Week 2 - Marketing 347

This week I have started to build my social media pages. I have created a page on Facebook that will be promoting the work that I accomplish as a marketer, as well as inform others on new-age marketing. 

For the page, I created my own logo which consisted of a black to baby-blue faded circle that includes my initials, S.D. I also created the cover page which had the backdrop of the city of Chicago, which I currently do much of my work in. The cover page has a transparent font that reads 'digital marketing' to emphasize the work that I will be promoting on my page.

One of the keys to successful posting on Facebook is to keep your audience entertained. I study articles that relate to digital marketing every day to bring my followers the most interesting news, and will begin posting about these articles. 

Currently, there is not much traffic that is coming towards my page. My plan to reach out to my friends, colleagues, and family is going to be through many different platforms. I have family and friends on all social networks, so I will definitely be adding a link onto my Instagram, twitter, and Facebook pages. Another interesting way that I have thought about getting my page out to people would be through my linked-in because I can connect to a much broader audience on that platform, which is also mostly used for networking. I continuously will be refreshing my Facebook page to appeal to more of my followers as well.

Social-Media Marketing

Marketing 347 is a course where I will be able to enhance my skills in different areas of digital marketing. More specifically, I will be learning on the many different ways of social media marketing.

To begin, I was able to review my past work and certifications that I recieved through google adwords. This semester I will also be looking forward to completing the Hootsuite certification, which can increase my skills in social media marketing through their platform. Incorporating these skills I learn to optimize any of the marketing projects that I will be taking on in my courses.

This semester I am also looking forward to expanding my LinkedIn account and using the database as a platform to communicate with other professionals in the marketing field.

Week 6

This week was all about exposure and impressions for my advertisements. From the material we learned in class, I was able to incorporate them and the material that I used to study for my AdWords and Search Exam on Google Partners, which I also passed both! 

One skilled I have learned so far and have been trying to repeat is risk taking. Especially when it comes to AdWords, it is all about trying something different and see how it reacts. This comes very handy in choosing keywords for my different advertisement groups. I was able to test the keywords on all three of my advertisements, and these keywords almost are competing with each other to see which ones are doing the best. I have optimized one of my advertisements on the Tiger Sanctuary and have over 50,000 impressions. I searched some keywords myself and saw my advertisement fell on the bottom of the first page, which is pretty neat for only learning how to use this software for a few months.

The material I used to study for my exams helped me more than I had expected. There was many different tips that you can learn just  by reading on how the different feature of AdWords work.
AdWords has many different features, and when you know the optimal use of these features you will succeed in creating an advertisement that will receive impressions. This is something that I also want to continue working on and optimizing my ads as the weeks pass.

Week 5

During the fifth week of the course, I wanted to be able to make the ad groups I had set up on AdWords to have more of an impression on a broader audience. I did much research that helped me utilize the different tools that AdWords has to offer.

Currently I am running three different advertisements for the National Tiger Sanctuary. I am pretty satisfied with how they have done within a short time period, and also using these as a test run for my first use of Google AdWords. The first advertisement I created was not getting many impressions or clicks, so I decided to create an advertisement that would include different keywords than what I previously used to make the most of it. Google Adwords does a great way of incorporating tips to expand the exposure of their advertisements.

This advertisement has been doing much better than many of my other advertisements, but I still want to be able to make these advertisements and get the full hang of them before I continue to advance onto other non profit organizations, but in the next week I will be sure to continue to expand my knowledge on AdWords and test out many different methods to gain more exposure.

Week 4: AdWords Optimization

Personally, AdWords is playing an interesting role in my life. I never really knew that there was so much thought and process that went into creating a simple advertisement on Google. Lets rephrase the word simple with something more as 'time consuming'. It really is a hit or miss situation when working with these advertisements. For the last seven days, my campaign has been having various impressions every day.  Currently, I have two advertisements for my campaign. They both are related to different tigers and have different landing pages.

Both of my advertisements did fairly well in the beginning, but recently when I went to see my first advertisement I had made, my keywords had all been removed. So, as of now my second advertisement is doing much better. From the beginning, you want to figure out what will be the best for your campaign and how you should go about it. When creating your advertisement, the first step would be to figure out what it is that you want to optimize. I wanted to have a very simple advertisement, something that can grab their attention, but not overwhelm them when they are on the search. When creating your advertisement, AdWords does a great job in splitting the steps for you.

 
Also, continuing my studies and tests with the Keyword Planner I was able to understand what would be most beneficial to my advertisement.  The Keyword Planner generates ad group and keyword ideas. It also really helps give you an idea of how to fully optimize your advertisement.

I am going to continue using these tools, as well as creating new advertisements. I also believe that as I study for my second exam, I’ll be able to utilize those and work to get my advertisement to have a much higher CTR rate.

*I also really thought it was interesting to type in any random name, and see the estimate on how many clicks they get, so I chose my favorite person Rihanna.*

Week 3: AdWords Keywords

I finally have my campaigns up and running, and I have to say I think my favorite part of this week was that when I came back from the weekend and saw that my campaigns had been getting clicks and impressions! It was so interesting that the way they all get calculated, and the different rates that google has to identify how well your advertisement is doing. Yet, I am not stopping there. I have been doing more research on the ways I can really bring my advertisement up when people search for it. I have added many more keywords, but I feel like after a while it is a hit or miss. You realize which keywords are doing well and those that are not really doing much for you.

Another software we came to recognize this week was the Keyword Planner, which is beneficial in searching for keywords to use. The Keyword Planner is another function from Google AdWords that is strictly there for the business to use for optimization of their advertisements. It was really interesting that you could even look up different keywords to see how well they would do and how many times they were estimated to be searched that month (yes, I did check to see how many times my name had been searched as well). It was a very interesting and really helpful to test out what keywords to use, including what their competition is. I am excited to see where my advertisements are standing next week! 

Week 2: AdWords & Getting Certified

After getting familiar with AdWords, this week was spent getting to know the fundamentals and truly how you can have a successful campaign. I was able to create two advertisements for the page, each of which was for the National Tiger Sanctuary. I am still trying to make my advertisements become much more interacted with. Adding certain keywords really did help the advertisements jump to different pages, and when I searched for one of the tiger’s names my advertisement was on the first page! It was so interesting to see that the work you put in for AdWords will pay off with the results.

I really spent time studying the material for the certification test as well. Google Partners thankfully provides extensive study guides that are very helpful, and if you study well you will be able to pass the test. I passed the certification on my first try, but right on the border. I know that if I continue to use the study guides I also would be able to improve my score. For my campaign, I made sure to utilize all the parts of AdWords that could potentially increase the insight of my advertisement. I researched on Google that there are many different types of articles that help businesses figure out ways to optimize their AdWords Campaign. I’m looking forward to seeing what my advertisements will do and how the campaigns in our class will succeed