Oh... ' PhotoShop ' ...Excuse Me.

Hello Funny Fans whoever you are - OK OK..I know...I know...it's been awhile, since I blogged on my career-blog, which I had started some months ago for my #SocialMediaManagement class.

I took a break over the holidays and then started a new college class, and tonight I just realized I have been neglecting it. Whether I will or can keep this blog up at any regular interval or pace in the future - especially when I find some work is left to be seen.

But for now since I am still on the job hunt, and I still have a little free time on my hands. I am taking another skills course - to learn something new for my career arsenal - by taking a beginning #Photoshop class.

For all my #SabrinaKellerFoundation (@SKFsays) fans who have been hanging on to my every word; the Foundation has been going well with a successful Bowling Fundraiser last month, and I invite you to look over some of our recent posts and "Like" us on the Foundation's Facebook page.

I might one day try to write another blog with some more SKF updates, but for now I thought I would share some of my recent projects using some #Photoshop #CS6 software (PS).

The following is my first Artists Statement for my first PS project. It is a mimicked cover-page for a Vacation Travel magazine I had located online. I used the project as a chance to highlight some photos of my girlfriend and I on our #WaltDisneyWorld / #Epcot vacation last year.  

Project 1 Artist Statement:

• A .jpg image (about 5"-7" wide at 72 ppi) of your project.

• Introduction Explaining  Approach

I started my project-brainstorming at first with Googling the term “magazine covers” for ideas to see what caught my eye. I had just returned from a vacation to Walt Disney World Florida last October, and I have a lot of images already from Epcot Center, Magic Kingdom, and Disney Studios. So I planned to use some of these photos from my trip for the magazine cover project. I refined my search for a magazine template by looking for some travel magazines – particularly those that might talk about Disney themes or Disney Vacations. I found a magazine cover online which I liked called “Dream Vacation” to use for my magazine cover page template. 

•      Τarget Audience

My target audience is Professor Mark Thornhill, my online classmates, my career blogging fans, myself and my girlfriend-  who went on the trip with me. 

• A step-by-step listing of tools and techniques you used to make the project.

1.      I started by creating a new blank white background document in PS - sized 8.5” x 11” in. x 200 ppi resolution, to match the dimensions of my Dream Vacation magazine template.   

2.      I inserted a Disney World/Epcot Picture of my girlfriend and I, which was taken by a Disney photographer with our Sony SLR Camera at Epcot Center - Disney World. 

3.      I resized the image (8.5 x 11 in.) using the Free Transform tool to make it fit into my blank background document and I also set the resolution to 200 ppi.

4.      I made a slight “Curves” blending adjustment to the entire photograph - moving the slider to the right a notch - to enrichen the overall colors; I also made an overall  “Vibrance” blending adjustment  setting the vibrance level to +29 and the saturation level to +10.

5.      I selected the “Food & Wine” sign and made a “Curves” blending adjustment layer to enrich the yellow background and sign words –and to make it stand out more in the photograph.   I also selected the Mickey Mouse Menu Cook Book in the center and made a “Vibrance” adjustment layer, to make that more prominent to the viewer’s eyes – setting the vibrance to +24 and the saturation to +39.

6.      Next I used the PS “Patch Tool” to remove a camera bag and a sign that was a distraction in the foreground of the photograph.

7.      Next I added a Red Bar (separator) at the top of the Magazine Image by creating a new layer and using the color fill command; and chose a dark vibrant red. I then downsized the layer page using the free transform tool to a single red stripe, which I placed about two inches below the top of the magazine cover image to match the Dream Vacation magazine template.

8.      Finally I added an opaque blue background bar at the top using the same method as the red bar layer - creating a new layer and filling it in with a light blue color. I then set the blue layer’s blending opacity to 75%, and the advanced fill opacity to 72%, -to allow the Epcot Dome structure to come through the blue band at the top of the magazine page.

