Finals Week - Reflection on Social Media

As a social media coach and as a constant user of social media to promote my own business, I've taken the last two years of my life and studied trends and techniques of social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Although its a necessary evil to have a social media platform (and I don't enjoy it as much as I should) there are a few things that I would like to wrap up this semester with, leaving you with some very interesting thoughts of how to approach your social media with your business as you move along. 

What Does It Mean For Me?

The migration to Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and SnapChat show the maturity of the social media space. Use of an online profile to interact with others in a particular arena is now a widely acceptable form of interaction. Technology improves and makes it easier for us to use these platforms and keep tabs on them. For my business (which is evolving), this is a very good thing. The spread of information online is the fastest way to get word out about a new product or business. Its irrelevant as to which platform its on. My plan is to shift focus to where ever the audience is and adapt my business practices around those movements. Those who do not adapt will not survive. And I intend to keep track of where to put my efforts on social media platforms as things change. 

Shift In Social Media 

Since the semester started, major giants like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are starting to reach a maturity phase in their product. They are not growing as fast anymore because... Well frankly and literally the entire world is now on it. Their main priority is a focus on keeping users and not loosing them to other platforms. Therefore, the way in which a business interacts with others is going to change based on how they tailor the site for the individual user. This means that its going to be harder for a business to reach others, and businesses must constantly change their tactics in order to keep pace. 

Impact on My Business

Facebook recently changed their newsfeed to start filtering out promotions and product offerings from businesses that were liked by users. This has taken away a free form of advertising that startups (like me) used to reach an audience. They also made sure that if a company posts a particular amount of information a day to limit their reach to their own users. 

This means that in order for Facebook to be an effective form of advertisement and engagement with customers for business, they have to pay to play. This means that I am going to start focusing my efforts in areas other than Facebook in order to reach an audience. 

My Viewpoint on Social Media

My viewpoint has changed ever so slightly since the start of the semester. Tech companies or new technology like this has a very short life span. Although Facebook will never go away, I started to realize as the semester went on that Facebook is not immune to the product lifecycle and will soon loose its power. Although it will never go away, it will not have the prominence that it has had in the past few years. Thus, what I have learned is that social media giants that may seem invincible  will not always be, and that I need to be aware of what the next platform is in order to jump on in time and stay ahead of my competitors. 

Development and tactics in social media

As the platforms change to keep and bring in more users, businesses must adapt to these and keep their ear to the ground for not only what people listen to, but how. I now know that in the future I will need several people who will both keep their ear to the ground in social media and also constantly change how we interact with those customers across this space. This is a giant pain in the ass that will cost me a lot of money, however it will help keep things afloat and keep my business in the black. 

In Conclusion

All in told, I am not a big fan of social media (even though I teach it). More and more people are going online for their interaction and the space is evolving almost daily. The amount of effort required to keep pace with all of this is absolutely exhausting, but a necessary evil in order for a business to thrive. 

Thank you all for a wonderful class. 

Week 13 - Changes to Analytics

I've been using Google Analytics for a long time now with my business, and I've been able to monitor the long term trends over time. There are some very direct things I've learned about inbound traffic and what it means by using this system. Here is what I have observed. 

Social Media Works

When I post to social media, regardless if its a link to my own web page or not, it will bring more traffic. Getting your company on the news feed of others will make them wonder about you and give them the opportunity to go to your website. 

Photo paint a bad picture

I have a post with a photo of a vampire in it, clearly explaining why people need to stop using vampires in their novels. And lo and behold, traffic started to pour in. But I could see that it was not because of the in length article I wrote, but because of google searches for pictures of vampires. Therefore, you have to be careful about associating a photo with your post and it inflating the kind of traffic you get to your site. 

Flow

There are advance features in there that let you see what the flow is of where people go once they land on your site and how many drop offs you get. The drop off rate is the most important number you need to be looking at. If most people drop off after the first post, you need to figure out how to keep them engaged. 

