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 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 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 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 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 - MKTG348 - Essentials of an Effective Inbound Strategy

In the marketing world, employees are looking for new innovative ways to reach out to its future customers. They can do this in a number of ways such as emails, television commercials, billboards, and mail. With the advancement in technology and competition, it has become more difficult for employees to market their goods and services thus new strategies must be used. The traditional ways of marketing has always been convenient for the employee but not so much for the customer. The internet has made it more efficient and cost-worthy for both parties. The internet has revolutionized marketing. Anyone can try to use the internet to market, but in order to see real end results an effective strategy must be planned out. This outdated way of marketing shoves information to people’s faces and it can’t be a nice experience for the people when they don’t want it. 

With inbound marketing the marketer can create content specifically designed to appeal to its ideal customers, drawing qualified prospects to the business and continuously keep them coming.  So instead of going out looking for customers and getting their attention, with inbound you skip this excessive step that at times isn’t so effective. Why go out looking for someone? When you can have them find you. This way of doing business empowers potential customers and all the employee does is wait for its cliental to appear. With Inbound it’s about creating marketing that people love.

In the Inbound methodology there are several stages that must be followed in order to have a successful marketing strategy to find the ideal customers. Individuals start off as strangers to the seller and in order to attract them they use such things as blogs, keywords, and social media. They then turn to visitors whom using the conversion process becomes leads. Using landing pages and forms that they fill out with personal information can help with this stage. Now to close the leads turning them into customers use tools like emails and customer relationship management. Now you have the customers you need the process repeats on to get new ones, but they can’t forget about existing customers. With Inbound strategy you continue to delight and engage with the customers which will turn them into promoters of the goods and services they are enjoying and loving.