9.      Next I created Three (3) different text layers for the Magazine Title. First one using a “Brush Script MT” Black font at 37.95pts. -for the word “Dream” - this matched fairly well to the Dream Vacation Magazine template.  Next I used a “Comic Sans” font for the date of the magazine with 20pt sized text and a hot pink color. The “Vacation” word font also was made in Comic Sans and was set to 88.07 pts.  I gave it a white text color to match the template. I then stretched the “vacation” text box out to match the template and span the word over the entire top of the magazine cover page.  I also increased the font of the letter “V” (to 124.09pt) to match the magazine template.

10.  Next I added some effects to the title words “Dream” and “Vacation” by inserting a “Drop Shadow” effect and adding an “Outer Glow” effect to the word “Dream.” I also added a drop shadow and a bevel/emboss effect to the word “Vacation”-  which made them pop out and gave my magazine title a look more like the template page.  

11.  Next I inserted a 2^nd image, of my girlfriend and me, with Disney Characters from our Disney Trip (also taken professionally from Disney World Photographer using our Sony SLR). I resized the 2^nd image as a separate Photoshop document to about 3in x 3 in. @ 200 ppi (at first) to scale the image down to fit better into my Dream Magazine page.  I then transferred the 2^nd document by dragging it into my Dream Magazine project page. I then repositioned it using the move tool to the left of the Epcot Dome, and resized it a bit smaller using the crop tool and tilting it to the left axis a bit. I then added a stroke to the image giving it an “outside” white border at 13px. I also added a “smooth inner bevel” with a “contour” at a depth of 100%. This gave it a cool kind of photo album effect.  I also added an inner shadow to the frame- although I don’t think this changed much. 

12.  One of the last touches was to add an image of a scanner bar-code. I found this image through a Google image search with the words “bar code” and “large files”. I chose one which was close to my Dream Magazine template. I inserted it into my project page (after changing it into a smart object) by dragging it into the project page. I resized it using the crop tool and the move tool to place it into the correct position.

13.  Lastly I added two more text boxes to the page mimicking some of the colors and fonts from the original Dream Magazine template.  Using yellow, white, and black lettering with both the fonts Pristina and Copperplate Gothic Bold; while using either 36 and/or 20 pt. font sizes.

• Problems performing a technique/Explain how you solved the problems.

Everything went pretty well with the techniques once I decided what I was going to do – At first I was a little ambitious trying make slices and cut out people and other backgrounds, where I was having a lot of trouble with sizing the images and getting distortions. So I regrouped and simplified my goals (for now).

I did have some troubles removing the foreground objects or at least wasn’t happy with the blurring that occurred in the lower left bottom corner – the image was already blurred somehow as I received it from the camera file -  as if someone else had already tried to adjust something. When I cut out the objects using the patch tools it would take those blurs and spread them into the fix I was creating. I decided to cut the bag and sign out in two sections instead of all at once - leaving more room to move the patch (for getting clearer images) into clear sections of the photograph (hope that made sense). 

• Thumbnail images of the source art/ Where you got the source art

All source art came from Disney World photographers – and were taken with our own SLR Sony Camera.  The Dream Vacation template was acquired in a Google image search with the words “Magazine,” “Disney,” and “Vacation.” The bar-code was also found through a Google image search using the key words “bar code” and “large file sizes.”  

• Finally, give yourself an assessment -- tell whether you accomplished your goals for the project and what parts of the project you're happy or unhappy with.

I think I did fairly good job for my first Photoshop Project – as mentioned above I started off ambitious and was running out of time to get the job done. I think I met my goals which were to make it look similar at least to my Magazine page template and hopefully look somewhat professional.  I think the blurring I spoke of above is my biggest gripe although I tried to improve it – it is still visible to scrutinizing eyes. I didn’t make it exactly like the original template page because my pictures/images fitted differently into the magazine but I thought the top sections and some fonts turned out well and were matched up fairly correctly.  


