Carrie Webber

Site Analytics

At the beginning of this semester, I would have never guessed that I would have 206 visits to my website.  After analyzing data from Google Analytics, I discovered that I had this many visits and 80% were new visitors!  My traffic sources consisted of Search Traffic, Referral Traffic, and Direct Traffic.  Most of my visits were from Search Traffic.  This means that my website is visited by people searching for topics that I discuss in my blog posts and pages.  When I viewed the Content section of Google Analytics, I was surprised to see that the pages on my site were viewed a total of 657 times!  I was not expecting such a large number and what is even better is that about half are from unique pageviewers.  I am very pleased with the traffic that my website has attracted this semester.

MKTG 470

Taking MKTG 470 with Professor Theresa B. Clarke has been a great experience.  Internet Marketing is not going anywhere and in fact it is continuously growing, and this class has really prepared me in my future career as a marketer.  Tools such as Google Analytics and Google AdWords have encouraged me to continue improving my website.  The goal for marketers is to get customers to need a product and get their attention.  The internet is a great way to sell products and services to customers.  I never knew how much work goes into internet campaigns before taking this class.  I never knew that companies have to have certain keywords in order to attract their target market.  One of the big things that I will takeaway from this class is how to operate tools effectively so that your website has a competitive advantage and also follows all of the laws and rules about Internet Marketing.

My Future in Internet Marketing

Now that MKTG 470 is over, I will continue to work on my website, I find Internet Marketing to be very interesting and a great career path that I may pursue.  I plan on doing more research on the topic and finding out how large companies operate such a large website so effectively.  If I had to do this course differently, I would start the ad campaigns earlier so that more research could be gained through the entire semester.

Over this semester I have been woking on optimizing my website.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to be seen on search engines like Google and Ask.  For this assignment we were asked to optimize a page on our website using the phrase “love JMU”.  I decided to use my JMU page.  I typed I Love JMU in large font before I even talk about JMU.  This is a way to optimzae my site.  I also commented on a few other people’s JMU pages in order to make my site more known.  That is another popular way to optimize a web page.

Before I optimized my site, my website was located on page 8 on ask.com.  This was not a bad place to be because most f my classmates were on page 10-20.  After optimizing my site, I was stll located on page 8 on ask.com.  At firest I was disappointed, but I looked at some of my classmate’s pages that were ahead of mine and they did a lot more to their page then I thought we had to.  I plan on continuing to optimize this page in order to get on page 5.  According to an SEO website called Webpage FX, I am still located in the poor category with a score of 29.  I want to raise this score and have my site seen by more people when they search the phrase “love JMU”.  SEO is a powerful tool for marketers and I will use it in my marketing career in order to help my company be well-known.

Are you interested in marketing?  Does the name Google Webmaster Tools intrigue you?  If you answered yes to these questions then this post is directed towards you.  For this assignment I explored many different tools on my Google Webmaster Tools account.  I had never looks at all of the data that had to do with my webpage before.  I started by looking at my queries, clicks, and impressions.  I wasn’t expecting to have 4,500 impressions!  My favorite tool was the “Links to your site” page.  This page shows who has linked content from my website to their website.  It also shows how many different links they have added to their website.  I had 11 links.  This is a great tool for marketers because we can get our websites out in the public.  Also, it allows me to see who likes what I am saying in my blogs enough to share with others.  Marketers can do this to attract more people to their website.

Another tool that is important especially when creating Ad Campaigns on Google, is the “Content Keywords” page.  This page allows me to see what keywords on my website are significant.  Marketers can use this tool to see what keywords to add to their campaign.  This will create more impressions and clicks to a certain website.  My most significant keyword was Marketing.

One tool that I would like to learn more about was the “Fetch as Googlebot” tool.  The page says that the purpose of the tool is to see exactly how a page appears to Google.  This would be a good way to see if there are any mistakes on a page or how large the font is, etc.  I learned a lot about my website while using these tools.  I am really eager to make a few changes to my website and potentially attract more traffic.

Last Tuesday our Internet Marketing class welcomed Deb Van Horn to speak to our class.  Ms. Van Horn started out by telling us her background.  She was a JMU Alumni and majored in International Business with hopes of living abroad.  That all changed when she was offered an amazing job in Harrisonburg.  She currently works for Rockingham Group as the Vice President of Support Services.Her job includes a lot of the topics we have covered in class so far.  It was refreshing to see someone that is passionate about her job and has used the skills from college that we are currently learning.  You can contact her through the Rockingham Groups’s Facebook page or through LinkedIn.

I took a lot away from Ms. Van Horn’s presentation.  The first thing I took away is that social media provides two-way communication between busineses and individuals.  The second thing I took away is that companies need to stay visible to customers.  The more visible a company is, the more social marketing they are doing. The third thing I took away from Ms. Van Horn’s presentation is that everyone should Google themselves every now and then.  In an article by TIME, they also mention that Google wants people to Google themselves too.  Everyone should know what the internet says about us and people that have the same name.  If there is something negative with our name, it can hurt our reputations and credibility.  Since her presentation I have checked Google and other websites to make sure I know what information is out there.

