Sarah's CSIT 155 Fall '22 Class Blog

           Before entering this class I wondered why businesses had social medias because I felt that they were just trying to be trendy which is silly since I look back and know now that social media can be a great tool to bring traffic to a business. I've learned that with recognition of the right audience and the knowledge of their preferred platforms you can create social media posts that may draw them in to purchase a product or service from your business. Whether it be through organic searches from potential customers or sponsored advertisements, having an active TikTok, Instagram, Facebook account or whatever platform works best can create some great traffic. I do see a lot more now how powerful social media can be.           I do wish that we had gotten some tips and tricks on how to make our social media accounts as aesthetically pleasing and effective as possible. I posted a lot of different content on Facebook and In...

 January Outline  Instagram: Make a sponsored post with company logo with brief description of PlayGround Podcast - as an adult you look at the playground and want to be able to slide down those slides or swing on the swings, but everyone thinks it's weird. We've got you. You're not weird. You deserve to play, so join us on the adult playground to talk about a hodgepodge of topics and listen to some sick tunes. *20m post with the creation of an aesthetic photo and writing caption.  TikTok: Brief  30 second video of us sitting in the car listening to a few different songs at the chorus to demonstrate music that will be played. Come jam with us. *30m post - we're going to be jamming out so that'll take a minute, and then the editing of combing the videos together Instagram: Post a photo of a list of the top five concerts that we've been to (including music festivals) and have a caption asking about the best concert that everyone else has been to and maybe ask thei...

           Throughout this class we have looked at a variety of outlets through social media that could help amp up a business. For my concept of business, a podcast, it has always made the most sense to use outlets that are more current since podcasts are a more up and coming business. With my target market it makes the most sense to utilize Instagram or Tiktok to accentuate and grow my business. However, I still think Facebook could be am option and I also have come to enjoy some ideas of LinkedIn, but LinkedIn would mostly be used for collaborative work to get ideas and figure out how I can best run the podcast.           I've said before in another post that TikTok is a great platform for many different likes and interests. The most random videos can blow up over night. I've seen people that I've gone to high school with get half a million likes on their videos, and I know that I can make videos that would do the same. It's...

           Since I don't have enough followers to see the Facebook business data I had to do some research into what is included in the data. Now I'm not sure if my research is entirely accurate because I have gotten information from a few different resources. Initially, I found that the Facebook data is pretty similar to some features of Google analytics. It tells you the demographics of the likes and views of your page which I really enjoy as it helps you decide how to better market your product or service towards the most popular demographic.           The website Sprout Social wrote a post about how to analyze your data in Facebook analytics where I found out that you can analyze how your competitors are doing. It also gave tips on finding your competitors by finding out who your followers follow. I found this to be a helpful hint. You can also look at how many people your page has reached along with who has engaged with yo...

           Google Analytics has many features that are helpful to a business. Through some research I found a couple of aspects to analytics that could be beneficial for my business with the first being age and gender metrics. With the start of a business you decide on a target market for your service or product, but analytics is able to tell you who is actually using your product. This is a very helpful feature because once you figure out the biggest audience for the product, you can direct the marketing more towards that audience.           Another feature that I would want to check for analytics is view duration. This feature helps understand how long a potential customer is viewing your content. I would want to check this regularly to see how long people are looking at a picture or video that I've posted on social media, how long they spend reading a blog post, etc. If I understand the attention span of viewers I can m...

           I think that social media management tools can be extremely beneficial to a business, especially a small business where one person has to control every aspect of the business. That person can get extremely busy with the goods or services that they are providing, managing their finances, maintaining a website, etc. Social media is basically a necessity for up-and-coming businesses to connect with potential customers, and having to use multiple platforms is just adding the icing on top of the busy cake. I don't even have a real business and found it to be difficult to create consistent posts on Facebook and Instagram. It put in to perspective why when we were doing research about other business's social media use that some of them hadn't had any posts in months or only post a couple times a year.           With the link provided in the assignment post I looked into some of the best social media management tools. The fi...

                     For two of my online ads I decided to promote posts that I have already made prior to this exercise. I chose to do this because I've actually seen a lot of start-up businesses doing this to get more traffic on their pages. The formatting seems more casual than creating a whole new ad, and I think this makes a lot of sense for my business since it has a relaxed nature. Both posts are videos/photo montages that briefly describe aspects of the business. The videos aren't so long that a viewer would feel that they wasted their time watching it. When I selected an objective I went for engagement and leads. Even if the videos or my business isn't someone's cup of tea I wanted the goal to be awareness. I think it's important to get your name out there because even if someone may not be interested in my content they may know someone who would be (added bonus if they themselves would enjoy it along with a friend). T...

