Week 17: Wrapping it up

Overall: Week 17

I would have to say after taking this course, I thought before I was well versed in the subject matter of social media but I really did have a lot to learn! I am glad I took this course to really dive deep in understanding the matter of social media. My viewpoint has changed about social media, before I felt there was only a few platforms that were important as a business (eCommerce) owner but that is not the case.

To really engage your customer on all platforms, you need to be posting on ALL platforms daily and be active. Exploring other platforms, for example Twitter, I never have used this platform in my personal life and we had to create an account, create and post ads on Twitter. Which, I am glad that I was pushed to use a different platform to understand the differences in platforms. This is something that I need to keep up with because the younger generation (teens-18's year old) is always using the newest platforms, so having that knowledge is key for newness. But also still posting on the "older" platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. 

Overall, I feel that after taking this class has definitely taught me the building blocks of starting and continuing to have a successful eCommerce business. By developing a well known standing business on the eCommerce level you need to have a stance on every platform. Not just that alone but by posting good content, that may not have to do with what your selling either just to reach to your targeted customer. Once that is grasped, you will have a great follower base and that is something for my start up that I want to get going. This class has helped me with the start up of my own company, Katharyn's Kollections by getting a follower base on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This will help me because I already have followers and those followers will create more by liking, commenting and sharing my content that I post. 

Social media for businesses, services and products are amazing tools to pick and choose what you want to use for the particular business that you are promoting. Facebook alone has this great feature of Facebook Ad manager, this allows you to create content on the platform as well as share it on Facebook and Instagram. This is an awesome tool because you can actually boost your ad that you shared a few weeks ago or months ago and bring that back to your timeline for you and your customers so you don't actually have to recreate content if you are doing the same type of offer. In the future, I am for sure going to use this tool to create and share content on Facebook and Instagram. This tool also helps have a guild line of what your content should entail, which is very helpful when creating a lot of content. 

All in all, this class has taught me the actual building blocks of having a successful business. I also very much enjoyed being pushing into something new to learn and grasp what is being shown to us, that is so important online because technology is always changing. And keeping up with the newness is very important as well. I am so glad I took this course, it really opened my eyes to social media businesses and running a successful one! 

Week 16: Planning Your Future Strategy

Overall

Overall, this class really pushed me in the right direction, from when to post, on different platforms, how to post, ect. All of the assignments were very helpful and useful for existing businesses or upcoming businesses. I really liked almost everything covered in this class because it really helped / showed me the correct way to go about being an eCommerce business. 

I think the best social media platforms that integrate the best for my company would be Instagram and Facebook. I feel that these two platforms are very powerful and hit my targeted customer. I am glad that we explored Twitter, but I don't think this is a good platform for my particular company. I definitely will use Facebook Ad manager as well as posting ads on Instagram. I got way more users and views on Facebook and Instagram rather than Twitter. I really like Facebook Ad manager because it allows you to create exactly what you were going for and also allows you to link your Instagram page as well. This I feel is a great tool to have, to save time and money. Facebook Ad manager does charge you, but if planned out correctly it will work for us and make our money back with sales. I think that my company should spend at least 2 - 3 hours on social media posts per day and coming up with a budget as well. 

Week of 12/8 - 12/14 

Planned post - Monday and Thursday (Extended Black Friday Deals) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook) 

Actual Post : Extended Black Friday Deals.... WHAT?!.... This is unheard of!! 40% off all purchases until December 15th. 

Week of 12/15 - 21 

Planned post - Wednesday and Friday (Last minute shopping - WE HAVE DEALS!) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook)

Actual Post: Last minute shopping... we still have some great deals with 40% off all purchases, including gift wrapping. Don't sweat it! Katharyn's Kollection's is here! 

Week of 12/22 - 12/28 

Planned Post: Tuesday and Wednesday (Happy Holiday's - Express shipping if in need of gifts!) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook)

Actual Post: Happy Holiday's ! Don't sweat it, we've got express shipping if in need of last minute shopping! 

Week of 12/29 - 1/4 

Planned Post: Everyday all week this week (After Christmas sale!) **Post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using Facebook ad manager (Instagram and Facebook)

Actual Post:Happy After Christmas sale! We are offering 50% off all purchases! 

Week 15: Optimizing Yourself and the Company

Google Analytics 

I feel that all parts of Google Analytics are very beneficial and useful. The main google analytics home is very beneficial because it shares the amount of users (which is great to know if you are building more customers or not), bounce rate (this is very helpful because this tells you how many people visit and stay vs. visit and leave, the sessions and the duration of the sessions of users (sharing how long a customer is on your site). 

Another part of Google Analytics that is very beneficial is "how are your active users trending over time?" This is a great feature to allow you to see if your traffic is expanding or decreasing. With this information you can see what you need to change if traffic isn't expanding. "When do your users visit" is another great tracker to see when the best time is to post an event, offer or anything else so the most amount of people see your post/ad. The other two analytics I found important were, "where are your users and what are your top devices?" These two are important because you can see where your customers are located so you can post effectively. Additionally, knowing the type of devices is very helpful to, to know what kind of ads to create for and what your customers are using. 