 Project 1 Artist Statement - Amended:

I added another layer adjustment to the background of my cover magazine project: On the background layer/photo - I selected just me and my girlfriend using the quick selection tool and made a "Brightness/Contrast" adjustment setting the brightness to 40 and the contrast to 30. I also made a "Vibrance" adjustment to the same selection (my girlfriend and I) setting the vibrance levels to +20 and the saturation to +10.

MCC Social Media For Business Wrap up

I wanted to thank my two Professors from my Social Media for Business class for presenting a very comprehensive review of some of the most prominent social media tools available online, as well as showing us how we can analyze and use them for developing a Strategic Social Marketing Plan. 

For my class project (in my mind) the results of my social media efforts are still not out, and they will be ongoing. I just started to work on the marketing needs for The Sabrina Keller Foundation (SKF) recently, and I am still in the middle of climbing the learning curve for developing their social marketing strategies. 

Since I started working on the SKF Facebook Page – I have seen an increase in Reach because I have been more active with making postings on the page. So has the Foundation President – it seems to me prior to my volunteering to help, the page was not very active, although it had garnered about 143 followers when I started working on it. That number has now moved up to 170 “Likes” over the past three months. Which is good, but we need to have an official staff meeting, so that I can be on the same page (no pun intended) with the President and the other staff members with SKF’s overall Marketing plans and our Social Media Goals. 

For me right now the real task to achieve for SKF is to gain more engagement with these Facebook followers, as well as still grow more awareness online overall for the Foundation. I think Twitter should also become more important for us, as I am going to try to use it more; not only for making more tweets, but also as a research tool (along with Facebook Insights) to study our target markets better over the coming months. 

I took a class on Social Media previously last year at CSUSM, and we had covered the many types of social tools available for business very quickly. The focus in that class was to be sure to tie our online marketing strategies with real-world-goals the business needs to achieve offline. Not just to join with social media for social media’s sake and because everyone else has been going there.  

We worked individually and in groups to assess what social tools we wanted to utilize. And each social tool and their marketing strategies were divided into individual projects per person for our group presentations. So in short for my part I only concentrated on developing a social marketing plan for LinkedIn and Yelp.

I learned a lot about LinkedIn for my class business project (A Craft Brewery called Stumblefoot) at CSUSM. And I also have developed an extensive LinkedIn page for my personal career profile recently. So I hope to take some of that knowledge combined with my strategic lessons learned from this MCC class, and apply it to a Nonprofit LinkedIn Page for the SKF Foundation soon.  

With this Social Media class this semester, I enjoyed the fact I needed to learn more about all the social media and analytical tools for a business by myself, and I had not just concentrated on two or three of them. Before this class I still was not very educated about Facebook, Twitter, or any of the visual platforms available. I am now. 

Frankly I was a little afraid of Facebook for personal use as I didn’t want to plaster my life online for everyone to see. But these social media classes have made me realize it is a valuable tool to further my career in marketing; as well as a good way to reach out personally to my old school friends. I knew it was a bit of an oxymoron when I decided to go back to school to study marketing in late 2006; yet I was still reluctant to join the social media revolution.  Now I am plastering my vacation pictures to everyone on Facebook. Go figure!   

I decided I needed to embrace it, especially since I am now looking for work, and I know HR managers are looking for social and professional profiles online. I figured I better have something there for them to see. With the help of this class I do now. And I am doing it in a controlled and smart fashion to preserve my personal and professional Brand.  

And finally to those readers who have been reading my class blog; “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to My Marketing Career” over these past three months – I say Thank You again and stay tuned. – as I do plan to keep my friends and business colleagues informed with this Blog or another about my career and other possible endeavors in the Future -Merry Christmas – DH

Creating and Planning Some of SKF's Social Marketing Strategies

The 2^nd to last assignment for my Social Media for Business class, is to decide which of the Social Media tools we will use over the next six months; and how we plan to experiment for business or social growth with our online marketing strategies. As well as how we will plan out our social media content and integrate our social posts over our chosen social media websites.   