Week 13 - Google Analytics

Oh the joys of looking at analytics. This is the equivalent to watching the stock market rise and fall with every click and change you make to your website: its rough, volatile, and changes mostly with out you really knowing why.

And now we are going to talk about all those lovely changes and the pain... I mean wonder', of what analytics can do for your mental health... and business.

Step 1 - Overwhelm yourself

When you first get analytics, you're going to find that there are a massive amount of tools, ways to organize information, and burry yourself with numbers and facts. Most of those tools will just make your head spin and it will take some time to settle before you can see straight. 

Step 2 - Look at Behavior

In the behavior section, the most important thing you need to find is what people are looking at and what people are engaged with. Look at "site content" and "all pages" and you will get a list of how many page views you are getting for particular pages. This is especially effective when you have a blog post and want to see how much traffic each blog post is getting you. 

Step 3 - Look at Landing Pages

In the same column under behavior and near "all pages" and find "landing pages". This is going to help you understand where your traffic is coming from and what they are landing on first. This is extremely important because you'll want to make sure those pages have calls to action or lead them to other pages on your site. Focus sprucing those things up. 

Step 4 - Acquisition

Look under the Acquisition tab and find "All Traffic". This is going to tell you exactly where all your traffic is coming from. Weather that be an inbound link for a website, blog, or social media site, its going to show it. When you do get that influx of people from that site, think about how many came in and how you can foster the relationship with that website to have them keep posting. 

Step 5 - Leave it along

If you start looking at anything else, your head is going to start spinning and possibly explode. Just worry about how much engagement you are getting per post and fostering relationships with those that help spread your site. 

Week 12 - Other Social Media Tools

Have enough social media yet? Let me place the fire hose right up to your face and turn it on full blast.

There are multiple different social media tools out there that are all trying to ride the coat tails of how powerful social media is. Some have been around for a while but are less used. Some just came about and have seen some success. Others go after a targeted market and smaller community. But the point is that there are an endless amount of social media tools that you can use for your small business. Here are a few that you can consider.

Google Plus 

Google plus (aka the ugly child of the big social media companies) is one of the most under utilized social media platforms out there that has mass similar to that of Facebook and Twitter. Powered by Google, anyone who has a gmail account automatically generates a Google plus page. Therefore, the site boasts to have over 500 million active users and accounts. 

Check out my personal Google Plus page, along with the business google plus page for my company, Social Publishing House. 

Google On Air

Also, since we are talking about Google Plus, this platform has an incredibly useful feature that will help increase your online platform and visibility on search engines. Its called "Google On Air", which is akin to Skype but functions more like an online webinar that will be filed under your YouTube channel. You can embed it into a blog post, promote it to have people attend and watch, and now have a steady stream of YouTube videos you can use to promote your business. 

Here's an example of a video I did with one of the contest winners for the writing contest that I held. 

HootSuite

Now that the fire hose is going, trying to keep tabs on all of those social media profiles can become a tremendous amount of work. HootSuite is one of the more useful tools for linking all your social media to one platform and managing it. You can also schedule posts in advance, keep tabs on key words and hashtags, and do all of your communication from one screen. If you use more than three social media platforms for your business, you need to try this out. 

Google Drive

As you can see, I'm a big proponent of using Google products. Google Drive is one of those things thats not necessarily social media specific, however the programs that you can use within it can make managing and plugging content into social media much easier than how it used to happen. 

Google Drive is whats called "Cloud Based Software", which stores all your documents on a server instead of on your actual computer. From there, you can access it from any device you have. Others can access those documents and work on them as well, saving their work every 15 seconds. Multiple people can work on them at the same time. 

Gone are the days when you have to email documents back and forth, worry about version control, or losing your work. If you use this for social media, you can create pictures, blog posts, plans, editorial calendars, and just about anything under the sun you would need to manage your social media and online platform. 

Give it a shot. 

Week 11 – Marketing with no budget

I got the itch one day.