           The place that I see the most online advertising is on Instagram. I think that Instagram is notorious for listening to my conversations to pull up the most specific ads possible to the point that I've turned off my microphone abilities in Instagram. One advertisement comes to mind that always scared me: A few years back I was having a conversation with my brother (my phone was nearby but Instagram wasn't even open). We were talking about bologna sandwiches (he was telling me that I needed to try a fried bologna sandwich), and he was saying you need some cheddar cheese with mustard on white bread. Five minutes later I open up Instagram for my hourly scroll, and the first thing that shows up on my feed is an advertisement for Oscar Meyer bologna and the ad was of a FRIED BOLOGNA SANDWICH WITH CHEDDAR AND MUSTARD ON WHITE BREAD. I had NEVER felt more seen by an app in my entire life. I started looking around to see if an FBI agent was hiding in...

 Blogs I Commented On and Thoughts:  Encinitas Donuts - This is a very different business from mine with a sellable product and a physical location. I thought it was interesting that we had similar findings with LinkedIn and MeetUp. Her search on MeetUp did seem to be a little more fruitful than mine, and I reallly liked the idea of the coffee and donuts collaboration. Instead of meeting up with someone or something that has the exact same product she thought of something that goes well together. This way, people can get the best of both worlds because who doesn't like coffee and donuts. Encinitas Donuts is already on Google and Yelp. These wouldn't work for my business, but they do seem to help with this business. Yelp is a great way to receive direct feedback on the product and establishment.  lil_K0ala Live Streaming - Live Streaming is a business similar to mine with being an online outlet for entertainment rather than selling products. I saw that he had mentioned som...

           My first search into the realm of specific online tools has not been fruitful. I went to the website Snacknation to view the list of the top 35 online collaborative tools to see if I could find a good website to connect with other podcasters. Most of the website suggestions involve manager and employee interactions, and I don't intend to have any employees to start this business. It most likely will be a two man band until the podcast picks up off the ground. I did, however, notice that there was a website that is similar to Zoom and Skype called Whereby that is an online video chat website. This website could work well if my partner and I wanted to invite a guest onto the show that lives in another state. We could use this website to meet and record an episode with someone that is all the way across the country. Other than this, I don't believe the collaborative sites suggested are fitting for my business.         ...

 I commented on Purple Tsunami Clothing, Dark Sided Strength, North County Fam, and lil_k0ala Live Streaming.           I enjoyed reading all of these posts because they gave some great insight into TikTok and Twitter for gaining an audience for businesses. I especially liked the Live Streaming post about Twitter because it gave me some ideas for the PlayGround Podcast. Carlos mentioned how convenient it is to get feedback in real time on Twitter because you can post a poll or questionnaire to get feedback from your audience. I think this could work out very nicely for the podcast because I could post a poll with a few different topics and people could vote on what they want to hear for the newest episode.           A theme I noticed with the folks who chose TikTok for another form of social media for their business was the addition of social influencers. I don't think that I would really be able to collaborate with other ...

           When thinking of a good platform to market my business concept, I thought of how podcasts have more recently become a popular outlet for entertainment. With this in mind, I figured it would make sense to use a platform that has gained similar popularity. I was very against TikTok for a long time because of all the talk of our data being used against us and blah blah blah...which is probably true, but that was happening regardless with the FBI agents watching us through our phone cameras.           I've seen multiple TikToks that promote podcasts and get a lot of attention. The "For You" page is really a powerful place. There is a podcast that I've mentioned in another post called This Past Weekend, and I actually discovered the podcast on TikTok. When I did my research into Theo Von's podcast and the social media platforms that he utilizes to promote his podcast I didn't even think to look at his TikTok, but TikTok i...

 Inglorious Bagels Purple Tsunami Clothing North County Fam Children & Parenting

           For this assignment I had to consider newsletters for my business. When I thought of my experience with newsletters from other businesses I didn't want anything to do with making them for my own business. The only newsletters I get from businesses are through email, and any time I get one I delete it or unsubscribe because I didn't want to be receiving them in the first place. The first business I thought of was Ulta. I get an email from them every. single. day. I do not want that junk in my email. They send out emails detailing new products or deals where you have to spend $75 to save $5....so you're taking away the tax and I end up spending $75 anyway? Quite a pet peeve of mine. The daily emails come in and I don't even read them, so I definitely would not send out a newsletter daily.           A business I receive letters from weekly is Planet Fitness. Now this one just makes me feel guilty because I haven't ...

