Joseph Pass CSIT-155 Class blog

I began my research with Twitter to further my knowledge from the little bit I knew already. I have never really used Twitter besides here and there over the years. I don't have any followers on my personal account and I used it only to follow celebrities and other influencers I liked. So I've never made any posts or used it in any productive way. Personally, I didn't like that the posts were mainly just short word posts. I found that Instagram and Facebook were more useful to me and more enjoyable to use. After reading the articles, I learned a bit about how to use Twitter for business purposes. Like any social media platform there is a good deal of effort that goes into making it a successful platform for your business. It's important to come up with a good Twitter handle, creating a clear and concise bio, creating solid imagery and media to attract viewers etc. But even after all of this, Twitter isn't a very useful platform to generate revenue. It has mainly bec...

For my cookie company I would send newsletters weekly to keep my subscribers informed about the specific locations we will be selling. I currently do not have a typical "brick and mortar" location so I sell in different locations, such as at Farmer's Markets, on the military base, and at the Fashion Valley Mall. Providing a weekly newsletter with that information along with any other relevant information would be my ideal frequency.  Of course, upon subscribing I would send out a Welcome newsletter to thank them for subscribing and offer them a special deal as a thank you. I also like the idea of sending out birthday newsletters yearly to give out a free bag of cookies. I think it's incredibly important to build a relationship with each subscriber so that they trust me and my company and continue to come back. Showing appreciation to each customer and keeping them informed is a great way to do this.  It seems like I am signed up for thousands of newsletters, they pile...

Categories on a blog are a great way to group together different posts in order for readers to more easily find what they are looking for. They help to organize your blog site into broad groups which can then be broken down further into sub categories. I think this is a great idea to keep the page looking clean and easily navigable. Having these categories also helps to make sure your posts are staying relevant to your industry. Since my business is cookies I would have a category for Flavors. Perhaps I would use this category to discuss new recipes, customer favorites, holiday and seasonal flavors etc. Another category could be Local Events where I would discuss the events our company would be attending or which farmers markets we would be selling. I could also use this category for posts to talk about other businesses in the area.  Because my business was started with a family recipe, I like to keep my business with a "close to home" feel. For this reason I could have a thi...

Depending on the type of business you have, your blog, social media, website, etc. will be specific to such, making it different from another type of business' blog.  However, regardless of what type of business you have, adding elements of personal touch in your blog can really work well to capture your audience. The goal of advertising and blogging is to connect with your audience. And how do you make connection? You use emotion, humor, relatable content, this all helps to get the person to remember you and hopefully become a customer. No matter your business, you can always find a way to add a personal touch. It may not connect with everyone, but you'll gain a few new followers or customers with the extra effort. I really believe there is always room to add a personal touch in a post no matter the topic or the business. Of course you want to get to the underlying point, which is "Buy my product or service." which I really don't think you can be successful at wi...

Visual media is definitely useful in my type of business. Customers really want to see images and videos to create an experience for them. In turn, this will more likely persuade them to buy my product. To get a better idea of how other companies in my industry are using visual media it's a good idea to look at their Instagram pages. By checking their number of followers, use of hashtags, types of posts and engagement received on those posts, this may help me to better understand how I can utilize similar techniques to grow my following. One local cookie company is called The Cravory. They have 31.8k followers and they post just about everyday. Their latest post was 11 hours ago (March 19). I would think Instagram is effective for them at least somewhat. They really are only using photo posts. There are not any video posts and the engagement is pretty minimal compared to the number of followers they have. Most posts are getting less than 50 likes and zero comments. They use about 4...

I viewed many of the Instagram accounts in our class and I love that everyone is getting their business pages started. Whether they had them since before the class or are just starting out now, I'm very impressed with everyone's work. The three accounts from my group that I commented on were Jan Walker, Morgan McCray, and Sue Godwin. These three have entirely different businesses but all great concepts.  Jan Walker's Instagram is to promote a consulting business, Morgan McCray has a business where people can create their own Kpop outfits, and Sue Godwin has a no-kill animal shelter. Because of the different nature of each of these businesses, they would require each different types of posts in order to capture their target audience. Morgan McCray can have a more colorful and fun type of theme, where as Jan Walker would want something more serious, maybe more neutral colors, with a lot of business inspiration. Sue Godwin would want something with lots of cute photos, but als...

I currently already have an Instagram account for my cookie business. I tend to use the story feature to post updates of where I will be that week, such as when I'm at the Farmers Market. I will also use story posts when a customer tags me in their own story after they've made a purchase. I use normal posts to share photos and updates with the company. I post both videos and photos to keep it interesting. I find that posting solely photos can get a bit boring and my audience tends to enjoy seeing me in the videos. I find them both to be very useful. I tend to get a lot of engagement on my posts and I feel if I had some training I would be able to make even better use of this platform. Currently I have 2,689 followers and I can't wait to get more.  I have never really used hashtags, I suppose that's because I didn't know how to use them efficiently. I don't know what would be useful. I follow many other business profiles and personal accounts. Although, I need to...