Apr 24

Who Would Have Thought Blogging Could be So Addicting?: A Semester Overview of Internet Marketing

Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing

There are many lessons that I have learned in this internet marketing course , but I will go ahead and give a quick snapshot in looking at GoogleAnalytics:

Google Analytics Site Traffic:

My traffic has increased significantly from March to April.  About 75% of my visitors are new and 25% are returning. They average a little less than a minute and a half on my site and look at about 3 pages at any given time. My traffic sources are 58.77% search traffic, 17.31% referral traffic, 23.46% direct traffic and then a very small portion from my ad campaign. Surprisingly, my largest referral source was not from theresabclarke.com, but instead, from hogwartsprofessor.com. I have had a little more than 1,200 page views over the course of the semester with about 40% looking at my blog post about The Hunger Games release and the hidden meanings within the novel probably because it was such a popular topic!

Reflecting Back:

As mentioned above, I thought that Internet Marketing was an extremely beneficial class and will certainly help me down the road. I liked how this class was very specialized in that it talked about one specific form of Marketing.  I think its amazing how many companies are now utilizing online outlets to reach their customers and using SEO to be the most relevant to their target market.

Down the Road:

In the beginning of the semester, I was much more skeptical about Internet Marketing and didn’t really realize how big the field was.  If I could take the course over, I wish that I would have spent more time and effort on my AdWords campaign. I don’t think I really understood the assignment as well as I should and know that I could do much better knowing what I know now. I think I will continue to keep my website up to date as I begin my career because I think it’s a great networking tool to have!  I will continue to follow many internet marketing gurus on Twitter and will try to keep up to date through reading articles online. Although I am going to be starting a career in sales, I think that after taking this class, I could definitely see myself entering this field down the road.

comments: 0 »
Apr 18

Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) and Link-Building: How I Improved My Website

Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing

For this assignment, I created a new blog post about the reasons why I love JMU as I am about to graduate and reflecting back on my experience in the last four years. For this blog post, I put love JMU in the title and throughout the body of the blog post. I also used the All in One SEO Pack to optimize the page. I included images in my blog post and alt tags with the phrase love JMU for each.  Although I haven’t done much yet, I plan on building links outside by having friends comment on my post, adding the page link to my other website, and much more. So far, all I have done as far as building outside links is Tweeting about the blog that I just created. From the SEO Diagnostic Test B/C, I found that my page ‘love JMU’ went up almost 80 spots (in Google) from where it was which I believe is a huge improvement. I think that the main thing I did was creating an entirely new blog post completely dedicated to why I love JMU. However, my site overall only ranked 8 out of 100 on the Crawler FX Report. There are many things that the website grader said I needed to fix about my website including adding social tags, posting more often and putting more alt tags on my pictures. I am extremely happy with the performance of this new blog post in terms of SEO and am happy that there are only three students above me in the search results. I will continue to optimize my page as often as possible to get my site even higher rankings.

 

love JMU

comments: 0 »
Apr 18

I’m About to be a JMU Alum?! A Few Reasons Why I love JMU

Posted in Popular

As I’m getting ready to graduate in a few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about why I love JMU and why I am so happy that I’ve been able to spend the past four years of my life here! Here are a few reasons why I love JMU and why I think every high school student should consider studying at this school!

 

why i love JMU

1) The people

One of the first things I noticed about JMU is how when you walk on campus, everyone is so friendly and happy! During my tour, everyone was telling me over and over again about how much they love JMU and why I should come here. Everyone is always willing to help another out and you will always get smiles from people walking around campus. Also, everyone holds doors! Not sure if this is a Southern thing, but I’m not used to it where I’m from!

2) Classes

There are so many amazing majors to pick from at JMU, but no matter what career path you chose to take, you will have great classes and professors. The average class size at JMU is a lot smaller than at other universities so you get a lot of one on one time with your professors. This is especially helpful when you don’t understand a subject matter or need help with an assignment. Every student also has to go through a number of General Education requirements where you get to take a lot of interesting classes in a number of different disciplines. I also had the honor of being apart of the Honors Program at JMU and took a lot of interesting courses (such as a Caribbean Literature class and another class where I studied how to handle conflict with people).

3) The campus

Take one step on the quad and you will fall in love with JMU. That’s what made my final decision to come here. The campus is always beautiful, especially in the spring. It also looks beautiful with a fresh coat of snow. In the springtime, there are always beautiful purple and gold flowers everywhere and the grass is always trimmed perfectly. The James Madison statue gets dressed up for Halloween, made into a snowman in winter, and is part of a million and one pictures. The buildings (especially the Bluestone buildings) are beautiful and make JMU’s campus come alive. Everything is within walking distance, so even though JMU is relatively a larger school, it feels much smaller and comfortable.