           In order to communicate with my target audience for the PlayGround podcast I would use a blog. A blog would be a good tool to get feedback from listeners and interact with them through the comment section. There would be two sections: one for music and the other for conversation topics. I could possibly make sub-categories for the music because I know that not everyone will enjoy every genre of music that we play. I think the music category could really help the podcast grow because it's kind of like calling in to the radio to suggest a song, and more people are able to "call in" when they just leave a comment on the blog. Any time that we play a song that someone suggested we could shout them out so more people are inclined to check out the blog and leave a suggestion. The same could go for the conversation topic category of the blog. If someone leaves a good idea for a conversation topic we could mention them before we have the conversation. We...

         I think it's always nice to add a personal touch to a post from a business - especially in today's world. A lot of businesses are so focused on promoting their products or services that they lose sight of the people that they are selling their business to. I've always appreciated a nice pun or joke with products that I buy. Granted, not every business needs to involve humor in their business promotions. A personal touch can be added into any business promotion, but I think the type of personal touch is important.            A medical product promotion most likely shouldn't utilize humor to make a person feel connected. An expression of a company's dedication to helping a person in whatever medical situation they find themselves in could be a nice sense of reassurance for the potential buyer.  A coffee shop could share something relatable about not being able to wake up in the morning without a ...

           To get a little bit of help in posting on Instagram for the PlayGround account I went to Google to find the best times and hashtags to use. I found out that there are different times for each day of the week that are the best to post. The universal best time to post is on Wednesday's at 11 AM because people are taking a break from work or school to scroll through social media. The best times for the weekend are 11AM, 7 and 8 PM on Saturdays, and for Sundays the best times are 7 and 8 AM, and 4 PM.           For the hashtag aspect of my posts I thought of most of them on my own, but I also searched for the best hashtags to use to promote podcasts. Some of the hashtags I've used so far are: #podcast, #toppodcast, #comedypodcast, and I've used hashtags for the genre of music that will be played. The hashtags that I found on Google that I plan to incorporate are: #podcasting, #spotifypodcast, #podcaster, #music, #co...

           For this research into businesses that utilize Instagram in order to promote their business, I wanted to start at my top favorite podcast: Crimejunkie. This podcast is a true crime show that covers solved murders, disappearances, unsolved murder, and conspiracies. Crimejunkie is one of the most downloaded podcasts on Spotify with over a billion downloads and millions of listeners weekly. Their Instagram page has posts about cases that have been covered, and it leaves room for listeners to get more involved with questions and helpful tips. They have 1.1 million followers and over 800 posts. Crimejunkie posts 1-4 times a week with questions for listeners, photos of victims, promotional photos, and merchandise. The posts' likes range anywhere from 4,000 to 45,000 with comments ranging from 36 to 2,000. The posts that get the most comments are on true crime memes that they post, and promotional photos of the lead voice's upcoming book. After that, th...

      I've looked at a few of my classmate's Instagram business pages with service vs. product based businesses. Here is what I've found:     Protein for Pets has a bio on their profile describing the location of their business, the type of product that they carry, and their business hours. I like this bio because it gives all of the basic information needed about the business to give me as a viewer space to explore further on their page or to up and go to the store. As you scroll further through the page you see mostly photos of the available products, and some photos of pups enjoying their products which is an added bonus ;). The page also has a lot of photos of flyers describing sales to entice customers to come in. I also enjoyed that there are photos and reels of staff members that gives viewers a sneak peak into what they can expect when going in to the store.      Another Instagram I checked out was North County Fam. The profile d...

           I went to Canva to create scheduled content for my Facebook business profile. I created a variety of content that I think will reach my audience pretty well. The first post is a design with my business logo on it inviting readers to relax with the podcast. The design is simple but effective with the signature swingset as the biggest part of the post. The grassy background gives a nostalgic feel for the days that we all would run around the yard or park and come home with grass stains all over.                     The second post is a video with music samples and aesthetic designs to give the viewers a little sneak peak in to what some of the music genres will be. It ends with a text box saying that there is all of this and more to hear on the PlayGround and it has the logo as well. This one was fun but very tedious to make. It also was a shame that I couldn't use songs that I k...