Normally my want to play online video games or massive online multiplayer games is quelled by the mound of unfinished books on my bookshelf. But when my work load gets to heavy, I need that outlet. After being out of the gamer sphere for so long, I had no idea where to get my fix.

So instead of doing an Internet search for top games, I simply posted a Facebook status update asking what good games were out that my friends might be playing.

The response was immediate. A dozen friends chimed into the conversation, telling me about the new game Destiny or the new release of World of War craft. After seeing that most of my friends played Destiny and all recommended it above anything else, I was downloading the game.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising that you can’t buy. None of my friends were paid to tell me that Density is a good game (which its alright by the way. Not the best). What matters is that I trust them because I know them better than the banner ads flashing on the right side of my Facebook news feed.

Its in this realm that you can try and advertise using social media. And in fact, it has little to do with using social media at all.

Pour your advertising budget into your product

Make a good product or give good service. Plain and simple. Marketers spend billions of dollars on ads for products that people sometimes bash in the social media atmosphere. Put as much time and effort into making a product that works, that impresses your customers, and makes them happy after they experience your service.

What does that have to do with social media?

Everything.

When they get done using your service or buying your product, they talk about it. They will post it on Facebook, write a review, take a picture and upload it. The customers will advertise it for you rather than you having to do it yourself. And its more effective because people will trust their friends more than you as a company.

How to leverage it

All you need to do is have a presence on social media and stay somewhat current. Your pages for your product and website need to be easily accessible and sharable through social media. Have photos they can share and material they find interesting. And have a hashtag they can latch onto. Once you have those, focus on delivering a good product and service. The rest will speak for itself through your own customers.

Week 11 – Use of ads

Online social media sites are now the new battleground of advertisement’s. You can’t go more than two scrolls through your news feed without seeing and ad creepily tailored to your likes and profile information. Although creepy and invasive, ads through social media really work well. So well in fact, that we are learning about it in this class for use for our own (fictitious) business.

Designing an ad

Designing an ad takes a little more than Photoshop and a few hours. What you say, how you position it, even down to how you color it, all have factors in how people perceive it and if they want to interact with it. The book focuses on some principles of design, however I want to address some factors that are more on the ground level and from practical experience (to give you a break from rereading all the regurgitated language from the text book that most students copied for the assignment) Be Obvious – The message needs to be straightforward. When someone looks at the ad, they need to understand right away what you are trying to convey.

Be Simple – Anything that takes them longer than 2 seconds to decipher will confuse and keep people away. This is social media, where attention span lasts shorter than a four year old on Christmas morning.

Capture attention – There needs to be content in the add that appeals to your target market. For example, if you are a beer company, your target market is man between the ages of 21 and 30. 

Therefore, a beautiful woman drinking a beer is the stopping power you need. Selling baby food? Put a baby playing with a puppy and you’ll have women snap too for the ad. Cheating? Yes, but it works and people do it often.
 

Use of Banner Ads

Banner ads online and in social media are tricky. Facebook is the main area where banner ads are being utilize to gain attention of a target audience. The reason why banner ads are so useful on this platform is because of the information Facebook has about each of its users. Want to target men who like foot ball, drink beer, and sit around playing video games all day? No problem. Facebook knows when they drink, what teams they follow, and what their favorite weapon is in Call of Duty. That kind of detail offers marketers creating ads a very fine way to target someone. And you can do the same thing if you want to.

Twitter Advertising

Twitter is another way to get your message out to a large and attention deficit audience. However, the ads end up showing in the news feed rather than on the side like Facebook. This is also less of image advertising and more script (under 140 characters). The potential to reach a large audience quickly on this platform with ads is just as powerful. However, Facebook would be a more long term advertising route that Twitter. If you are going to advertise on Twitter, I would suggest you use this for a promotion or coupon that involves a quick call to action. This is a great way to boost traffic to a website or boost sales in the short run. Over a long period of time, it will not work based on how much information is pushed through Twitter.