Considering our status as a small nonprofit organization, The Sabrina Keller Foundation does not have much of a budget – frankly we have no budget at all (except for our own personal donations) for any kind of extensive marketing activities on a regular basis. Everyone involved with managing SKF are volunteers, with their time and energy limited by regular work lives and/or family and home needs. 

Organic or free social media is the best way for our SKF staff to get our Brand and the foundation’s messages out to our potential supporters without spending a lot of money, or which will require a lot of time demands; especially when we can use free content and post scheduling tools on many social media websites.  

But with that said we can still see from my past semester class-work (My Blogs), that social media marketing management can take a lot of time and personnel efforts, with the required research needed to analyze your SEO, Consumer Reach, Content/Engagement, and Return on Investments (ROI), etc.  

Most of the SKF staff isn’t very sophisticated to run these types of research and marketing campaigns, so the majority of the social marketing will be done only through Facebook and Twitter and on a more limited basis perhaps with Pinterest. 

I will try to teach our Foundation’s president how to use some of the Facebook Insight Analysis tools, to better understand how our target market is responding. And as I said in an earlier blog she is already quite experienced with using Facebook, and sharing her own social media content on her personal Facebook Page. So I think if she and I could devote about 1 to 2 hours a week each on running our SKF Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest content management, we could try to set and meet some SMART Goals to improve our social reach and engagement; as well as try to gain more followers for our Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest pages.  

Mail Chimp will be our designated email program (because it is a free service for our Foundation’s size/ needs) and we will use it to send out event announcements and perhaps an occasional newsletter. The newsletter is a topic we need to discuss at an SKF board meeting, as well as maybe publishing an occasional SKF Foundation Blog, to complement our social media efforts in the future.  All these would take some extra content and planning efforts, and I am not sure we will have neither the time nor the manpower to create a regular blog anytime soon. 

Facebook will be our chief social media marketing tool along with Twitter in tandem with most of our posting of our social content. I will propose a six (6) month social marketing strategy to increase our followers on Facebook through the use of more Twitter engagement (Tweets).

Our goals will be to increase engagement and Fans on Facebook through increased engagement with Twitter - I think we need to research where our potential social followers might be (as I had explained in a previous blog), and develop a strategy to engage them in conversation or tweets - with our Facebook or website URL posted as a Call to Action to come and see our page and “like us” on Facebook.  The same can be done for sending out calls to action to also visit our Pinterest page and pin boards.  

Twitter will also be used for announcing events to come volunteer or attend our local fundraisers.  Or once in a while we can just plain ask them (Business) to donate some money for our Scholarships or to sponsor an event.  

I think our test marketing strategy would be to make some ongoing Tweets on Twitter (perhaps paid at first to increase our reach) designed to invite new people to see our Facebook page – and the real test will be to find out what works (research), and what to use for our social content, that will keep them there and increase our Fan Engagement.   

We also have a big bowling family fund raising event coming up in February – I think integrating this Bowling theme as well as our SADS Foundation fund raising efforts into our marketing campaign on Twitter would be a good way to attract new followers. 

We will schedule the next four (4) weeks for our social media marketing calendar as follows – with the Upcoming Bowling Event and the marketing goals stated above in mind to increase our Fans and their Engagement:

Week 1: 

Mail Chimp could be used on a Monthly or Bi monthly basis to remind our followers of the upcoming Bowling event or other news – 

Our scheduling of these and other types of email blasts need to be discussed with the SKF staff and our Foundation President before I can make any future plans on how Mail Chimp might be utilized throughout the coming months. 