4) Delicious food!

For years now, JMU has been among the top universities in the nation for our delicious food. We have a ton of options on campus (including a lot of healthy ones!–we were just ranked in the top ten universities in the nation for healthy food) to chose from–big dining halls with a lot of options, specialty places, places that serve milk and cookies until 2 am, and much more! We also have Quiznos, Starbucks, Java City, Einstein Brothers and Chickafila!

5) Extracurricular activities

There are a ton of extracurricular activities at JMU! At the beginning of every semester, there is a Student Organization Night where people can walk around and chose which clubs and organizations to be apart of. I am involved in a number of these activities and this is a very important reason about why I love JMU. I love to be involved and meet people!!

6) The surrounding Harrisonburg area

Finally, the area around the University is a lot of fun and has a lot to do. Since it is a college town, there are a ton of restaurants and things to do to keep students entertained. There is also a really nice downtown area with some awesome little places to eat and drink at and cute boutiques to shop at. One of my favorite places to eat at is Jack Brown’s, which is a delicious hamburger place that has a special sauce to die for! There is also a ton of local events to go to, such as the Rocktown Beer and Music Festival this weekend. Massannutten is very close as well if you want to ski or go for a hike. Everyone in town is really nice and loves to help out JMU students.

another reason why i love JMU

comments: 1 »
Apr 9

The Many Uses of Google Webmaster Tools: Why Should Marketers Keep Track?

Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing

After taking some time and exploring through the many different tools available to individuals on Google Webmaster Tools, I was able to see many of the benefited associated with using this particular site. Whether Google Webmaster Tools is used for an individual blogger, a professional or a business, the benefits are very similar. This site allows you to track a number of different elements about your site such as popular keywords, top search queries (including impressions and clicks), any crawl errors and links from other peoples sites.  You also have the ability to check how your page looks as a Google robot would see it and see if there are any issues with it!

I found out a number of things about my website upon looking at Google Webmaster Tools. First of all, I found that my name was searched the most–probably because there is a famous newscaster and acrobat (which would explain why I had so few clicks for this phrase). Secondly, I found that the search query “hunger games hidden meanings” had 90 impressions and was clicked on 16 times. My page for this search query is on page 6 of the Google results, meaning that Google thinks my page is extremely relevant for this topic. I also found that hogwartsprofessors.com had linked my page over 130 times on two different pages! (in reference to my Hunger Games article). I plan to continue to check back and keep track of my progress which will also help me make any changes in the future.

I think that Google Webmaster Tools ix extremely important for businesses today.  It is similar to Google AdWords in its tracking techniques, however, it focuses on your website itself, the searches your blogs and pages are coming up under, and ideas to make changes to your current and future content. It will also show you who is linking to you so that you could return the favor and link back to them as well. By analyzing the most searched keywords, you can either continue to focus on your best ones or use some of your resources to build up other words you want to highlight. Keeping track of all these different elements will help marketers use their dollars most wisely in the long run and see their website begin to rise in the search results. Google Webmaster Tools should be a central part to any businesses core marketing strategy in order to track their success with various posts, products, etc. As a student, I think that this is also a great tool for something like a blog to see the impact that your site is having for a class or however long you may have the site.

comments: 0 »
Apr 4

Guest Speaker and JMU Marketing Alumni Lindsay Crone Explains the Difficulty of Capturing Consumers Attention in Today’s World

Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing

Last week, we had two guest speakers come into my Internet Marketing class, discuss their careers and explain how internet marketing has played a role in their lives. Ms. Lindsay Crone, a 2008 JMU Marketing Alum, came in and spoke to our class about her work in Search Marketing and the difficulty she has faced in trying to capture the attention of today’s consumer. I know I speak for the entire class when I say that I really appreciated hearing her speak and enjoyed hearing about search marketing from a professional perspective. After graduation, Ms. Crone initially worked as a SEM Creative Manager at Advertising.com/AOL Advertising and got a lot of experience there working with keywords and campaigns. Currently, she works as a Creative Editor at The Search Agency, and loves her job! You can check out more information about Ms. Crone on her LinkedIn.