All of these analytics are super important and will apply all of these to my company to gauge and understand where my customers are expanding, ect. 

Week 14: Developing Online Advertisement

#1 Promoting the business locally

This was my first ad for this assignment, and I thought this was important to use location to boost my customers to come and visit my shop! Also, I personally find this very helpful as a customer when a location is shared to help me find where I want to go. Sometimes if there is not a location listed I will not track down the store, I will just shop somewhere else. That is why I feel this is so effective and a good ad, to show our location (allowing more shoppers to come shop) and boost our traffic especially with the holidays right around the corner! The objective for this post is for customers to find our shop the easiest way possible and to create more traffic through out the Holiday season. 

#2 Promoting Website and Extended Deals 

This ad was to promoting our websites and different social media platforms, to share the good deals of our Black Friday Deals being extended. This will be effective because sharing the extended deals on all the social medial platforms will boost our sales (because of our great deal - 40% off all purchases) and get the word out. Additionally, everyone loves a great sale, by doing a great sale will continue traffic and bring new customers. The objective of this ad is to bring in new and old customers to purchase with our great deals we are offering. 

#3 Boost Posts and Getting Business Out There 

Finally, for the last ad, boosting a post. Taking an old post and tweeking it a bit! The objective is to show our beautiful bracelets and the great deals we are offering with them! This makes sense for our company because of the great sale along with the Holiday season... and who doesn't need to grab a gift real quick! 

Week 13: Online Advertising

The five companies that I picked that were similar to my company was Pandora, Alex and Ani, Alzerina Jewelry, Carlsbad Creations Jewelry and Fosters Fine Jewelry. In my opinion all of these companies do a great job with online marketing and all of these companies post every single day, sometimes multiple times a day. These are all great practices to help your company grow because when your company posts every day multiple times a day, people see that and want to shop your products. All five of these companies use multiple social media platforms, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snap chat,etc. This is so effective for these companies because posting more allows people to see you and your products more, which this allows people to purchase more products. Also with a larger audience when posting on multiple platforms with different people and different likes/wants.

All of these companies all have in common is there photos and content that they post. All of the posts are thought out effectively with a professional stand point but also it makes it look super clean and easy like the person just took the photo of themselves instead of being in a photo shoot. All of these companies post every day  - a few times a day, which is something to consider because it is putting your business/promotion out there multiple times a day. By doing this, this will bring in new customers along with your regular customers.

The traditional advertising vs. social media advertising, in my opinion social medial advertising is winning. I say that because of how many people go on social media every single day, multiple times a day they are more pron to seeing the ad that you posted online vs. a magazine ad that someone is just looking at one time to pass the time. On social media, that ad can be used more than just one time as well. Also, the traditional way to advertising is very expensive and does not reach out to as many customers, that would reach on social media platforms. Social media advertising makes more sense to me to use for my company, for all reasons to reach all target markets and being cost efficient.

Week 12: Other Online Tools

Meet up Groups: 

Before researching for this assignment, I did not know of meet up groups and that was an actual thing. So, I went on Google, and searched meet up groups in San Diego for jewelry making. North County Crafters came up in my search, there is 110 members in the group and they meet every weekend to share ideas and finish up crafts that they have not. This group is awesome because if you feel like you have a road block with some of your ideas, the members are there to help you and give you new suggestions. I think this an awesome idea and something I definitely would like to be apart of! Being in the art industry, sometimes your ideas fall short or need a little boost in your passion, this is a great tool to help build your business and new ideas. 

Yelp.com:

Yelp.com is another outlet that I think would help drive my company. By having an yelp people do check that before shopping with a company and it is a good idea to have a good name for yourself and your business on that platform. I would start by creating a yelp page for my company, and for every customer that purchases I would have them write a yelp review on their personal experience to grow in positive ways. 

Week 12: Using Other Online Tools

Using Other Online Tools: 

After reading our lecture, I honestly think I would put all of these tools into consideration to use for my company. I really think that bringing in different types of marketing will drive my company and overall sales. I think I would use a few of these ideas from the lecture.

https://www.proofhub.com/articles/best-online-collaboration-tools-business, this I would like to use because this really drives your company/business sales. This platform can help from what is trending and helping you post on social media. This tool would really help my business because this can tell me what is important to share vs. what is not very important. 

http://google.com/business/, I would also use google.com because google can really be a team player, google rules the internet. Google allows you to create websites, post photos/content, customers can review your company and you can even add you location so your customers can just put you in their phone and get to you(Google Maps). Google is defiantly going to be one of the first tools we use and we for sure will get a lot of use from the other end (customer end).  

http:/linkedin.com/, We would use this as a professional stand point, to network with other alike companies and learn from each other. As well as employment opportunities, Linkedin is a great tool to find good employees and network with them as well.  Overall, Linkedin would really help our company grow all together with knowledge and business growth. 

http:/yelp.com, This is a platform that our company should really try to grow because a lot of customers/consumers will check out yelp before even walking foot inside the business. Other peoples options and experiences are so important for the business and for the customer as well, so we will try and keep our positive outlook on yelp.com