Tuesday December 10 - Facebook/Twitter (every Tuesday and ongoing Tuesdays)
- Post a SADS article or any related Heart Arrhythmia Stories (To do some SADS article research it will take about 30 min to an hour of our time each week)

Facebook/Twitter December 12 – *** Post/tweet Daily (or link) Advent Calendar – (Ongoing thru the month of December) Each Day until Christmas there will be a new Holiday message on it  
(This is an idea I am still researching the details http://www.adventcalendaronline.co.uk/  ) 

(***If the calendar does not work out we will start a daily or every few days/semi-weekly -  Xmas themed posting involving Family Holiday Events/Hobby - Cooking - Projects for Xmas time)

(The research and development of our Christmas Content will take some time approx. 3-4 hours will probably be needed to accomplish this task this week or we can spread out the work throughout the rest of the weeks/month if we are not making a calendar)

Friday December the 13^th – schedule Facebook (and a Tweet) to post at 6 am – to make a “spooky” Friday the 13^th post sharing an Online Game: “Nightmare before Christmas” (http://games.disney.com/the-nightmare-before-christmas-jacks-sleigh-ride )

December 13 Early Morning - Post a Disney Image /link to Nightmare Xmas Game/with CTA and a Link to SKF/URL on the Pinterest Family Fun Board.

 

Sunday December 15^th – Re-post Advertisement for Midnight Bowling Event (Schedule to Do this every Sunday and schedule intermittent weekdays (Dec/Jan/Feb) until the event is held in late February. 

Twitter December 12 and Ongoing till December 25 – Tweet about the Advent Calendar /or Tweet about Family Xmas Event/Projects – create calls to action to come and like our Facebook page.

Twitter/Facebook – Monday December 16^th - Make a Call to Action to get sponsors to donate time or food/catering etc. - for Bowling Event in February.  (Be sure to schedule the same sponsor posts each week until the event but on different weekdays/times).

-Daily Times for postings will be scheduled during the day or night, and we will vary them to increase the reach to our Followers Timelines/schedules – This is a good metric to study in Facebook Insights analysis over time to see which times of day (and days) we get the most Engagement/Reach.     

Weeks 2/ 3 /4:

Facebook/ Twitter/ Pinterest -  Repeat the ongoing Advent Calendar Christmas Campaign as described above for week 1 /or use some Christmas Events/Hobbies (articles as researched) as well as publicize the Bowling Event by postings/ads as indicated at the times/days listed above. 

*** Ongoing we will Post any Shareable Social Content that may arise during the coming weeks – Girl Scout Posts / other Followers Content or any other amusing and family friendly/Appropriate content we may find online to share. 

We hope our social strategy, aside from the obvious reason to promote our upcoming Bowling Fundraiser over the coming weeks through December, January, and February, is also going to gain some more awareness for The SabrinaKeller Foundation. 

The Facebook and Twitter posts we will publish with the Advent Calendar, or some other Christmas themed content, will hopefully help achieve more social engagement with our page. 

We want to increase the size of our Facebook/Twitter communities. I think the real test of our content strategies will be trying to get more Facebook Fans raised through our Twitter presence, and by using some of the market research (listening to Twitter conversations) in order to locate and reach out to them; which will take some time and experimentation - So please post a comment. Link to and “like” our social web pages and wish us some luck!  

My Comments on MCC Student Social Media Reviews/Blog Posts

MCC Student Blog Links:

Ipina,Jessica -  http://bit.ly/1f5C84q

Mencher,Jennifer - http://bit.ly/1bBQZDN

Ogg,Cynthia -  http://bit.ly/1bVdjdc

Parente,Lenah - http://bit.ly/1fir4Sf

Identifying The Most Relevant Social Media for Our Business Strategies

This week we are finally starting to wrap up our fall semester classes at MCC. It has been a long 15 weeks of school for me. And I am now ready to turn my main focus onto my job search for a marketing internship, and hopefully finding some gainful employment. Not to mention prepare for the coming Christmas Holiday.

We have learned a lot about several different social media engagement platforms in my Social Media for Business class; as well as some of the other types of online analytics and marketing tools for complementing our Business and Marketing Strategies.

Now it is time to review some of those social media platforms that we think are going to be the most effective or sustainable for our business, such as with the Sabrina Keller Foundation; and which ones will be the most useful for integrating over the short and/or the long term to meet our business and social marketing goals.

