According To Google Analytics…
After studying how relevant internet marketing is, I figured it would be best to learn a bit more about it. After taking a look at my overall performance with regards to my blogging website this semester in MKTG 470, I am pretty satisfied with the results. After examining my Google Analytics results page, I can see that most of my traffic is coming from search traffic. I think one of the qualities of my blog is the content within. It seems I have very relevant content that many users are interested in, as I can also see the breakdown of which pages and blog post’s most people are paying attention too. There is a pretty even break up of percentages as to what pages people are viewing the most. I will continue to post a variety of content, attracting all sorts of audiences!
What’s Most Important?
I think a key take-a-away from MKTG 470 this spring semester was really how relevant internet marketing is in today’s marketplace. As business’ are moving more away from traditional advertising, and more towards internet advertising, it is extremely beneficial to have a firm understanding as to how this new era of advertising works. I think the most useful thing take-a-away, was simply how to set up a blog. Blogging is becoming so relevant, and Professor Theresa B. Clarke made it very clear that if we can attract peoples’ attention through blogging, we can than transfer that traffic to potential streams of income. Overall, blogging is a great way to gain traffic and potentially make some extra money.
Blogging and My Career
Not only have a I gained a firm understanding of how relevant internet marketing is through taking MKTG 470, but I plan to utilize the skills I learned in my professional career as well. I am heavily involved in a company called Evolv Health. I plan to try and promote my business in the online sales arena through blogging, and driving traffic to a personalized website I am going to create. All the skills have been learned through MKTG 470, and for that reason, I am ever so grateful to my professor. Hopefully these skills will lead to some money making potential online! Relevant internet marketing is key!
SEO – Suggestions I Have…
Optimizing a website can be fairly simple, as long as you show consistent effort, on a daily basis. It is extremely important to take efforts each day to try and analyze what is working for you with regards to on-site as well as off-site SEO efforts you are currently using. The easiest way to tell if your efforts are showing results is to check your website grading using Crawler FX. I tried to optimize my page about why I Love JMU. I had a score of 24 out of 100. You can also use HubSpot’s Marketing Grader. My score after trying to optimize my love JMU page was an overall 45 out of 100.
To try and increase my grades over time, I used on-site tactics like using love JMU as keywords for images, as well as including it in my blog post content. You want to be careful to not overload your website with that phrase however, that will actually decrease your rankings. You want to also make sure to have a title tag, and include strong keywords within your content to link traffic.
Some off-page tactics I used was Google AdWords. Running campaigns and keeping a close eye as to performance each day, I was able to increase my overall ratings on HubSpot’s Marketing grader. I will continue to monitor my page, and each day that goes by is another opportunity to increase your rankings search engines. All though online paid campaigns are not a must, they definitely do help!
Goodluck with your SEO!
Marketing as a career offers incredible potential for anyone…as long as you know how to market effectively. There are incredible amount of tools in place to help marketers promote their business and achieve success. One of the most valuable, useful, and easy tools to use is Google Webmaster Tools. Whether you have 1 website that you have created, or 1o,o00, you can manage them all in one spot..for free!
I wanted to focus mostly on Google Webmaster Tools site mapping tool. In my mind this is one of the most effective, if not the MOST effective tool that Google offers. If you are not familiar with what site mapping, look below for the description, or click here!
“Sitemaps are a way to tell Google about pages on your site we might not otherwise discover. In its simplest terms, a XML Sitemap—usually called Sitemap, with a capital S—is a list of the pages on your website. Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process.”
As everyone knows, webpage design is widely considered to be most the crucial part of online marketing. After you design a webpage, the only way to know if it is effective is if you achieve results. Utilize site mapping to list all pages within your website, and communicate this list to Google. This way, the “spiders” that crawl the internet, may not see certain pages, therefore not considering you for search queries. This way, you can make sure Google know’s that these certain pages exist.
Use this tool to your advantage, as you need to communicate with Google, that you may have more than just “meets the eye!”
Last Tuesday, March 27, 2012, I had the privilege of listening to a guest speaker in my MKTG 470 class taught by Professor Theresa B. Clarke. Her name was Deb Van Horn, VP of Support Services at Rockingham Group. It was an eye-opening experience, not only for me, but my classmates as well. I want to start of by extending a warm and genuine thank you, to Ms. Van Horn.
Ms. Van Horn went right into the presentation talking about some Social Media Marketing that she controls over at the Rockingham Group. The first thing that I believe really caught my attention was when she described how effective Google AdWord ads were. She went into explaining that the companies text ad’s performed at the highest level, as opposed to display ads with images and graphics. This made perfect sense to me, as I know, as soon as I see an image as an ad, I immediately question the integrity and legitimacy of the ad.