 

Ads for my business 

During the course of this class, my business is taking a different direction. I will be rebranding the company a book publishing company to that of an eBook distributor. With that in mind, I am going to employ a different marketing strategy than most would when it comes to using social media.

 I know the assignment it to come up with an ad and post a screen shot, but I’m not going to do it. Unless you have a large budget with a team to develop an effective advertisement, the work and monetary allocation will not equal the amount of interaction and conversion that you might need, especially as a start up company with a limited budget.

 Go ahead instructors; hit me with a few points lost. I’m not going through the motions of creating an advertisement that I am not going to use.

 To counter the homework, instead of explaining why ads are effective, I am going to explain why they are no longer affective in the social media space. Keep your hands and arms inside the ride at all times kids; you’re about to learn something new.

 Ad space is incredible crowded – according to studies, people see around 5,000 advertisements a day. Everywhere you look, be that online or just walking down the street, you are bombarded by brands and commercials from every which way. People are becoming numb to it and seeking areas where they are not inundated by commercials. Marketers are fast to follow, but case in point there’s way to many that people just ignore.

Lack of trust – Consumers find banner ads online to be the least trusted form of advertising. Most of us grew up with false banner ads and pop ups that lead to sites that mostly likely have viruses, result in spam, or tricked the consumer into visiting the site that is not what they intended.

They’re incredibly expensive – I’ll bet after taking a look at what it might cost to run an ad to a large audience on Facebook, you’ll agree with me that its becoming rather expensive. With how these social media companies are growing in terms of users, the ad space will only become more and more expensive.
 

In conclusion

Go ahead and read my next post that will show you my tactics for getting the word out about your company over social media.

Week 10 - Email Marketing

Email marketing can be effective if done correctly. Businesses have a tendency to over to do sometimes, such as sending out emails daily. For a small business, learning how to have the right blend of content and consistence for each news letter or email you send it a delicate dance that could be the difference between a customer visiting the site again, or ending up in the spam folder.

I've done a little bit of emailing with news letters for my business. Lets go over some of the possible content that I have used in the past. These are both things that my customers enjoy and have proved to be effective.

Writing Contest

On my website, I have a tab specifically for holding a monthly writing contest to help find new writers. When the page it not active, it allows customers to input their email for updates on the contest. When it is active, they must enter their email address in order to participate. 

The news letter that I created has one of two types of messages

1. A call to action announcing that the contest is under way and that submissions are being accepted

2. An update as to who the winners are. 

These are sent out once every two weeks or when there is new information to share with the competitors for the contest. 

Blog Posts

I have a separate email list for people who signed up for the news letter and updates about new blog posts. Here, I created a special template that showcases the last three blog posts that were written. I only send this email out once every two weeks.

Press Releases

For any major updates, such as a new author, publication of an ebook, or advancement of the company, I put into a small press release in the form of a blog post. I sent the email out with a small synopsis for the article, then the link for the blog post. This one I push out to people when new things occur in the company, which comes out to an average of about once every month. I also integrate new blog posts into this one, so I am not sending more emails out than I need to. 

Conclusion

The idea is not to send an inordinate amount of email to your recipients. Once a week is more than enough. You also want to make sure that they sign up for the updates and that you do not input their email address into your mailing list without their permission. There is nothing that makes a customer more angry than getting email when they didn't ask for it. 

Week 9 - Organization of Blogs

Keeping things organize for a blog are relatively difficult to balance. Choosing between the right topics to offer a diverse amount of information can easily be seen as not enough or cumbersome. To attract the audience for the business that I am running, I have decided on the following topics:

Company News

Here, I can release and press releases that I might have with regards to activity with my business. This will be for all general customers and anyone interested in the daily activity of the company. This will also target individuals interested in becoming part of Social Publishing House to see if the company is legitimate and moving forward. 

Writing Tips

This will be the most active out of all the tabs and will target the writers who are interested in improving their craft. These posts will be spread out on social media and target the heavy duty writer getting ready to publish. This will help draw legitimacy to the blog and to the company by offering well written tips and advice that move writers forward. 

