such as Yelp. As the time goes on, analyze your progress and continue to optimize the website, changing/adding keywords, and keep getting those clicks. For further information you can check out www.hubspot.com.  

Week 2 - MKTG347 - Hot Skills for Employment

Getting a job is no easy task, especially nowadays. Any job you take has requirements and qualifications that come along with it. So it is a good idea to do some research to find out what they are and what will get you on the right path to get the job you seek. You see there can be hundreds of people applying for a position and you need to stand out. This is when doing research ahead of time will pay off.

As time goes on new skills are acquired from employees in order to accommodate to the development in technology and any other innovations. According to LinkedIn, some of the hottest skills of 2015 that can get you hired in 2016 are cloud and distributed computing, statistical analysis and data mining, and marketing campaign management. So as you can see involves technology and business. Hence, anyone going into the college, in college, or out of college should consider learning such skills like these to ensure you of being able to find future employment. If it comes to be maybe these skills don’t necessarily suit your prefer field of interest, but it can be in your interest to learn the skill for emergency purposes.

Try to stay on top of the evolvement of the workforce, things change as time goes on and being an employer you can be expendable. For example, when the introduction of computers came along employers being exposed to this new technology had to learn this new skill otherwise they would be gone. Anyone that didn’t keep up was left behind and it became harder for them to find employment in areas of preference. Same thing here, you need be up-to-date with the development of the workforce and what employees are looking for. This doesn’t take much time and it is well worth it in the long run.

Check out this link (http://blog.linkedin.com/2016/01/12/the-25-skills-that-can-get-you-hired-in-2016/) for some for the recent hot skills that can get you hired and do some further research of your own.

Week 2 - MKTG347 - Basics for Having Fun and Finding Work

     Marketing has evolved over time with the introduction of social media. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are some of the most prestige’s social media websites out. Social media marketing can be fun and also help you find work. This tool has many options to work with and it can be overwhelming, but it’s doable by leaving intimidation and following a series of steps to build confidence.

     Return on investment is very important to any business because if there is no ROI then the business can’t operate. With social media marketing, return on investment has been fair to those that use it and it’s steadily growing.

     Depending on what the context being marketed, you consider whether you are marketing to a consumer (B2C), or to another business (B2B). Content needs to go in-depth to whom you want to orientate your business too. Taking the B2C or B2B will change how you approach things; its two roads that need be implemented differently through social media. So once you choose a “road” you want to engage your audience through promotions, videos, blogs, etc. Do what you need to do to make this happen and make the target customers aware. Monitoring social media goes on in with social media marketing to help generate a successful webpage because you can scan social media and see what people are saying about a product. There are a number of tools that can be used for this such as Radian6. Even though it is quite expensive, it’s worth the pay. There are other free tools that can be used, but you get what you pay for. Aside from these principles, social media marketing is all about posting and getting the attention of the target customers. Promotions are good ways to get individuals attention and the content must be compelling to the audience. Even though most of social media is free to make post to reach out to your followers, they also offer tools within that aren’t free. They help generate more social media exposure to parties outside of your followers.

     With social media marketing, and all these principles and tools, return of investment can be substantially rewarding. Everything that is done is for that reason and get ROI, so make sure to go thru this fun process and essentially find work

Week 2 - MKTG349 - Adwords: Value of online advertising

Online advertising gives you more control with marketing aspect and having both the sellers and buyers satisfied. Ads reach out to people that are likely to be interested in your products and services, and eliminating those that aren’t. AdWords functions as an online advertising tool run by Google, that can help reach new clients and grow sales. With AdWords an ad will be shown at the right time, place, and people in order to meet goals set for business success.

AdWords offers several benefits.

• Target your ads
• Control your costs
• Measure your success
• Manage your campaigns

With AdWords ads will be shown on both Google Search Network and Google Display Network. Depending on the campaign type chosen you can determine which network is used to show ads. With Google Search Network advertisers can show ads next to search results and reach individuals currently searching for specific goods and service. While Google Display Network helps the advertiser use appealing ad formats to reach wide reach of customers with broad interests, build brand recognition, and choose more specifics on where ads appear and to whom.

Quality is always important in all aspect of business, in relations to ads this is extremely important. For success in online marketing, ads and landing pages need to be significant to customers the more likely it is that you'll have a higher Quality Score. Other things that you can do with AdWords is control the cost of advertising and there is no limit to what to put in. But you get what you put in. You can set a daily budget and money will be spent in the way you choose. You can set a bidding plan to focus on getting clicks, sales, or views. AdWords’ features will give you control over what has been mentioned and plenty more. It’s a tool and skill worth learning.