Planning Business Content for Social Sites

Every business should have a marketing plan in place.  Why?  No marketing = no customers.

Social media enables you to target your audience as well as grow your customer base at an extremely cheap price.  Just a little bit of your time.  If done correctly you will even be able to meet bad publicity about your business that's staged on social media platforms head-on and replace it with more positive feedback.

Before you begin posting on your social media sites, plan your developmental goals.  What do you want to accomplish with the help of social media aids?  Do you want to bring in more customers, target your current customers for further contact or increase traffic to your website?  Pick one or more and these goals and run with it, just make sure your goal is realistic, measurable, and timely.

Above you read where we discussed target audiences, but what are they?  A target audience is to who you are trying to reach with your product, service, etc.  For example McDonald's main target audiences are family and kids who want a fun, cheap meal fast.  The next step in developing the appropriate content is to determine what and who your target audience is.  For tips on narrowing down yours, check out this article from Inc. Magazine.

Decide on your overall content and your key message.  What does your audience want to hear?  How does your service/product differ from others like it?  The overall content can include long-form (large articles), short-form (statuses/tweets), and/or conversations (encourage conversation between yourself and followers/fans or between followers/fans).

Time to establish your audience!  Create relationships by not making it all about you, try to use the 80/20 rule.  80% of the content shouldn't be your own or pushing your product while 20% is just that.  Get your customers to have a conversation with you.  Ask how they are doing.  This shows your personable side and that you are not all about work.

That's about it but make sure to change your plan as needed.  If customers don't seem to be responding you might have to make them a complete a call to action like printing off a coupon from the social site and bringing it in for a free hot coco or whatnot.  Just make sure you are flexible and responding to the positive and negative comments that you might come across.  Don't try to hide them in a room or delete them.  Ask your customer why they are unhappy.  This will make your business ou not to be the bad guy.

Resource:  mashable.com

Social Media Analyst at DEPCO, LLC

Started a new job last month where I am working for an organization, DEPCO, LLC, that develops new ways of learning for the classroom.  They have programs/curriculums for pre-schoolers on up through secondary level institutions.

Currently I am working on developing different levels of social media for them.  So far they have presence on Twitter, Facbook, LinkedIn and Blogger.  By communicating with one of the techies I was able to get code imprinted on DEPCO's website so that I can check analytics on Google to find how many external people are visiting the page and where the traffic is coming from, etc.  Another job that I have is to stay informed about the 12 different salesmen for DEPCO, LLC all across the US and to stay in constant contact with them as well as update dealers.

A couple of weeks are down from when all of the social media pages have been set up with little traffic coming in.  Hopefully since they do not have a dominant presence as of yet it will pick up.

New Web Design: Marketing Association

Check out the new look for Pittsburg State University's, Marketing Association's, web site.  This site features inforamation about the Marketing Association, how it can benefit you, upcoming and past events, and how to contact the club or adviser.

Team Sites

In my Web Site Design class, we recently had a competition of sorts, bof who could create a better site.  We had two teams by splitting the class in half, which meant 4 or 5 people on each team.  Team one created a website to attract visitors to a zoo while team two, my team, created a website to attract attention to a club on our campus, Fencing Club.  The two homepages of the sites are shown.

Value of Emerging Media

According to Joe Grigsby, Emerging Media Director at VML which is a full service digital marketing agency located out of Kansas City, education and marketing work together to connect with an audience with the intent of making an impact using innovation, creativity, and knowledge.  His definition of emerging media is consumer behavior trends that transform how they connect to content, to each other and broader society. 

Within emerging media there are two current top trends throughout the world, social and mobile.

Social: 
76% of broadband users contribute to information surrounding social media.  In fact, if Facebook was a country it would be the 3rd largest country under China and India.  Facebook is starting to become so large it is overtaking Google as a starting place on the web.  This means that Facebook is the first place a person will go when they go online.  Social media is crucial to marketing because marketing equals reach plus influence and therefore social media is equivalent to reach and friends is a synonym of influence.

Moblie: 
With the emerging popularity of smartphones comes this equation: device capabilities + 3G plus network speeds + flat rate data plans = mass market value adaption.  Therefore one must leverage text messages, create mobile access and utility, and integrate social media.

All of this together should create value to the customer.