Fun and Interesting

This will be for the general user and reader who might want to buy an ebook someday. This area will be more sarcastic and cover topics that target a wider range of people for views. This will help grow the business by attracting more viewers and get more shares to get the heavy duty writers and book buyers in. Basically, this section will boost awareness of the company. 

Book Reviews

This section will target books written by independent writers. The goal here is to highlight well written work of an author with a medium to large platform. They will be most likely to share that blog post with their platform and bring readers to the company. In other cases, this section will also be used to bring awareness to the company by reviewing books that will soon become movies. Those interested in reading reviews that compare the movie to the book will find articles relevant to what they are looking for. 

Publishing News

This will be a very niche section of the blog that will give writers and readers a summary of what is happening in the book publishing industry. Although the audience for this is small, the idea is to grow this over the long term as a key source of information for people looking to make publishing decisions. 

Blogs I posted on

http://wafflehaususa.blogspot.com

http://travismoss1986.blogspot.com

http://smstacey.blogspot.com

Week 9 - Blogging

Blogging is becoming a powerful way to draw traffic to a business website. The fresh content that appears on the page is identified with online search engines and increases the probability that you will appear on searches. It also provides customers with fresh content and information they can share with others. 

The question posed by the class is how professional does one need to be with a blog and how personal can one get. 

When to be professional

Blogs can take the form of news posts and the reporting of facts. For the Social Publishing House blog, we have a section specifically for press releases and information updating the status of writing contests. In these areas, its important to be very matter of fact and professional. It leaves little room for discussion and personal opinion. 

When to be personal

The use of the first person in a blog post can make it feel very personal to the reader and allow them to connect more to the content. It can be effective, but it has to be used in the right matter. 

For example, blog posts that I write for the company normally are impersonal and do not use the first person. Most of the time I use the second person, addressing the reader directly, which can also be just as personal. In these posts, the topic usually covers ways they can improve their writing or things they have to look out for. 

Audiences respond to different posts, and its a good idea to diversify the posts. So where I am more impersonal and matter of fact, I bring in writers who use more "I" in their posts to draw in attention. One writer give his opinion on books that are read that will eventually turn into movies. Sarcastic as they may be, they appeal to particular kinds of readers that would shy away form the matter of fact posts. 

What Makes Sense

At the end of the day, it matters what you are writing about. If its reporting, be impersonal. If its about a new book or movie coming out, its more opinion and can be more personal to the writer. But as a business owner, its important to have a balance of content that can reach to several different target audiences that you are looking for. 

Week 8 - Businesses Similar to Mine

Major publishing houses of the book publishing industry use very quiet tactics to promote themselves. Their main efforts are in promoting their individual authors and their work, thereby driving interest and revenue into their company.

As these large companies focus on branding themselves quietly through their main authors and stay behind the scenes, we will take a look at social media accounts for two of the largest book producers on the planet: Penguin and Random House.

Penguin

Penguin maintains an active Tumblr account. They focus on displaying the covers of the books that they produce. Although some of the book covers are simple, they actively display the Penguin logo on all covers. Due to the fact that they mostly rely on words for their actual product, displaying the visual part of the covers is essential and is a great way to draw in audiences

Random House

The Titan of the book publishing industry, Random House uses a variety of media that include a very under used social media tactic, GIFs. They also have, dispersed throughout their platform, images of the covers of their books that they sell along with antidotes by the authors. Interlaced with those are promotions and calls to action. 

Visual Social Media for Social Publishing House

The use of visuals for Social Publishing House is very difficult in the beginning. This is a book production company, which focuses on the written word and prose. Photography and visual arts are not my forte. However, in order to draw in attention to the company, we have to have some type of image based content. Therefore, the best of both worlds is to exist on Tumblr, where the target market is most likely to read content as well as engage with visuals. 

Here is the Tumblr Account use for Social Publishing House. It has been connected with the Facebook page. 