Ms. Van Horn went on to talk about all of the different ways to utilize social media marketing for a very low cost, or no cost at all. I had no idea how many different ways one can utilize these social media methods to advertise. The one that stood out to me the most was using facebook to advertise. It is as simple as making a facebook page, and obtaining “likes” from people to start creating awareness. This had an impression on me, and as soon as I went home, I created my own facebook page, centered around my home based business. Feel free to like it here!
Another interesting point that Ms. Van Horn made was constant tracking and updating to your ad campaigns. Whichever program/service/driver etc. you were using, it was important to monitor the performance, and make changes to keep enhancing overall performance. Over time, you will find that different keywords, tactics, and methods work better than others. The key to success is monitoring!
Learning more about Ms. Van Horn:
Visit her LinkedIn page
My findings:
After doing research on social media policies in the professional workplace, I have found that many of them tend to be very similar. The first social media policy that I researched was IBM‘s social media policy. The policy went over a variety of different categories to address. Both of the social media policies discussed, first and foremost, the importance of speaking on behalf of the company. Both companies made it to clear that you are allowed to say things about the company, however if you do, make sure to address that you are an employee. Dell specifically states, “When you talk about Dell on Social Media, you should disclose that you work for Dell. Your friends may know you work for Dell, but their network of friends and colleagues may not and you don’t want to accidentally mislead someone. You should know and remember the 10 magic words: “Hello, my name is [NAME], and I work for Dell.” Be sure to replace [NAME] with your name because otherwise that looks odd.”
The next thing that they made very clear was the fact that in no way, shape, or situation are you allowed to speak on behalf of the company. Not even as an “unofficial spokesperson.” IBM specifially states, “If you publish content online relevant to IBM in your personal capacity use a disclaimer such as this: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”
Pretty Neat Picture!
There seemed to have be many more similarities than differences. To tell you the truth there really were not differences at all. Hope you enjoyed!
Over the summer, I got involved with a network marketing company called cPRIME. As I got more and more involved with the company, I knew I had to find a way to utilize advertising via the internet, facebook, and various other forms of social media. As I did some research on some of the best ways to advertise, I figured that I would start with good ol’ blogging. I found a pretty cool opportunity to get my own blogging platform, along with a unique way of earning money as well. This company was called “Empower Network.” Basically, for $25 a month, you received a replicated, Empower Network website to recruit people to also use this affiliate program, and you would be paid commissions for more and more people joining. I was more concerned with the blogging platform it offered though, as I really did not know how to set up my own website. I used the platform for about 2 months and than realized how to start my own website. I decided to cancel my subscription to Empower Network and move on. 
I than enrolled in Strategic Internet Marketing at James Madison University. One of lessons in class was to use Google Adwords. As we went to set up our individual accounts in adwords, I saw that I somehow already had an Adwords account activated and that my account, was “permanently suspended.” I was shocked by this, and had no idea why, (as far as I knew, I never even used Adwords). I called google and they told me that Empower Network breached one of their policies with certain keywords and that everyone who was involved with the company, who used a google email to sign up, lost access to Adwords until EN fixed the issue. They never fixed the issue, which forced me to have to create a new google account.
I just wanted to point this out to everyone, as you need to consider all possible events that could occur when you decide to market online. Unexpected things can come up, and unfortunately, with some things online, you are not in complete control of.
Happy online advertising, and good luck to all!
Hey ya’ll, I am sure most of you marketers are subscribed to some sort of an email list that sends you emails, each and every day – sometimes more than once. Since I have been 18 years old, I have been on the look out for new marketing “guru’s” and always looked forward to subscribing to their email list, to learn how to market effectively, and hopefully make some money doing it. However, as the years have gone on, and I have become more and more in tune with online marketing, email marketing, social media marketing etc. these emails seem to be more annoying rather than effective.
Obviously everyone has their own opinion and ‘threshold’ so to speak with regards to getting blasted emails each and every day. In my mind, when I am getting 3-4 emails a day from the same ‘marketer,’ I feel as though I am only getting more and more turned off. Where does the line get drawn between a good, solid amount of information that is being communicated to your subscribers, and being just too much for one to handle?
I believe this subject is extremely important to take into consideration when you are the one sending out the emails. Be sure to include enough information, as well as not over power the amount of times you are blasting emails out to your subscribers on a daily basis. Just food for thought, see you all out there, and good luck!
Check out this review of email marketing!