SEM

Ms. Crone not only talked about her past and current positions, but elaborated further on organic and paid search, search engines, and the impact of social media on search. She highlighted that as consumers, we are currently living in a cross screen media world where while the TV is on, one person in the room may be on their laptop with their phone next to them, while another will be playing a game and typing a paper on his iPad at the same time. This type of environment makes it extremely hard for marketers to determine what medium is best to attract the attention of their consumers from and whether that be all channels or just one. As mentioned, Ms. Crone also went through and dissected a number of different search engines (such as Google or Bing)  by breaking them down into various parts.  When a person types a search query into Google for example, there are a number of different types of results that will appear. This includes instant, social, seller reviews, local, extended sitelinks, and organic deep links. All of these types of results serve different functions and each may appeal to different users. For example, individuals may use local results to find what they are looking for (example: shoe stores) that are close to where they are. They can also change their location simply by changing it on the results page. Overall, I felt as though Ms. Crone gave the class a lot of valuable information about Search Marketing and also got students excited about potentially pursuing a career in this field.

comments: 0 »
Apr 3

American Marketing Association International Collegiate Conference 2012

Posted in Marketing, Popular

For my fourth year, I attended AMA’s International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans, LA last week. This conference brings together over 300 schools from all over the country (and world) to compete, listen to speakers and network with others. This year, James Madison’s chapter (Madison Marketing Association) competed in the Booth and Website competition. We also had a lot of members (including myself) compete in the Northwestern Mutual Sales competition. Finally, we submitted our Chapter Plan and Annual Report to see where we placed amongst other chapters and won Silver Chapter (which means we are in the top ten of the nation!).

Throughout the conference, there are a number of opportunities to network with various companies and marketing professionals. On Friday at lunch, there was a Career Fair where individuals could walk around and give their resume to different companies. Also, there are a number of “Experience Speaks” sessions throughout the weekend where various companies such as Bacardi, Carnival Cruise Lines, Miami Heat, McDonald’s and Harrah’s come in to speak to aspiring students. This year, my favorite session was listening to the VP of Marketing for McDonald’s. She showed the audience how the fast-food company uses their ads to target different ethnicities in the United States and shared a number of surprising statistics (50% of McDonald’s customers under the age of 10 are non-white!).

As it has been every year before, this conference was a great experience! As mentioned, I participated in the competition, and even though I didn’t win, it was great practice for the real world. I actually was able to use techniques I learned in Personal Selling to sell a product for the judge. Our group also had a great time exploring around New Orleans–eating po’ boys at Mother’s Restaurant, looking at artwork in the French Quarters and listening to jazz just about everywhere we went. I would suggest attending this conference to anyone interested in pursuing a career in marketing because it is a great experience!

 

 

comments: 0 »
Mar 29

The Importance of Social Media Policies in Today’s Highly Technological and Connected World

Posted in Internet Marketing

There are many other companies that have social media policies in place to prevent their employees or potential employees for saying something online that will hurt them.In Ford Motor Company’s “Digital Participation Guidelines”, the company discusses the specifics that personnel must adhere to when engaging in social media online. There are five main standards that the company sets: be honest about who you are, clarify that the opinions you state are your own, respect the company in all communications, use good judgement in everything you share, and be aware that everything you write is permanent. These guidelines are put in place to ensure that Ford maintains a good reputation with their customers.

As I looked further into this topic, I found a number of other companies have begun to put social media guidelines in place as our society is starting to resort more heavily to social media sites. One of these that I found very interesting was the Boy Scouts of America. This company focuses mostly on staying positive and safe on various social media platforms. Boy Scouts abides by a “two-deep” leadership rule within their organization and also with their social media use. For general trips and outings, the two-deep rule simply means that two adults over the age of 21 must be present at all these events. For social media, ” two-deep leadership means there should be no private messages and no one-on-one direct contact through email, Facebook messages, Twitter direct messaging, chats, instant messaging (Google Messenger, AIM, etc.), or other similar messaging features provided through social media sites”. Their site also gives customers tips on how to stay safe on the internet in general as far as how much information you share with others.The Ford Motor Company’s website has much stricter guidelines than the Boy Scouts of America overall.

Another company I found that has a very interesting social media policy is IBM. This policy is “aimed to provide helpful, practical advice to protect both IBM bloggers and IBM.” They also link their site to “Business Conduct Guidelines” to remind their personnel of overall etiquette in the business world. The company continues on to discuss how they want to utilize their personnel to essentially spread word of mouth about their company. Starting in 2003, IBM embraced employees using the internet to blog about the company, as long as it was done in a positive and professional manner. At the end of the article, the specific tips that IBM gives to their personnel is very similar to those shared by Ford. These included  being who you are, be thoughtful, speak in the first person, use a disclaimer, respect copyright laws and protect IBM’s clients, business partners and suppliers (just to name a few). Out of the three, this social media policy was the most descriptive and advanced.

The underlying theme in all three of these policies is that the companies want to make sure they create a good name for themselves and their brand. They are less concerned with the individual actions of their customers but instead of the overall reputation of the company.

 

comments: 0 »
Mar 19

The Hunger Games and Hidden Meaning: What Was Suzanne Collins Really Trying to Say?