Week 8 - The Visual

Images are the most powerful thing you can use to enhance traffic and engagement on social media. As the social media world has evolved, there are four major platforms that focus almost entirely on the visual, and they are now holding most of the sway and power for a business.

Right for my brand

For Social Publishing House, the use of images is difficult. As a book publishing company, the target market is mostly for individuals who take time to read articles and posts. However, the stopping power of an image still appeals to these readers, the fact is that reading mostly takes place in the imagination. 

Despite this case, using visuals to attract readers is still important. And the images could be used as a stopping power to draw in people to read what is posted on social media. Here are the four visual networks and how they relate to the brand of Social Publishing House

YouTube

This is a video based social media network and rely on video production methods. Videos are almost the complete opposite of the production of books, which can pose a problem if I were to use this site mainly to promote the company. There are ways that this platform could be used to draw traffic to the brand, such as the creation of commercials associated with particular books that are produced, or small commercials that talk about the brand. But outside of that, and for the start up phase for my company, it is not the most effective platform. 

Instagram

This social media behemoth is on the rise and is quickly becoming the choice of millennials and generation Z. Due to the younger target market and the fact that this platform is completely photo based, this area would not be an effective area for developing the brand of Social Publishing House. The target market is much older (35 to 45). Additionally, users are going to be more visually based than they are creative based, meaning that people who read are less likely to be on these platforms. 

Pinterest

This platform is more promising due to its target market and sharing ability that focus around products. The clientele is mostly affluent women who are in the target market range for Social Publishing House. They will make boards and pin products that they want in the future. Some of those include the covers of books that they want to read. So, this is an ideal place to start marketing the brand of Social Publishing House and the promotion of its books. 

Tumblr

This last platform is the most effective one to spread the brand of Social Publishing House. Although this is an area where individuals share photos and videos, it is also blog based. Articles and written work permeate through the feed. The target market also excises on this platform, and many of them are also writers as well. Social Publishing House will build the brand in this area and recruit its writers from this platform. 

Week 7 - Twitter

Twitter is a powerful tool for business. Although most would say that Twitter is for people to follow celebrities and post what they had for breakfast, its actually much more than that. 

Finding Connections

I looked for people who are in the publishing industry and write about publishing. Specifically, I look for people who are talking about the Amazon vs Hachette ordeal that is taking place and rocking the price of eBooks. So I searched "Amazon vs Hachette" and found several articles written about the topic. I looked to the authors of those articles then found them on twitter and started to follow them. 

I found about a half dozen authors who write for Digital Book World, Huffington Post Books, and the New York Times. Some of these individuals even started to follow me back. 

Lists

I created two different lists: One for the major ebook distribution companies and publishing companies out there, then one for some of the major writers in the industry that I just described above. This helps me keep things organized in several ways. For example, when I want to see what tactics and books that these publishing industries are doing currently, the list allows me to get a good glance on their activity in the last few hours. With the list for the major writers, this allows me to see what the reaction to these promotions and books is and see how it is shaping the industry. 

Lists for Goals

Creating lists helps to keep things organized by keeping a finger on the pulse of companies, competitors, and trends in the industry you are operating in. This way, you can easily look at what is going on and get the most up to date information you can about what others are doing. This helps you daily gather intelligence to make decisions about your own company. 

Week Five - Post Reach and Engagement

Introduction

Oh the pains and possibilities of Facebook. The company has made a lot of changes to the business features of company pages over the last year. When I started Social Publishing House, it was much easier to engage people and get likes. However the insights were not as good for tracking. Now, things have changed to where insights are excellent, but getting likes and engagement are harder than ever. So, here is the simple difference between reach and engagement. 

Post Reach

Post reach is connected to those who actually saw what you posted. Do not confuse this for people who actually read what you wrote or updated. Post reach simply means that those who follow your page ended up seeing your post in their news feed at some point. Most of the time, people scroll through their news feed like a kid running through the candy isle; they just don't ponder long until they see something more shinny and appealing. 