Facebook is probably one of the best social media platforms for The Sabrina Keller Foundation to use on a weekly basis if not daily.  The foundation director and some of the other SKF board members have already had some experience with using the website. Although we as a group (the board members with Fb authorization), need to be better organized into acting as one voice when we use the page for Marketing or Social Content Management purposes.

Facebook has the potential to be our most effective social marketing tool. Our Facebook Page consists of our largest social fan base, but most of them are not very socially active with our content at this point. The director of the SKF foundation is already fairly comfortable with using Facebook/social media on a personal basis. So I think if we start to use some of the Facebook Insight tools for gaining more knowledge about our followers, we will be able to better see what is working with our content.  Then with the help of our SKF director’s social savviness, we might try a more organized marketing campaign to increase our fans social engagement.  

Personally I think I enjoyed using and learning about the Facebook platform the most during this class, with Pinterest following in a close second.  

Pinterest was not being used by the Sabrina Keller Foundation prior to my arrival earlier this year. So I was the one who actually created the new account, and started making some strategies for gaining followers, by making pin boards that were related to our brand; Having Family Fun while raising funds for Girl Scout College Scholarships and promoting SADS Education.  

Pinterest is probably one of those social websites which we would manage on a less frequent basis than with our Facebook page. All of us are new to most of these visual social media tools and learning how to use them effectively will take some time. Although I am proud to say we have gained ten (10) new followers since I started the Pinterest account last month.

I found Pinterest can fit in well (integrate to help meet our goals) with the Sabrina Keller Foundations key social demographics – women ages 25 to 65 – those who are moms and parents who are active, and concerned with their families welfare. I made several pin boards about SADS Education, Health & Food, Family Fun, and one especially For Kids; filling them with visual content that is related to their themes. I have already attracted several followers with these pins - mostly women but also a couple of men, including one Pinterest follower who seems to be more of a business professional, who provides literature about heart health and educational material for medical professionals.  

Twitter is probably the second most integrative social marketing tool for reaching the Sabrina Keller Foundations goals after using the Facebook Page; as we can pair them (with tweets) while sending out our Facebook posts simultaneously.  Also if we decided to create even the smallest of marketing budgets; Twitter would be a good tool to use to find some new prospects (Fb Followers: Sponsors/Volunteers & Donors) and to drive new traffic to our main website or Facebook page.   

I still have yet to create a LinkedIn Non Profit Page for The Sabrina Keller Foundation. But it is at the top of the priority list for my ongoing projects as SKF’s new volunteer marketing director. I think LinkedIn will make a good nonprofit social media tool for SKF to reach out to San Diego Business people, and to find some event sponsors; as well as maybe seek advisors or volunteers that can help us grow our brand as a new nonprofit foundation.

I think after Pinterest some of the other visual social websites we had covered over the semester would be less adaptive for the Sabrina Keller Foundation’s needs at this time (Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram.).

Although I think maybe after we have mastered using some of the new social marketing strategies we learned this semester with Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest; we might want to explore using Instagram or Tumblr on occasions in the future, to highlight our pictures of fund raising events etc.  I would imagine as we became more creative with using Pinterest we might find the other visual sites more attractive to use in the future.

Email blasts, and an occasional newsletter or announcement, through an email program like Constant Contact (or others), is a good way to keep our true followers informed about the organization.   We have currently been using a general Yahoo email account to send them out as a group to our fans and it has (unbeknownst to some) compromised our fans security.  This problem needs to be brought up, and we need to discuss this at a general board meeting to find some low cost but safer alternatives.   

I have created a Google+ account for my personal use and I have already linked it to this class blog (which can help your page with (SEO) search engine rankings), but I have yet to make a page for the Sabrina Keller Foundation. I think it might be a good idea to create a Google+ account for SKF soon; if not for expanding and increasing our social media presence then definitely for our gaining access to the Google Analytics, which we can use to help better determine our marketing strategies. But maintaining too many social media websites right now might become a bit difficult for many of the SKF volunteers who are working in regular jobs.