Posted in Popular

Since a young age, I’ve always been one to enjoy reading. Whether its sappy love novels, stories about wizards at Hogwarts or classics like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, I dive right in and get lost in the story. Recently, I finished reading Suzanne Collin’s wildly popular trilogy, “The Hunger Games”. Like J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels and Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, “The Hunger Games” has quickly become one of those bandwagon books that EVERYONE reads. With the movie release in only a few days, Hunger Games fans everywhere are prepping for the showdown. I, unfortunately will be out of town the day it comes out, but can’t wait to see it as soon as I get back.

While thinking about the up and coming release of the first movie in the series, I couldn’t help but think back to the book (which I finished in two days) and what the story was really about. I found a great site that gave some depth to the novel and talked more about the underlying meanings to the text. For those of us that aren’t familiar with the story, here’s just a brief synopsis.

The book, which appeals to a wide target audience, focuses on the post-apocolyptic America where the country is divided into twelve districts and one ‘Capitol’. The districts attempted to rebel against the Capitol some years ago, and in turn, the Capitol implemented something called ‘the hunger games’. Every year, each district must submit one boy and girl (older than 12) to play in the games. Only one can win which means the teens must fight to the death.

Some of the most prominent messages within the story are Collin’s critique of media/television. The author also pokes a lot of fun at politics and the corruption that exists today. Overall, I felt as though the book showed where our world was going if we weren’t able to take a step back and make changes to the way we live our lives. Not just talking about ‘saving the planet’ and being more ‘green’ but in our morals and the way we treat others. Hopefully someday our world doesn’t end up like the Hunger Games, but the book definitely makes you think. So when you’re sitting in the theater watching “The Hunger Games” this Friday, don’t just marvel at the special effects or the movie itself, but think deeper into the meaning of the story.

comments: 0 »
Feb 26

Pinterest as a New-Age Marketing Tool: How Marketers Can Utilize “Pinning” to Establish a Brand

Posted in Internet Marketing

These days, it seems as though new forms of social media are popping up everywhere quicker than society can keep up with. One of the newer forms is Pinterest, a social media site that uses images and “boards” for users to post things that they like. Users can organize their profile by creating a number of different boards with different categories to keep their items grouped. Some category examples include “My Favorite Things”, “Books and Movies”, “Places I Want to Go”, “Wedding Ideas”, etc. At first, the site can seem relatively simple, but its uses are endless.

I first started out on Pinterest sometime last semester and quickly became addicted. It’s a great way for me to keep track of new recipes, style ideas and crafts that I can “pin” and come back to when I need. I saw a great recipe for a Valentine’s Day cookie recipe around Christmas and was able to save it and come back to it on February 14th. It’s also great to go through other peoples pages (those that you follow) and scroll through their boards and see what they like.

 

Not only is this site great for individual users (and a great way to distract students while studying for an exam!),i t is also a great tool for marketers to use on a company level. They can use this site to show their new products and even discover the preferences of their customers. There are a number of companies that are currently using Pinterest in their marketing campaigns including Klout, Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Bergdorf Goodman and Cabot Cheese. These companies are using Pinterest in a number of different ways. Klout uses it to post pictures of office events,Nordstrom to showcase trends, Whole Foods to put up new recipes and so much more!

In the future, I think that more and more companies will begin to use this website to reach out to the growing market of users scrolling through pins!

 

 

 

comments: 0 »
Feb 12

Tweet, Tweet! My Hour-Long Twitter Exploration Experience for MKTG470

Posted in Internet Marketing

I have been on Twitter for well over a year, so for me, this assignment was a ton of fun! I spend a lot of time on Twitter anyways, so this was a normal activity for me. When I first started on Twitter, it took me awhile to really understand its purpose and how to tweet. I finally figured out the point of hash tags and tagging people I follow in things I say. At first, I only tweeted once every few weeks to a month, and now, I can’t even go a full day without sending a message on Twitter! Soon after I got a Twitter, I helped both of my roommates make their own Twitters and help to explain to them its purpose.

During my hour of exploration, I thought it was interesting how up to date people’s tweets were (unlike Facebook). The Grammy’s were on during this time, so a majority of the tweets I was reading were about the various performers and how well they were doing. I follow over 250 people on Twitter (friends, famous people, marketing blogs, etc), so there is always something going on. Much of the time, I find out things before others simply because I saw it on Twitter!

I think Twitter is a great way to connect with people (both my friends and employers). It is a great tool for marketers to disseminate a message to a large group of people at once and very quickly. I think as I enter the workforce, my tweets will be more related to my field instead of using it as a way to reach out to my friends. I know that I will continue to use Twitter for long after I end this course and graduate college.

comments: 1 »
« Previous
Privacy Policy