Marketing Association Logo

Our new logo created by yours truly:

South Pointe University Mocks

This summer I had an internship at PlattForm Advertising.  Besides my everyday job shadowing and duties, I worked with the other interns on a project made just for us.  On this project we had to come up with a complete marketing plan for South Pointe University in Utah.  A fictional school.  For my part of my part, as I was in the interactive department, I developed the web mock ups for one of the ideas we came up with, SOPO.  In other words we created a mini Facebook site for this school.

For more on PlattForm Advertising visit their website.

My Creations

Here is the home page I created where I upload my assignments for my Web Design Class:

And the class homepage that I designed:

My Kind of Blog

There are many different approaches you can take when starting your own blog.  The first step is to decide what you would like your blog to focus on.  Listed below are some different types of blogs that you might decide on:

• Business Blog
• Potential customers will more than likely go to your page if you have a creative blog within your site.  It will increase visits and attention to your products.  Business can blog about tips, events, put up photos, and the latest news to get web surfer's attention.
• Personal Blog
• A personal blog is generally set up to allow the author free to discuss their views on anything and everything whereas business blogs tend to be more targeted in subject matter and focus on a specific market, area, or niche.  
• Portfolio Blog
• A blog user can choose to showcase their talents for potential employers or customers to view.  It can basically serve as a digital portfolio.
• Items that can be exhibited could be photography, design, writing, etc.
• Tutorial Blog
• Tutorial blogs basically show how to do different things.  In the following list are examples:
• Tutorial Blog
• Photoshop Tutorial
• Cooking Tutorial
• Design Tutorial
• Flash Software Tutorial
• Blog Services Blog
• These blogs are those that are showing off their blogging skills so that they can create one for you.
• The price ranges can go from $10 to $50 depending on the elements in the design
• When the blog is completed many will want a user agreement implemented, where the customer will not use the designs other than the reasons specified.  The individual who designed the site will probably also want to put a copyright mark on the bottom of the site.
• There are several ways to go about this, but here is one way on how to go about hiring a person to develop your blog:
• Go to Google--search "hire blogger"
• Look through your options
• On the site follow the directions to hire your own personal blogger!

Good luck with your blog!

Stay Safe This Halloween!

This was basically my tutorial in my class Multimedia Authorizing.  I will warn you that the first few seconds are black.  Enjoy and have a safe Halloween!

The Battle of the Free

Many have problems deciding which they would like to use:  Blogger, WordPress, or Squarespace.  In this case it is good to know that while you have to pay to use Squarespace, Blogger and most of the time WordPress are free to use.  


Squarespace, according to the website, is a fully hosted, completely managed environment for creating and maintaining a website, blog or portfolio.  Bloggers and businesses of all types can use this site to have full control over content and site customization for you blogging needs.  A Squarespace site takes less time to build than a WordPress or Blogger account.  


When comparing the paid sites (Squarespace and at times WordPress) and the free sites (Blogger and most of the time WordPress) think in terms of SEO.  They are all capable to end up number one on a Google search, but Squarespace will be the most likely to end up there.  There is more security in Squarespace in the way of hacking and viruses.  All will satisfy marketing needs, and only you can choose which you would rather have.

Blogger VS WordPress: Pros and Cons

Pro's of Blogger:

• Easy to navigate and the dashboard makes blogger easy to use
• Free to have whatever domain name you care for
• 1G of free photo posting space
• Free overall usage
• Customizable

Pro's of WordPress:

• Many plugins to improve functionality
• Free usage
• Customizable
• Mobile blogging

Con's of Blogger:

• Not as many options for customizing

Con's of WordPress

• Frequently have new versions

Both have a variety of good and bad, but here are some of the main ones that could inspire a decision about which one you will use.

Why Do You Blog?

Many businesses blog when they have less time, a general knowledge of the internet, Facebook, and/or attaching items to emails.  The business's that don't blog, but rather have a site developed from scratch, have an extensive knowledge of managing a site, folder management, html, and know various image software programs such as Photoshop.  Businesses can effectively use blogs to promote their business and products.  Others might blog instead of creating a site of their own, if they are a club or organization or perhaps so that not as much training is required when passing the site along.  

A person can blog personally as well.  A great way for a person to put a blog to good use would be to use it as a digital resume for potential employers to view.  It's beneficial by showcasing previous works that have been completed and talents within design, writing, photography, etc.