Normally, your reach will be much higher than those who actually engaged you. So don't get excited when your reach is 1000 people, but only 1 person engaged

So whats the difference between reach and engagement? 

Engagement

What really matters it the engagement. That means they saw what you posted and decided to click on it and interact with it. Be that a like, a share, or that they clicked on the link and took the time to read something you wrote. This would be the equivalent to that small kid in the candy isle picking up that giant 2000 calorie candy bar, ripping off the wrapper and chowing down. 

Now be that as it may, getting people to engage is very difficult. But, with the insights from FaceBook, you can see what works and what does not. 

Insights 

The best way to learn how to engage people is to look at the insights. These insights let you know how many people you reached, and out of those reached how many engaged by either liking the post or clicking on it. 

Flashy and to the point

What I've learned in my time running this page is that people want things that are easy to read, flashy, and are interesting in the sense that they have nothing to do with your business. Most people interact with pictures (the fewer words the better), they don't click on articles unless it has a title that is more shocking, such as "Brook Burk reads her ebook topless on the beach," rather than, "Bowker Research finds kids under 30 read more ebooks." (Yes I know, harsh, but thats what people would rather click on and read)

So when you post things, post lost of pictures and articles that are at least 'somewhat' related to your business. That will give you the most reach and will gain you the most likes. Once you have enough likes, you can start posting things that are relevant to your company and you will start to have some engagement to your actual business. 

The rest will freeload on your posts just looking for more articles about Brook Burk. 

Choose your time wisely 

You will also notice that engagement for your target audience is going to be different depending on the time of the week and when you post. People are more likely to engage on monday mornings and friday mornings (at least for my business). So this is something you need to look at before you plan your posts so you can get the most engagement. 

I use a program called Hoot Suite that lets me auto schedule my posts and time them out. It saves me a lot of time and allows me to keep my page active without constantly having to nurse it like that wining little kid in the candy isle. 

It will take a while to discover this pattern, but watch it closely and start to make adjustments. Experiment and see when things get read the most. 

Don't Spam 

There is nothing I hate more than getting spam email. I do everything I can to unsubscribe from those when I get them. The same goes for Facebook. If you like a company, all of a sudden you start to see your news feed crowded with offers and promotions from a company trying to take your much earned candy money. 

Don't be that business. 

Instead, thing of what your target market wants to see and stick to one very important rule: the 9 to 1. Post 9 things that are interesting for other people and add to their lives. Then, for every 9 posts for others, you can post one for yourself. This way, you won't seem spammy and you won't get unlikes. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, you are going to get frustrated with all those little candy starved kids running around the isle not picking your product. Just remember: more calories, more color, and a bigger bar is the only way to get their attention and get them crying to their moms to buy it for them. Just make sure to write down how many temper tantrums you get per day and take note when they walk in the door. 

Target Market for Project

Using My Own Business

I will be using my own business for the project for the class. My company is Social Publishing House, an ebook publishing that uses the group collaborative approach to creating novels that benefits the author and the team producing it. The company is entering is second year and I am working very hard on establishing my first few authors.

Target Market

I have a very specific target market for what a book buyer is. In terms of writers, this demographic is very hard to pin down. But, it is assumed that those who read often are more likely to be writers (good writers that is). Thus, I have priced together some information from various consumer reports and articles from reputable sources. This is what I found: 

-          Gender: Female

-        Age: Between 36 and 45 (average age 42)

-        Income: $50,000/ year

-        Ethnicity: White/Caucasian

-        Location: North eastern United States or areas with inclement weather

-        Family: Married with two to three kids. Recent empty nester or kids of high school age.

-        Interests: Romance, Memoirs, children’s books

-        Writes: Romance and memoir books.

-        Occupation: Homemaker/Teacher

-        Education: College Degree

         Additional Information: 

Republican/Conservative

Wants to be the next E.L. James

Most likely to self-publish

Most likely started writing seriously within the last two years

Reads 10 to 20 books a year

 Probably overweight/non athletic