CSIT155_F18_CDahmann

After going through google analytics and exploring the different features and tools it offers, I've found a couple features that I think would be most beneficial for my business specifically. Those features would be Audience reports and behavior reports. With audience reports you're able to track all kinds of information about your audience. Demographics, interests, geo(language, country), and active users are just a few of the different options you have at your disposal. What this means for my business is that I can accurately track the traffic of people coming in and of of my website/social media platform, and whether or not I am hitting my target audience. Depending on the data I receive I can adjust accordingly or reinforce measures that I already have in place.  Another really cool feature I would want to use is behavior reports, to better understand how people are using my website. One of the tools available under behavior reports is the flow report. The behavior flow...

My objective for these ads is pretty simple, I'm trying to spread awareness of my brand/ photography and gain likes on my page.  This specific ad format on Facebook is designed to do just that. I tried to use visually captivating photos, mainly portraits, to engage my audience and draw them into visiting my page. I tried to come up with short witty captions in order to hook people and grab their attention. The captions also aim to share a little bit about more about my personality and style; simple, to the point, real, and always rad.

To start of  I must say that I was really surprised with how many options a person has when it comes to advertising on Facebook. Anything you could possibly want for your business Facebook can provide. Although I feel people don't use Facebook as much as they used to, It still can be used as an effective tool to distribute content/advertise especially since it is parent to Instagram. Some of the ad options you have on Facebook Include Domain ads, multi-product ads, offer ads, video ads, lead ads, canvas ads, post boosting, sponsored mentions, and dynamic ads. Some are more self explanatory than others, but all serve their purpose. For instance, dynamic product ads provide a way to show single/multi- product ads to people who have visited your website. Depending on customers activity on your site, you can customize ads for them based on their interests. The ads I found most interesting however were the canvas ads. A canvas ad is basically an interactive ad that helps businesses adve...

After observing a few photographers/businesses like mine (for a decent amount of time) on social media, I noticed they all have some things in common when it comes to marketing themselves. It seems that most prefer to grow organically with little help from actual paid advertising. They prefer to let their work speak for itself and gradually gain a following over time as their skills progress. Some do sponsor posts on Instagram, buts that usually after a hiatus in order to spike engagement. Personally, I like this method of growth. I think its a better gauge of whether your work is up to par and reaching the intended audience. Almost all of artists whom I admire greatly have come from either me finding them or friends telling me about them, not from advertisement they put out. Using hashtags seems to be pretty effective and costs nothing, but you're still able to target a specific audience. Although growing organically seems fitting for people in my field, that's not always th...

Now days streaming is becoming the dominant source of entertainment. Whether it's streaming your favorite music in your car or streaming videos at home, you're bound to be streaming something throughout your day. Lets start with music sites. I personally have been using SoundCloud pretty much since its inception years ago. It's a great platform to discover new music or find music you already love. It's also a great place for new artists to upload music in order to get noticed. In fact, there's there's an entire generation of artist dubbed 'SoundCloud artists', due to the fact that they all started their careers from using SoundCloud to project their music out into the world. SoundClouds simplistic design allows anyone to stream their favorite music anytime, anywhere. Another huge streaming platform that's blown up over the past year or so is Twitch. Twitch is a live stream platform that allows its users to broadcast themselves live to their follo...

Another social media platform I could use that I think would be beneficial for my business would be LinkedIn. Not so much so to gain clients or business but rather to connect with other professionals within the industry. As a photographer I'm always looking for other photographers/ videographers to work with on projects. The way I see it is you can never know to much especially in this day and age where technology is constantly evolving, and the more people you work with the more you're able to exchange knowledge and establish connections. As far as the rest go, I'm not a huge fan of google plus, I've also heard that it'll be shutting down soon anyway due to some major info leak. Yelp is probably another great platform to be associated with but I don't necessarily think that it would be a great fit with my business just because I'm not an establishment. I feel that yelp is more often than not used to look up reviews for businesses that have store fronts or...

Taylor Bantle Leslie Montano Andrea Esquivel

To be quite honest I didn't even know that newsletters were a thing. I mean obviously I've heard of newsletters but I never realized how useful they could actually be. Upon do some research I found a few successful photographers who swear by sending newsletters, and from them I was able to come up with many ideas for a news letter of my own. First there's the obvious which is having a news letter that has special deals for shoots and would be sent out every few months or so. I could also do a bi-weekly inspirational newsletter which contains beautiful images curated by myself. Along with that I could sprinkle in tips and tricks for editing and using Photoshop. I could also do a themed newsletter where I edit a few photos in a similar manner, create presets, and include the presets and the photos in the newsletter. So many ideas its hard to settle on one. But one thing I have learned for sure is that newsletters can be another powerful tool to engage customers.