For this assignment we were asked to read the article on the Ford Motor Company’s Digital Guidelines.  After reading abouf Ford, I found two other articles that were similar.  These articles were about Intel and IBM.  Both of these companies are successful and growing, and a growing company needs to have excellent Social Media.  More importantly, are the guidelines to their social presence.

Intel has 3 rules for their employees.  These 3 rules are: Disclose, Protect, and Use Common Sense.  Disclose means that employees presence mustbe truthful andtransparent.  Protect means that bloggers need to be extra careful  and take care of themselves and the company on the Internet.  Use Common Sense means that bloggers should remember that professional, straightforward, and appropriate communication is best.  Intel is proud of their employees, and in return want their employees and bloggers to be proud of them and respect their socal media policies.

IBM also uses guidelines to provide helpful advice to protect IBM bloggers and IBM.  IBM has 12 social computing guidelines they ask bloggers to follow.  These guidleines include identifying yourself and your role with IBM, respecting copyright, respect your audience, don’t pick fights, try to add value to the company, and more.

Both of these are well known companies with a lot of respect from customers.  There are times when one negative experience had by a customer can jeaopardize the value of these companies, and that is why these have these guidelines in place.  Both companies have well-defined social media policies, but they do vary.  Intel makes their policy more fun for readers with drawings and charts to show thei policies, while IBM takes a more serious route by listing each guideline and providing a lot of detailed infromation.

For the past 7 months I have been asked the question “How does it feel to be graduating soon?” by friends, family members, professors, and fellow dukes.  I always replied that it was sad and I was scared about going into “the real world”.  Maybe it’s the change in temperature that has recently made me think about graduation more.  It also might be the countless emails that JMU sends me reminding me to order my cap and gown, or my parents hassling me to find a job in my free time.  Lately I have realized that I need to enjoy every moment I have here at JMU because next year, it will all be memories.  It’s true I do bleed purple and gold and I can’t wait to come back to football games and tailgate with friends, and potentially show my children my school.

I like to think about my future, but at the same time I don’t because it does not involve me at JMU being able to walk to my best friends apartment or grab dinner on-campus with a punch.  The real world involves commutes, long-hours, and being on a different type of budget.  I have realized that soon I will no longer be a college student and instead I will be a young adult with a college diploma.  JMU is a great school and if I was to say goodbye to any college it would be JMU because lately I feel that I am ready to embark on what the future has in store for me.  It is a bittersweet feeling, but I know in the end it is all going to be sweet.

I think the singer Vitamin C phrases graduation in a good way in her song, she says “As we go on we remember all the times we had together, and as our lives change come whatever we will still be friends forever”

There is a new trend hitting the marketing world…what is it?  Mobile Marketing or Text Message Marketing.  Internet Marketing has become a necessity for businesses to survive in this e-world that we live in, but now marketers are noticing the potential of mobile devices.  Google is even making their move into the Mobile world.  Mobile marketing is expected to continue to grow with the amount of people that have cell phones and text growing everyday.

Businesses can text their customers or potential customers and give them promotional offerings as well as coupons and calendar events to remember. QWASI offers a list of options that businesses can select from before mobile marketing.  Customers can sign up for these mobile messages usually free of cost, but there are some instances when they will be charged and extra fee by their service provider for these messages.  Is it worth it?  It depends, if customers can get promotional offers that are different than the internet deals, it may be worth it to customers especially if it is free.

Will customers get annoyed with these messages?  Customers can easily unsubscribe from these messages, usually by phone, but sometimes by the internet as well.  Customers that ate loyal to certain retailers will most likely be the users of Mobile Marketing.  There is a large market for this type of advertising and there are a lot of costs incurred by businesses to send these mobile market promotions.  Will I be using Mobile marketing?  Probably not until I trust that all of my information is kept private and I feel I am gaining something in return from some of my favorite stores and restaurants.  In an article on PCWorld, they discuss how over half of all consumers can be classified as “mobile shoppers”.  This is a huge opportunity for businesses.

I won’t lie, I was afraid of Twitter.  It seemed confusing and kind of a waste of time to me.  Why would someone update “tweets” telling the world everything they are doing?  I had my facebook account and that was all I needed.  WRONG…Twitter is more than status updates about what someone had for lunch or what the weather is like for that day. I read about the history of Twitter and found it very interesting. It is a way for us to socialize and stay connected to many people and organizations.  During the last hour I read tweets and viewed pages that I never would have thought even existed on Twitter.

Twitter is an important tool for marketers because it allows us to network with other marketers, marketing articles, and organizations that can give us ideas, opinions, and feedback. Here are 8 easy ways to network on Twitter.  Everyone knows in the world of business, networking is the most important tool.  What more could you ask for from a website like Twitter to bring the world together over the internet in a way that allows us to explore and expand our knowledge as marketers.

I still have a long way to go with my Twitter, but I look forward to following more people and organizations.  I also want to be a Twitter expert so that when job interviewing organizations can follow me and vice versa.  I now see Twitter as a marketing tool, and not a high school fad that I tried to avoid.