Groupon and Living Social are probably the last and way down on our list for SKF to adopt as social media marketing tools; as we are not in the business of making any commerce or seeking any profits to be discounted. Although as I had proposed in an earlier blog about these tools, we might want to approach the management, and try to utilize them for some kind of pre-paid ticketing program to our fund raising events.  

Facebook Insights

For this assignment in my Social Media for Business class we have been asked to review over our latest Insight Results (analytics) for our Facebook Business Pages, and to report on some of the data changes that have occurred over the past week.  

We were also asked to go and “Like” all our fellow Social Media students and follow their Fb pages - so we all would have access to the Facebook Insights panel (there must be at least 30 followers on your Page to have access to Fb Insights).  

I was going to report on my new personal page or actually my “Professional Page,” hoping that enough students would “Like” my page for me to gain access to the data in Insights. I was actually looking forward to it.  My Professional Page is looking rather lonely with only a handful of students and some close friends (for a total of 14) who have liked the page as individuals. 

So not a lot of engagement is going on with my Professional Page posts either; there are a few students who managed to find me and say a few words on my wall and to them I am grateful – Thank you! 

The rest of them (my MCC Social Media Class), I think, -most if not all the students had “Liked” my FB Page as we were instructed. But they did so as their business pages (not with their personal) and I guess somehow Facebook doesn’t think those types of “likes” count as Fb Fans.  

So I am a bit disappointed that I couldn’t see my Insights results for my HTD Enterprises Page.

Nonetheless I am still a page manager for my actual project page The Sabrina Keller Foundation which I have been reporting on in this blog throughout the semester.

The Sabrina Keller Foundation did not see a lot of positive changes with their page statistics over this past week. With currently receiving 167 Likes - there were no organic changes in our number of Fans (0%). Although yesterday I decided to run a short paid advertising campaign and two more likes have been gained within the last 24 hours (but they are not showing up yet in the Insight results).  

Also to my chagrin we did see a marginal decrease in our Post Reach at 26 which is down 3.7% for the week. A bright side is that our Total Reach (people seeing any activity on the page) was up by 3.2% at 32.  Our Total Engagement (six (6) total unique people Engaging with 4 “Post Likes” & 20 “Post Clicks”) with the page was down a whopping 45.5% from the previous week (that would be people who actually clicked on something). 

In conclusion I think we need to work on bringing up Page and Post Engagement numbers by researching our target market’s social interests and then providing them with some better content to increase their engagement with our page and social posts.  

Google Analytics & Search Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and how it affects our Social Media (Marketing) are my topics from this week’s Social Media for Business class - as well as how we can monitor our search engine and web-marketing results through the use of Google Analytics, Facebook Insights and other web based analysis tools.  

Search Engine Optimization is the art or science for getting your organization’s webpages (Home Page & Social Content) ranked high if not the highest in Google’s (and others) search results or rankings. These rankings are also referred to as SERPs or “Search Engine Results Pages.”  

I am not going to go into how SEO Optimization works in much detail here with this student blog (beyond linking to some articles), because it is a highly technical and an ongoing process for beginners like me, and probably you; where we will need to take some time to learn the use of the data and analytics, and how we develop our Search Engine Marketing (SEM) strategies.

The general idea is that Google has developed complex algorithms that help rank online web pages based on “Authority” (web page authority is ranked based on several factors); and the “Relevance” of your webpage(s) content (how well it matches to your potential customers “key words” used in their online search queries).

When you optimize your website/page content to achieve higher organic ranking with Google’s SERPs; your content will need to match your key product or subject categories; and you should use your potential consumer’s popular key (search) words in your website content or text, and webpage titles, or subtitles, etc. This will help Google better identify what your content and webpage is about, and it will rank your webpages accordingly to the relevance of the researcher’s keywords; which will then be shown to those searchers who are located in your local business area. 

