Jessica's CSIT 155 - Spring 2023 Class Blog

 I have included three real posts that I have created for my business that either promotes the YouTube channel, or the podcast. In the first one, when I post it, I include a link that brings the viewer to the YouTube channel. I have found that using pictures in the posts significantly increase the attention it gets, so I like to use the thumbnails. The second one is what I post the day before a new podcast episode comes out, so people remember to listen. The third one is a promotional post for a specific YouTube video that links to the podcast episode that is out that week. An objective is a goal that a business wants to accomplish after a viewer sees their advertisements. The biggest goal for my business would be for the viewer to listen to the podcast, so that is the number one thing we try to promote with our social media. 

Typically, the advertisements I see on Instagram and other social media are fashion related. I also see a lot of them that are advertising something that I was just looking up or talking about, which is sometimes helpful, but most of the time just creepy. They will usually be advertising a sale or something like that, so their call to action is for us to click the link and utilize the sale that is going on. Honestly, when I see an ad for something, I typically do not even watch it, I just scroll past it or skip it. TikTok especially likes to use the same ads over and over again, so I have seen them multiple times already.  The non-online forms of advertisements, like billboards, seem really effective to me. It is a way to promote something to a large number of people, who may not have known about it any other way. It is also very beneficial for people who do not have social media. Generally, social media ads are probably more effective though.  Billboards are a great example o...

 I commented on Dustin's post, Christian's post, Tawni's post, and Marcus' post.  It seems like mostly everyone has discovered new platforms that will greatly benefit them and their businesses, which is great! Considering my business is an online one, it does make it a little bit more difficult to find platforms to help promote it, but as long as I get creative with it I should be good. Honestly, I am not sure if most of the platforms my classmates talked about would necessarily help my business, since it is online. Like I mentioned, everyone did a great job of finding platforms that will work for them. I believe if they put those platforms to use (if it is a real business), they should see good outcomes. With my research, I discovered that it is harder to find ways to promote an online business, but that there are definitely still great options out there. TikTok is a platform that I have strongly considered, and am still strongly considering, using for my business. The...

 After this week's and last week's assignments, I have realized that using the Google for Business or Google My Business tools would most likely work really well for our business. The only downside though, is that since we are an online business, we do not actually have a location. I am not sure if this means that potential customers and listeners who search us up on Google would get very much information out of this platform or not. I definitely want to look into it further though and potentially use it. I would love to use Google Maps, however this would not make sense due to it being an online business. We do not use Yelp, but we do look at the comments of our YouTube videos and podcast episodes, and respond when they are commenting something kind. If they comment something hateful, we usually delete it or use it as more of constructive criticism (if that can be applied). We have considered using TikTok since it seems to be one of the most popular social media platforms nowa...

 I commented on Christian's post and Dustin's post. By reading their posts, I have found that Google for business might be the best platform to utilize in addition to the ones we are using as of now. Considering many people use Google as a way to find new businesses to try, I believe it could definitely be good for us to try that too. It seemed like we all had the same thoughts about TikTok and how it started as an entertainment app only, and turned into a beneficial app for businesses. 

    For the business that I work on, we utilize mainly Instagram and Facebook. We also use YouTube, but that is less of a promotional platform for us. Instagram is definitely the platform that we enjoy using the most because we see the most outcome and feedback on there.      We like to schedule most of our posts so that they go directly to both Instagram and Facebook at the same time. However, for some posts, we find that it is more beneficial to post it in real time since scheduling it limits the amount of extra things we can add to it (like links). Because of this, I will go on Instagram and post whatever it is that we need for that day. Sometimes, it will also post on Facebook since we have them linked. Other times, it only posts on Instagram and not Facebook so we will occasionally forget about Facebook. This is definitely not ideal however, I do not think that Facebook is as beneficial for us as Instagram is.      Another platform that we ha...

 I commented on Cody's post and Christian's post

 1. For me personally, I would say sending an email newsletter weekly is the maximum amount I would feel comfortable with. Biweekly might even be better. I know when I get emails from businesses every single day, it gets on my nerves and I usually just end up unsubscribing. The difficult part would be finding that sweet spot where you are sending them frequently enough to keep your audience interested, but not enough for it to be annoying to them. The real business that I am working on, which is my mom's business, sends an email out every week or so, usually to promote the new episode. 2. In our emails, we include information about the new episode that just came out, or information about the previous episode. We also like to include little tips or nuggets of information just as a bonus. We try to be more personable with them too, instead of the emails almost seeming like a bot is making them. We include the links to all of our social media accounts as well. 

  The categories I might use for this business are drinks, food, featured or new drinks, and an about us page. People love when coffee shops have a seasonal menu with more fun drinks, so I would definitely want to promote that.  I commented on Dino's post, Christian's post, and Sascha's post. 

 In my opinion, I like to add a personal touch to a post when it is specifically one to hopefully gain more viewers or followers. For example, if I was to make a post reintroducing our Instagram followers to our podcast, I would most likely describe the podcast and talk about my mom's story of how she started out in the industry and how she became who she is today. We would also add a little bit of humor in some places just to showcase who we are/she is. By sharing her background and life story, it would make our followers more likely to trust her in what she is saying. It would also let them see what kind of person she is so that they would actually want  to support her and what she is doing. I see this sort of technique on commercials on the time. Especially ones like car commercials where it tells a whole story of a family with a child who wants a new puppy, and somehow they connect that to the car that they are trying to sell. It works well most of the time because it evok...