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FINAL THOUGHTS

Who would have thought that Myspace, one of the first widely-used social media sites, would crumble to the likes of facebook, or that snapchat would grow so much in popularity that it could compete with instagram, becoming a major player in the social media sphere.  What are the lessons here?  Clean, simple, and functional.  In all of these cases, the platform that rose above the rest was clean, simple, and functional.  Many years ago, when using Myspace, I remember seeing some profiles that were so extravagant that it would take them minutes to load.  Tons of graphics, music, wallpapers- it was utter chaos.  Along comes facebook with its simple, straightforward design, and viola! a new start was born.  These principles can be incorporated in the creation of social media content as well: content should be focused and functional, and adapt to the platform in which it is being published.   Throughout the semester, I have vacillated between embracing the major platforms and questioning
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Week 16: Group comments

This week I reviewed content for and commented on the following group members: Lemar Anderson Mark Buxton Paul Wendee
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Week 16: Future Strategy Part 2: Tools

Being well-organized is helpful in any endeavor.  Considering the volume of platforms, log-in credentials, and sheer content, it is important to use some of the digital tools at our disposal, so that the task of creating engaging, consistent content becomes less daunting.   Of the available tools and methodologies, I already employ a separate email for most of my social media.  Since I am a one-man team, it is sometimes frustrating having to alternate log-ins, especially since my YouTube, Drive, and Gmail are all linked to one credential.  Nonetheless, when I gain a significant following, it will be helpful to have this separation.  Over the next six months, I think it'd be useful to begin uploading more content to my drive, so that I have constant access across all devices. Considering that my business is essentially myself and self-promotion thru social media, I should spend more time in contributing versus consuming.  With Instagram, I would like to achieve a once weekly pos
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Week 16: Future Strategy

Of the available social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook integrate best into the construct of a travel blog/ vlog.  As far as enjoyment, I find Instagram to be the most enjoyable and engaging, if not borderline addicting.  I enjoy Instagram due to it's simpler layout that helps showcase visual media, namely photo and video.  I also find Instagram to be the easiest to post daily content to, particularly to the daily "stories" section.  Via my research and own use of Instagram, it seems like most successful influencers create consistent story sections, supplemented by several posts a week.  In both mediums, stories and traditional posts, successful influencers point users to their other pages, namely YouTube, so as to maximize engagement and monetization.  On a nearly daily basis these influencers are encouraging users to "swipe up" to redirect them to YouTube based content, an online store, or an email list.   Facebook is a behemoth that fun
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Week 15: Facebook Analytics

I am reviewing my facebook travel page, "Imdustinthewind" facebook insights for the week of May 11-17.  The truth is, I don't spend much time on facebook, as I am a much more avid user of Instagram.  This being said, all platforms provide analytics or insights and knowing how to read and interpret them is important in crafting content.   This week I had 6 total page views, which is actually about a 40% drop.  Some of my classmates have been gracious enough to like my page, and believe it or not, 3 page likes is about a 100% increase.  My reach has expanded beyond both of those numbers, up 71% to 12 people.  Unfortunately, aside from these increases, my engagement has dropped by 15% , having engaged only 11 people.   Along with these insights, I'm able to review a snapshot of my 5 most recent posts which provides information regarding the post's reach and engagement.  This section is helpful in clearly identifying which posts are obtaining a greater reach and h
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Week 15: Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides a wealth of information regarding a site's traffic and the people who are accessing the site.  For a business that is interested in cultivating a social media following, this type of information can be very useful.  Similar to looking at the number of likes that an Instagram post receives, the first thing that catches my attention on google analytics is the pageviews section.  Everybody wants to see how many views his content is receiving; how many people are coming to your page?  Other helpful features include the average time a user spends on your site, and which parts of the site he viewed and for how long; by knowing these things I can strengthen parts of my content that may not be receiving much attention, or consider reasons these sections might not be receiving attention.  For example, a certain part of my website might not be receiving much attention because it may have poor visibility to the user, or even something wrong like a malfunctioning li
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Week 14: Developing Online Advertising

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This week I created two different ads for facebook.  The goals of my ads are as follows: 1.) Reach: I'm trying to gain awareness of my YouTube channel and gain subscribers 2.) Conversions: I'm trying to get clicks that lead to my YouTube channel (hopefully leading to more subscribers). Considering my goal is to attract viewers and grow my YouTube channel, I will be using a video-based ad to attract viewers.  The content of the video is of utmost importance, as the ad has a brief window to attract the maximum number of viewers.  Impact is key, so a high-quality video with text would attract the most viewers. My ad object can thus be best described as Traffic: I want to increase traffic to my YouTube channel.  This can be measured using the analytics of my ad, to see how many people watched the ad and clicked on it.
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