One of the several test factors used by Google’s search engine algorithms, to assess your webpage ranking authority, is to determine how much your webpage is getting linked to other authoritative webpages and/or social media content.  The more in bound links your webpages have attracted from other authoritative web places, the more likely you will be able to increase your search rankings on Google’s SERPs. 

The art or science of SEO Optimization takes a lot of practice as well as patience; and the use of content experimentation with your social media marketing will be constantly needed. You will need to always do regular analysis of your consumer’s actions and of all your webpage activities; to measure the conversions (those who become customers), and to see how your other social media factors (goals/measures) or results are showing any progress, or are resulting in any (ROI) Return On Investment.  

Google Analytics is a free web analysis service, which measures many technical factors online, regarding data such as advertising clicks, and webpage visitors, or potential consumer’s activities; including your customer’s engagement or activities on your business pages and other social places.

 

There are many data points offered for analysis by Google Analytics (GA) to a web based business or online organization; - way too many and some way too technical to cover for this student bloggers expertise in SEO at this time. 

However my assignment today was to research some of the Google Analytics (GA) tools and its features for Business webpage analysis; as well as determine how some of them might be useful for my organization The Sabrina Keller Foundation (SKF).  

First off Google Analytics (GA) offers a customizable “Dashboard” feature which I like – where you can arrange your data points and graphs or other metrics as you feel fit, to do your own webpage and content analysis. 

One of the GA features that I feel would be useful to SKF would be the reporting tool found under the Advertising & Campaigns Performance Metric; called (SEO) Search Engine Optimization. This SEO tool- or report - will give you statistics on what are the most popular or not so popular search queries (paid or organic) your page viewers or users have used to search for your website(s) or your competitors content.

The SEO metrics will also give you the number of impressions (views), as well as (the mouse) clicks on to your website URL’s - which are seen by viewers in the Google Search Ranking Pages (SERPS). The report also gives you the average position of your page rankings (the URL)- or how it was ranked/listed in the results page; and also there is a metric telling which landing page the visitor had ended up clicking to on your websites or other social webpages.

This would be a good tool for the SKF Foundation to use to see what search terms our organic visitors are using before they find our webpage and social pages. We could use this information to better identify what our page visitors were looking for; and then make our homepage or social content even more relevant to their search queries.

In fact I have a just got a personal epiphany about this concept even without having SKF registered for the GA service at this point. As one of our social page visitors last month had made a comment that she found our Facebook Page through her search query under “college scholarships.” I could take this theory and use the GA SEO optimization report to confirm if other visitors have found our pages through a Google search using the key words “college scholarships.”  If this turned out to be a trend then I would conclude that we should make content more often that tells our visitors more about our scholarships, the recipients, and what is being offered to Girl Scout participants each year. 

Another feature-tool or report on Google Analytics which the Sabrina Keller Foundation might want to use is the Audience Data and Reporting Metrics- which is essentially a demographics report that identifies your website audiences. Data such as their ages (breakdowns) and gender, as well as an overview of your web traffics interests (with consumer “categories” or “affinities”) are highlighted. There are many other variables to be analyzed that can be broken down and formatted or reported by dates, and segmentation, etc. as you feel may be needed for your Social Marketing and SEO analysis. 

The Sabrina Keller Foundation can use the demographics information to identify our most common visitors and design content specifically for them. Or even try to figure out ways to attract other demographics we may find we would like to pursue, such as developing more business interest and sponsorship in our projects for the community. 

Geography, behavior (engagement with websites), and user technology (what are the viewer’s using to view your content), are also organized into custom data sets for analysis on GA.

There are many other types of other Google Analytics Tools (data) available to a Business or organization which can assist with improving your SEO and online marketing strategies, such as a social reporting metric, data on traffic sources, and special tools for following your consumers use of their mobile applications to name just a few of the many tools/metrics that are available.

I invite you to look at the Google Analytics resources pages for more information on how it can help your business.